Winds from Four Corners

I am very hard to see, as delicate as a dandelion puff. I struggle against the ferocious gusts that have been coming in increasing cycles. They started off gently, almost like a tickle against my skin, but now there is no denying their rampages. 

I can see yellow sloping hills in the distance, speckled with oaks that grow at an angle; a low river further north, its current barely visible in the distance. It is slate colored and seems locked in place, as though I am looking at a photograph. But that is all easy to dismiss.

I still linger in the walls and carpets, holding on to the orange mug in the cabinet, the books that line the shelves of my room. The twisted blankets of the bed hold my smell. I recognize it all. I know every dusty, neglected corner. The contents of every drawer, the waft lavender from the closet sachets.

I hold on to the house with open arms, large enough that I can fit it all within my grasp. Every paper and stray hair, I hold. I cling, cling as tightly as I can, against the current.
What is it that is on top of me? That light, that heat.  Those gusts which don’t seem to move a tree canopy in any direction, and yet they spiral around me, coming towards me from every angle.  
And then I feel it inside, rolling, tossing what I know, shattering those memories of silverware and linen drawers. The dreams that fill countless notebooks, it all spills outwards.

Bursts of hot energy light up in different directions.  “Don’t go there, don’t step outside the lines,” I think. I bury my face in the clothes of my top dresser drawer, smelling the sun. I look for the cat that once hid in the laundry room and can find not a piece of fluff. Colorful patterns emerge as I look up, letting myself cry. Beneath the layers that connect me to a certain gender, I feel a violent stab of spiraling currents.

I feel a dozen pairs of eyes, moving slowly up the street. They pass the house, in unison taking in the wooden tiles of the roof, the red geraniums beside the front door, the white curtains in the downstairs windows. They are here, taking me in.
Then I start to move. I can resist no longer.
I follow them for a while, then become entangled in the shifting winds. North, south, east west, they come at once, enclosing me in intangible threads, finding the hidden knot where my eyes meet.
Matter becomes a dancing cloud.

I press on the door. I can hear my own voice fading, descending. Everything pushed up from below.
The labyrinth emerges, whole, reflecting the cosmos.
And then I see it is not a reflection.
The door falls and I hear a familiar voice, not my own.
There is a change of self, a vortex, and the center of it all dissolves.

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 King

What is the king like?

The chorus rumbled, loosening the answer from their stomachs, letting the deep sounds and grumbles manifest into words they knew the crowd would recognize. Things formed. Small things turned into larger shapes that had tails and wagons and little bits of paper that drifted after their tails like sparklers on a warm summer’s night. The room cleared of other thoughts, waiting expectantly, patiently. Silence rumbled from the stone floors and the mosaic tiles along the walls, waiting. And as they waited the things edged forward, the sounds moved into formation, and then the tongues sprang to life, knowing where to go, how to move.

What is the king like?

The answer came.
He’s arrogant and proud and likes the best things of everything. Deep red wines looking like fresh blood swirling in a crystal goblet. Satin sheets for him and his room of full-hipped lovers in little more than colorful scarves. He takes milk baths and freshly made goat cheese served on bejeweled platters. His world is that of comfort and opulence, pride that manifests only from his material power and earthly wealth.

The king? He cannot see that death comes to all, then beneath all spun, golden robes, beneath all skin are bones and flesh that eventually, sooner or later, turn to dust. Blinded by his gilded palace and bountiful gardens, his earthly finery and servants responding to his every desire, he has forgotten that death comes for all things.
One day he will take his last breath. He is not prepared. The core-shattering moment will come, it will come like a new dream and he will look out over the abyss and see that his life was full of things and pleasure and matter, but it was devoid of help.
Help would not come from slaves and servants and the maids of his palace. Help would be uncomfortable, it would pull at the self he had created, it would twist him in all directions, leaving him panting, looking for the window. But he has no help and he takes his luxury for immunity, but death does come.

He cannot see the moment, but the banished witch in her hut watches the events in the smoke of her fire. She can see his gasping last breath, the moment of transition when he truly realizes the time he has wasted, that he has done nothing that will take him towards the clear light of awakening. She watches the curling twists of smoke, knowing she cannot help him, for one must seek help.

What is the king like?
The chorus takes a breath of air, preparing for the next stanza. Again, inside, their answers release themselves from the inner walls of their bodies. They merge deep inside, then find their way out into the air in recognizable form.

