Black

We are dressed in black today, matching the night.  Black holding all our purpose.  Every color and shape, each breath taken and lost.  For all that were and all that could be. 
The clouds have parted, granting my midnight wish and I stare at a dozen silver moons, a collection of aged children of rock and light.
There are a trail of silver dollars illuminating the path from bed to window, from window to door.  Each step is first memorized and then taken with care. 
There were maps and drawings and we practiced one tiny moment among moments.  Bursting, we feed it and the circle grows, a wide band of black holding each moment. We take it in, drinking, lapping up the dribbles along the edges. 
It is all here, not one thing forgotten.  We cannot list them all and yet their names are etched into the wrinkles and lines, the scars over her breasts and the wisps of hair misplaced. 
The boat sails and I remember, a thing in motion is excited, confused and ready for toppling.  Bubbling up and spinning, the lights direct my attention, moving from human to bird to car to cat. 
You cannot stop me as the colors come and STOP! You don’t witness, you mustn’t. 
The tale must be fulfilled as written and the pages are there, may I direct your attention to the dried up hands telling our story.  Look into the black eyes beside the window, nothing has been forgotten.  Transience, mortality, they are for others outside this space. With the candles lighting our chamber, we sit as the circle.  Bodies are the wires for light, light is the shape of ecstatic motion. We are still, silent but for occasional gasps.

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.

Deer Hunter

Everything was known. The limits of the rural town punctuated in the center with smoke stacks, the babushka that walked slowly to church every afternoon, even in the snow. The tiny grocery store that was stocked and always full of etched recognizable faces. Everything was known. There wasn’t a stone he hadn’t seen, not a person he couldn’t call by name. Those friends he had known since infancy, boys he had grown up with until they were full chested men ready to serve god and their country.

He could walk the streets of the town blindfolded. He could walk from his house, down the narrow treeless drive and go down the hill, knowing exactly as he was passing the Mason’s house, walking steadily as the street sloped until the shops of downtown appeared, he could smell them, could imagine their worn shutters and screen doors. Following the street, he could walk towards the edge of town delineated by the raised train tracks that created a tiny tunnel for the semi trucks that hurtled through town towards the plant.

Every breath he took came from that air, every sip of water fell towards his sink from the mountain chain in the distance. Everything was known. His friends with their worn out jokes, the clear beer glasses and the familiar bar. The seasons shifted, colors changed from orange to white to green to yellow and then back once more. Trucks came and went, paychecks were delivered and cashed. It was a familiar rhythm of gentle movement, but everything seemed to stay the same, it was all known.

But sometimes they escaped. Filling the car with the bodies he had grown up with, bringing along their guns and cans of food, they would drive recklessly to the purple mountains, going up and up the curving slopes until the air was thinner and colder, until thousands of trees did not appear to be the same and instead looked different and new. He would walk with the only man he trusted, climbing boulders in clear silence while they tracked the signs of antlers and nibbled leaves. He saw her walking through the trees, evading him, almost. He went towards it, taking her down with one shot, because even the other bleeds.

He drove back recklessly to the known, down the dark slope towards the familiar lights of the bar. There was blinking neon sign with its comforting welcome, the pool table, the waiting frosting mugs, that smell which was so familiar he could no longer distinguish it from his own.

And then he was taken away. A big jet engine and a uniform and god and country gave him the ride. He went to where the syllables all sounded different, where bodies lay for the flies and even babies were red targets. There the familiar memories crumbled and the smell on him changed. He couldn’t walk blindfolded here, there was jungle and bombs and soaring bullets. He managed to keep his breath and mind and was eventually flown back to the known.

But when he saw the smoke stacks and roads and faces it was not the same. They were the same, but he was different. A part of the other remained in him, hollowing out the familiar and turning it into images that rubbed at his heart, touching it all the wrong way.

He drove towards the mountains again, doing what he knew, what he had always done. He brought his gun and his cans and walked slowly and quietly, just as he had always done, following the nibbled leaves and the traces of antlers.

When he saw her, a wide body and dark eyes staring back at him, he did what he always did, raising his gun. One shot, that was what he always wanted. But the other stared back at him, and this time, he saw. He had been changed and this time, there was no need to shoot.

