Thoughts In The Labyrinth

They sit in a circle in a dimly lit room.  Candles flicker on the fireplace mantle and cast shadows from the wiry kiwi branches onto the ceiling.  The black curtains are drawn and they are all alone- three bodies who try for a moment to leave the labyrinth and cortex behind, to emerge new from the trappings of intelligence and talk without walls. 
She looks at the man in front of her.  In most societies he would be considered an adult, a man with graying hair, more than forty years of age.  He sits in front of her illuminated in the golden light, imitating her sounds and creating syllables without meaning.

“dooooahhh” she says.
“dooahhhhhhhhh” he repeats one octave below.
“ti ti ta ma to sooooo.”
“ta toooo ta ma to sooooo.”

They all smile.  Someone shifts slightly on the futon.  A part of her ego breaks off and wanders down the labyrinth alone.
She wonders just where she is and who she’s with.  Who is the man in front of her?  The man making sounds? 
The strangeness of the moment hits her, rustles up against old thought patterns and rubs at convention.  Do adults do this?  Do they sit in a circle, letting the stars and night turn to day? Do they make sounds and sing together, pushing their bodies beyond normal comfort to remain seated in a circle?  Do they breathe loudly, moving their hands wildly as though there were music, though none is playing?

“MUUahhhhh, sahhhh, tiiiii.”
“MUUahhhhh, sahhhh, tiiiiiaaaaaa.”

Her ego searches through the known, all those layers sitting, accumulating since birth, waiting for a moment in the light.  “Known” meaning words, thoughts, convention. 
She looks again at the man, long wisps of white hair shine in the candlelight. 
This is not what adults do, though they could all be considered adults with driver’s licenses, bills, kids, cars, jobs- and yet they are not.

In another space she watches two young boys, both just a few feet off the ground.  She is supposed to be the adult there.  She feeds them noodles and bananas and makes sure they are warm and dry.  She comforts them after a fall and tucks them into bed with a lullaby.
And yet, she does not only do what the other adults do. Before bed she sits them next to her by the computer, she practices her singing while they watch and sometimes follow along, clapping as they sing along.  She imitates them in the hallway with her body, stomping her foot when they do, she jumps when they do, yells into the air when they do- they notice what she does and laugh- delighting in the exchange.
But that is not what adults do.  Not the adults they know.  She is their Other. She is like the graying man, a living signifier for another path. 

Center

The words came out of the girl.
Big pink lips and lusciousness that could only be described by words like liquid and voluptuous and moist.
We looked at her and flipped the pages, there were a thousand more with eyes like feathers.
The words came out of the girl and she knew- there actually could be no asking- it was the center and the center casts no shadows and there just must be a moment when she can let herself feel what it would be like without questions.  No answers either, just a place where the Real could come through the window like moonlight and stroke her with the softness of blue wings.

Center.
We try to maintain the center.
Center.
Center.

The windows were open and the bright daylight revealed all their flaws and they glazed over them like pink lip gloss or sticky donuts and their love coated them in candy without hard shells and turned everything pink and wet and ready for something more. 
More?  Yes, but not then. More?  YES.

They sat in the car, sunlight pouring in. She asking the question. The words again.
The center.
Snuggled against a wiry beard of black feathers, she breathed in the darkness of a scented garage and oils.
We find the center.  Look for it.  Walk towards it.

The sunlight came in and she closed her eyes, letting the struggle inside settle. The moon could be there with its jagged edges.  The silver light could be there with its calm.  It could all happen in that tiny space where his legs could barely fit and she rustled up against him like a pillow.  There were rooms with closed doors that she did not need to peer inside, places with more questions that spiraled like carousel wheels. 
She let the ruffling wings settle.
Those words, once spoken, fly from the open wind and beat out the story of a new memory.

My Life As A Leaf

I held onto that tree branch, suckling where my lips met the bark, clinging, holding.  Thousands more like me, clinging, waiting. 
Which will it be?  Pale blue light?  Soft yellow? 
The tunnels stand, eternally waiting.  A choice made minute after minute- for the beings die by the thousands.

I move through the tunnel- I have chosen. A rock, a white house, a dimension where the work has taken root- I cannot tell. 
I am folded into the darkness, one with the shadows that hide my lifetime.  It comes- it is there, eternally ready.

Fluttering.  There is a maelstrom of currents pushing me in all directions. 
I am not dying.  I am living. 
I breathe. But do I live? 
There must be more than breathing, simply existing.  Must be more- did I chose that place? 

The ground is near.  I see it coming.
The ground blares even from the tree branch- so far and just a blink away.
I move towards it slowly, I move towards it quickly. 
I shudder and I am there. 
I turn around and my edges are yellow and red and crinkled. 
It comes and there I am, touching the earth once again.  swoosh.  
I am in the void.  The clear light. 
Nothing. Nothing.  Everything.  Nothing.

And then there is consciousness once again. 
I look back at the fading clear light. 
I am falling.  Falling, falling. 
Soon I will have to choose once again.
I will be that leaf, clinging.
It’s coming.

Soon I will decide. 
The tunnel is there once again-
a million of them leading to rocks or thirst, yellow of white, clear or brilliant.
There will be breathing, perhaps life once again.

I am falling, falling. 
The clear light is ahead. 

The Battle For Words

The battle of language
For language
We are twisted
Searching
If only it could be one way, then we could rest
If only they could be one way, then I would understand.
The battle for language
It wraps me in its wheel, taking me, taking me
Not, I am not your lover
Raping me.
The wheel,
It does not ask if I can breathe
There is no consent
I am a body, plunging to earth, into the earth
The wheel
I see my eyes spinning, eyes spinning
Words
The battle for words, it comes through me and out.
If only there was one way to be, then I could know.
If only there was the word, the word, I search for the word.  What is this?
What are you?
Who are we together?
I fight for the answer
There Is no answer
The battle for the words,
Take me take me.  I am your slave.
Rape me with your contortions and I’ll search the world-grasping for the one thing- only one thing.
The battle for words, of words.
I struggle for the ways to be.  Definition, oh it would feel so fucking good.  If only I could define this, set it straight, keep it there for all eternity, there are plenty of me- those who would enjoy it.  oh predictability, you are my lover.