Miles away from the thick woods and icy river and old witch, far down the path that turns to gold by the wrought iron gate of the castle, lives a king who is blind to the clear light. In the middle of spring, two days before the new moon, two lankly and well dressed men arrive at the palace gates. Seeking an audience with the king, they claim to be tailors of the highest order. Their credits include royalty throughout the old world as well as the new. Across the deep oceans of the globe, the most important men wear clothes made by their hands. Their secret is the magical cloth, they tell him. Cloth that can only be seen by the most deserving, royal, important men, all others are blind to its magic and colorful wonders. The king, knowing himself to be a man of the highest order, has the tailors make him a new set of clothes for the upcoming spring parade.

What is the king like?
He is dying, not from disease or old age, but atrophy. He breathes, but he dies. He lives, but he does not work, there is no world for him beyond matter. The skeleton behind his meaty cheeks has turned into vague promises he does not intend to keep, promises of the real, promises of a day that will be beyond his control. He cannot imagine such a time. His coffin is empty, for he does not believe in death for the glorious.

After many weeks of working in the stone room on the bottom floor of the castle, the tailors finish the king’s new clothes. In a room full of mirrors, they help him step into his beautiful new pants, his fabulous new shirt and electric robe. The tailors smile and nod, congratulating themselves on a job well done. But as the king looks into the mirror, he sees only thick bare flesh.
“Now you are dressed as all important men should be! And remember, only the truly deserving will be able to see your clothes, this magical cloth reveal true virtue.”
As he looks at himself, naked and covered in patches of thick hair, he nods, remembering his position, his stature, his glory. He begins to nod. “Yes! What fine work you have done! Amazing! Truly a work of art.”

What is the king like?
He is covered in the veil of his habits. A thin, silky veil that blocks out light. It covers him in worn patterns, making his sticky flesh turn to stone with each repeated thought and gesture.

With his new clothes he walks proudly into the square just beyond the iron gates to the castle. Nearly all loyal subjects of the kingdom are gathered on each side of the golden road that leads eventually to the river. Man, woman and child crowd to take a look at the king.
They all hide their surprise as they see him stride confidently down the road without any clothes. By the tallest black walnut tree one small child, no more than five years old, cannot hide his surprise as his parents do:
“The king is naked!”
The witch can see the child is not dead. The child is not stuck in patterns made of stone.

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.

Lineage of Desire

The family continues. Or it, as an organism, desires to continue. Despite murder, after betrayal and retribution, after an affair stained with indecent thoughts, the family continues. It is a lineage that travels though blood, mingling and marrying, sharing saliva and mucus, eventually forming other, smaller life forms, who in turn, reach out with tentacle-like arms to find those with a slight taste for blood and reflexes that can easily pull a trigger.
The family continues. It is the desire and impulse, not only of two-legged mammals that claim dominion over the earth, but in every creature that fucks and dies. To continue on, to multiply, to produce more. It is programmed so deep we don’t need brains, even single cells divide and divide and divide, creating more of themselves, not all too different from the warm blooded beings we call offspring. And though our babies cry and smile, it is nearly the same movement through generations, each new life engendered by the one preceding it.
In an old story told to me at a young, open age, it was Abraham who was asked by God to take the life of his son. It was a child hard to come by and with a quick slice of the knife the boy would die and the lineage might end, which would be the greatest of tragedies, but Abraham was willing to make the sacrifice.
My parents told me that story, and now they sit it their marble house, waiting as the clock ticks and no grandchildren are born, it is the greatest of tragedies. For when I die, they will die. The little branch will end, snubbed out, finally, after dozens of incarnations.
In my immediate family, the entire younger generation is female. There are six cousins, all female. Two of my cousins have children, all three of them are girls. Growing up, it was assumed I would have children. But as a minuscule deviate, I always imagined they would carry my last name. In my name I felt all the generations before mine and as a tribute, as a way to preserve them, I thought the most important thing to do was continue the family name, to insist that the next generation not assume the names of their fathers.
It seemed so important. I wanted the family to continue, not just in bodies, but in name. In name as a symbol.
It is different now. Entire species of animals go extinct under the hand of an indifferent man that uses the earth’s plants and soil for profit. Races of humans are taken out, babies are killed for preemptive retribution, one name seems to make little difference.
Is it the wish of every being to keep living? A life eternal, maybe not in their first body, but in the smaller bodies that come after them. Can my child take what I have not finished and redeem me? Can they carry on and change what I have failed? Is this the hope of any parent, that their failings will be altered, the dark memories of their lives changed for the better?
I sit on the edge of this bed and look at the white wall, there is no one who will redeem me, my failings will be my own. Each jealous outburst, each painting left undone, they will be mine. Those are the curses of the invisible generations and their echoes will reverberate through time, just as I carry the unfinished goals and dreams of the generations who never saw me, the ones that exist in faded photographs and memories that I can no longer retrieve.

