Before The Journey

There once was a magician who lived alone in a cave.  From time to time, other travelers and seekers would find the cave as it was next to a fresh water source and close to the dirt path that led all the way over mountains and forests and deserts to the land of spices and smoke.  Sometimes students came and brought him sacks of tea and paper and ink.  Sometimes the children of the nearest mountain village would leave sweets at the mouth of the cave and rice in burlap bundles.  Mostly, he was alone, left with the slow steady rhythm of his own breath and the restless occasional cracking of the rocks surrounding him, the sounds all houses make when they think they’re alone.
He had been there before his hair ever turned white, when his muscles had been firm, and though he had been there for decades, he was aware of how little time there really was, how birth seemed to have come just a few days before. Because of his acute awareness of time, he practiced his art with urgency and strict attention. He kept detailed notes about experiments, their results and the methods employed.  There were charts that outlined his emotions, his health, the weather and time of year.
In his dreams, he saw another world where there were tall buildings made of glass and steel.  He had dreamt of this place for many months. Upon waking, he felt the lingering desire to voyage deeper into the dream, to go so far in that there would be no memory of a cave.  The place in his dream was not better, it was only different, with smells and textures that did not exist where he sat.  He wanted to look into the eyes of the people and see what they had to share.
For months he tried various things.  He played in his dreams and covered himself in the smoke of local plants.  He chanted and organized and re-organized the order in which he set up the space around him and the methods in which he relaxed and let himself drift into dreams.  Sometimes, when the spell was working, it seemed like he could reach out and touch the glass of the tall buildings, but just as he stretched out his arm and moved his fingertips towards the glass, he would awake suddenly, aware that something had brought him back. He had not made full contact.
One night, he waited for the full moon to crest above him.  He could feel the light changing, growing stronger. Though he had no direct sight from the deep interior of the cave, the waters inside him vibrated in louder ripples as the moon rose over the mountain range. Sensations rippled over his skin, it felt lighter, smoother, stronger somehow. He waited, patiently breathing, allowing his body to move as slowly and calmly as the moon that gently rose. When the energy peaked, his body began to rock.  His eyes no longer perceived the clear lines of his world, they shifted like a color show and melted into each other.
He journeyed that night into the world of glass and steel, walking through streets that showed no signs of the earth, where the trees seemed planted as ornaments rather than mighty elements in the natural landscape. 
He wandered for hours, looking intently at the people that crossed his path.  They were women and men in bodies like his own, but their attention seemed taken, turned inward on earthly matters, squandered on abstractions and worries. He could sense their tension more acutely than ever, as though none could remember their true purpose. They walked past him like ghosts, never taking their eyes off the ground or off the objects in their palms. He noted their presence and posture.
He continued his walk, collecting his notes of the other world.  Soon he came upon a piece of paper that seemed misplaced on the sidewalk.  He stooped to pick it up and was startled to see his own writing on the paper.  He looked at it more and realized they were the instructions he had written to himself prior to the journey.  He looked at it with different eyes now.  Not the man that had thought of dreaming, the man that thought of going to other worlds, but this new man now, the man he was after touching glass and steel, the man that walked among ghosts.
He was struck by the second and third lines of his instructions.  Before every journey it was his habit to write out a list of directives, things we would need to remember while travelling, the incantations he would need in order to come back to the cave chamber.  He kept them in his right hand pocket always, a place he could easily remember to check when he felt the time was right. It was strange now to find it on the ground, easily lost or blown off by the wind. 
He looked at the writing, at his familiar script. But he felt a slight alarm as he noticed the extra embellishments on the curls of several script characters. It was a minor detail of handwriting, but he knew himself well enough to know what it meant. 
Over the years and countless hours of inner exploration, he had come to glimpse the many parts of himself, the light, the dark, the terrors another man would have hid away in fear.  The benevolent teacher and the raw animal.  There were a thousand faces in between the extremes of his machine and he had met with each one, he had come to know their habits and he knew the extra curls in his script indicated that several of his egos were active, manifesting themselves in his writing. 
Without realizing it at the time, back in the cave, he had begun his journey with them inside, active, unbeknownst to him, they had piggy-backed through his dreams, stepping with him through the door.  Had he known, had he paid enough attention, as he surely should have, he would have caught a glimpse of their presence.  It was a mistake, a dangerous one, bringing them along into this altered land, in this altered state, was a hazard. They could lead him to a very nasty place, a place dripping with identifications and worldly demons and monsters hard to defeat. 
He had not been careful enough. But he could begin again now. 
He stood on the sidewalk and placed himself in the center of a circle, imagining its firm golden walls.  He closed his eyes and began to breath rapidly, letting the palpitations in his stomach push those creatures to the surface of his flesh.  He felt them emerging and he saw their contorted faces in the awful visions before his eyes. Each breath pushed them further to the surface. 
He stood in place for many minutes, breathing rapidly with intense concentration, visualizing a clear, cleansed circle around him until finally he could feel that that his inner landscape had shifted.  He slowed his breathing and began to walk once again.  The sidewalk ahead was illuminated in the glare from a dozen mirrored buildings in the high sun. He walked through them, letting his intuition pull him forward.