Looking Into The Nameless

I knew then, through whispers and side-glances, as I know now, that I am different. That the compulsion to jump from fences stirred me even then, and I would run from the sofa, through a house full of cool tile, to the lush garden that awaited with green arms and promises I could never describe. And I would leap, throwing my body into trust I hadn’t the name for, into chambers I had yet to recognize. And I would land, spinning, on my head, smiling with the impact, alive with the hurt and dizzying reality of matter, and something else, something I have yet to place in a box and seal with a kiss.
I have used thousands of words, I have run around it in circles and created colorful stories that hint at its splendor, but I refuse to stare at it directly. I refuse to look it right in the eye and mark it forever with letters and obvious description. It is respect, colored by the sheer knowledge that I know nothing, that any word would fall a thousand miles short and cause bruising that could never heal. I have seen it spinning in blackness. I have poked the edges with a sharp stick and my prying mind and curious eyes that seek the details of all forms.
There is flesh, round and soft with pointed ends. There is darkness lit only by stars and the dreams of the dreaming. And I have walked through the tunnels of my mind and I have taken ships that led me to forgotten caves painted with orange and red.
I have looked, with my head bowed, and my body calm as a steady sea. I have looked. Into mirrors, into eyes that seem to look back with the same curious stare, my eyes, brown and almond shaped, alive with flecks of green I might soon forget.
It is all there, and as I know now, as I knew then, that this is different. Leaping from fences and rooftops, scouring the inner caves of ink and stinking rot, this is different. And I pull on thick boots and walk with my head bent, my arms open for others that might come running naked from the mouths of other caves.
And if they do, we will walk, through tunnels of brown and sooty black, and we will walk, through tunnels I have yet to touch and refuse to name.

Everything Is Nature

The room is lit with a bright artificial white glow. The space is wide and long and the powerful light bulbs hide high overhead, their distance is like the sun, far away but felt by everything beneath it. A long stretch of black and white ads run across the back wall of the bowling alley. The smooth wooden floors of the lanes gleam with thick varnish and a weekly dousing of wax. Echoing through the space is the low rumble of heavy bowling balls. They hit the wood of the lanes. They hit the white pins waiting at the end. The temperature is a perfect 69 degrees. Everything about the room is artificial. Without a word, it manifests its aim, the geometric perfection of clean lines. There is no wave, no tilt, just constant even shape. There is nothing natural about it. Not the wood floors, long cut from the old growth forest. Not the paper used to create the ad campaign along the back wall. The bowling balls and white pins are smooth and nearly perfect. Nothing about this chamber is found in nature. There are no rocks so round, no trees so straight. It is a created room, a created game. But this is nature. It is here, on earth. On a flattened piece of land, in a city shrouded in mist and lit by a distant sun, it is “natural,” mutated and rearranged, but “natural.” The sun, a million times removed, is still present here. The nearly flawless shapes and lines, they exist because of the gleaming orb a million miles away. The wood of the floors grew with heat. The metal foundations were forged with tools from the earth and fire. The artificial composition of the pins and bowling balls are a conglomeration of substances transformed through human hands and ideas. And the humans playing the game, walking in mismatched shoes, smiling after rolling a gutter ball. They exist only because of the sun. Light brings them food, it nourishes plants and animals. Light gives them the ability to build and create artificial worlds with bright lights and wide lanes. The room does not smell of dirt and pine. It houses all the strange creations of the world, but the elements of the earth are still present. The life blood, the moving red vein, is here as well. The flowing red vein moves through the people, moving and walking and rolling. It moves through the filament of the lights overhead. What was once a living, breathing tree is the ground at their feet. What were once buried elements in the soil are now bowling balls. Everything has been transformed, but it has come from the one source. The source of it all. The sun. And while they play indoors, while they try over and over to hit straight rows of white pins, the sun shines outside. Far away, perhaps covered by clouds, but it shines. There is nothing unnatural, not in the cleanest white room, not in the grocery store or chemist’s laboratory. This is nature. Every thought, gust of wind, packaged food, water bottle. Each object is affixed with a million invisible tendrils, tied one to the other, eventually finding its way back, winding and curving through machine and heat, finding its way to the brightest star.

