My heart started beating when I realized my turn to speak was coming up, a kind of pounding right in the center of my chest that lightly echoed in a full body reverberation. The dj, wearing a vest made of sheet music, looked towards me, microphone in hand. In a deep, practiced voice, he said: “Now a few words from the sister of the bride and Desiree, the sister of the groom.” My body reacted and I stood up. I walked towards him, reached for the mic and waited as Desiree took her place beside me. The mic was slightly warm in my grip. I stood there, looking first at my sister on my left, sitting in an off the shoulder white dress at a small table just for two, her husband next to her. I looked into the crowd of people, sitting behind plates of food and half filled wine glasses. Some of them I knew from childhood, others were still strangers. I looked into them, but did not really see them, not as individuals, not even like people. They were a mass of energy and even though they appeared as human shapes, my perception went past that simple quality. I took a breath, my body somehow relaxing on its own without brain intervention. I looked at the groom, sitting in a suit and jacket beside my sister. I opened my mouth and got exactly three words out before the fourth caught in my throat. I was immediately surprised by it, hearing it from a stranger’s perspective even though it came out of me. My years of training moved through me in that moment as I calmly kept going, speaking slowly enough for the words to move through me, a vessel talking to the great pulsating mass that went beyond us.
Later I understood that my sister wanted a party, a real party with dancing and energy. It was then I understood, it was then I decided that I would be that party. I would be the dancing body, I would help her create that invocation. The only way to make a party is to be a party. I wiggled and jumped to rap. I bounced and sang to early 90s hip hop. I gathered my chiffon skirt up and did some grinding to Justin Timberlake. We were on a patio, just steps from the ocean waters now black under the night sky. Between us and the ocean was a cement promenade, even at night there were people walking by. I realized we were on display, the dancers, the people standing on the sidelines grabbing drinks at the bar, the older couples standing against the cement ledge, we were all on display and I let myself be a spectacle, giving up self conscious thoughts about what the three black guys thought of us dancing to Tupac or what the couple walking hand in hand perceived as they saw us dancing in a circle around the bride and groom. I flowed into the pure ritual of it, allowing myself to be a dancer, a singer of repeated tunes, a sister of the bride, a wild invocant mixing tribal movements and fist pumping and flamenco to “I like big butts and I cannot lie…”
I remember the last painting he ever made. The colors, the memory of its creation, its absence from the walls of the family home haunt me and often come to me in fragmented thoughts and dreams that rise from the black and green pools of unconscious thought and find my waking mind like water drawn to the surface of a desert by some miraculous force. I wonder how much of his life, how much of my life was reflected in that paint, in the colors and shapes he brought into existence. How much of it was a blueprint for what was to come, the tea leaves of a man brought to vibrant life by his own hands, delicately choosing the brush thickness and pigments that would forever remain, at least in my thoughts.
The metal easel was set up in the corner of our large, light filled patio, my red child’s size easel was close to his…papa bear and baby side by side. The homeowners before us had added the patio and we used it for birthday parties and occasional grilling and for some time, perhaps years, I don’t remember exactly, an art studio. The walls extended just to hip height, above that it was windows to the ceiling. In the right hand corner, just off from the sliding glass door which led to the formal living room, was a world of paint and chemicals in small metal canisters with thumbprints over them in red and black and mixtures of the rainbow. Our large table he had made of an old wooden door that had been left in the garage and it was held horizontally by two wooden legs he had also made, using crude and rough lumber. Serving as a thick six foot table, he pushed it against the wall which faced the wooden deck.
In the corner, to the left of the table, were the easels, directly facing the blue pool just beyond the windows. He arranged his years of collected supplies in a methodical way along the back edges of the table. Towards the middle were old jars in a variety of shapes and sizes which held the brushes. There seemed to me every size and option, thick-handled ones of smooth wood with a thick bunch of hairs at the end, other more dainty, with thin handles and perfectly pointed tips meant for delicate line work. Others had bristles in the shape of thin fans and there were dozens of other brushes, each designed for a particular purpose. To the right of the jars and brushes were the chemicals; turpentine and paint thinner and half a dozen others I never bothered to learn. Beside them were empty jars to use during cleaning and a small pile of rags meant to wipe off paint and solution, though I ruined many of his brushes by neglecting this crucial step. Along the back left side of the table were a mountain of white tubes, each one with a strip of color at the top which promised the containment of vibrant oil paint in every shade imaginable.
I knew he had been a painter, the walls of our living room attested to that. There were several rich and moody paintings of surreal shapes and people, the subjects of which seemed barely real. There was an aesthetic about his work that seemed to favor particular colors, or particular shapes of particular colors; he loved maroon, black, green and orange and touches of white for shading. But though I knew he had been a painter, I had never seen him paint until the day he began his last.