What I Wonder

What would the choice be? If lights were coming down, blinking and spinning, twirling with red, blue and white like psychedelic lollipops from beyond the bluest parts of the sky. What would I do?
The grass is swaying in the wind, rustling from side to side in the abnormal breeze. Mailboxes are popping open, the fridge door opens and slams shut every second. Nothing is how I know it. The books fly from the shelves, every loose-leaf bit of paper is airborne. None of this makes sense. When the blender whips through the air of my kitchen and the night sky beyond the window is alive with colors I have yet to discover, what will I do?
Maybe I start to run with all the adrenaline my body can find. Do I step back from the porch into the safety of the doorway, moving slowly into the hallway while my hand latches the flimsy lock? Will I run to save my life, this life that I think of as so valuable and precious. Unique and unlike all other lives. Would you find me under the blankets, breathing as shallow as possible though my chest beats out like hands on a tin drum. What would I do if The Other came to me with flashing lights, red and blue lights and hard gusts of hot air?
I see myself running, jumping over chain link fences and scraping my knees as I fall clumsily to the ground. I can see a tiny scared body hiding in the dark of a closet, my eyes closed and mouth rattling off a small prayer. I feel fear running through me like monstrous rivers, seeping out of every finger and toe.
I see these visions and ask myself, what would I do?
Would I walk towards the ship, my fear held tightly, controlled by a will forged in years of practice.
I walk towards the ship to see what lies just beyond the top of the metal stairs. I walk, hearing an inner voice, ‘Look,’ it says, ‘see what will happen.’ Can I take that step? Will I die? Will I fly? Will I ever look back and see their faces, looking towards me with fear and curiosity.
Or maybe I will take a tiny first step and glance back, seeing all that I have left and sacrificed. Will they hate me? Will they ever know what has happened to me? They will know that I went with a smile, holding hands with the Other, happiness and wonderment radiating out of me like a brilliant sun.
Maybe like now, I will step forward cautiously, taking backward glances, stepping forward, little by little, until the door opens. I walk slowly towards the space lit from inside, but it could shut at any moment. Will I act quickly enough? Will I curse myself afterwards when it closes? Will I walk towards that light, those things that my mind can still not define?
It is the Other, and I reach to try and grasp it, though it slips through the language I have learned. Will I learn new sounds, a simple pentatonic language with clear signals? Without words, will I be able to push my essence through the sounds without concept till they find other ears.
I do not want to run with fear, but my feet seem to carry me away. They are brains with tennis shoes that move on impulse. They run towards small solid corners and little boxes. I see myself running, but I do not want to be that character. The human defending the human. The machine defending the machine. I do not want to play that type of role.
But I have not come far enough. Fear still shoots through me like comets, coming and staining my body before I even realize the atmosphere was breached. Unless I work, I will be the hysterical woman shouting for the world to return to normal. I want the dishes and the clean rugs. I want the plants in their proper pots and the fence in the yard. I am that woman, though I get glimpses of the other one. The woman in dreams that smiles and hops on the back of a bike. The woman that takes the hand of a stranger, calling him by name. I am that woman too, a little of each. A lot of machine, a little bit of amazement that lies hidden under the metal plates and gears.
I need to poke holes in the armor. I need that rustoleum and that pickax. I need to make it crumple. The amazing voyage is here, in my backyard and beaming into my room. It is already here and I need to step towards that brilliant, skin-burning light.
I will leave those kids and pets. I will sacrifice those familial ties and the life of shopping and the mall and beer drinking. It will fall like dead skin and I will walk up the metal platform, holding onto the hand of the Other, watching in amazement as the door shuts and we rise into the dark night. Moving forward and up, towards a new home in the stars.

Judgement

They stand with their arms open, their bodies springing from freshly unearthed graves. At their feet is the earth, once their womb, but something has changed. They are dirty with soot and trails of fallen dew. They stand, the small group of men and women; beside them, three young children. All are pale, as though their time in the ground had been long, so long without sun and air. Now they stand, open, their chests exposed to the sky, their arms open as much as their bodies will allow.

They welcome it. “Judge me,” they say with their hands.

“Judge me,” they call to the heavens, their heads bent back, letting the Real wash over them.

