Walking Backwards

She was sitting in her room. The overhead light was off and just a tall floor lamp provided a slight glow to the quiet chamber. Soft light illuminated her white naked legs, her black and green tattoos that coiled around her thigh and calve. Her thin fingers held the pages of a red-covered book open, its pages a pale yellow, its words in deep black.

“I will stop making efforts to remain asleep.”

The words went through her like waves of truth. They wrapped themselves around her, plunging deep into areas she left dry and untouched.

She sat still on the soft bed, letting the sentence roll through her, letting it resonate wherever there was space. She held on, letting the next sentence wait.

She actually made efforts to remain sleep. She took steps in the opposite direction. She turned her back on the path every day, walking backwards, throwing stones, doing all she could to remain asleep, to remain where she was.

Every argument.

Every eye roll.

Every long tangent of jealousy that held her down like a drowning girl in a shallow pool.

Every reaction of jolting anger.

She sat with the book open, her hands still, her eyes soft and unfocused while the words traveled deep, coiling around the sinews of habits and pride.

“I will stop making efforts to remain asleep.”

This is what she did, everyday, perhaps every hour, as rage poured through her heart, dropping her far from the mountain she was climbing. She remembered sitting on the same bed earlier in the morning, staring up into the aluminum covered piping that ran through a part of her room. She sat there for nearly five minutes, staring into the foil, finding shapes and faces and reliving the comment she heard the day before. The four words that pierced her, the four words that she holds onto for hours, holding on o them, letting them form more bubbles of anger and reaction.

It was what she did, she found ways to remain asleep. It didn’t just come naturally. She made an effort. She actively put her attention on things she could not control. She didn’t focus on herself, which would have been the one place it would have made a difference and instead focused on every misstep of those around her.

“I will stop making efforts to remain asleep.”

Could she actively relax and let go of those efforts? Could the anger just fall away like old skin? She imagined herself on the same bed, still and calm, a slight smile on her face while rage just dripped off, falling to the earth and turning into green sprouts and vapor.

Her machine was trying, actually making an effort to remain in the dirt, to keep as far away from the mountaintop as it could. It tried everyday, reminding her of pain, of pride, of the way it all should be, but was not.

As she held the book open, her eyes softened and she took a deep breath, allowing the exhalation to cleanse her. Moving her eyes slowly onto the next sentence.

The Climb

The question came in little gasps of breathy exertion:
“How…. much… longer…. is this….. going…. to take?”
He could barely get the words out, his body felt like lead, his breathing was so heavy, it muted the sound of his feet on the worn mountain path. Sweat covered his vaguely wrinkled forehead, the red shirt he wore had long since turned into a damp rag clinging to his shoulders. His heart pulsed, sending huge waves of blood through him, like dams about to burst. His heart was like a drum, pounding, pounding…
With each step, the muscles in his legs seemed just a moment away from ripping. It was pain, more pure than he ever remembered. He kept moving, as though tied to some sort of invisible rope that kept one foot following the other, endless, repetitive movement. He told himself that he couldn’t take it much longer, with each step he repeated the same thought within like a mantram. He imagined himself falling over, pushed too hard and for too long, soon the end would come.
There was a small laugh, it came a few feet ahead of him and traveled lightly on the wind till it found his ears.
“The path is the path. There is no end.”
Another light laugh followed, somehow finding its way to him over the sound of his heart and breathing and heavy footsteps.
His body reacted to the answer. He felt a sudden coldness, though he saw no wind moving the tree tops. Everything ended. There must be some mountain peak somewhere in the distance, there must be a point to the climb, something that they were trying to get to, something he was supposed to see.
Maybe a shrine? An old mountain hermit? A cave with paintings hidden within? Wasn’t there a point to this? There had to be an end, a place where he could rest his back against a tree and fill himself with slow deep breaths for hours and let his heart rest and his shirt dry.
“But I… can’t take…. much more of this,” his voice sounded desperate, “the… climb…. is almost… vertical… from as far…as I can tell… I’m… going to… fall… over… soon!”
Again the small laugh, almost like a bell, so light, filled with such melody. He didn’t feel offended when he heard it, it was not mocking or harsh, it felt like the sound of a child, innocent and open.
“Don’t worry, you’re fine. One step. Then another. Then you will need to take another. Feel the chain that binds us together and keep breathing. Keep moving.”
For a moment he felt nothing, no pain, no heavy breathing that burned his throat, just a calmness that seemed white and smelled of flowers.
“ahhhhh,” he moaned. A ripping pain in his legs consumed everything. He looked at the tall pine trees on either side of the path. He envied them. He wished he could stand still, adding his shape to their ranks. Just a moment of stillness, a moment to let a cool breeze wash over him and wipe away the rivers of sweat. He wanted to scream and turn around. He wanted to walk downhill, anywhere but up. Down to where he could find a car or a ride or a drink of water, perhaps a ham sandwich. He wanted to close his eyes and take a nap, to let his body rest and recover from this incredible strain. He wanted to do anything but this, but he felt the chain, he felt it wrapped around his heart, and he put one foot in front of the other, following the sound of bell-like laughter.
“Keep coming, the path continues this way.”