Black Friday

“Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock, jingle da ta da taaaaaa….”

Overnight the mall has turned into a simulated winter wonderland. The shop windows are built upon beds of soft fake snow, mannequins in sweaters and mittens pretend to play in an eternal moment of cheer. There are pine trees everywhere, green garlands and candy canes and colored lights. It happened overnight. Just the other day was fall. The predominant colors were brown and yellow and gold…and now, just a day later, there is white and green and red. Just yesterday I was eating turkey and cranberries and stuffing, yesterday was another holiday entirely, but now, we are all in a downward slope towards Christmas. There’s the jiggling man and snow and trees and wrapped boxes with bows, all the signifiers of the holiday.
And this is it. The official first day of the season. “Official” according to retail analysts and department stores and consumer groups and the stock market. It is Black Friday. The “official” first day of the Christmas shopping season. And overnight, it has become just that. The food of Thanksgiving is not yet digested, and yet, the Christmas buzz has begun. The ringing of registers, the unmistakable sound of a credit card transaction spitting out a receipt, the bell of Goodwill employees with their red buckets, the Christmas carols in every store with a sound system.
The mall is an oversized ant farm. Families, couples, teenage girls…everyone is here. For the sales, for the shopping list, for the spirit, to ease the boredom of a day off work, out of habit, out of a clever advertising campaign. The mall, spacious as it is with tiled floors and wide aisles is just not meant for so many people, each laden with bags and staring into colorful window displays that depict what we should all strive for: endless styled merriment.
They do it en masse. Millions, all waking up on the same particular Friday morning. All with the same idea, the same plan, the same future just minutes away. The town may change, the particular name of the mall, the dent on the credit card, but it is the same flow, the momentum that propels them out the door, into a car, and into a packed shopping center.
The biggest cloud that coats the brain is the illusion of individuality. They may be singular bodies, breathing and moving independent of each other, but there is no individual thought or plan. Millions of people cannot suddenly wake up the same morning and each have their “unique” idea of how to spend the day. Anything that moves that many bodies to one particular place is carefully constructed. We’ll never see them, those slick men and women with a firm grip on human desires and insecurities. They can move a million people like soft clay bent between fingers. Scared, sad, bored, deeply fearful about the meaning of existence, desperately clinging to any theory that explains life in an easy-to-follow formula. The stores are ready for the masses, those people ignorant of their own fears. The stores are open by 6 am and there is a line around the block. Large women in oversized jackets run to the shelves like they are stocked with the last remains of bottled water and provisions. But there is no war, there is no scarcity. This is the desperation of the satiated, or seemingly so. Another Black Friday begins and end with the illusion of free choice.

“Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock, jingle da ta da taaaaaa….”