Rolling clouds bubble overhead. The grass beside the open graves quivers.

And what is Judgement? That look, a bit of opinion as I shower you with a stare.
What is Judgement? That bit of presumed knowledge of morality in the symbolic order?
To throw words upon your shrouded body, covering you with a set of expectations I have known almost since birth.

I look at them and see the world through the narrow lens I have chosen to understand it. I watch everything through this porthole. Afloat on a sea of dark mystery, I watch it, a tiny point without reference.

“Bad people are people who do bad things.” I look at that tiny pale body sitting in the car next to me. A little boy so convinced of himself. He is the eye of judgement, a tiny being, clueless, yet so sure of his place.

“Judge me,” the white bodies call.

The angel comes, bringing with it the Real. It is death. The void has no symbolic order, for it is nothing. It is without words, without definable shapes and morality. Step into it like a bath, for the real has come. Open you arms if you can, throw your head back and relish the ecstasy of a new set of eyes. They are doorways, not merely windows. Step up, step inside.

Though their eyes are closed, they see the angel and his red cross. North, south, east, west. The sound comes from the horn at his lips. And it is music, shape without context. Sound without attachment. It has all fallen like a cleansing rain and they welcome him, opening their bodies to a new type of noise.

How many do I judge? I see all of them through the lens of my language. I either assume an understanding, or cross their names from my book, calling them evil and rich. They find a home within the boxes of my aesthetic or I call them ugly and laugh at their pants. I laugh with them if we share the same language, or I squint my eyes and stare, waiting for the sentence to end.

Judgement comes with my language and I throw it out like dice on a filthy street.

Their bodies rise from the earth, covered in soil.
“Judge me,” they say.
No words are necessary. They bask in the void, holding themselves open for a new page to turn.

You Are Dying

Do you know that you’re dying? Don’t stare at me with big wide eyes, You Are Dying.

Through the tunnel from the womb, into the cold air, breathing, gasping, a moment from death.
Our birth is an immediate tolling bell of what’s to come.
Our only disease is life itself.

We are dying.

Each breath,
another step
Each day,
a moment closer

There is no need for doctors or prognosis. Skip the tests, the transfusion, the trips to a place of many rooms and fluorescent lights. No man in a white coat can say it any different than I can… you are dying.

Let it sink it.
Let it go to the core.
And if your heart doesn’t start to beat just a little faster,
Then let the words go a bit deeper, for you still haven’t heard:
YOU ARE DYING

Look around, it’s time to pay attention.
There’s no time for anything else, no time for watching the spilled milk or crying for the crimes of the past. We’ve all been fucked, screwed and spit on. It’s part of the experience, like strobe lights at a rock show, it’s just part of the deal. As was once said by a great band, there’s no time for fussing and fighting my friend.

You’re dying, the light at the end of the tunnel is clear, the end is inevitable, you are standing on the tracks, you will be food for the birds.
And so now, take a breath. It is coming. YOU.

If only we could stop the little bits of swirling sand and dust clouding our vision. They are sentences from the past, nuggets of resentment hidden in clenched fists, your father’s wrinkled brow. They whirl so fast, blinding even focused eyes. Clouding the path, making enemies of friends, pointing towards the cliffs.

You are dying.

There’s no time for the complaining.
For the excuses, no time.
The habit of anger, resentment, comparison, there’s just no time. We all end up as dust.
Shall you spend your last few minutes squawking? Complaining about the tart strawberry, the irritating glare of the sun? The child laughing loudly?

There is just too much to do. So much to write, circles to build, songs to hear, careful steps to take. Don’t let it all evaporate below the sun, growing lighter and lighter by the minute, fading into nothingness.

It is all here, every laugh and cry, every person in your path, every sound floating in through your walls. It is all here for you to use, coming to you free and untainted. It is the raw matter for you to bend and shape, bursts of energy to wrangle and harness, converting into fuel and long sticks of light.

It is all here, take it before you’re gone. Before they mourn the bit of dust you were. Before your steps are silenced and forgotten. The path can use another set of hands. There are weeds and misplaced rocks, there are stories to write and gnomes to meet.

Did you know that you are dying?

YOU
YOU who read these words.
YOU ARE DYING.

Look around and breath it in. Then start to work.