The canvas on the easel went through a series of changes, I watched from my seat on the couch just past the other set of double sliding glass doors which led to the informal living room as he applied the first layer of white gesso, then later above it a background of dark green and black. He used the fine edge of his palette knife to push the paint on the canvas, the effect creating simultaneously smooth strokes with slightly thicker edges, all of which made subtle mixed textures of the green and black paint, blending them in such as way that it was hard to tell what was black and what was green, they seemed to melt into each other, just hinting of the other’s presence, an allusion to color that seemed to me full of questions and mystery and deep penetrating substance. Two colors that were full and alive, whose presence seemed to go deeper beyond the simple thickness of the canvas, deep into time and lineage and space.
For weeks, perhaps months, I cannot remember, he added more. Above the magical darkness, suspended among the undulating green and black was a single leaf. With no tree or branch beside it, the leaf hovered in bright contrast to the rich darkness and texture of the background. It had a somewhat tropical feel, with a wide face and slightly wavy edges that seemed to mirror moving water in their ripples. I watched its existence manifest with layers of green, dark and light along some contours and in other areas of the leaf a hint of yellow. He added strokes of white using both the thick and thin brushes and created definition and shading and movement on an still surface. To me, the leaf was bright and buoyant and perfectly contrasted the deep darkness where it floated.
I thought he was done, but then several weeks later he added more. They were big and bulbous drops of red, yellow and white water which, to me, looked angry and full of vengeance. The drops came from the upper right hand side of the canvas and crashed into the delicate veins and cellulose of the leaf in the center, pushing into it and destroying its simple existence. If the leaf had contrasted the color and mysterious mood of the darkness behind it, then the drops were in direct conflict with the mood of the leaf. To me they seemed to vibrate with vicious violence, intent on destroying the cool elegance of the leaf with raw red power. I was scared of what the painting had become. The drops of red and yellow and white filled me with a sense of fear. I cannot remember what I said to him, if it was anything at all.
The canvas never made it to our living room walls where the few survivors of his days as a painter hung. I never saw it again. It took years, but at some point the many jars of brushes, the tubes, the table, the easel, it all went away, perhaps slowly, perhaps all in one day, I cannot remember. I do know it was the last painting he ever made.
I look out the window as the train leaves. I am on it, in it, watching a dusty landscape sketched in the shades of white and black. Little dots of brown vie at the edges of the breathing photo and start to scream, warning me of stories better left untold. Of crimes unpunished, of little mouths that cry in hunger and weep tears for a life that will never be. I try and look past it all, searching the mountains for words of poetry, but their shadows, all too real, pull my eyes back. Escape is for the blind, for the heart that has stopped bleeding, for an eye that loses no kiss of salt. I stare in the face of sorrow, pulling its sharp scent in, letting it wrap me with its tears that cannot be shed. Thin trees dot the land, their scrawny branches hold a few struggling leaves. Dust swirls in tan gusts with every fierce blast of wind. The elements slap their worn brown faces, those people without tears. The sun takes the side of a heavy handed capitalist, a punishing, unrelenting heat shines never-ending. A cold dark night takes the side of imperialism, the blackness of their glossy boots, their smooth lead of total end. It whispers in my ear, it is a blue breeze that holds a song waiting under heavy rocks. It whispers… there is a small white flower, a flower easily overlooked and forgotten, only a little girl with bright eyes in a landscape bleached of color. Only she will see the petals before they wither and crack in the sun. I watch tin roofs that hang by threads. Soil has turned to dust, for the rain has found other places to drench. I see myself in the window, a strange reflection in the afternoon sun. I am spotted in the remnants of dew, I am a silhouette, only a shade different than the surrounding mountains and thirsty crops. As we leave, I take a thin breath. A pain burns from within, coating my throat, stroking it like the hot hand of Satan, up and down my windpipe, down my vertebrae and into the ligaments of my toes and back up through my torso, escaping out through my fingertips, lingering in a spiral below the crown of my head. What I see dries my eyes, leaves me without tears, without a drop of moisture in my mouth of desert and skin of old parchment. I am old, a thousand rings surround me. I find myself without a drop of life, breathing in only more heat, more sorrow, more dried up dirt and old wrinkles that had never seen the clouds. But from the front of my soul, something burns and the part of me that dies is like the weeds I never knew I was. I am quiet, but I burn. The worn streets sweep something into my memory, a feeling I cannot contain, an energy that seeks a cup, that reaches out with hungry hands to hold and grasp a metal chalice. I open a door once nailed shut. These people with their rough skin and old eyes, they speak of the conquerors, they talk of disease and death and boils, the masses of hungry, oppressed, searching for a road beyond the small corner they have been given. I shined a light into that small adobe cave, I looked with all the eyes I had, writing, talking, seeing