New Life Forms

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

Intentions

The Rabbi looks down upon his followers and says:
“You must build a wall. With this wall that you build, you will separate your altruistic intentions from your selfish intentions, your selfless transcendent center that yearns for God will thus be separated from your ego based desires that only yearn for pleasure and fame and power and sex. By building this wall, you will begin on the path.”
I look around myself, at the wide desert that surrounds my little city of dreams, and I can plainly see that the construction of such a wall is impossible, such as it has been described. For the desert hides its depths, and in its depths there are caves through which the masked inhabitants travel, and there are deep secret rivers full of forgotten beasts, and there are great mythic birds that fly overhead in translucent silence, and there is a heavy burning rain that comes down from the skies every so often, and carries with it news from other lands, and there is an ever evolving sickness that travels through the open mouths of all of those that talk, and finds its way into all those that listen, and there are sounds that no wall can stop, screams from distant places and distant times, anguished screams that still yearn to be heard.
Far from the city, the ancient walled city within which the Rabbi speaks, there are people being killed, people being tortured, people being banished, people being thrown away like yesterday’s garbage, pushed away to find their misbegotten lives among the refuse of a thousand bloody wars. Can it then be said that the city is safe from this, as long as the pain and the screams and the tears and deep lakes of blood don’t touch the city walls? Does the Rabbi not know that the quest begins here, from the heart of the city, but it extends far beyond its gates? If the men that kill and torture come from the streets of this protected city, is the city then safe from their guilt? Are the city’s own intentions not corporealized in the sound wrenching missiles that tear through hot air and mud wall and fleshy membranes? Maybe the Rabbi does not know of this. Maybe he is simply quiet and blind, aloof from the madness around him, centered on the true God above. But if he is, then can he not be blamed for his own blindness? Is it not a self imposed exile that ultimately betrays his own stated intentions?
Why has he chosen to remain quiet in the face of so many atrocities? Why has he chosen to remain ignorant of the pain that travels in bits of dust through storms of pebbles and sand? Are these the altruistic intentions that remain hidden within the city walls? Or are these the other intentions, the ones that have managed to walk past the checkpoints, past the interrogations, past the security police, past the careful eye of the guards, and they have penetrated deep into the heart of the city, ready to unleash chaos with a single flicker of a switch?
I am that I am. I am One. There is no Other. I am the Rabbi. I am the soldier. I am the killer. I am the bomb. I am the baby blown to little red bits.
How can we then build this wall around our inner city, when we can’t truly distinguish the good from the bad, the true from the false, the right from the wrong, the image from the real?
Within each step of my strange robot, the fleshy machine that I currently ride into extinction, lie a million electrical accidents, free in their randomness, wild in their flight. They flash like little lost torch lights in the middle of the desert night. Some of them, in their wild run through my body that is a world, may in fact look up to heaven. Most of them still stare into the bloody heart of the Void, and, as they stare, they yearn for power, they cry for revenge. They are all enmeshed, like spider webs around other spider webs, like the pages that you may read on a network of light, pages like this one, that make no sense in themselves and don’t even have the intention of clear communication. They swirl and they crash, they come to bursting bubbles of orgasmic supernovas and then sink into themselves to become eternal black holes.
Above all, they don't reveal themselves easily. They may look friendly and hide a bomb beneath their coat. They may look righteous but pull out a boy’s fingernails when the lights are down, and the walls are thick.
As above, so below.
As below, so above.
And if they hide from me, these strange wild intentions that roam within the electrical network that makes my fingers move across this keyboard, they will certainly hide in the endless desert of deeply entrenched resentment and hatred. And if they manage to get past a hundred checkpoints, and a thousand vigilant eyes, they will surely get past mine, my single pair of eyes which fall asleep recurrently and only come to a clear place of attention but a few times per day.
To start by building this wall, then, is a path to certain disaster. Or maybe just a path to blindness. The blindness that is willful, the blindness of the eye that can see but can’t rise above the very wall which its own hands have built.
We start from where we are. As evil as our intentions may currently be, they are the only ones we have.