A Death of Scattered Signifiers

The truth could never be given with a word. It could never be understood with a sentence or on the pages of this text. And maybe you wouldn’t understand, but maybe you would, and if you do, then take my hand as I reach from the grave. I started writing months ago, and what began as a rant became more, and what began as therapy became even more until I saw the dark cloud that loomed on the horizon. It wouldn’t go away when I blinked; even when I cried and cut my fists, it was always there, steady and silent, waiting for me to truly understand. It was black and hard and I knew therapy could not fix it, words could not fix it, but I tried anyway, because I had to.

They just don’t get it. You can spell it out in big words,
And little words
And black and white
And you can make it as simple as possible
And they just don’t get it.
Now they call you demented
And your wife apologizes for you
And someone wonders if you were having marital problems.
But you told them, and you used a few cuss words and your rage was palpable,
But that’s life, that’s anger at injustice, that’s red blood pumping and pumping and pumping.
And they’re calling you demented and crazed,
They’re as blind as you thought, and even spelling it out did not help.
Their eyes are gone and they just cannot see the dots and lines,
but you tried.
You wrote it.
You told them.
Your wife does not get it.
Years and years, hidden under sheets. Years of sweat and tongue and she still doesn’t understand.
And that’s what makes me sad.
You left behind a black charred body, you tried to scream, a final exclamation point in your crash,
But they just shake their heads…another lunatic.
Your sacrifice was for a point the sheep cannot see.
There will be no legions behind you,
No revolution
No violence.
Tax day is coming and the post office will be full and the stamps will carry our money away on wings,
And little will change.
Your sacrificed life will mean so little.
Your death will be a ripple in the ocean, so faint and distant it could be nothing at all.
And that’s what’s makes my heart want to bleed.
The malls are full.
The battles wage on.
The machine grinds steady.
The freeways are crowded.
The money keeps flowing.
You could not change it.
Can it be changed?

My heart has grown weary from the failures. All the fathers have crumbled. The lies are out and as I stare, I vomit and watch them grow. Children still recite the Pledge of Alliance out of synch and they still teach that Columbus discovered America even though it was refuted so long ago. They just cannot change ignorance. Young men still sign on the dotted line, believing in honor and the vision of Country. But I can see all those cracks, not one has escaped me and I cry for the innocence I once knew and I have turned hard while the lights of florescent bulbs flicker. It is all too much. They are all lies, each one of you in suits, each one of you beneath stripes and stars. How dare you speak? You white skinned, white haired, blue eyed liars. And while those men die in roadside bombs for corporations they will never know, profiting people they will never meet, I am prepared to die. The band plays behind me, and I am a patriot. I am a revolutionary in a forgotten country of words without substance. Add me to the pile if there is anything left. Follow if you can, and if you cannot, read my words.

(Text inspired by Joe Stack’s suicide note.)

We Are All Going To Die

I looked at her from 20 feet away. She was crowned with a head of thick dreadlocks, held away from her face by a red ribbon. Most of the matted stalks were dark brown, as were her eyebrows, but the ones framing her olive-skinned face had streaks of platinum blond through them that ran through the locks like lightning bolts through a darkened sky. She looked thick and healthy, wearing baggy jeans and a jacket to protect her from rain that came in intervals.
Now the city park was filled with a bit of tentative sunshine, a few rays finding their way through a mass of fluffy gray clouds above. She smiled easily at the Afghan boy, his face still taught and smooth, just the hint of a beard growing on his chin. A table of packaged flat breads and jars of jalapeno spreads and humus separated them, though there was not much more, he held out his hand, offering a small sample and two rows of neat white teeth. She opened her hand, accepting his gifts.
I was twenty feet away, behind my own covered tables piled high with thick-crusted German bread and pastries. Whoever might have walked past by my booth in these moments was invisible, a ghost lacking any presence. My head was turned, slightly to the left, watching the pretty girl, smiling, wearing a thick red and white raincoat meant for mountain treks and camping. The young man in front of her, talking, both of them sharing easily for just one simple moment. It was soft, gentle, and I watched.
“She’s going to die one day.” The thought came from nowhere, it was simple and stark, so true as to be startling, yet I was not scared, I stood still, watching them both.
That pretty girl, in her later twenties, a head full of thick dreadlocks, a mind full of thoughts and a machine full of personality. I felt the hum of the market, crowded with white-tented booths and fresh oranges and vegetables. So many people, and all of us will die. The girl, the afghan guy….
And as much as they were alive in the moment, talking, breathing, she, tasting the flat bread, me, watching them, us, the entire market of vendors and customers and the people who drove by in their cars on the street just outside the park, we were all going to die one day. The thought hit me. Not just a thought, but a deep anchor that fell and hit the deepest part of me, a fact so true that I stood shocked, unable to turn away.