Balancing on Trains

The subway rattles along its track. We are underground and the interior lights wash us all in a yellow haze. In front of me is a man standing close to the double doors. He is at least fifty years old, maybe a little more. His hair is completely white and his skin would be considered white by many people on first glance, but it is actually a deep shade of pink, almost red. He has on a pair of khaki pants and thick white tennis shoes. A loosely-fitted red T-shirt is untucked from his pants and revealed by his unzipped light white jacket.
There are plenty of seats on the train, it is Saturday and just a little after 3pm. I have left the hordes of tourists above ground and the commuters still have another day to relax before the cycle begins again. Instead of taking a seat, the man stands close to the double doors. His feet are spread wide apart, not horizontal and parallel to each other, but aligned vertically. His left foot reaches out a couple feet from his body and his right is extended behind him. His knees are bent slightly. Instead of holding onto the silver railing that outlines the door, he has his hands raised out to the sides, nearly halfway to his shoulders. His body sways back and forth, moving as the train does. His arms oscillate up and down, providing balance as the cabin wiggles forward on the tracks. His eyes are fixed on something low to the ground in front of him. His light colored eyes are open wide, nearly mesmerized by the object providing him a sense of stability.
The words that come to mind are “crazy and postal and bug-eyed,” but they pass quickly through me and I watch him with a small smile on my lips. I am the only passenger that has a view of his face, the rest of the half dozen people sit behind him. A couple of steps away from his wide stance are two middle aged Latin women. I watch them as they laugh and joke with each other, each so comfortable and happy. One sits slouched into the seat, the other sits a bit taller, but they don’t seem to think about their bodies, their shapes are now merely habit. They focus only on the face that laughs beside them. They each look at the man occasionally, but they do so as they talk and their bouncing conversation does not stop. I study their faces to see if they are talking about the man, but their expressions and body language do not imply that they see anything strange. There is a portly Latin man a couple of seats behind the women. He is dressed in dark slacks and a white button-up dress shirt. The other people are a blur, forms with no distinction.
I look to the man. His eyes as wide and focused as if he were watching the whole world crumble. I take a bit of comfort in imagining that no one else sees him, just as I knew this morning that no one saw the tears spill across my cheeks. The train had been crowded, but no one saw. Twelve hours later the world has changed, but it really hasn’t, and we stand alone.
The train lurches and the pink-faced man looses his balance slightly and stumbles to the right. He smiles and then after a few seconds, yells, “DAMN!” He looks at me with a smile and says something, but the noise of the train drowns his communication. I smile back, somewhat shyly. A little shocked at his loud outburst. He refocuses and opens his eyes and raises his arms. His hands are nearly parallel to his shoulders. The other passengers are watching him now. The women keep talking and laughing, but now they look at him differently, with the faintest hint of suspicion. He is not doing anything particularly odd, he’s just trying to balance, as he would on a surfboard, but given the place, given the norm, it is unusual. It is so unusual that he might as well be dressed as a clown and singing off-key. It is completely other.
Three years ago I saw a man practicing what seemed to be Aikido moves on the train, but besides him, every other rider I have ever seen walks immediately to an open seat, and if one is not available, they grab a rail and hold on. How can a man simply not holding onto the rails or taking a seat in a nearly-empty train seem so odd? Just this slight difference in body posture means the difference between “normal” and “weird.” Practicing balance. The man is practicing balance. No matter what is beneath the feet, no matter how the body is thrown, he works to maintain balance.
Before the sun had risen I looked at the tarot card of the moon. But it was not just a moon in the dark sky, the shape of the moon was yellow and embedded within the round shape of the sun. Below the moon/sun was a long path, on either side of which was a dog and a coyote, both had their tails and heads raised to the sun/moon. All morning and afternoon I had held the image of balance. It was a balance and merger between the conscious and the subconscious, between the dreams and waking life. The unification of the spectrum and the long path that led beyond the mountains.
I watched the man practice his balance. He used his time differently. Much different that anyone else around him, much different than me. The train came to a stop and the man stood a little straighter, the double doors opened and he looked at me, “Have a good day now!” he said cheerfully as he walked out the doors. I smiled at him and the train continued on.