what was there, searching for the answers that tried to evade me like pregnant clouds. There was a light, a road that traveled a thousand years to end up at my toes, moving up and down, playing games with my limbs and organs until it spurted out, drenching the land with water, creating a road that would last another thousand years, turning past wide stones and tiny sprouts. Water pressed against the rocks, pushing in like woman with soft, giving curves, but it kept moving, never staying, never resting. The train moves and I watch them walk with their wide hats and their children that look into the sun. There are girls that know of need and dust, dust that finds its way in, working itself into every crevasse, coming in through the ears, through the stomach, seeping in with the toes. They walk along their paths, they walk with wide brimmed hats, they walk with skin dry and cracking, for the hands of their masters had ruined the sprouts, had taken away the rain. I began to bubble, I could not watch their hats disappear over the mountain crests. I could not continue along this mechanical route made of wooden beams and metal and thick nails. As it poured from my skin, an 'it' which I cannot describe fully, because to see it is to feel. To watch from a train window, to hold their stories, to give your tears for theirs that cannot flow, to hold a thirsty child and see an indifferent hand move through the air sweeping every bit of life into a metal vacuum…to see this is to feel It. To burn from the toes, to burst from the skin. What I see moves in shades of black and white, screaming of gray and crying for the missing red. The dust, that ever-present dust was talking, finding its way in through my ears, finally ready after all these years to really hear. To simply observe and move on would have been one route. There were a thousand trains, each headed in another direction. There was the island, there was the medical position, there was Cuba, there was the girl that needed attending, there were a thousand ways, some that I cannot name and describe, some that float by like leaves on a river, floating away before I can even see a shade and shape. There are so many trains, there were, and I touched them with my hands, feeling the electricity of each, the pulsing hearts, the rhythmic pounding. Some were safe, in some I saw bullets and sticky blood. There were a thousand and I touched them with my fingertips, moving towards the one in which I sit, staring out a window at broken houses and dry people and land that has stopped crying, for there are no tears to spare. I sat with them in hunger, felt their need, the desire of all humanity, the hearts one step away from silence. I sat and touched them with my fingertips, drew in their breath and smell, weaving them into me, turning them into paintings that are colored in black and white and vibrant red.
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.
The day sparkles with freshness, made new by gusts of forceful wind that rustles silvery leaves without rest. The light is high overhead, the brightness of a wish just past. My heart has been aching since the morning, noticed in a moment of stillness when all I could feel was the pounding in my toes and the ache of my wrists and the extra pressure in the center of my chest. It stays in me, a continuing presence as long as I can maintain this quiet in my mind. The sacrifices are made, held tightly inside, and I look for my ring of keys. The day is bright, the sun is high overhead, winking its rays through the glass of the car, through the tinted lens above my eyes, through the delicate membranes that are my windows to the world. The light is clear, I feel myself in the car, aware of each turn of the wheel, aware of the narrow road down the hill with five sharp turns. I move out beyond the dotted yellow line, there are no cars coming and I’m safe, but I feel the strength of the car, I feel the weight moving at thirty miles an hour, fast enough to smash the delicate connections between fiber and blood. There are three stop signs before I get to Mission St and as I brake at each one, the sensation of fragility compounds. Maybe it’s the man wheeling around his trashcans to the curb, maybe the woman walking across the street talking into her cell phone, or the man sitting in his car at the red light beside me. Something comes thorough me, coming in, moving out, twirling inside. I do not name the cause, I wouldn’t reveal the source, I can only recognize the moment. Without the radio on, without yammering or melodies…the day seems brighter, harsh in its generous opening. It’s not the strength of a fight or the pounding of a bat, it’s more like the opening of a sun that has remained shrouded in petals, the glow is harsh, the reality is painful. My chest thumps with more pain than I usually a notice, a nice, dull, achy pain that sits well, a feeling I have begun to consider a long lost friend that I welcome with a smile. “Oh, you’re back! It’s great to have you home!” The skin surrounding me seems so temporary… I feel the forceful weight of the car, I feel the fragility of the moment like an egg shell rolling down the street. The mortality of the breath, the temporal nature of me. The other day, she loudly laughed and then she said, “You don’t know when you’re going to die!” “Oh yeah,” I thought… “I can’t count on eighty more years.” One wrong move, now, and everything could be altered. I imagine myself in the hospital on a ventilator. I hear his voice, “We might be able to be together after this, depending on how much progress we’ve made during this cycle.” I scan the crosswalk carefully for walkers. I check the rear view mirror. Time is precious, the body is precious. The moment is precious and delicate and I feel it as though for the first time, in the brightness of a sun high overhead, in the freshness brought about by the wind and an aching heart.