Crumbled Bodies

There is an orange skyline hugging the awkward angles of fallen structures; the foreseen time that the insane have warned of is here. The towers of glass and steel have taken new shape. Piles of rubble and trash rise up like little mountains. Gray mounds of crumbled concrete and steaming piles of burning wood have reconfigured the city streets. Like scavengers in a sunken ship, we pick through the debris, looking for gold and pictures in frames, anything we can use and shape anew. The dust of the orchestrated implosion is strong, and in the setting sun, everything is cloaked in a thick golden haze. Through the murky light, I look for you, for your blackened contour in the earthly clouds. Your curving shape is close, walking on the loosened train tracks, picking up bolts and small pieces of iron. The heavy metal screws designed to last centuries have been defeated. Strait lines and symmetrical patterns have deviated from the original plan and now, in defiance of blueprints and architects, they skew to the right. Loose wooden beams poke from the earth in every direction, looking more like the decaying posts of a pier battered in the salty elements than the dry as bone metal tracks. The boxcars and trains have long since disappeared from the rails. The masses have taken them as housing; stopped in their tracks, the dwellers live side by side on the thin rails and cluttered railroad yards. The solid colors that once passed mile after mile of corn fields; the dingy red, blue, yellow and green remind the little girls of the rainbows they have only heard about. The clouds have disappeared from the sky, and with them, the rain. We live in landscape of heat and dust, altered only by the fast moving gusts of wind that momentarily delight us. The lighted prisms that bent over us have no home here, they are shapes of myth and memory in the few that have stable minds. Some of them journey on, following the rambling train tracks, using them like a well lit path that turns in unlikely directions. The earth, what is left of the green and blue planet has jumbled the metal course. A better path? More natural? There is debate amongst the walkers, but still they follow the rusted metal pieces, for no better reason than to discover where they lead. In the remains of the cities, where the high rises lay in smoking piles and the street lights have all gone out, people still scream in the streets. There is no fear in their voices, but they scream to their god. Are they heard? We leave them to shout their profanities, we walk by them with sympathy, soon, perhaps, we may be like them. When our stomachs rumble and begin to cave, when our bodies have taken hold of the small kernels that remain, perhaps we will stand atop piles of rubble, naked below the waist and foaming at the mouth. Or maybe I will end up like the wandering girl, still wide eyed and smiling, the dirt on her face outlining her tender eyes like well applied makeup. She left her kinsfolk in the hills and came to us alone. But I found her in the green land, not far from where I stand, three bullets in her head, disguising what was once her mouth. I found her at daybreak as I scavenged for pine cones to warm our cement cave. She was like me once, open and oblivious to the terrors, never knowing the surety of death… that it happens, in one shape or another, that it comes. The crusted brown shapes around her face and body once flowed a bright red, hot and clear and humid. When I saw her, she was long gone and what remained was already ice cold, taken out by a passing group of dark-skinned boys. I see them in my mind, shouting from a car as she rode on with an increasing sense of dread. Just hecklers, right? Death cannot come. Now? Why would it come now? And then the sound. A shot. At her? Really? It happened fast…it happened so slow. The way death moves and time escapes perception. She lay on the earth as they came closer. She thought of her mother, high in the hills. Did she beg? Did she cry? Did her coming fate slow her mind, did every instance of her fleeting life pass through her like a pretty kaleidoscope? Did she smile, remembering the sweetness that surrounded her in a younger age? Death, approaching her from all angles, a couple of boys that forgot her face as they walked away with her bag. They destroyed her body, ripping apart her flesh like children with tools of men. I saw her cold body and covered her in dry leaves and a yellow flower plucked from a cluster of weeds. Just like the crumbled edifices that litter the small city, she lays still for the birds to pick through. A changing form, from flesh to dust, she moves as I will soon. Like her, I will someday surrender to the fate of circles that never come to a final rest.