Take me, take me. There is no asking.  Born to struggle in this word game.
My eyes spin.
I see you in my eyes, you are me as she is me as we are all together.
Just as he said- they said - or me, we have no words for this and I am drawn into the pile of shit that would have us all be defined.  Oh, it would feel good on that corner of the white hospital shelf, but this is gritty and dark and the fight takes my heart- beating- it feels so good and hot tight in this hand.
This is the battle for words and we are drawn down in its tight embrace.  Give a kiss, won’t you love?
Give a kiss, for this is the battle.

Essence

The question was asked, and I skirted it like a child running from a wave moving quickly across wet sand.
What is my nature? Too many things cloud my mind, opposing thoughts, statements made and then refuted. I search through the mess, looking for a simple answer. But even that word hurts to look at, like a glare from the sun that could burn to the core of me, making me blind and sweaty and full of hardened thoughts. And so I run skeptically, chasing foam and seawater though staying clear of its chilly touch. Every answer is a guess. But maybe that’s fine, just a tiny lap of water on my calves won’t hurt.
And so what am I?
Am I the moving arrow? The thing moving through time, the constant motion of work.
Eternal.
And this thing, this essence... I truly search for some word, anything to describe it, but it slips through even the most outstretched part of my mind. This thing invisible yet tangible. This thing, quiet and eternal. Energy. A lost sentence made of color, shape and turns.
My function? I am the vessel, the thing through which creation moves.
I am the open door, the portal to the other sides, the other places, the realms where there is different knowledge, knowledge without facts and dates.
On earth, am I the Other way? An example of something else, one of the many paths.
I am another option.
Am I the fish in the river, a creator on earth, choosing time over money?
Colorful, lazy, moving, working through tears, watching sunsets and computer screens.
Am I the future teacher, now the student?
I am a link in the chain, a pink tile in the mosaic of our lineage, another vessel that leads forwards and back. There are truths that cannot be explained, and with each small remembering, I become a stronger link into the past, connecting to the future that waits for my return.
I am the door.
I am the dreamer alone in my bed. I am the dream of another playing with fire and paint while eating donuts. I am the being that struggles under a cloak of confusion and learned rubbish.
I am the vessel, the fleshy pot holding something precious inside, the thing I have glimpsed rarely. This thing that I cannot describe, the essence I search to understand. I am the hidden, the cracked door. The flickering light.

And so I play with the thoughts, searching slightly for something, something, anything.
There are a dozen question marks behind my thoughts and each answer depends on the day, on the rain, on the mood in which I sit and listen.
A thousand changes and the questions turn in on themselves, becoming laughter blowing in the wind, a hint of jasmine as we tilt closer to the sun once again.
My essence is the shifting of time.
Constant.
In motion.
So close.
Yet somewhere beyond the stars.

The Wild Song

It came like a freak wave. Rising up from still blue waters until I was enveloped in its forceful arms. It circled me with fuzzy golden light, blotting out the details of room and life. Chair, computer, lunch, the garden outside beneath a happy blue sky, they all faded into a blur of colors that quickly merged into a hazy sun colored blur.
There was no room, no city. I was no longer me. I was a body without memory, free of everything before this moment. Swirling around me with abandon, particles entered without permission, moving through the barriers of skin and bone, dancing beyond the laws of physics. The eye, the strongest point of this thing that can only be described as a wave, hovered above my head. I felt it there, pulling slightly.
I opened my mouth, tilted my head back and I began singing.
I was lighter than usual. As it went into me, I reached up into it. Reached out with sound, higher and higher I sang, letting the notes roll out pure and free. Dancing on meadows, rolling in bed. They did what they wanted, went where it felt right.
They came from me, my children, I opened up and let them go without a worry clouding the air. My eyebrows lifted, my body arched as though in orgasm. I closed my eyes though I could still see the hazy golden light all around. I saw the notes, watched as they jumped up and out, finally free of their chains.
These were not the tentative sounds I usually choked out, a body gripping, somehow always scared of the inevitable fall. Timid, quiet sounds just barely louder than the refrigerator that struggled for equal attention. This was all different. Not just a new world, a new planet with nine sided stars and monkeys that spun sugar into gold.
This was a warm bath with a shout. Force mixed beyond the bounds of anger, for it was a gentle wave, an ocean storm meant to free every part of me. A gift that found me in a city of millions, picking up on my particular scent of sticky sex, woods and sweat.
I opened my eyes, but they were closed. I lay back, but I was floating. I sang, but as I sang I kissed every part of the wave. I reached up, my voice touching its swirling shape.
As I sang, any remnants of fear were a far off memory, buried somewhere without a marker. It was just openness that rose up to meet the elements, sound moving to air. Light to fire.
The human had finally fallen. This was song without death fear. This was love without the thought of betrayal.
This was something that came to me. Something that came from me, to me, away and up, into the golden colored wave that took me.