"Welcome home" "It’s good to be back..." The shuttle has entered the atmosphere, cutting through a thick layer of gray clouds… they are home…on earth. Welcome back… to everything you understand as "human," as "home." Our cities of concrete and steel and glass, our domesticated dogs and our oxygen and our shopping malls and warm beds that have awaited you. Here is gravity, here are fish and continuous waves and continents full of talking people that can’t understand each other and green trees that exchange our waste for invisible gold. Out there, in the vast blackness of a space that has no sentimentality, among rocks that spin just like ours, amid air devoid of oxygen, our planet is one of many. Our sun is one of millions. Floating in the darkness, looking back at what you know as home, does anything seem relevant? A lone astronaut fixing the side of a satellite, a glimpse of earth, of swirling green and blue and white… "we are so small," she thinks to herself. On that globe, there are battles for water, a baby cries for its mother, a handful of people die in a car bombing in Iraq. Does any of it matter? Our sun continues to burn, sending fiery explosions our way, our moon orbits faithfully, waxing and waning month after month...how long has it cast its silver light? A man dies in the street, hungry and crippled. A young child walks to school with her friends on a sunny day. The astronaut sees the swirling white, she sees the orb. She cannot see the woman being raped in the Congo, she is not watching the flood waters rise on TV… floating, breathing through a tube, she sees the whole, the one sphere where we know people breath and fuck. Where people die with a gasp and are born with a push. Does any of it matter at such a distance? At that distance, is any death a tragedy? Or is every single action a hiccup absorbed into the greater blend of green and blue? Looking out…past home, into the true vastness of a space that moves past the threshold of logic and comprehension, does our home, does this one planet even matter at all? Somewhere on an oxygen filled planet, a young woman sits in a small apartment on the crust of a complex system, she types diligently on a device invented just a little while ago, a blink on the watch of time. None of them know her, the astronauts, the sun, the comets that streak across what she knows as the sky, does her life matter amid the chaos of floating rocks? Do her tears matter to the moon? She feels the tie that connects one thought to the other, the thread that connects one small life to the system that spins around it; she is the spinning, she is the wonder, the lifetime of rocks, the wars that continue without end. Century after century, there is another conflict and stars flicker out and new ones are born and some planets merely turn half a degree and the century passes like a blink, a mere flutter. From out there, does any of this even exist at all?
Tears come easily, like water from the suburban tap, just lift the handle, just sing the song. It’s a pretty melody with a tribal beat and a chorus of strong, pretty women chanting in unison, and their energy, recorded long ago, exploited for years, it comes through me like the dagger of something real. Raw emotion, communicated through melody, told lovingly by thick voices heard with a ripped heart. It moves through me, in through my ears, down to my chest, out my eyes, along the edges of my skin. The colors flash by and I know I must use it, to do anything else is neglect. Precious and fleeting, it cannot be bottled, but it can be channeled, funneled into writing, pushed in and moved around and reconfigured into a human language made of numbers. I grab a hold of the moment, unwilling to let it die beneath the florescent lighting, unwilling to let it evaporate in the night or absorbed into another bite of cake that coats me like a blanket of fog. No, the moment moves like a soft wind, easy to feel and enjoy, easy to dance within, and easily forgotten as a new thought immerges on the fringes of my mind. Is the training taking root? Has some small piece been remembered, internalized, a step towards a second nature…I wish for this. This evening, it can be blamed or accounted for, on hormones and built up forces of primal sex that have yet to spill, and now, I rush towards the tide. The waters come and I fling myself towards the white foam naked and hungry. My ass jiggles with each step on the beach, each narrow print is a plunge into the earth, a temporal dent of existence. Does the womb remember my birth? The people of stone push back and I stay above the crust’s edge. I run naked, covered in the salt of waves and the hope of a virgin. Thick clumps of matted brown hair cling in streaks to my pink cheeks and thin neck, my hammer is by the fire, and the smoke rises behind me like a signal to all those that can see and the very few answer back in thunder and small sparks. Black wisps turn into colored messages, delivering them to the beauty that rests on his bed. Does the conch cry for me? Do the lips that press against it know the value of its sound? The mermaids will be arriving soon, in time for tepid tea and limp cookies and wet kisses from a devoted mouth. On the waves of the coming storm they come, in the arms of dark clouds and hanging on to the earlobes of mighty tritons that tower beyond the clouds. I run towards them, to the crashing black waves, to the shells that rain like pointed drops of hardened semen. The desire for life scrapes across my skin, leaving streaks upon my arms. My breasts are painted in lines of blood, my hips are etched with the marks of their descent. I feel each stinging line as it comes, it enters, it crosses, it falls to the sand. I feel it as I run and I notice it all, the sand which enters between the gaps of my toes, a cool wind nearly pushes me back, but I charge forward again, and here… they come, my ass jiggles as I run. The necklace bounces on my neck as the teeth and shells that conform it clink against in a music of escape, the feathers in my hair dart back and forth in geometric patterns on an invisible canvas. They arrive and the tea is poured, the cakes wait for their mouths, my breasts await their curious hands, my ass hopes for the tritons sword. They come on the blackened waves, they come with the salty tears upon the cheeks of a round mother, it comes with a song, a simple melody that ignites fires among the waves, they surround us, holding the energy in place, and the song crashes towards me with the shell soaked wind.