Death

A college-aged boy in a white T-shirt and jeans stands in front of a crowded room. His round Asian face looks towards the white pull-down screen in the center of the classroom wall. An unused microphone rests in his left hand. The room is dim, the only light source comes from the projection itself, which is a picture of the same boy, in another place, a different time. The boy in the photo is in a light filled greenhouse. His hard city mask has fallen and he beams into the camera, holding a red ripe tomato in each hand. In the dark room, down a windowless hall in the basement of the science building, the boy looks at another self. He cannot recognize himself. He brought the slides, he practiced the presentation, but the face that appears to be his own is a stranger.
Who is that? he wonders. He is without the requisite white bandana and required mask. The boy in the room has been overtaken by death. He stares with eyes blinking. He looks, searching, searching for the self he now knows. Searching for…something. The projected photograph is a sudden flash…something used to be different. For a moment, maybe as quick as the snap of the shutter, he was different. He smiled because of tomatoes. His fingers were dirty and his car was useless and all his friends and family were miles away. He was no one to the soil, no one to the trees. But he coaxed life from a seed. And life was given. Birth happened, and the tomatoes were proof.
The photo which he stares at now with strange curiosity, is a reminder of another life, one that faded the moment he left the greenhouse. A tarot card drifts to the floor. The boy doesn’t see it, he doesn’t feel its subtle wind. It lays facing up, a skeleton in armor tramples all with his horse. The flag of death waves in the red sky. A fallen king lies next to his forgotten gold crown, two children weep at the feet of the white stallion. Are they in the path? Is the horse’s shoe a moment from their heads?
The boy with the microphone does not see the fluttering death flag beside his own head. The stench of his physical death will take years, but this is just as foreign. It’s like looking at his own corpse, except…it is not. His corpse looks at the being left behind. The being forgotten, flowering just for a moment. Open and light-filled and caught forever. Caught for a moment that will always exist, even if it has moved beyond the recognizable.
Death came uninvited. Death came when the boy began to think, when he began to be “himself.” When he returned to life as though nothing had happened. When he got into his car, put on his bandana, and tried to explain his experience. But death happened. A moment of sudden life had exploded out of the rotting experience of a machine, and that moment lives on in the photo. It lives in the dim room, lives in the moment. It is the reminder that flowers can bloom in the mud, that a burst of lighting can cause a fire. But the boy standing with the microphone is a reminder that death is never far away. It is ready, with horse and flag and armor, ready to snatch it all.
The class waits expectantly for the explanation of the photo, the description of his experience and the things he learned. But there are no words for the captured moment. No words that can describe the bliss of creativity and birth. Nothing to explain the smile and the love of two tomatoes and the energy of a being spilling forth. The class is silent, waiting for the unexplainable to be explained.

The Attempt

The school is closed on this early Sunday morning. The imposing shapes of the administration buildings stand silent in the background, and just a vague sense of silenced authority finds its way to the parking lot. On this weekend, as with all weekends, there are no cars in the lot, and the recently paved black asphalt is the perfect floor for an education without curriculum and standardization. This is the self-created flat-land of trial and error. The place where there is only will and peer pressure and broken bones and the decision to try it again.

Two dozen teenagers are gathered on the periphery of the asphalt, close to the sidewalk that wraps around it like a thick barrier. They stand there, patient and attentive, but with their hands on their own skateboards, ready in an instant to step into the sacred space.

In the center of the lot are metal rails and obstacles meant to be jumped onto or over, or coasted against. They have brought them here, carried in backpacks and bicycles, easily assembled and built for the moment. These are self-imposed obstacles, and they’re here to be used. To hit, to land, to wail against.

In the center is a young man. His slim-fitting black pants do nothing to prevent him from attempting another trick. He has tried it over and over, weekend after weekend. Sometimes he gets it. Sometimes he pushes himself with his right leg and rolls over the asphalt gaining speed until he is just a few feet from the metal bar. Then he puts a little more weight on the back tail of the board and uses his right foot to push the wooden board up just a little higher. Sometimes he gets it. Sometimes he makes it to the rail and then falls off. Sometimes he makes it to the rail and grinds the bottom of his board against it till it ends. Sometimes he even lands on the ground with both feet on the board. Sometimes he falls off halfway through. After all the attempts, he has still not got it quite right, not enough to be consistent. So he tries it again.

His loose black T-shirt billows with the force of the wind. This is the moment. The gathered on-lookers watch him, and though he has made it to the rail, nearly to the end, he looses his balance. His arms are still out to the sides for balance, his right foot tilts awkwardly on the board, just about to fall off the platform completely. His right foot is bent and raised slightly towards his chest. He knows what’s coming, and he smiles.