Reminder

The TV was on and its volume was turned very low. I watched the bright Technicolor images move across the screen though eyes that were almost ready to shut. Letting my body melt into the plush suede cushions, I held the remote in one limp hand, ready for another attack of toothpaste and car insurance ads.
In front of me, people in bikinis and board shorts were furiously diving through a pool of mud, frantically rooting through the mess for little bags of sand in an attempt to reach the blue finish line ahead of the pack. As the screams of the contestants came through the living room speakers, I heard a faint sound from the other room, something foreign to the sound of cheering and sloshing that came to me through electric magic and science, or science that was so amazing, it was magic. Aiming the remote at the cable box, I turned the volume even lower and strained my ears for the sound, had I heard something?
Waiting…fixing my eyes on the hardwood floor…waiting…there it was, a little cry.
I left my embedded place on the couch and opened the door to the babies' room, where two dark wooden cribs sat against opposing walls, perhaps clearly defining the roles they would one day assume when they were grown men and left their wooden cribs and baby blankets.
Jonas, the six month old and the younger of the two, was crying. As I looked into the crib, I saw him on his back, his little legs wriggling in his sleeping bag-like-jumpsuit that covered both his legs. His tiny hands were balled up in fists.
Reaching into the crib and pulling his little body towards mine, his cries came up to envelop me. He was unable to clearly say what bothered him, but something was not quite right. Was it the lack of light? Was he lonely in his crib surrounded by only darkness and tall bars? I brought him to my chest, covering his body with my arms, stroking his head of thin silk hair, bringing him as close to my heart as I could.
I remembered the song practiced years ago while standing in a circle of three in a dimly lit room, it was the melody I strained to reach when it leapt up the scale. I sang it here now, in this dark room. I sang it for Jonas, ‘nothing ever has happened, nothing ever will happen…”
Over and over, the two line song came out, reaching up and then descending only to start over once again. He stopped crying quickly and I held him in front of me, propping his jumpsuit covered legs on my stomach. Jonas looked at me with alert wide eyes, eyes that were quickly turning from baby blue to a metallic brown. He wiggled slightly, his body bobbing and moving with currents of electricity and unanswered curiosity.
I stopped singing and looked into him, seeing nothing that can be explained, defined, or understood.
“You know,” I said clearly, “nothing has ever happened, nothing ever will happen.”
His eyes widened. We went into each other then, me looking into him looking into me. I understood it. Him looking into me looking into him, understanding.
There was no woman, no baby, no crib or parents at a party. There was no game show on a television in the other room and no sore muscles from a day standing in the sun.
Here the words made sense, in a chamber of feelings without words. In this place, we were the same thing, two parts of the same fabric, not separated by bodies and memories or contorted into a canvas of unequal shapes and designs where egos dance.
I had spoken and we both had heard. His sudden jolting was mine as well. Oh yes, nothing has ever happened. Nothing ever will happen. Nothing ever has. Nothing ever will.

Rockabye Baby

I heard him from the living room as I was browsing TV listings with a responsive remote, heard the small little gasps he made seeking air to fill his little lungs. By the time I opened the door to his bedroom, the gasps were turning into high pitched wails. I reached into the wooden crib and opened my hands for his little body, bringing him to my chest. I carried him from the room, leaving his brother in the arms of his own dreams in the darkness.
“What’s wrong baby?” I asked with concern, giving his downy covered head a few soft kisses.
In the dim light of the hall, just a few steps from the kitchen, he was not consoled. Wiggling in my arms between gasps for air, his face contorted into a red mess of anger. A sudden fear ran through me, “he’s choking.” I held him upright and patted his back and he cried harder. He wasn’t choking, just mad.
“What’s wrong baby?” I asked with a smile, looking at him.
His face was completely red and his little mouth opened wide with each wail, showing the pink soft gums that would one day house two rows of teeth.
Cradling him in my arms, we went back into his bedroom, I groped around his cradle for the pacifier I expected to find in the left corner. When my hands found nothing, I turned on the light to look again, I still didn’t see it, though I had the memory of his father placing it there earlier. I took a quick look at Noah sleeping in the other crib against the wall, his body in a contorted angle on one side, undisturbed by the noise.
Jonas continued to scream, and we walked back into the hall, taking a few steps to the kitchen. Moving him into another position in my arms, I scanned the kitchen, searching for another pacifier and finding one the side of his automated jumper. I inserted the pacifier into his open, crying mouth, he did not latch on.
I brought him into the living room and sat on the suede couch. I sat him on my lap.
“What’s wrong baby?” I asked smiling at him.
I kissed his head again, feeling the few wisps of his silken hair on my lips. I tried the pacifier again, he didn’t want it.
“What’s wrong baby?”
Not a bit of anger or agitation in my voice, just pure questioning.
“What’s wrong honey?”
I tried holding him in a variety of ways, but nothing seemed soothe him.
Then my eyes fell on the mechanical baby swing by the window. I tried to lower him into the seat, bumping his little head on the three stuffed animals that dangled from the upper plastic arm of the mobile. I realized that his legs couldn’t spread because of the baby suit he was in, it was like a sleeping bag over his legs that snapped at his chest like a vest. I pulled him towards me again, brushing his head against the stuffed hanging animals once more. I let out a little embarrassed laugh and his little face scrunched tighter.
I unsnapped his jumper and then his legs were free, I lowered him into the seat. There was a seatbelt, but I didn’t worry about snapping him in. I sat right in front of him, just inches away and turned on the swing.
“Rockabye baby, on the tree top…”
I held out my two index fingers and he grasped them, holding on tight with his own little fingers. I looked at him, his eyes were still all scrunched up and wet, his mouth was open, showing his red gums.
“when the wind blows, the cradle will rock…”
On the edge of my mind, I remembered the preschool I had worked in for a week, one of the little boys there liked the song, “itsy bitsy spider,” and we sang it to him over and over when he was crying.
“when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all.”
I opened my eyes wide as I sang, smiling at him.
After repeating the song several times, insisting on the melody, his crying slowed, then eventually stopped.
He looked at me, with his eyes that were turning from blue to brown. They would open wide as I reached for the high notes with my voice. I pushed on him gently with my fingers even though the machine was rocking him, pushing just a little so he could feel me. He looked at me, seeing me, seeing deeper than what was available in the mirror. I looked into him, seeing beyond the baby, seeing a universe of beings.
“Rockabye baby, on the tree top…”
As I sang, and as his crying became a thing of the past, he would break out into a quick smile every now and then when our contact grew strong, then he would sharply turn his head to the left or the right, grasping for something with his open mouth.
I kept singing, kept looking at him, kept providing a bit of pressure with my fingers as he rocked up and down on the swing. He repeatedly returned my contact, his eyes opening wide from time to time, perhaps seeing sound and feeling color. Between phrases I would purse my lips and blow on him gently, letting my breath move across his soft face.
Experimenting, I stopped singing for a moment. When I did, his body would start to squirm once again, preparing to cry.
“rockabye baby, on the tree top…”
I started to forget the lines, or I was repeating them so much, it seemed like there were lines I had skipped, but I kept going, dropping any armor and image, just giving my rawest self.
Soon, I felt like improvising and started making up another melody. From time to time, I went out of tune, and found it difficult to get back. I kept my eyes open, a smile on my face even when I remembered another me that would care about performance.
But here, with him, my desired image was easily dropped. I felt only love for this being in a little body. We could be together without my human ways, I could give my voice to him, calm him, love him with my most intuitive self.