Sculpted From An Alchemist Dream

I hear whispers. They come from the darkened alleyways and linger in the narrow stairwells. From the sewers they rise, snaking around my legs and urging me on, there are secrets to discover…hidden cookie factories and old tea tonics, dragons that sit under plastic awaiting their birth each New Year’s Day. I pick up the gray video camera that has hung around my neck like a dead snake. The object is hard, cold and small…it’s all but dead. No soft breath, no lungs, no heart. My fingers reach for the circular knob that activates the machine, Biiiiiinnnggg…there’s the green light. It’s waiting, now it’s time for me to act. The screen reflects my perception of the sidewalk.
Chinatown is clustered with German tourists. They stand, just as me, filming the swinging paper lanterns, just like me, they turn their cameras toward the rooftops and preserve forever the small windows with laundry hanging to dry. I hold up my camera and trace the lines of a man as he takes a photo of his plump wife. The video camera trails him as he walks down the street eating from his bag of fortune cookies. I follow him until the smell of sweet bread assaults me like a lover in the morning. I turn to the right and see a bakery laden with sesame encrusted buns and a crowd of small Asian women waiting to be helped. My eye is transported through the camera….my attention travels through the machine, the gray piece of plastic that comes to life in my hands. I watch them for a moment, but they live on endlessly in the code, women who fill their bags with cookies and moonpies.
I drift away from them and see a family gathered a couple steps from the entrance. There are two little girls sitting on the ground, one is probably six, the other three. The older sister has her arm wrapped protectively around the younger one in a gesture of fierce love. The mother of the two is kneeling in front of the three year old, fixing her shoe. The father is close by, leaning on a metal post. No one notices me. No one sees a young woman with a camera pointed directly at them.
Standing there, watching them, I feel the sweetness of love from one sister to another. Will their love turn and wiggle and flitter through life’s complications? Will the younger girl lie alone in her bed decades from now, remembering something soft and tender that breathes on her like an alchemist dream? Or maybe she’ll forget everything, her memory robbed like so many other things that get lost along the forking path. I stand and record, until the shoe is tied and the older one reaches down and extends her hand to her little sister.
Their forms drift out of site and I am left with their memory, their tender forms. I step into the shaded quiet of an alleyway. On the right is the open backdoor of a flower shop, the room is covered in buckets of dyed carnations and bright daisies. Five feet away is a doorway outlined in aqua tiles, the address reads “79.” The little gray machine is my third eye, my hand moves with it as I scan the shiny tiles, left from a era when color was king, when cars were moving rainbows on the highway of asphalt. I capture the Germans sipping “horny tea” at a tea bar, I grab bits of their words, sentences in their lives that flop on the floor like forgotten fish, but I swoop them into my net and store them for later.
The streets are crowded and they give me a piece of themselves that I will mix with the graffiti covered vegetarian restaurant and the old woman sitting on a stool at the far end of a jewelry store. I will mix her with the images of barbecued ducks and the young couple that kisses by the mammoth lions who guard the gates of this old town. With their forms, with captured words, with the stolen kiss and the forgotten newspapers that blow like runners down a hill, we will sketch a new story.
Like the Tequihua that we are, the builders, the masons, the musicians, the creators that we are, we will shape it into something new. An ordinary creation. A creation from the ordinary.