Electrified

It was a bright sunny day. The sun, a million miles away waved hello, letting each one of them, each one who turned their face up to the cloudless sky, know that another day had come. The reds were redder, the sunlight was stronger, the green of the treetops shone as though she had never seen them. Each of the cars that passed her on the road shone with the gleaming brilliance of light hitting smooth metal.
She drove with her window down and her left arm casually resting on the driver’s side door, feeling the soft breeze of the afternoon glide across her skin like water over marble. The city beyond the car’s surface was bustling. Tall cement buildings lined the streets, and they too gleamed in the sunshine, as though in this one day they finally were the sum total of their architect’s dream, and all the hopes of each person that entered their revolving doors and every person that walked the halls had finally come alive. And the buildings heaved with the breath of life, and the windows moaned, letting their long-held sounds out into the air, where they were met with the gentle groan of the wind.
Her foot pressed lightly on the gas and as the car eased forward, she felt faint stinging in her toes. She wiggled her fingers, feeling pins and needles there too. When she had left her house that morning, the doorknob gave her the first electrical shock. Then each step to the car was one tiny jolt after the other. The earth was energized and she wondered what lighting bolts had shed their power the night before.
The car’s handle was another little shock, and as she reached for it she saw a jagged blue-white current race from her middle finger to the handle. As she pulled into downtown, she saw that the cars were plentiful, each on their way somewhere different, but the traffic moved at a steady pace and the breeze kept on coming, not wanting to miss a thing. And she drove on, but she saw it all moving, almost dancing under her gaze. The tall street lamps wavered and the telephone lines bounced up and down, greeting her with their own language. She turned to her friend in the passenger seat, his face greeting her own with curiosity and a soft smile.
“Everything’s alive today. The cars, the buildings, the street lamps. Everything’s alive and shocking me with its power. My hands are still stinging from the metal knobs.”
He laughed. A gentle deep rumble that came from the kernel of true understanding he carried in the center of his chest.
“It’s you. It’s all coming to you, like a massive network of electrical currents that are all seeking you out. Those electrons feel you, they feel your charge and they’re jumping, like literally jumping towards you in great rivers of energy. It’s not everything else, not the street lamps or trees, it’s you that is electrified.”
She took a deep breath in, inhaling every drop of oxygen her lungs could hold. Drawing in the great rivers that flowed to her like water down a mountain.