The Wheel Of Fortune

I looked into the mirror, there on the street. He was an Asian man. I was an Asian man. With a camera and flannel. I was a man. He looked at a woman in the mirror. He was a woman. I looked into a mirror on the street, and there I was, a man. There was a camera, a flannel, a full cup of curiosity. I was there, a man. A man with breasts, a man with a camera. A mirror revealed. There I was, on the street, with my camera, my curiosity, my heavy cup.

I looked into the mirror, and as I looked, I saw that I could have been her, there, on the other side of the street. There, on the sidewalk, a Latin man with a briefcase. A woman with a tiny white dog peeking from her purse. A flip of the wheel, the crowd chants, a smile of white teeth gleams into the camera. I watch from a blue reclining chair in a far away living room, a chair I have never seen, a chair I bought, a house I sleep in, the phantom in the mirror.

I look into the mirror, and there they are, a thousand reflections. She with her long blond hair, the man with the cigar, a naked child running through a mountainous garbage pile, the little dog with three legs, the man with his camera and a flannel shirt wrapped around his waist. There is the mirror, right on the street. There is the lens and the black eye of curiosity and an open iris hiding behind a wall of glass connected to a finger. There is a mirror, and I stare back with my own black eye. With my own purse and sweater, with my own ceramic cup that steams with fire. They all walk by, holding an ounce of me, a fragment of my reflection. I hear the sound of fortune, the tat-a-tat-tat of the wheel as it spins.

A flip of the hand, a tug of the wrist. The audience chants. The smile, so white and fake frozen. The lights of the studio audience dance: red, green, blue. They move. Lasered strobes of attention jumping from one object to another. Hop, flip, hip. Hope. The man, the dog, the woman and her smile. They could have all been me, and I watch through a lens, through a mirror that allows me to see, even months later, what I was and who I am and what we all could have been with just a slight turn of the hand, a spin of the wheel, and a jump in time.

Without A Body

Those little fingers move, picking up a pen. Nubby pink toes grasp the air as they move her forward, keeping balance on the large globe beneath her feet. She turns her head to the right, her eyes searching for the bright flash of red that just blinked out of existence. She is a body. A moving, flesh covered body. She walks, breathes, talks, I see her jumping on a bright green hillside, her arms swinging wildly as the soft whiteness of her moves through space. And I see her as real. She sees herself as real. For what can be more real than a body? It is the eyes she sees through, the vessel that takes her from supermarket to concert to warm bed. Is it the body that defines life? I breathe, therefore, I am. I take four steps, therefore I am. I sing a little tune, therefore I am. If she stays still. If for some reason, her body no longer responds to the command of her mind and she sits in a padded chair, unable to dance, jump or walk, is she still “here?” Her body exists, we can see it. I watch it remain motionless as four small black wheels guide her through wide city streets, but what does she feel? Is she trapped? Made powerless and motionless by the body. She can see, perhaps she can talk, but what is still inside? What is it that looks out through those eyes, what is it that still questions? Maybe the being. Maybe the still sleeping machine without mobility. I remember having a sickened feeling as I watched a man in a high-tech contraption. His head was held upright by metal poles, a tube and ventilator helped him breathe. I though to myself, “I could never live like that. Wouldn’t it just be better to die?” Motionless, still except for, perhaps, an active mind. What are we without a body? Maybe this motionless woman paints the picture of what we will all soon be without a breathing, carbon-based body. Trapped? At the mercy of something else? Is this woman with shriveled legs and skinny arms more prepared for the black spaces of the Bardo? Will she more easily recognize the falseness of the body? The illusion of the self? Or will she travel the chambers, looking for something to enter, looking for someplace that she can be “herself” again? How do we determine existence? How do we extract it from the void?

Cutting The Cord

She takes one small breath, her first. The earth has opened up with light, long awaited through the long meaty tunnel. It is cold, her body feels a sensation without description, a pain without concept, just the raw brutal force of chill on still warm flesh. She takes another breath, her second.
A woman is crumpled against the backseat of a four-door car. Her open white thighs reveal streaks of pale blood that have yet to dry. She leans against the cold vinyl seat of the car, exhausted, sweaty and smiling. Beyond the window of the stopped car, there is night all around. A moon glows somewhere in the sky, only no one notices. The wind beats against the window of the round-edged car. And inside, in the yellow glow of an interior light, they can all see, something has come out.
Creation has turned along the wheel. For a moment, they all ride the second hand together, watching, breathing, crying as a new being emerges into the human realm. It has come, from a place that knows no buildings or cars or sympathy. This new thing, this new creature comes without language. Without concepts. From one realm into another, tonight, this thing has come
The night is cold. The young body feels the air with stark attention. This is the steady re-supply of nature. Whatever words and thoughts and explanations were used to create this little being, this is nature multiplying. This is creation. This is change. Replacement. One body spawns another. One gives as another takes. The night is so dark.
After the pains have left, the crickets take over the sounds in the darkness. They are in between towns. Like a piece of blood cut in the cord that must be tied. With this birth, they are bound.
The baby will learn, the baby will follow and imitate and the habits will be passed. From one generation to another. This new life will be stamped with all that has come before. It will turn into the human, it will live in this realm, in the world of language and thoughts and the mind. It will grow, until one day, it too will re-supply the earth with another young form, a new little body that will also come thoughtless and empty of language.
But now, the night is cold and the crickets sing. A little baby breathes. The force of creation moves.