A Model Of Talent

She looked directly into the camera, with a smirk on her face and the faintest hint of a singularly raised eyebrow, and she said "I’m the strongest model here, it’s my face on the wall this week. I had the best picture last week and right now, I know I’m the best, so yeah, I think it’ll go great at the photo shoot tomorrow."
She had done well last week. In a photo shoot which involved disguising every part of the body but the eyes, her eyes and expression came though with the utmost clarity and force. Out of all the other models in the competition, it was she who went into the camera lens, bringing herself into the small tube, communicating to the photographer and future observer with all her fierceness and beauty. She projected herself out like a laser and brought herself to into the material world of magazine ads and lipstick commercials. And at elimination, the judges praised her work and photo and told her she had a real talent…a natural talent. Those comments solidified her own ideas and hopes, that she was indeed already a great model. And all the other girls who had been in the same photo shoot looked at her with wonder and wanted to know how she had done it. They wanted to do it too.
When the next photo shoot was scheduled, she walked into the well lit studio with her head up high and a confident swagger in her hips. She knew she was the best, as had been proven last week, and this week, she was sure she would deliver as well, she had talent after all. Looking into the future, she knew she would win the entire competition and would soon begin modeling all over the world. She was the next star. When her turn came for the photo shoot, she did her thing. She looked into the camera and tilted her head and projected strength. She switched positions and used her legs and arms and played with some angles. But the model coach on set was not giving her any position feedback. After the first couple of frames, he said she didn’t look intense or strong and with these first biting comments, she began to sink. With each new pose, instead of hearing "beautiful…these look great," she heard silence and felt the exasperation coming from the coach and the photographer. Each click of the camera deflated her more until she couldn’t wait until it was all over. They tried to give her a couple of tips. "Turn the left arm more, lift your chin…" but nothing seemed to bring the magic. What was she missing? She had no idea. She was doing the same thing she did last week. Why wasn’t it having the same effect? "last frame!" called the coach, practically rolling his eyes as he said it. She knew he was mad. She hadn’t delivered and hadn’t impressed and she didn’t know why.
She wass young and had only really modeled in the mirror of her room when she found herself alone. But she came to the competition with the hopes of doing more than that. She wanted catwalks and Gucci and to work with the best photographers. She wanted gorgeous pictures and a new career. But she was young and inexperienced. She had never really practiced her moves and her "walk." Modeling was all new. They told her last week she had talent. Shouldn’t talent always be there? she wondered. If I had it last week, where had it gone this week? In effect, she had stumbled into one amazing photo. She had no idea what she had done right. How exactly had she held her head? What had she been thinking about when the camera clicked?
She could not retrace her steps, and thus, what they called talent was merely a chance encounter with the perfect light, expression, and timing.
Time and practice lead to true knowledge. Knowledge does not need the label of talent. It is beyond talent. Knowledge is knowing how to hold your head for the camera at just the right angle. Knowledge is knowing the shapes your body can contort into and still appear beautiful and interesting. This is not talent, it is not inherent. It is practiced and perfected. Day after day, it is examining what works and improving what doesn’t until you don’t need a mirror or another set of eyes or a coach. It is feeling it from within, knowing its every shape and subtlety. With deep knowledge, you can perform despite the weather or illness or stress. You know it. It is not a mysterious god given talent. It is direct and practical experience, crafted and made flawless over years of solid work.
If you show your work and someone says you have no talent, set the statement aside, shift your attention back to creation and keep on working. If you show your work and someone says you have talent, do exactly the same.