A thick wall of mortar and stone and cement and glue, an amalgam of parts and substance, encrusted ideas and fossilized bones. Part wood, part stone, part metal…affixed with barbed wire along the steep edges and stuffed with body parts and memories and the collected refuse of so many lifetimes. Like the builders of the great wall of china, this wall is composed of forgotten flesh and metal hammers and the silenced stories that were swallowed and with a single final breath. And the wall, it was constructed without plans, without consent or even a crude brainstorm sketched on a crumpled napkin. Its ongoing construction has lasted more than twenty years, the ongoing project that never comes to a close…the workers in orange vests continue to show up, rain or shine, as they have for years, each bearing my face and my dirty hands, yet I have no memory of digging the foundation. There are no pictures that shed light on its beginning, no memories that flutter in my fragmented mind, reminding me why there are piled bricks and shovel handles and femur bones protruding from the great walls. Its erection must have begun before my first memory congealed, perhaps watching helplessly from my crib as my mother left the room, perhaps when I cried unattended in the shadow of the forgotten moon. This wall began without my direct knowledge, and yet, it was I who built it. These hands who I look at with a stranger’s eye, these rough hands put each piece in place, each stone dug from the ground, each row of brick, each scoop of cement in place, this work was done by me, me alone. Perhaps each smooth stone was inspired by an event, an interpreted stare, a defeat, an imposed darkness…inspired and then, because I remained asleep at the wheel of this four limbed vehicle, I gathered my stones and I mixed my cement, like a one eyed witch stirring a pot of some foul smelling potion, and I placed those hard rocks firmly in place. With thick resolve, with renewed wrath, with victory playing in my ears, I watched the substance harden by the second, gray mush to thick glue to unconquerable solid strength and, surrounded by stone and brick and metal, I basked in the solitude of my defense, my fortress, my singular city. I awake for a second from this chamber, and clearing the sleep from my eyes, I see the walls have spawned another life topped with sparkling horns of fire, and a beating heart and they have grown beyond my control, beyond the thickness of my desire, beyond my understanding…I put them here, but I cannot get them down. The walls are so thick, covered in spikes and razor blades and blood-covered thorns and I want them gone, I want to step outside these walls and taste the air of freedom, true freedom from self imposed exile, but I cannot climb them, I cannot scale them, no ladder is tall enough and the helicopters do not come this close. And then, as I sleep, I retreat into the cave. Sometimes I am in the middle, wishing for a door, yet finding the bed is all too warm and comfortable. All too familiar in its smell. Which way is right? Is there a wrong way? Is there black or white or red? Or are all these colors merely shades in an illusion of rainbows that peak in the height of my delusion. The walls are thick, and the sounds of music flows through me like a ghost, the heart within me accepts its message and I search for the door once again.
I am the baked chicken, my skin is brown, almost golden in its heated hue. I’ve been baking for hours, though it feels like years. The recipe is on the marble counter. Oil spots and a thin coating of flour soil the edges of the paper. I glow in the florescent light, green seasoning and dots of pepper decorate my skin. I’m pretty enough for a cooking show and soon, the guests will arrive, marveling at my color and crispy skin. With mouths watering, they will compliment the chef, job well done! "She looks perfect," they say, "the crispy skin is sure to be delicious." For a moment, before the show continues, a slight tear in the crispy skin opens. After a fleeting moment of music and sound, when voices open and move without fear, without the barriers of control and doubt, the white flesh is exposed. Juicy and white, tender as the moment of birth, the insides are naked, open to all that have the eyes to look, and they are few. The salty tears come without anticipation or explanation, for the moment, without hesitation, the body opens wide. In this moment, I know clearly why I am here. Why I beat this drum, why I sing this sustained note. This is beauty. This is raw and dark and light and the strength of time moving through us. Through the tear, the world comes through. Through the tear, the whitest of light seeps out and meets the deepest of blacks. In the bed of sounds, the piano cradles the drum, the fork finds his lover, the chandelier. The tears well as the cymbal is hit, lightly and unafraid. Harder, harder, there is no hesitation, there is no wrong, there is no right. It is. It simply is, now. This sound, this symphony. There is no show, there is no skin, there is no crispy barrier protecting me from the watery-mouthed watchers or hungry guests. There is no secret, there is no skin, there is no me. The brittle design has been cut in half, and I find myself here, beating a bass. Through the opening in the candy coated shell, you find your way in, building the wooden bridge that connects one universe to another. When the tear is repaired, when the authorities are alerted of the breach and the hungry guests demand their dinner, hopefully the bridge will remain, just large enough for the Unknown to find its way inside and for me, to search for a way out.