Nothing Ever Has Happened

Like wind that has no power, like a wave without sound, void of temperature or sensation, rolling past a body without shape or skin…the thought came over me. More than the thought, the moment of clear understanding, like the bell I ring every few minutes, sending its deep resonating power through my ears, penetrating the still air and layers of consciousness. I felt the moment come through me, roll through me, like an understanding that has traveled with a comet, past stars, though many outer levels, into this labyrinth. “I cannot be born” Oh. A tear stings. “Die.” Oh. “Exist.” Ouch. “Or change.”
The candle flickers in front of me. I take a deep breath. The body does. The body is born, the body dies, it changes…but the thing that moves through it, that thing inside this breathing flesh, it does not. There is no beginning, no end. It is. The thing with no shape, no characteristics, no form. I see.
Thank you. Thank you for the cosmic look into the blackness. Nothing ever has happened. The question I asked so long ago finally means something, the question is itself the answer. Depending on who does the asking.
Nothing happens to the unnamable. Nothing happens to the void, the void in which I am part of. Things happen to the body, or at least they seem to. The body can grow old and die and still, nothing ever will happen.
Two things happen simultaneously. One of flesh and nature, the other an eternal cosmic stillness that resides inside the movement of the body and light.
I sit in the garage, while the cold summer wind tries to make its way through a fleece blanket. This does not have to be learned in a cave deep in the Himalayas. It can be understood in a basement, with only a flickering flame and the sound of typing and sporadic coughs in the background. It can happen to a girl who talks slower, as deliberately as she can as other thoughts vie for space in her brain. And as thoughts seep in like oil into the bay, as they move like tendrils of smoke from the incense that burns a couple of steps away, a soft wave of knowledge rolls over the shores of consciousness.
Oh, and the tears.
The picture morphs like heat waves, taking on a manly harshness, becoming gentle, becoming a monster of blue and yellow and then a vague Mona Lisa smile. This woman from the corner house, twenty minutes from a place I call home. She is a part of me now, as much as she ever was, as much as I was blind to understand it. As I am one and there is no other. The body I never knew, but we are One. My mouth will move tonight, and while nothing has happened, it will. And I will watch and you will show and I will talk.
You were never born, I will never die.

Flight 228

The seat below me is soft and blue. I look out the tiny rectangular window and see nothing but blackness and occasional spurts of lighting.

The seat below me is gray, the windshield before me is covered in smashed bugs that speckle the vision of evening traffic.

We rock violently, trashing through the night sky. This is not turbulence, and as much as I would like to hear the reassuring voice of the captain, assuring us of our altitude and safety, this will not be that type of flight.

My eyes water. I am in a sea of cars, their headlights blink on and off in a Morse code of red.

We jerk violently, like a toy in the hands of a giant. The lights have gone off and the aisle is illuminated in an orange glow of polka dots. The air masks drop, I reach to them like a machine clinging for life. Air. I need air. It is the scene from a nightmare. The terror of birth, the knowledge that soon I will be taken, taken back into the world of darkness. This is the sheer pain, the raw fact of inevitable death. This is happening. And it’s happening to me.

Tears begin to flow. The freeway surrounding me is a slow game of movement. But I am in the sky. I am crashing towards my death. I am sucking air. I am clenched with fear. The ocean is below, a black vastness that will soon embrace my cold flesh.

There are screams and they are loud, but at the same time, running in parallel, is the muted stillness of a moving grave. I move as though it as if wading through molasses, each second stretching further than I ever thought possible. An electric cord of lightning blasts through the sky like a careful dancer. The craft shakes with the force of a demon. All truths exist at this moment.

Sadness will not let go. Fear of the inevitable moves with my blood. My mouth is dry.

A terrible roar, the screech of metal ripping, what have we lost? There is crying, but there is silence, the silence of an approaching death. The plane tips, we flap like a feather, this multi-ton hunk of metal is dropping like a stone in a pond. Has my heart stopped? I am nearly dead with fear.

Their fear is mine.

It is the sound of dying metal, there will be no landing, not on hard earth. Open up, we are coming.
The wing hangs by a tendril. Every prayer I have ever known runs through my mind, words flip through me like a crazed typewriter.

There is nothing that can help us now.

I will never see him again, his eyes flash in my mind, the space we shared in the airport not too long ago. Just moments before the flight. We stared, my lips quivering, my hands still playing with the crinkled hair from his beard.

A tear begins to form, the pain of knowing this is the end.

I held and held, feeling his truth. Sink, he said. Let it wash over you like a warm wave. You will never see me again. Goodbye, I will see you on the other side, I will call for you with my bell and my candle. I will call for you. Listen for me, come to my words, let me be a guide. Follow me.

I reach deep within me and I pull out another breath.