An Image with No Fault

The small round table was set with a red table cloth and mismatched pink and tan place mats. There were two white plates of food upon them, cooling hotdogs oozing with mustard and crumpled napkins on the side. Sitting across from each other and bathed in the stinging white light of afternoon, they began their meal in an intimate silence. As he took a sip of his chocolate drink, he asked her,
"Did you bring the lesson notes for today?"
"Ah, no," she replied, looking out the window and vaguely noticing the cars passing by on the wide street outside.
"Why not?" he asked in confused surprise, his usually smooth face wrinkling.
Avoiding his eyes, she said, "ah, I only had a couple minutes to get dressed, and I wasn’t even sure if I would need them…and I didn’t want to carry them around with me all day and…I don’t even know which lessons you’re talking about…"
Stopping her words with a raised hand and a sharper tone, he said, "yes, you do…and you knew we would need them today."
"no, I don’t know which lessons you really mean and some of them are in the computer and I have that with me but I have only been practicing the other lessons for a little while and I wasn’t sure if we would need them because you didn’t tell me to practice them until a couple weeks ago and…."
Tears began streaming down her pale white cheeks. She looked out the window, afraid to speak, afraid to look at him and make the moment worse with her confused and defensive words. Maybe they wouldn’t even have a lesson now, she worried.
"Why didn’t you bring them?" he asked again, in a tone slightly louder than normal but that was still calm. A hint of a smile teased at the corners of his lips and a glimmer of mischievous glitter played in his eyes.
There were tears reddening her eyes and she had a crumpled wet tissue buried in her hand, she said, "I forgot them." Loudly, clearly and looking right at him.
"okay… why didn’t you just say that?" He looked relieved.
Stumped, she said quietly, "I thought I did."
"No," he said laughing, "you said everything but that."
And she saw that she had. She had walked out the door of her small studio in the early afternoon slightly angry and impatient, wondering how she could possibly complete her task within an hour. She had not thought ahead and remembered she needed her lesson notes for later in the evening. She had forgot them. It was simple and true. She had been occupied on half a dozen competing thoughts and shallow emotions and had forgotten the notes.
But admitting this, admitting clearly that it was she who had messed up, she who had forgotten, was admitting that she had been wrong. And to acknowledge this, this simple fact, was to go against a strong current that ran the length of her. To her machine, she is a flawless self, a golden ego which is free from fault and guilt.
When something goes wrong, it happens because of an external situation; it had nothing to do with her carelessness or inattention or unexposed anger. No, it comes from beyond her flesh. It comes towards her, from people, circumstance, words, society…it all comes towards her and it is them that cause her struggle. Problems come from the outside to her, not the other way around. In her carefully crafted image, her forgotten lessons notes arose from hastily given instructions and limited time and unclear plans and difficult requests. Her bouts of depression and anger arise because of unfair circumstances and harsh tones and the harsh ways of the world. Her life would be smooth and lovely, if it were not for those others who work against her and hate her and keep her sad. This idea of a flawless vessel keeps her protected. It is insulation against the strong currents beyond her control, it is the barrier between the reality of her actions and the truth of their consequences.
The faults of others are so easy to see. Watching any reality TV show, the habits of each character are easily identifiable: the man who always wants to win strength challenges and brags with aggressive confidence to the camera, yet each week, time and again, he is the first to lose momentum and give up. And as easy as it is to see the flaws of those around us, from the person across the dinner table and the grocery clerk who never says hello, it is just as hard to see the weaknesses and flaws hiding within oneself. The images are thin as glass, lacking any substance or true emotion, but it is strong as any metal and more than that, it is even harder to shatter because we protect ourselves from its destruction. To destroy it, to expose it as a flawed image is destroy ourselves, what we fervently believe to be ourselves. Our ego, our sense of self, our identity, our IMAGE is really all we know, and we cling to it, like a drowning man to a floating piece of wood, we cling to it because it is all we know. Without it, without our mask, without our image, without our face, what are we?

Kitchen Nightmares

They send him pleading letters. Within, the words are desperate and begging for help. Begging for guidance. The problems are mostly cloudy, rolling ambiguous shapes that never seem to point to a definite solution. They are not sure exactly what is wrong, but their restaurants remain empty, and each day, new worry lines etch their marks within the soft folds of weary flesh. Their hearts are burdened with thoughts of bankruptcy, home repossession, guilt and pain. Their worries are marked by heart attacks and restless nights. In this state, the restaurant is a temple of gloom, and those that work and eat there are poisoned by its desperation and deepening failure. After fitful nights, the owners wake up, seized with the burden of another day. More of the same. And so, in a last measure of self preservation, in an attempt to resurrect themselves from the pit that they have learned to call home, they write to him.
Like a gleaming messiah, he shines and comes to them with sincere wishes for success. It’s his love of food that makes him move. His supreme respect for taste and pleasure. He comes to help, he comes to ignite passion and integrity. He comes, demanding personal responsibility and a desire to change. His authority is based on a lifetime of accumulated knowledge and on his undeniable success. Restaurants, TV shows, adoring food critics; he has succeeded in this business. He has knowledge.
And they write him for help, and if they are lucky, he comes. He comes with an open heart. He comes to see, to identify the problems and the very bad habits of these establishments. As he observes, he notices the flaws, the rotting food in the fridge, the lazy wait staff, the nervous manager, the cluttered atmosphere, the over complicated menu, the owner who invests all his money in white china. As the teacher begins to identify the problems, the owners, the cooks, the staff- they begin to resist. Many of them fight back. They argue…they become identified.
It is mostly the owners that resist. Even though they begged for his help, now he is here, criticizing their home, their dreams, their work, their identity. And as their sense of self is called into question, as they reel from the criticism which they take as a personal insult, they fight against him. They walk off the job, they yell and cry. They hate the man that has come to help them. The man who has nothing other than their future success on his mind. Yes, he hopes for a good show, for good ratings, lucrative advertising, good pay, but first, he comes to save a failing dream. An idea that had been put into action without a plan. It is his hope for them that keeps him there. During the name calling, during the childlike tantrums of adults, he stands, grounded in his mission.
The owners knew there was a problem, it was why they wrote for help. Their mounting debt and empty restaurants were the symptoms, but when the root of these problems are discovered and brought up to the sunlight, it is these same problems that they resist changing. The owner who clings to his plates, the owner who cannot stop trying to do everything. The owner that clings to the outdated decor. If they can see past their egos for a moment, if they can take his advice, if they use his advice, they usually see results. They see increased sales, compliments on the food and a returning sense of humor.
The teacher has walked this path before, many times, and he stands firm, rooted and waiting for a moment of insight to rupture the ego; within this space changes can be introduced. And sometimes, when the results become as obvious as day and night, there is a moment of true realization, and a new way of being emerges.