I spin the paper color wheel. In the color spectrum, black is the culmination of all, black it at the center, black is all around. Red, white, yellow, green, violet, aqua, every shade in between the primaries, every subtle hue and variation, blended and pure, black contains them all. It is the ultimate mixture, the pure blend. The night sky, shining in darkness, it contains all our naked desires, all the brutal thoughts covered in polite conversation and gracious smiles, all the loving smiles that flow like a river without end, without a source, without an ocean a thousand miles south. The starless black covers me, seeping through my open bedroom window unabated, invading me like the man I love, coming in and conspiring with all the sparks I cannot name. Darkness is the universe I perceive, finite in my understanding, infinite in truth. The name given for hours without sun, it covers the blue of day, the light of nothing with the culmination of all. It is the immense dinner plate with everything heaped upon it, gravy mixing with peas and touching the virginal apple pie. Everything that ever was, every thought that burst shining with splendor from an idealistic youth, every hearty chuckle of laughter from a newborn just discovering their hands and feet, every groan from lovemaking at its peak, all this is mashed and mixed and spread across black. Next to the lumpy sauce and sparking water. Next to the shiny fork that wishes it could poke the voluptuous girl in fishnet stockings, while she hopes you peak into her uncrossed legs. The little candle burns softy upon the table, lapping gently as the waves of wind and hot air caress its flame. Beyond the lit kitchen, the night outside is dark, the wind is roaring and trash cans slide down the street in gusts of released tension. Misfit cans make their escape, rolling without a thought of destination. I hope to stay and avoid the wind. I hope to stay and hold the softness of your skin in the dark. I hope to kiss you in the all consuming darkness of your room and bury my face in the finality of your hair. Blackness is me and you, in the man who died a couple minutes ago in a burst of warm white cream and a final grunt. It is the girl walking hurriedly down the sidewalk with a cell phone in her hand. It is the gray tombstone in Germany and the Dodo bird. It is the amoebas that spawned life, it is the asteroids that tear through the atmosphere and dissolve into dust before they meet my upturned face. Black is the stew of eternity. The witch’s cauldron of peas and carrots, stones and hearts, swords and fingernails and dinosaur bones. Every sound that has been made, every emotion felt, every orgasm that escaped. Within it, within this color, is everything. Each shape, each equation and unsolved problem. The sweat of your passion, the tears of my pain. The screams of the dying as they struggle for their last gulp of air, the shouts of rebellion as fire lights the night. Each century with its layers of texture, each murmured prayer and taste of salt. Each myth recited and kernel of knowledge discovered. Blackness holds it all. We are in its arms and it rests like a lover in mine. We are here, the collectors, the deconstructionsts. The observers and creators. The destroyers. The writers, the ghosts that pick up lost pieces and make puzzles from mosaics. Foraging with blindfolds and baskets, we gather small sounds and memories to form our songs. My voice cracks as I wander half blind in the night, singing a soft melody while burning trees remind me of your flesh.