Stranger

The wood of my hand moves like a twig in the breeze, a whirlwind of currents brings fragments of lost conversations, escaped words from the backseat of a car, ideas glimpsed on the face of a passing stranger in an old red truck. His eyes say everything, only I imagine more than his lips would ever say, not just because he doesn’t know my name, but because even if we were intimate, even if he licked me in the most sacred places, even if I knew the taste of him on my lips and we shared a crop full of screaming, beautiful children and even if he was at my bedside while the skin dripped off me like the story of a life spiraling down the drain, even then he would not tell me the meaning of his dreams, the story behind the red dragons that always eat their tails, the fortunes left hanging in the morning air while a set of brown eyes shake into wakefulness.
The smell of coffee moves his tired muscles, like a dog performing tricks for a small cookie at the end of a practiced routine. I watch him get up, naked and soft, he walks to the coffee pot with the madness of a man half asleep and a quarter conscious. Standing at the counter, he looks to the distance, out the window, down the hill, past the small box houses of red and blue and orange, past the rolling hills that have lost their trees, out to the great sea barren, rolling endlessly, only he can’t see the rolling, he can’t hear the crashing waves break on land, he just imagines it all, his memory filling in all the details. I imagine his imagining. I devise the plots of his secrets, his unspoken desire that remains buried in the folds of his flaccid cock. His thoughts remain a mystery that wrap me in their tingling arms, forever cradling me in story lines and sadistic scenes.
The stories stay with me, year after year, beyond the day that I lay dripping a lifetime of accumulated skin and memories, spiraling down the void, the black drain that awaits me, patiently, always there, and never fully understood by the part of me that lies on the thin mattress, smelling the ammonia, hearing the iv drip, feeling bodily pain. Never grasped by the part of me that holds on to the idea of “me.” White walls close in, clouding my vision beyond the cataracts that have grown like ivy. I see it, no, not my eyes, I feel it, the pulsing center that balances on the pin of knowledge.
But the cord unravels with the sound of a small boy slurping soup, he fills the house with his inattentive sounds, reading, watching TV, slurping his wontons, sucking in his noodles like a dog with his nose to the plate. The sound of him disgusts me, his careless inhalation of liquid, his half attention for the words he reads, his inability to stop and truly pay attention to one task at a time, it all disgusts me, and I see a careless little child who does not desire to change what he cannot see. The world is his, his understanding complete, his role fixed, and I am disgusted with his arrogance, with his blindness.
And in seeing his blindness and in my disgust for his habits, I too prove to be a creature, a machine of little sympathy for the small machines that slurp from their ceramic bowls. My mirror, as ugly as I could have ever chosen, as blind as I have always been. These are the secrets that I hide in the crevasses of my white breasts, the truths that my mind cannot bare to perceive, the words I will never utter to the man who watches me from a street corner as I pass in my red truck. The strings on my arms take me to the left, up the street, towards the microwave, they make my face snag at the sound of loudly chewed food. I see the mirror, the silver thread that will never know it’s a dream, the small figure in a play with a million mute actors and a thousand glimmering suns.

New Life Forms

It was an idea found within the pages of a small paperback, sitting among hundreds on a dusty shelf, out of sight in a dark garage that smelled of mildew and curiosity. Buried in the pages, well after the colorful cover of four purple tentacles probing a busty young woman, the slimy arms spreading a look of shock across her face from the inside; after a thousand words that built momentum and teased at the sexual longing of orifice-less creatures, the doctor took his singular syringe and gingerly poked the bacterial cell, inserting a synthetic chromosome into its DNA, a synthetic chromosome based on the naturally occurring bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium.
By his calculations, the synthetic chromosome would live off the host for a while, feed off of it, incubate, grow, and then, in the final stage of the process, the synthetic chromosome would be powerful enough to take control of the host cell. The result of this takeover…an artificial life form.
I read the passage and felt a quiet grayness begin to tug at the corners of my vision. Could this be real? I looked down at my naked body, white and soft on the plush blanket below. My toes wiggled hello. My fleshy vehicle of movement, like the small metal box that takes me quickly from point A to point B, this curved tube of veins and blood that moves because of a fleshy pump, this is the vehicle that takes me from bed to desk, from sleep to dancing invocation. The “I” that writes these words is part of the machine, the thoughts, the fingers, the mouth that pouts from a night of crying…I am the host to another, the organic bacteria that hosts the silent watcher trapped within a forgetful creature of anger and rage and sexual fever. The machine eats its dinner, the machine dresses in pretty skirts and stays warm in the winter. The machine enjoys its bite of chocolate and does what it needs to do to stay breathing. In nearly every moment, only one force moves this small vehicle, it is the desire of self preservation, the “I,” the ego.
And then, in moments in the dark, when the lights of the road take on a quiet pattern and everyone in their metal boxes feels like kin, then the presence of another emerges and in those moments, no worry seems important, every fear seems like a waste of time and time itself seems truly short and precious. And then the organic bacteria takes over once again.
And I look down at my typing fingers, long and skinny and crowned with stars. Through a strange turn of events, I find my machine working…writing, creating, doing what is asked of it, despite the habits. Despite yelling at slow drivers, crying a couple times a week, looking for sweets in its fridge.
The machine, the limbed body with fingernails, the body that seeks comfort and death, this machine sustains me, it is what I need to work on earth, it is a host, a host for the Being. Perhaps one day, a new life form will emerge, strong and willful and in service to the Absolute. For now, I work with what I have.