Consequences

It was late at night and it was very dark. The clouds were hidden behind a thick layer of fog and the world moved around her in only three colors: black, gray and white. The roads were nearly deserted, just a bus with its hazard lights on blinked quietly as she passed. And she drove on, driving up the twisted road that skirted like an asphalt snake along the edge of San Bruno mountain, her car’s headlights outlining the bulbous forms of gray clouds that enveloped her like a hungry ghost made of mist and sheets of moisture. There was a musical piece on the radio, an electronic composition without words that seemed so tender, coming right from the unknown heart of its creator and entering hers with an unrelenting curiosity to see what lay open in the late hour. Small tears pricked her eyes as she reached the crest of the hill. The music was too beautiful, how could something like this arrive to fit the moment so well? This was music for the tender dark hours, when night and day blend into one. When the sleeping and the awakened dance between clouds of fog and pull dreams from the void. The music held her, as though the notes themselves were made to caress her curvaceous tears, as though the notes knew why she would cry and they pulled the tears out with a little more force, taking her with them on their voyage through time. As the road flattened out, she suddenly realized she might never know the composer, another song would come on and the beauty of what she had just heard would remain forever in her memory, encapsulating the moment like a dream. Someone, somewhere had made this music, and that person would never know that now, there was a girl driving in a small black truck in the middle of the night, going home. She could never tell them that the notes cast themselves around her like a magic circle, holding her as no other piece of music could. It was made for this. It was this. She was that, and it was her. It took her hand and led her down a psychedelic road where owls feed and coyotes sometimes wander. It held her in its palm, a loving teacher that pulled on her metal gates just a little more. “Open up,” it said. And whoever made this piece…they would never know. What were they doing right now? Sleeping? Eating? Working? Making love? The infinite consequences of their creation were unknowable. Once born, the creation had its own life, moving through time, radio, stereos, ears…moving into and out of perception…being heard by some, being shut off by others. Were there others crying? Others dancing? A thousand ways this piece could go…its creator would never know.
The consequences of what we create are unknowable. We create for the sake of creating, we do for the sake of doing, and then, it is sent, it goes out into the world, drifting like a carefully constructed leaf in the wind. Will someone catch it? Will it go straight to the sea, straight to the blue waves that will swallow up the orange and yellow and green? Or maybe it will drift to land with the high tide, and perhaps a little girl will pluck it from the ocean foam. And maybe it will end up in her collage of thoughts and dreams and her memory of changing seasons. There is just no way to tell what will happen, so we just let them go. Just as we were once let go, like tears already dispersing into the fog before the song that provoked them has come to an end, like ribbons of stardust dancing in the bottomless void of the infinite night.

Piece Of Paper

She looked out the window and saw a small scrap of paper blowing in the wind. It was a small yellow post-it note and the wind pushed it to the fence where it stayed tangled in the bunches of wild mustard plants and yellowed bits of grass that clung to the edges of the yard. A white moth-like butterfly flew over the wooden fence and disappeared into the eucalyptus grove that covered the hillside below. She stared at it, at the little trail of darting white that had faded into green and silver. Her house was warm, and because of the heat inside, she indulged in wearing only purple panties, that had lace along the edges, and a striped purple T-shirt. Her legs were bare except for the pink slippers keeping the bottom of her feet warm. She wanted to go outside and get the little bit of paper. She wondered what it said, where it had come from, who had dropped it. Would she find her own writing on the yellow paper? She wanted to go outside, but, although the sun was out, she could see by the rustling eucalyptus that it was windy, and wind, at least here at this elevation and so close to the sea, meant chill. She was not anxious to let the wind brush past her and strip from her the warmth she had accumulated over a night of sleeping under thick blankets and warmed by space heaters in every room. But what was on that paper? How come she didn’t just look right past it the moment she saw it? How come it didn’t just fade into the other images that she took in and let wash over her without a second thought? Was there something different about this piece of paper or was she just getting fixated on something, finding meaning or hidden purpose when there was nothing there. Maybe there would be nothing on it. But why couldn’t she just stop and go back to her computer and start writing? What kept her standing here at the window, so close to the cold wind that managed to find its way in despite the glass barrier? She thought about all the things she had lost over the years. The small chunk of Tibetan turquoise stolen from her bathroom. Her stacks of vinyl records. Her purple and white batik shirt that just went missing one day, the blue v-neck T-shirt that Suki had given to her before her parents sent her to a rehab facility in the mountains. Could this piece of paper be one of those things, a precious bit of her or someone else, something that was about to drift off into the bushes any moment, only it had stopped here for a brief second, waiting by the fence and held close by the mustard stalks.
Act now! This is the chance. Move and grab the curiosity in front of you. Act now, or it will disappear forever and you will always wonder, you will always stand by the window and wonder about that thing which called to you and you did not respond.