The Egos that Flee from a Sinking Ship

Crrrrssakkkk….the sudden breaking of glass as a dark shape lands on the windshield of a tiny blue car. As the fleshy body hits the solid mass of glass, she thinks to herself, "I think I’m getting hit by a car now." Her back lands on the windshield. Her eyes are open and she notices the blue sky above. How long does she stare at the sky?
It is such a pretty morning, it’s a sunny California spring day. She sees the sky, as though she’s never quite noticed it before. It’s blue. It’s open and wide. "I think I’m getting hit by a car now." Her brain gives her some sensible information. It’s objective, without worry or fear, just information. She is being hit by a car. It’s something that she has heard of, something she’s seen on TV, and it’s happening to her.
She looks at the never ending ceiling of earth. slightly hazy, but still clearly blue in the early morning. Where is time? Her brain is unguarded, left alone in this moment. The many "I"’s (the multiple egos that usually pull her in all directions) have fled, and her brain is slow to comprehend what is happening.
With the sudden impact upon her body, all sense of time is assaulted, revealed for its true transitory nature. At this moment, time reveals itself for its falseness.
Time…the great perception. Without an "I" to perceive it, any "I", it moves like clear molasses through a vacuum of images. Mistakes happening within fractions of measured time, yet being felt as though through the eyes of many years.
The many I’s have scrambled like a group of confused chickens…have they been hit? Has one of them been hit? The windshield of the dirty car has broken into a thousand tiny fragments, revealing the blue hue of an objectively clear pane. The driver, a small brown woman, has her mouth open, herself not quite understanding the nature of the shape blocking her view. And the shape, the body of a tall woman, designed by nature to work fields and bear children, is observing the blueness of the sky. With the impact, the driver hits the brakes, the girl flies forward, landing on the pavement. Her head makes contact with the ground. "On no, am I dead?"
She wonders. She lays still with her thoughts. She cannot answer her question. There is no "I" to respond. Who is asking the question? The brain? The personality that wishes to keep breathing? Time has abandoned her. No, it is the many I’s that have left, and in their absence, she does not feel time. She lays on the hard earth, paved long ago with black tar. She asks herself: "Am I dead?". In the silent absence of time and under the endless blue sky, there is no answer available.