Fractals

I pick you up with the slightest of efforts, your form rests in my sweaty palm as though it has always been there. The web of your surface transforms in the light of midday, and I gaze in tenderness at the mountains of your flesh.
I look further, deeper, and for this discovery, my eyes are reborn with new lenses equipped for this sacred task. The beauty of this form is revealed, a pink flower of petals that get smaller and smaller with each successive layer, smaller still until they shift dimensions and move back in on themselves, covering the tunnel with their soft scent. In my hand, mountains stand mighty and tall, gazing down at the rivers that course though you with unsentimental love. Red waters and clouds carry your thoughts. A basket with gifts floats with a gift from the gods, a word from the people of air, a token from the people of stone.
Inch by inch, a further examination proves that you are covered in even smaller lines, lines that create valleys, valleys that create hills, hills that stack to form more mountains. Bushels of hair smell like sagebrush in the south and I breath it softly, it will be my last. Like the roots of a tree, the source fills you with a substance even more powerful than air, more delicate than oxygen, more polluting than the carbon you spill. Beyond the window of my eyes, ants travel the length of this coast, trees branch forever in a quest to reach infinity, my mind stretches, allowing me a moment of access beyond the lazy mood of this room.
With one hand stretched out, I reach out to grab for the nearest star, and you laugh at me, truly knowing how far it is, yet I hear you in my mind, telling me to stretch just a little further, that the sun might be within reach, that we might soon have a new home, if only I stand on my tiptoes and if only I devote my heart to the task and if only I focus just a little more. I hear you and my muscles lengthen in the stretch, my heart expands to the balloon size it once had, before I knew a possibility of breakage, before I knew that everything that begins must end, before I realized that there can be no joy without the contrast of sharp pain.
The pendulum swings, and I ride it with the thirst of a lost bear, with the yearning of a mermaid searching for the sea. On the metal gauge, my hands gripping the metal string like a lifeline to the heart, I hold on, balance, wait for the descent. It will come, because truly, it cannot be any other way. It is the force of rain, the growing grass, the lifeless squirrel, the movement of time. It will come, and as I go down, maybe I’ll remember that I have been here before, maybe if I remember this time the journey might not be as hard. Soon I will be heading up, and then, after a short stay, I will go down again.
Yeee! Here I come, make the bed for me, prep the tea and here I come… The grass catches my fall, I land with a soft thump and taste a bit of soil. Bright blades poke me like little itchy fingers, an endless blanket of them, they tell me their secrets, a million whispers mingle in my ears and I blush with their intimate details. Who knew this would all be so kinky?
Sure, tell me more, think of me as a new bed of soil, a new fertile piece of earth to plant with desires and old memories. Give me what you have and we’ll see what new shapes emerge. Will they be the formless structures of seaweed which lack names, will they move like pink feathers on the wind? Will they come as droplets of my tears, blinking in the dark night as I head for my car?
Everything and nothing, you give, I take, and soon, just as the pendulum swings and just as the earth opens up to accept its lost child, I will give back to you, giving my body of material, take it all and send my stories off to the next little girl.

Looking For Escape

The afternoon sun is still bright. I’m surprised, because the clock reads 7:30pm and I expect the moon to be out and the stars to wink and say it’s close to bedtime, but the daylight is still so bright, and, despite my mood, there still appears to be enough time to work on more projects before slumber calls me to its den.
I lay on my soft bed, paralyzed, as though I’ve awakened in another realm from a coma, only my surroundings are unpleasant, like a hospital that smells of sterilizer and death. I’ve opened my eyes from a restful nap, only to remember the cause for my unrest, the cause for my initial weariness an hour before. I lay in bed, motionless, the same frown that I wore an hour earlier still remains, the feeling that something is not quite right. The overwhelming feeling that the world around me is wrong.
I lay in bed, wondering if a shower might do the trick. Maybe I’ll snap out of it then… but the mood, the relentless malaise that is real enough to smash, and yet vaporizes as I try to find a reason for its form. It did not change when I got something tasty to eat the other day. When I felt sad and alone and just a little grimy, when I thought that surely some oral pleasure would snap me into happiness, I ate the Thai food, I ate the pupusas….what I wanted was not delivered, the noodles, the sweet soda, they looked like what I remembered, crispy and stuffed with cheese, cold and sweet. But, it just wasn’t as good as I remembered and the wait was extra long and the restaurant smelled a little weird and the traffic was bad. And after all that I wanted from that snack, placing my hope for happiness upon it, it did not come with the order. I left feeling defeated. I lay on my bed remembering
And the piece of chocolate? Try that. Maybe…I get the cookie, I take a scoop of vanilla ice cream, but I grab a spoon with the same limp arms and I put a bite on my tongue with the same sad expression tugging at the corners of my mouth. My eyes are red and the sweetness does not bring me a smile.
And the nap? I escaped the feeling momentarily, but I awoke to my neighbors screaming and they sound like chickens dying and why do they keep scraping their chairs on the ground? I escaped it for a moment with closed eyes, but it’s all here, still here.
Maybe a shower? Can’t I just rinse all this stuff off of me? Can’t I send this weirdness down the drain along with other sediment my body rejects? And I lay here, my mind strategizing for a quick fix, a lay, a bite, a laugh. But I know. It cannot be bought away, eaten away, slept away. It follows me, it’s inside me. It colors my eyes, turning my brown irises into cloudy lenses that distort the world into obstacles and enemies and everything that comes towards me is an assault to my existence. I cannot escape what’s inside, turning me into a woman lost in a house of distorted mirrors.
I know the change has to come from within, but I’m having a hard time reaching inside. I’m the shell of what I remember. The silt at the bottom of a pool that cannot be cleaned. I don’t like it, it feels awful, and only I can change it. Laying here, I wonder if I’ve actually tried. I’ve tried the old standards, the ones that never worked before, but have I tried anything new? I’ve sat in the hole all day, wondering how I’ve got here and refusing the lifelines sent to me and ignoring the ladder by my side. I need to try something new.

Amma

I ran over to touch her little feet. They were miniature toes with even tinier nails, she was just ten weeks old and still looking shocked to be in a world of sunlight and sounds that come from all directions. She looked at me with gray-blue eyes. I had been wearing my glasses all day while working in the bright rays of spring, but as I looked at her, I remembered to take my glasses off instantly. It was as if another well of knowledge opened up, the part of me that knew this was different, that this required contact without barriers.
I looked at her while her dad held still, maybe she felt his breathing, she was suspended on his chest, but whatever he was thinking about or doing, he held still and Amma and I looked at each other until she looked away. Her father wore her like a precious necklace upon his chest, or perhaps the tangible creation of his love, worn right above his heart. The baby smelled of milk and newness.
This little thing did not exist 11 months ago. Her material form, her body, her eyes, her crying, her name…none of it was here. And then she came, from a place I wish I could remember, a place I wish she could recount in colorful stories that would paint my dreams in extra dimensions. But is the price of travel paid for in language? Or did she come from a place that spoke in other ways? Without a shared language between us now, I look into her eyes and hope she sees the stars that have collided. I search in her grayness for the missing pieces of the sentence.
She is a piece of this earth now. A piece of matter that breathes and cries and sleeps and looks at her surroundings. She grew inside of a woman and came out into arms that were waiting. She took a breath and began her life here, in this place, with that little body, to these particular parents.
Is it the smallness of her, the helpless body that needs constant nourishment and attention to survive, is that what strikes me? Is it the strange materialization of a new human that is so natural and yet, so completely surreal? Where did you come from, Amma?
She looks at the trees and the faces that coo at her without judgement, she seems without character, without personality. An empty vessel which will quickly be filled with words and ideas and thoughts and taught how to count and tell time. Soon she will be polluted and the smell of milk will fade, will she be able to remember why she came and what she left behind? Will she learn to use her new language to describe her experience coming through the tunnel and filling her lungs with air?
I am filled with questions which cannot be answered with words. So I wait, and work. Soon, I will journey through that tunnel again. Maybe next time I will remember.