On The Edge

“I want to fall asleep, but I just cannot let myself dream.”
He said it softly and so close to the glass pane that his breath momentarily fogged a small circle on the window. And just like the dreams he would not allow, the little galaxy vanished before he saw its nebulous shape.
Five inches above, his eyes looked out the window. Below him was New York City and a skyline of gray and glass and snow covered branches and impatient taxi horns. There were a few speckles of green that dotted the sidewalks and in the very far distance against the white horizon, the promise of Central Park. The open. The wild within the tamed.
He looked out, his eyes burning with the cold that found its way through the glass, wishing he could just blink and find himself in a grove of tall trees, perhaps watching a chipmunk gather some nuts amid buried oak leaves and empty potato chip bags.
If only he could travel so easily. If only he could let himself wander from the room, beyond the walls and carpet and structured glass. The world out there was spiraling through the dream, and he wanted to be part of it, only he didn’t know how.
He looked out the window. He wished for something he could not name. He tried to claw at the feeling, he tried to turn it around and examine just what he wanted or how he could find it, but the shape was a gray cloud that morphed every time he tried to focus on it. There was nothing to hold onto, no word or action he could use to explain his irritation, his frustration with himself and his constant need for control.
“And why can’t you let yourself dream?” the thin voice of a woman finally responded.
He rolled his eyes towards the city, hating her voice and the question. Hating the legs that sat crossed and covered in sheer black pantyhose. The leather chair held her. It touched her legs and the back of her torso which was covered in a white collared shirt and a blazer above that.
It was a question he tried to avoid nearly every time it was brought up. He just didn’t have an answer, not an answer he wanted to reveal. What if he jumped into the cloudy stew of colors and shapes? What if he jumped and could never find his way out again?
He would be stuck in the world of twisting reason that leaps from moment to moment without sense and logic. He would be trapped within his own mind, unable to drag himself back from the deep waters of unconscious darkness. He had the vague memories of nightmares that squeezed the breath from him. Thick armed and tentacled men who tried to drag him to their chambers while he gasped tugging at their claws.
He couldn’t risk it, he might not be strong enough this time. He cleared his throat, preparing the simple answer she could understand.
‘It’s all chaotic and nothing makes sense. I just wish it could tell me something directly. Something I could use right away. What do I do with a flying mattress or an octopus that keeps trying to eat my hand?”
There was a heavy silence between them, as if the woman on the firm leather chair could not think of a good argument to counter. He looked to the horizon, finding the greenery of Central Park with his seeking eyes.
If only he could leave his small apartment or the doctor’s office two floors down. If only he could find his way to the lobby and out the front revolving door and onto the sidewalk. It was through the doors that the world awaited. The park was beyond the walls of his building, beyond the cage of his skin.
In the distance there was a bit of the wild within the tamed. That small part of him wanted to run towards the trees, to dive into the dark lake that waited impatiently for curious hands.
A small howl emerged from deep within him, but he stifled it with a little false cough.