Puzzle

A 4000 piece puzzle sits atop a glass table… this large, flat, rectangle is the fruit of a summer of labor. A scene from the middle ages has sprung into creation. An alchemists chamber, with charts and tubes, globes, and powders. Thousands of small pieces have created this scene, tiny jigsaw shapes that all share the same darkened hues. Each small shape, with jutting sides and liquidous forms, each one varies just slightly from the others; like flattened cardboard snowflakes.
But there are some pieces missing, at least a dozen pieces are gone. And in their holes, a transparent shape rests in the color of nothingness. Perhaps they were never there, never made. A slight oversight in the maker. And now, this image is incomplete. It wrestles with itself. Gropes for unity and form.
Like my puzzle, my many shapes disguise themselves as beauty and caring. In here, when I truly look in, when I see the many egos dying for attention, when I feel jealous rage bite through words and pleasant smiles, when I feel with the compassion of a young, tender woman, when I kiss with the desire of a chained woman on her knees…I know that all of these share the same bed. These, and many others. They work together to form the image of this Lydia.
Missing pieces, dark shapes, curvy little chips of colored cardboard that manifest the strangeness. I feel them all. With the same breath I utter hopes and suggestions while some small part, barely more distinguishable than a cool breeze, but slightly darker in hue, whispers, almost inaudibly, for the worst.
It does not want hope. It does not want contact. It is out for itself. It wants control. It does not care, does not understand, not for a second, what we are trying to do. It lives within the darkest folds of my flesh, yet it springs to life, feeding off sparks of negativity. Enlivened by tears and sadness.
And while a part of me Works and laughs and is smooth and attentive, this other me watches with eyes slightly squinted. With ill intentions and ulterior motives barely passing unnoticed. And it is me. Not totally bad. Not completely good. Jealous sometimes. Ugly sometimes. Helpful sometimes. Joyous sometimes. Awake for slight moments.
They leak out like perspiration. They cover your fingers in clear love. They dribble from my eyes each morning. Asleep, I see only the good. Asleep, I see only the dark. Like a fucked up puzzle, I am many without clarity. Capable of beauty, capable of torture and brutal killing. Capable of infinite love and the sweetest of kisses. Dark, light, gray, green, red, yellow. It is all here, seeping out like poison on the wind.

Pressure

Sometimes all it takes is a little arm twisting, a few spanks, or applied mental teasing. A little bit of stress to bend the machine into working a bit faster, a way that moves more smoothly, more unexpectedly than the pseudo-intellectual frontal cortex.
In the front, the intellect rests in a silver throne and red satin pillows, relishing its command over all organs, cells, and movement. But it is truly a blind king, with only half witted subjects duped into its madness. The real king is the force and energy that stems from the back, from the unencumbered place of deeper, quicker, more intuitive knowledge. This is the domain of clarity. The movement here is quicker, faster than the pompous king can comprehend. It moves faster than doubts and rationalizations. So fast that the pseudo-intellect can have no hope of catching up.
And it comes from pressure. From need and urgency. The Urgency that exists in the dominion of chaos, where everything flows, where creation leaks like golden life sprung from slimy cracks in ancient stone.
In our endless sleeping state, all we see are comfortable beds and leisurely walks. Slow cooked dinners and hammocks in the sun. Every minute that makes its rounds around the endless wheel…a measure of movement. They are all lost…an endless march towards all and none.
A march in place, a march to the left, to the right, moving to the center and disappearing. Going to the dimensions of mathematicians and shamans, tasters of fruit and fungus. Dwell here, within this space of shifting lands.
The space without words.
There are no second thoughts. There are no worries about syntax and ego. It comes. It spills with urgency and purpose. Need. Black rivers and red skies. Laughter thunders in the distance, rattling clouds of moving sunshine.
Captured in a bottle, my love forever stays upon your shelf. Take me with you to the other side, where your secretive dreams are recorded an dissected. On nights covered in black and moist air, you searched for water within rooms of neon and beer. Stale everywhere, but within your red sphere. The moment had begun. With quiet. With the hush of observed holidays and empty streets, we began.
I began.
You opened the door, holding it like a gentleman…into the garden of kingdoms and blue glory…I went with eyes half open and holding your soft hand, poised to catch me falling. A forceful tug pushes me back to center. To the razors edge I walk without finesse. Marked hands and feet dirty the path.
Although it is laid with fine powdered gold, I constantly spit on it, a testament to my zoo-like tendencies. Like a monkey in a cage, I scream and fuss, waiting to be noticed and ogled. A little push, a forceful yank. A bit of metal pain to get it started.