Music For The First Time

When was the last time you heard music for the first time? The notes from an old David Bowie song jump from the steel guitar strings, they rush through the air, vibrating moments apart from each other, they leap into the ears of a toddler running by. The men stand on a street that’s crowded with vendors selling the first strawberries of spring and the remnants of a short winter’s harvest. A toddler waddles by, she runs past the music and then two feet past, she stops abruptly and turns once to the right, then to the left, as though trying to identify something, looking for something she saw or felt on the edges of her consciousness. She stands still for two seconds, then turns around and runs back to the musicians, to the source of the music that fills the street. She stands still in front of them, like a small mortal at the feet of giants that reverberate in the world of sound. She stares at them, without a smile, without an indication of joy or fear, just an open mouthed stare that borders on disbelief, as though she is trying to understand her perception. I look past her and see a middle aged man sitting on the warm asphalt with two small children in his lap, their attention focused on the musicians. Is this the first time they’ve heard the orchestrated notes of a Bowie song? The first time this particular arrangement of seven notes has run through their ears? They come towards the music like strange worshipers to a stone covered in undecipherable marks. Unsure and curious. Like a vibrational comet, they fall towards the closest source of sound. They can always find an airplane in the sky or point to a pinecone perched on a table full of soap and incense. A little baby stares with wide eyes at the singing face in front of her. Her big hazel eyes take it all in, watching everything. I wonder how she senses each note. Is it a pure sensation, like touching snow? Does she see it though a lense of color and sparkles, not just hearing, but seeing the music that moves around her like a breathing story? The crowd moves past her, adults with bags full of ripe produce, ten year old children that care more for their ice cream cones than the two buskers under the full sun, children that have already begun to watch the magic drain from their bodies like bubbles from a bath swirling down the drain. The baby is in her father’s arms, she points to the music over his shoulder, but he is busy talking to an older woman in a stylish jacket, he doesn’t see her tiny hand rise up in a tight fist, she jerks it in the air, as though pounding a drum and then opens her little hand, pointing to the musicians. She stares at them, fascinated, captivated. Suddenly, she looks away. Something has broken the spell. Sooner or later, something always does.

Black

I spin the paper color wheel. In the color spectrum, black is the culmination of all, black it at the center, black is all around. Red, white, yellow, green, violet, aqua, every shade in between the primaries, every subtle hue and variation, blended and pure, black contains them all. It is the ultimate mixture, the pure blend. The night sky, shining in darkness, it contains all our naked desires, all the brutal thoughts covered in polite conversation and gracious smiles, all the loving smiles that flow like a river without end, without a source, without an ocean a thousand miles south. The starless black covers me, seeping through my open bedroom window unabated, invading me like the man I love, coming in and conspiring with all the sparks I cannot name. Darkness is the universe I perceive, finite in my understanding, infinite in truth. The name given for hours without sun, it covers the blue of day, the light of nothing with the culmination of all. It is the immense dinner plate with everything heaped upon it, gravy mixing with peas and touching the virginal apple pie. Everything that ever was, every thought that burst shining with splendor from an idealistic youth, every hearty chuckle of laughter from a newborn just discovering their hands and feet, every groan from lovemaking at its peak, all this is mashed and mixed and spread across black. Next to the lumpy sauce and sparking water. Next to the shiny fork that wishes it could poke the voluptuous girl in fishnet stockings, while she hopes you peak into her uncrossed legs. The little candle burns softy upon the table, lapping gently as the waves of wind and hot air caress its flame. Beyond the lit kitchen, the night outside is dark, the wind is roaring and trash cans slide down the street in gusts of released tension. Misfit cans make their escape, rolling without a thought of destination. I hope to stay and avoid the wind. I hope to stay and hold the softness of your skin in the dark. I hope to kiss you in the all consuming darkness of your room and bury my face in the finality of your hair. Blackness is me and you, in the man who died a couple minutes ago in a burst of warm white cream and a final grunt. It is the girl walking hurriedly down the sidewalk with a cell phone in her hand. It is the gray tombstone in Germany and the Dodo bird. It is the amoebas that spawned life, it is the asteroids that tear through the atmosphere and dissolve into dust before they meet my upturned face. Black is the stew of eternity. The witch’s cauldron of peas and carrots, stones and hearts, swords and fingernails and dinosaur bones. Every sound that has been made, every emotion felt, every orgasm that escaped. Within it, within this color, is everything. Each shape, each equation and unsolved problem. The sweat of your passion, the tears of my pain. The screams of the dying as they struggle for their last gulp of air, the shouts of rebellion as fire lights the night. Each century with its layers of texture, each murmured prayer and taste of salt. Each myth recited and kernel of knowledge discovered. Blackness holds it all. We are in its arms and it rests like a lover in mine. We are here, the collectors, the deconstructionsts. The observers and creators. The destroyers. The writers, the ghosts that pick up lost pieces and make puzzles from mosaics. Foraging with blindfolds and baskets, we gather small sounds and memories to form our songs. My voice cracks as I wander half blind in the night, singing a soft melody while burning trees remind me of your flesh.