On A Game Board

My left hand is on the top left curve of the gray steering wheel, my right hand is a mirror of it, gripping the thin piece of plastic. I feel the urge, the desire to release my left hand and caress the smooth, long fingers that grace the nape of my neck, but I cannot…there is too much at stake. The paved road is worn and bumpy, there have been too many cars travelling too long and too fast. The white lines clearly indicate our prescribed path and I need every bit of attention to stay within them. My eyes awaken to the game, and we are among the many players in shiny colored objects moving across the board. The road begins to split, green signs with block yellow writing point in different directions, my left hand reaches for the knob, it turns on the blinker and we merge seamlessly into another path. The metal machine is powerful, I awaken to that knowledge with a tinge of wide-eyed fear. Can I handle this beast? This is more power than I should be granted, the force of our velocity is too great. I imagine turning the wheel sharply and driving us over the freeway’s edge, sending us plunging into the bushes below. A red car passes us on the left. Another player moves. A discarded piece of trash drifts in the wake of rubber tires and disappears beneath the hood of the black truck. In front of us, a red car changes lanes. No one talks. There cannot be words, there cannot be listening. These moves require me, they demand my attention. There’s a shiny building over there, the reflective windows shoot back our vision. In the mirror, I see the green player switch paths. The cement bridge is wide and thick, the tires are making gripping sounds. The wind pulls us onwards and in the distance, the buildings loom in the hazy sunshine. My hands are on the wheel; my face, nearly expressionless; my eyes, dead ahead. The wheels pull us onwards. The pedal moves us onwards. The freeway begins to end, taking us down one last curving slope, we are moving too quick and I grip the wheel and press the brakes in muted panic. This is real and unreal. There is a red stoplight, I gently push on the brakes and we are still. My heart beats, my eyes are dead ahead, a girl in calf-high leather boots walks along the crosswalk, her arms swing confidently at her sides. A young woman crosses a couple seconds behind her, she’s wearing tight jeans and black high heel shoes, the jeans are a little short. Two other girls, they are more round, wearing jeans and sweatshirts. The wind blows and the tree tops on the curb rustle. There is a trash can, it’s green. The light is still red. The light is green, my foot presses on the gas pedal. Our turn to move. There are other cars on both sides of us. There is a red light ahead, we slow down. We stop. There are groups of people at the crosswalk waiting for the signal. There is a man in a maroon turban talking on a cell phone. They cross, I look at them as ghosts. We are ghosts. A bicycle. A man. The building. We turn left. There are cars ahead, my foot presses the brake. Onward. Raw. Data.

Whore of Nothingness

It is the moment that makes itself known. The timeless chamber that is both wide and deep, kept clean and soft by the waiting whore that watches the space. She stands alone beside the great opening, mouth wide and red, moist and dripping. Her long black hair swirls above her, moving like a slow tornado within an underwater kingdom, radiating with the calmness of fluttering stars. Black winds move about her with an air of caution, not the kind humans recognize as fear, but with the reverence reserved for contained power. The currents move in and curl, twirling with the prettiness of invisible smoke, shifting and sprawling like a thousand tongues at work. Licking, covering their symbols with the juice of desire. Their utter devotion is what makes them salivate, forcing themselves to cover their great god with gifts of attention. Within the open portal, the whore moves along the periphery. Like a lady in waiting, wearing the darkest gown of soft black silk. There is nothingness surrounding her, open land and air, all painted shades of black, yet she seems to wait in a contained sphere with the sprawling trees that resemble oaks, but come from another place where names are meaningless and everything is known or taught through intuition. It is there, where the heart is the ruler of people, and the toilers bend over daily, accepting their true nature as false; where they lower themselves in gratitude, accepting their humbling like obedient servants to an almighty power. Extending beyond the horizon, rows and rows of them are kneeling, the great moon is full of power this evening, and the light of countless centuries burns down upon their exposed necks with the coolness of a smothered fire.
The light enters her, with the softness of a warm kiss and the harshness of a terrible rape; moving together in truth as they enter, rocking her center, stuffing her with all that comes from elsewhere. She goes flying back, yet remains still, altered with each step she takes around the portal. Around she walks, from above, she is a flowing black creature made of light and rain, from below, a towering goddess composed of fire and stone. She stops at each of the four rocks laid about the portal, one for each point of the cross. At each point, she stops, bending to kiss each one. She waits for another entering. The whore lifts her dress, exposing the fatal whiteness of her flesh amid the glowing darkness surrounding her. With nothing below, she readies herself for the energy approaching. It comes screaming with a silent voice, painting the black world red with invisible colors. Her heart quickens, her womanly opening expands to accept the gifts. And like a glowing sword, she feels the nothingness move inside. Pushing itself with the force of nothing, with the strength of all, without words and sounds, devoid of any tangible attachment. She radiates from the inside, with the heat of a million worlds, a thousand words and places that have been stripped and condensed to pure energy. They are inside and she pushes the gifts into the darkest depths within, her eyes are wide, her mouth open and wet, her flesh is sticky. She is the whore, the vessel of nothingness.