Your Discovery

I didn’t discover you…you discovered me. You used me to bring yourself forth, into this space, into the world and time. It is you who are wise, containing the wisdom that I can see only for a fraction of time before I recoil and cry. Colors and shapes warp into faded memories of dogs and purple clouds. The face I have studied in the mirror is soon broken, diced and re-compartmentalized like a Picasso experiment in form. Almond shaped eyes laced with fear and excitement expand with each inhalation, growing until they suddenly burst, releasing themselves into the sputtering open mouth of time.
And in this space, it is you who is in control. The mix if chemical components that plunge its hosts into a state of existence that is beyond the realm of human worlds.
And if I didn’t discover you, then… it is not "I" that does the thinking. It is not "me" who makes the decisions.
The other
The superior force
The other
The unnameable energy
The other
Not me?
Not you.
Something that needs you.
The other
It needs you
It discovered you.
It brought you out,
Made you open your mouth and ask for knowledge
Made you open you mouth and accept its gifts with a wet tongue.
Its horrors that break every concept cemented in your warehouse of fractured goods and tainted beliefs
The sledgehammer that rips the flesh from bone,
destroying all you know of gravity and colors.
Take its gifts with respect and fear.
The other brings it ALL
more than can truly be understood.
More than you think you want.
It is knowledge
It IS the other
It discovered you.
Your concepts of free will are illusions in the fantasy of your existence.
Your breath
Your memories
Your body
They swim in an endless ocean, devoid of any color, but blue.
The kind of blue for kings and gods. The color that is so rich, it holds every other color within its spectrum, the color of pure awareness, the vibrancy of your highest chakra in full awareness.
With this color comes beating drums and sacred round fires. It is not of the sky, it is not of the earth.
It is the other.
In its form without form.
In its colors without colors.
In it lifetimes without birth or death.
In its love without bodies and warm breath.
It is the other
It is this and us
These lifetimes of blue,
These chemicals and body movements that create the perfect tension
Sowing the time for alchemical change.

What Will You Be?

"Who will you be?" she shouts from the sandy beach shore. "what will you be when the clouds part and darkness descends with droves of hungry black-haired beasts?""Who will you be?""who WILL you be?"Implying that tomorrow is the question that needs answering.The looming monstrosity of the future.It reeks and hints at madness.
But soon THEN will be NOW.It is a cycle of concerned predictions and worries, a repeating pattern with an unattainable end, always beyond the horizon.There is nothing to attain.You cannot "be." There is nothing to be.All are words.

Wealthy,
Famous,
Happy,
Content,
Father,
Mother,
Satisfied,
Broke,
Doctor,
Musician...

Words like these can never describe "you."You cannot "BE," for you are none of these, and yet, quietly, all of these.You may have a son, but are you really a father? Is your Being a father?Can you be happy?
A happy emotional state does not continue endlessly into time. The subjection of time and movement will crush all these fantasies. It will all come to change, for it all does. Each second that passes changes us in a subtle, yet deep way.We cannot perceive the wearing of time on a wall, the molecular breakdown is too slow to watch, but after twenty years, the cracks in the paint and the crumbling stone reveal the long traveled path of change upon the buildings’ surface. It was happening all along, right next to you as you ate your morning cereal, it was just moving at a rate we could never perceive in motion.They ask what you will "be."In Spanish there are two different verbs for "to be." In English we say "I am happy." "I am a doctor." "I was born in Mexico." English speakers use one verb to say what and how they are. Within the language, it implies that this "am" is a constant, a non shifting idea. In Spanish, there is a distinction between a fixed and transitory state. The two verbs used to describe these states are "ser" and "estar." One implies that you "are" feeling happy, yet it is not a fixed emotional state." You use the verb "ser" to describe a more permanent statement, like the location of your birth.While this is more accurate than the English language, it stops short of recognizing the impermanence of all states, even the ones that seem permanent. Our language, the way we speak and talk about ourselves and our world has deeply influenced our ability to comprehend other states of being, other realities. The words we choose/speak have influenced our ideas and perceptions, going very deeply into our subconscious realm. These provide the machine with fuel to continue in its current perceptions of "being." We walk around with beliefs in what we are, we hold tight to the ideas of where we come from and where we want to go. These beliefs restrict us and freeze us into repeating activities.We "are" none of these. My Being is not Jewish, my Being is not a young woman. My Being is not a salesperson that likes pizza. These are the roles my machine plays, they are part of the play that this human known as Lydia recreates every day. My Being lacks a definition, it is beyond the temporary nature of earthly roles.

And so you cannot "be," but you can "do."

You can Work, you can push your earthly machine to work for your Being. You can create the discipline within yourself to Work NOW, to use what lays at your fingertips to move your energy and create.