The demons are playing in the pools again, the abandoned waters where many children have drowned. They are long neglected waters, growing algae and fungus, a heavenly breeding ground for tadpoles and mosquitoes that feast on dead skin and coagulated blood. And, unlike swimming pools that have boundaries defined by concrete and steps and diving boards, these waters are uncontained. They are endless, stretching north and south, starting at my feet and plunging beyond my imagination. Beyond the voyages of Jacques Cousteau, higher than the furthest solar system. They are depths beyond measurement. They are heights beyond calculation. The pools are all I see, and even more clear than the black waters are the open mouths that just barely peak over the water line. The waters they lurk in are as thick as molasses, made even thicker by the ink of my fear. Purple flowers dot the murk, their presence in the blackness is a lifeline between despair and the memories of work, a glimmer of the beauty that can emerge from death. But most of the time, I cannot see the blooms, they are hidden by other life forms that are not so forgiving. They are the demons who feed on my sweat. Their long, nimble tongues miss my clit and instead, gather the salty drops of my fear. Their feeding does not release me from the trembling or worry, they allow me to reel, allow me to cry; they play with my pain like maniacal children in a park of carcasses and chewed bones. They like the taste of my tears, like cheap wine mixed paranoia and salted with tears. These are winos of the highest order. Boozers and drunks. Pure addicts. They cannot live without my doubts. Without my anxiety, they shrivel like vampires in the sun, only unlike the undead, their death is not eternal. Their ashes may drift in the wind, sometimes for days, other times for a few fleeting seconds, but no matter where the current has taken them, they can smell me in the air. In Paris, blowing across the steps of the Louvre or perhaps in the middle of the sea, cavorting with whales and mermaids; no matter how far away, they are triggered by my stumble. They smell my salt and the sudden rush of darkness that wrestles anything else to the ground. My altered mind, my anxious heart…they come running. Within the time it takes to blink, their forms coalesce once again. Quick and hard, their dark mouths take shape. Like a flash of brilliant lighting, something moves within them, giving life to their ghastly forms. They wait silently at my heels for a time, within the first moments of my fall, they wait patiently like a puppy learning to beg, waiting for the scraps of its master. But then, as the seconds pass and I begin to fall further into the pit, they start to nibble at my heels. They lick my toes in small circular patterns. Sometimes there are just a few, other times, dozens, each vying for a feast of my despair. And as the first tear falls, they are climbing up my calves like skilled mountaineers, scratching the smooth skin of my toes with sharpened nails and small metal tools. There is plenty for all. Each angry beat of my heart moves into an open mouth, each salty drop slides across their tongues like delicious nectar from a flowing well. They are ravenous, but always patient. My blood is never enough, but when the waters within are still, they don’t cry out. They wait, silently, always alert, always ready to come to my heels, to come to my cries, and delight in the earthly splendor of my recurrent pain.
Sitting at her desk, she practiced her writing exercises as she did every morning. Long before the sun ever poked above house covered hills, she arranged long descriptive sentences into tight paragraphs, molded flowery stanzas and simple quotes into colorful stories. As the darkness began to give way to a brilliant, full blue, she paused to think of the next line. She looked out her window into the brightening backyard. The large space was nearly bare except for a lone wooden chair and a gray shed in the corner of the rectangular yard. There were overgrown shrubs that creeped in from the neighbor’s yard, but in her own, there was nothing but hard, smooth concrete land. At the point furthest from her window was a red hued wood fence, behind which was a tall wall of eucalyptus trees that blocked the view of the twinkling city lights below. She looked out, and as her mind freed itself from the thoughts of her writing, new thoughts began to crowd in. They were familiar thoughts, more aptly described as recurring worries that she rehashed day after day, year after year. Their forms did not change, their content, nor their frequency. Hour after hour, she wondered and worried about the same things. She felt the same jealous thoughts. She felt the same anger, the same desire for revenge, the same need to cry. She sat at her desk, looking out the window, and now, tears were reddening her eyes. A salty droplet left a wet streak across her cheek. Alone in her room, she was filled with anger and sadness. Her body was hot and sweaty and a headache lingered at the horizon of her consciousness. Nothing had really happened to her within the last couple of minutes, nothing external. She did not get a phone call with bad news. Her neighbor had not hit her car. Her landlord had not evicted her. She had not had a fight with a friend. To any outside observer, nothing had happened. There was no external event that warranted the desperate need to cry and her elevated pulse. She had not really even moved, and yet, her energy had completely changed. In a brief instant, she had paused and drifted into an unstructured realm of floating thoughts that quickly turned into other ideas and then, just as swiftly, morphed into recurring uncontrolled thoughts. They moved in and out of her mind like wisps of passing clouds. Their entry had been in the moments of her inattention. While her mind was off her work, it began to fill with less intentional thoughts. Gone were her poetic lines and colorful descriptions. Her attention had drifted from her creative task and, as it did so, she had begun to devote more and more of her attention to her endless series of worries. The more she thought about them, the stronger the thoughts were and thus, the bodily sensations grew stronger within her. She was overcome with sadness. And with each tear that escaped her eyes, with each suffering thought, her negative emotions grew stronger. Like a blazing fire that begins with a small handful of thin twigs, each small worry fed the cauldron of negative emotions. Each small jealous thought added a little more strength and fury and soon, she was overcome with sadness and grief and bitter hatred. She fed it to herself, small bit by small bit, letting it grow in strength until it was impossible let it go. If she had noticed the first distracted negative thought, she could have redirected her attention to her work. Caught quickly and early it would have been easier for her to regain her focus, but a raging fire takes tons of water and ample time to extinguish. She had fed her negative emotions with her thoughts, bathed them in her attention and allowed then to consume her from within. Although she sat in the same place, with the same trees and light and view, she now had a large dark hole to climb out of.