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.

Chamber of Secrets

It was a clear, sunny, breezy afternoon. There were probably better reasons to be outside, but we were on our way to the pharmacy, the one inside the big hotel that had a lot of medicines and other items imported from the United States. The whole place was covered in slight teasing glimpses of another life, a life far away and drenched in sex, violence and money. I could feel the caress of these visions in the way that man was dressed as he signed up for a room, in the way the bellhops spoke to each other, in the smell of the leather of the sofas in the bar, in the laughter of the people seated in a circle, drinking large glasses of hard liquor and talking very loudly, one of them wearing dark glasses with his arm around a much younger woman wearing a mini skirt, in the cold voice of a tall man giving orders to two guards about their respective positions, in the shiny gold of the handrails that lead up to the hotel rooms upstairs. I felt it and I wanted it, I wanted to be part of it, to be in it, to receive it and become it, to swim in it and let it drown me in its unimaginable pleasures.
We stepped into the pharmacy and my eyes immediately wondered to the newsstand. It was very wide and very tall, full of mysterious magazines I had never seen before. There were some comics but these were not the comics I was used to. They were all in English, the covers screamed sex and violence, they told of stories that had begun before me and would continue after me, stories I would never fully understand and I adored them because of it; because they escaped me, I wanted them more. There were so many that I felt overwhelmed, my eyes shifting quickly from one to another, spotting some familiar characters in very unfamiliar situations, sensing that this was the "real thing", not the imitation I had become used to… here was a chance to touch what had formerly been just a rumor, but where to begin? Which one to pick?
Quickly, before the maid picked up the needed medicines and it was too late. I looked up and saw it.
It was the size of a regular magazine, not the smaller size of a comic. The cover had thick, dark colors, not the bright glossy colors of the comics… it was the color of real blood and not its fake counterpart. And blood is what there was. Lots of it. A large character dressed in red opening a bag full of human entrails and laughing, the pieces of intestine and heart dropping onto the floor along with a broken hand and the remains of a human foot. I looked a little closer. The large man had a long white beard and a tall hat. The large man was Santa Claus. My eyes opened wide. This was a comic book, but it was not like the others. It was so high up that I couldn’t reach it. It was probably not meant for my hands. But neither the maid nor the man behind the counter had any clue about it. For them a comic book was a comic book and they never even looked at the cover. So pretty soon the strange magazine was in my hands and I was breathing intensely, reading the little blurbs that spoke of the mysteries to be found within.
This space, this instant of recognition, surrounded by temptation, closed doors and revelation, was now inside of me. I would now search for it. There was a new "me" that now swam within my inner ocean whose only purpose was to find this space, over and over and over. Search for the place, the special chamber, find it, activate it… search again.
It would now be a comic book store in the suburbs of a faraway city in California, or a little college town turned into a festival of medieval color and strange little rolling dice in Wisconsin, or a lost little book store in the heart of the Basque country in Spain, or a strange web site in the lost backwaters of the Internet, or a little booth covered in flashy covers in the middle of a huge convention specially prepared for others cursed like me. Wherever I may find it. However I may look. I would shift aside and under, let my attention slither out and connect and I would look for it.
And when I did find it, it would only last an instant. It would not be the moment before, it would not be the moment after, when I may or may not have an item in my hands and be ready to pay. It would only be that single eternal instant, when my eyes would land on it, on the cover, on the text, on the voice, on the message, on the color, and I would hear the laughter, and the cars, and the voices, and the golden handrails leading up to the secret rooms where the hidden heart of darkness would finally be revealed. Always one step away. Always just slightly beyond my reach, always alive in its obscurity, infinite and eternal in its insistence on staying one step removed from time, space and form.
And as it would always escape me, I would forever want it more.