The trick has failed. There will be a fall, he will have to roll as he always does and duck his head, and just as he feels his entire body shifting with gravity, he smiles. Another attempt that has failed. But after the fall, he will try again. There will be a line of guys, they’ll attempt the same trick. And he’ll be standing there, watching them, as they watch him now. As he waits for another turn, he’ll watch their footing, the speed with which they approach the rail, the timing and pressure on the nose of the board. He’ll watch it all, looking for another subtle movement to use and push him along. It’s balance, timing. Above all, it is will. There is so much to remember and execute, he has to do it within seconds. If they are watching him from the sidelines, they’re learning from his mistake, just as he learns from them. He smiles. It was a good attempt, another jump into the unknown, taking all the knowledge he could remember and use. And though he jumped, though he ground the wheels for a few feet, it just wasn’t right. When he falls, the sun will still be shining. The clouds will still be scattered. He will be one jump wiser. If he can just remember it all, he can try it again.

For the brief moment, he is suspended, not quite the victor, not quite the fallen. He knows his mistake. He smiles and waits for the crash.

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?

The Drop

The long silver bomb fell through the clouds and the women dropped to the ground. It wasn’t that they consciously thought of ducking, but their bodies melted and substance that had once been known as skin and bones and hair fell to the rumbling earth like heavy dust. When the waves of hot vibrations passed, the women looked through the remains of their buildings. They pulled out pieces of things they had once called children. Under heavy pieces of crumbled walls they discovered the loose remains of fingers and little toes. Tin cups that were once held by small hands during breakfast lay beneath a broken wooden table. When they found someone breathing, they called the remaining un-bandaged men and with sheets and what was left of their strength, they carried them to a makeshift infirmary in the place once known as the park. Only there were no trees left, just little sticks that had managed to stand up to the waves. They would have to find a new name for this barren land, it was no longer a park, it was nothing they recognized.
And their city, there would have to be new words to describe this collection of rubble that they once called Nagasaki. It was no longer a city, no longer a collection a tall cement buildings and crowded urban center. This place was a land of broken pieces. They combed through the piles of glass and wood looking for people once known as friends. They salvaged items their memories categorized as useful. The fire wind had come just a few hours before. The end of the world moved through them like a white cloud. It ripped through them, surely they had found hell, this was the landscape they had been warned of. It came from the sky, but they would have to search for understanding later. Now, they looked for their memories.
An old woman looked up to the clouds, to the blue dome she once believed contained her god. Was it the destruction of nature or man? What had crumpled everything she knew? Who had the power to flatten her home? Who had the power to take her children, to turn them to dust? She turned back to the land of cement. Back to the landscape of twigs and wrinkled flesh. Maybe they would understand later. Now, she looked for the things she recognized, before the hot wind had come. Before her home and children had turned to dust. Before there were crumpled men that needed water and bandages. Before the world was flattened. She picked up a pitcher of water and walked towards the wounded.

The Release Of Pain

It all comes down to death. The machine wants to die. The machine wants to sleep and die. A warm sleep with no dreams and a soft pillow that might never be felt. In each release there is an explosion and in each explosion there is a death. The tear, the squirt, the shout, the laugh, the cut. The outward explosion is the death, of a moment, a chamber, an energetic movement. And the machine seeks death. To remain breathing, yet dead, that is an ever-present option. To remain asleep while the eyes are open, while the feet move, while the chest rises and falls.
Look for pain. Pain is my hand in the midst of flickering flames. Pain is hearing a baby screaming. Pain is being ignored. Pain comes with a swiftness that demands attention, it demands acknowledgement in one way or another. Pain requires the shifting of attention from one thing to another. Pain requires that I look at it and talk to it and indulge its wishes. My body begs me to look at its shape. My body wants pain to stop. My mind wants pain to continue. My machine desires the explosion. Pain needs to be hidden in the corner or given a bottle or smoked out of existence. Pain needs to be fed, consuming every thought and action and object in its path.
The body itself will only absorb a certain amount of pain, after that threshold consciousness is lost. It is the reason a baby cries itself to sleep, the reason a cold man would grab a bottle of whiskey or put a gun to his head. In one way or another, pain demands remedy. It demands attention, and the body demands an end. A death to the pain. Ends are found many ways. Pain wants an outlet, it seeks an explosion, an orgasm, there needs to be a resolution. Whether for one moment, or for a lifetime of recurring cycles, pain comes and comes and the body seeks over and over again to let it out in gasps, like a volcano releasing steam. Emotional pain can be covered in the mask of physical pain. A cut might relieve a little sadness. Pain can come little by little, mounting slowly until one day the landscape is a concrete path and a long row of trashcans. And as much as pain seeks a release, the body is addicted to the release itself, so over and over again, it finds reason for pain, creating the circumstances so a release can be had. The eternal cycle of death and sleep. Climb and fall, without any hope of ever reaching the top.