The corner feels forgotten, a tiny space that only a few people know well and they like it that way. The sun shines tenderly bright, it bounces off the mostly white walls and takes the cold edge off the strong wind coming from the ocean. It is a T intersection. The upper part of the T is a long street that runs parallel to the edge of the beach. The vertical part of the T is another long street that extends into the heart of the suburbs. As that street approaches the ocean, it gets more and more gentle, as if the corners become blurry and the edges get soft and diffused with the presence of the salty water. The wires that cross over the street are less tense and more sparse, they dangle like black yarn over the rows of parked cars. The asphalt itself is paler, less taken care of, more full of holes. The trees are green but twisted by the recurrent attack of the wind and sand. A pickup truck is parked in the middle of the block. A long haired man sits inside talking on a cell phone. A girl in tight jean shorts walks slowly by the truck. An old Filipino man carries a couple of grocery bags to his car and looks for the keys in his pocket. A blond surfer in dirty overalls walks into his garage, a slim cigarette between his fingers. In the top window of the corner house there is a small line of clothes, old light blue shirts put out to dry. A wooden horse sits on the porch of a flat dark brown house. Every once in a while, a car drives by. Two young Latin guys sit in a class Chevrolet, laughing softly and nodding. A bald headed woman in a long blue coat laughs and gestures with her hands to an old woman as she walks into her apartment building. A green haired girl looks with curiosity at a strange bearded man that takes pictures of her house. A middle aged man rides by in an yellow bicycle, humming to himself as he leans his head back. Three birds fly above the telephone wires in a constantly shifting but unified formation. At its deepest core, the place is quiet. Not with overwhelming true silence, but with the quietness of the light wind moving through the sunlight and gently touching the white walls. The wind has just enough power to blur and swallow any bits of conversation but not enough to have a definite deafening roar of its own. It covers without concealing. It makes the trees sway without pushing too hard. Its touch is just strong enough to be real but not loud enough to reign supreme. I have been here many times before. I have driven past it on my way somewhere else. I have turned this corner when I had changed my mind and wanted to return to the park. I have even parked here and walked over the hill to the beach. But I have never really seen it. Like a sound that has been just beyond the reach of my hearing, it has been there all along, but it has gone completely unnoticed. Today, just today, my vision centers and I can see it, I can feel it. There is so much here. The festering cruelty under the brush. The gentle sleepiness behind the window. The urgent need behind the car wheel. The crumpled memories on the window sill. The light touches of life in the unkempt garden. The face of a god on a discarded piece of twisted wood. As my eyes open, and my heart speeds up with raw undefined true emotion, every little element of this place resonates with me and wherever I place my attention, more secrets are revealed.
All the talking in the world does nothing to disguise this state I talk you listen You don’t hear My sounds only spark other thoughts within you You think You listen to yourself You hear what you want You only understand what you already know. There is no real dialogue No real exchange We both don’t care We are simply together Filling the space The space of nothingness We try to mask the uncomfortable feeling within In the darkness of early day you try to buy your way into security Into the feeling of meaning We fear the nothingness Slashing boxes, piling the merchandise on shelves, Useless things destined for the trash Sooner that you think Disposable items, like lost dreams of happiness Why does it not come within these things? These plastic bags and boxes. Artifice and cloth. How is it we’ve come together? This strange lot of dwellers that move in the dark hours between sleep and sun. pointless questions posed and answered. Is there caring? Do I actually care about you? I notice the whistling. The strange habits of myself. My tendency to open my big mouth, to share information unneeded and unwanted. This blast of insight moves me to an undiscussed dimension. Where only my beautiful master can make sense of it for me. My guide in this labyrinth. My tears swell to the greatness of storms. Pureness wraps me with strong arms, soft and white. Hold me with your hand on my head, like the tiny child I am. Like the great void that looks out of these eyes. How does this nothingness move? How does it talk? Writing on these keys, perceiving these sounds. This strangeness stirs me. And I cry. I could be sad, if I chose this. I could be smiling, if I chose this. I could remain with this headache, this ball of energy trapped behind my ears, atoms vibrating against each other like schoolyard children. They push against each other, hard and fast, like boiling water on our white stove top. Tsss, tssss, the bubbling water boils over, tsss, steaming the air, moisturizing my organs. I feel you from the inside, massaging me with the care of a dear friend. Tears roll, they keep coming, this energy providing me with an amount of strangeness. Sad if I choose, strange if I choose. Productive if I choose. It’s all up to me. This supposed individual, this lie of an individual. My rights, my desires, my feelings, all of these simple perceptions, embedded into these cells, they have moved beyond any control I possess. They work for their own concern, devising my downfall with glee. They wait for the sweetest moments, when I am drifting to sleep.