Nothing Ever Has Happened

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

Slow Guidance

“GSP!!! GSP!!! GSP!!!!” Fans pumped on energy drinks and cheap liquor and watery beers and bright lights and the collective energy of thousands chanted in the sports arena. Guys in T-shirts gave the “rock-on!” sign with their hands and young painted women looked seductively into the passing video camera and I just had to wonder if they really enjoyed watching two men fight each other or if they came as the good-looking companion for their boyfriends and husbands and perhaps to make sure they didn’t get into too much trouble. The scene was drenched in the aroma of adrenaline and manly sweat and sweet intoxicated breath. It was loud and it had all the ingredients for smaller fights to occur in the stands and for sexual aggression against the outnumbered women. It could happen, if this were a country where people wandered over the edge and gave in to their most savage tendencies in a collective burst of action. But this was not that kind of place, not in the sanctioned sports center of Nevada. They would all end up watching the fight with enthusiasm and they would shout and chant and in the end, after it was all finalized by a couple of judges, they would drown the rest of their sparkling energy in another cold beer and maybe, if they had any left, they would spill it into the open legs of their woman if they happened to have one or maybe a prostitute if they didn’t.
“GSP!!! GSP!!! GSP!!!!” The octagonal stage was the center of a stadium-like space, it was the epicenter surrounded on all sides by black chain link fence that had a black mat-like padding at the very top edge. Two fighters paced around the ring, a referee ran back and forth, monitoring their punches and kicks, looking at their hands to see if they were grabbing the opponent’s shorts, or was it the fence? He ran around them, moving constantly in a tension between being close enough to see every detail of their engagement but light enough to get out of the way should they move positions and come tumbling towards him. Watching at home, it was easy to forget that there were many cameramen surrounding them as well, capturing it all, every twist and punch, close enough so it felt like we were there, just inches away from all the sweat and blood and taut skin that struggled to either make contact or avoid the blows.
A bell went off, indicating the end of round two. “The Pit Bull” was bloody; the area below his nose was covered in smears of red and one of his eyes was starting to swell. He went back to his corner and sat down on the small stool while one of his trainers propped his legs up and shook them slightly. His team was next to him, one of them was yelling loudly about what moves he needed to come out with in the next round. Matching the pitch of the cheering crowds, the trainer gave him advice, but the fighter stared straight ahead, looking into the distance, perhaps seeing a blur of lights and shapes that bent and twisted in the corners of his eyes. The fighter nodded, but could he hear the voices or were they like the buzzing of flies that he had somehow gotten used to?
On the other side of the octagon was GSP and his trainer. His trainer was kneeling almost in front of him but slightly towards the right. “Okay, breathe, breathe…are you with me? Come back to me. Do you hear me?” The fighter looked at him and nodded. “Okay, we need to calm your breathing, can you do that?” The fighter nodded. The trainer spoke to him with the voice one would use with a little child, a child that had just made a pretty drawing, not the full grown muscular man that had just spent the last ten minutes punching and kicking and submitting an opponent that was 30 pounds heavier than him. “You did very good in that round, I’m so proud of you.” He said it like many parents have spoken to their children, he spoke slowly, deliberately, saying only what was completely necessary. There was a second trainer on the other side of GSP, this man had not said anything, but he kept his arm moving up and down vertically and very slowly, indicating with his slow hand the way GSP should calm and move his breath. In the excitement of cheering fans and multicolored spot lights darting across the audience and the noise of thousands of people talking excitedly, among this noise and energy, the trainer was able to cut straight through the static and chaos and reach into the heightened state of GSP to communicate with him directly. He used tone, gesture and careful words to communicate what he needed. With this gentle touch, the trainer was able to calm his fighter down, to bring him back to a space where words made sense and directions could be understood.
On the other side of the ring, another tired and heightened fighter sat, many words were shouted in his direction, words that contained instructions and advice, but could he hear it through all the noise and energy that was going through him like electrical sparks? Did they make sure he heard them or did they just keep sending out words to mix with the countless other shadows in the stadium?
When travelling through a tunnel of lights and sounds and sparks, it is slowness that will guide us in the right direction. It is slowness that we can hear, slowness that can be perceived as different among the shooting stars and bolts of static. Slowness is necessary. Giving directions is good, but to complete the circle, for the advice to be effective and useful, the directions must be understood and followed through. In the basic raw state of the animal, it is slowness that we can understand. It is tone. It is clarity.
The round was about to begin, “Okay, when you get out there, I want you to jab and move… what are you going to do?” “Jab and move,” replied GSP, looking directly into his trainer’s eyes.

Climbing Aboard

Staring brightly into the sky, they dreamed of rainbows that never ended, of colored trails that flew around the earth like great open freeways of possibility. The singular road forked with smaller trails and disappeared over bridges and down pixie-dust covered tunnels. Rainbows arched in the sky like Becky had once described over a pipe of psychedelic grass and created concentric circles that looped back in on themselves before branching off into the distance that was lit with the hope of red and green and purple. The roads moved like pretzels and clovers and dove in on themselves, leading to other planes where rainbows were called by other names and seen with different eyes and painted with other colors. They stared at the rainbows from the ground, their necks pinched and eyes wide with the energy of amazement. How would they ever find a ladder big enough to reach the road?
They just needed to get to the lowest point on the road, but even that was close to the hawks that coasted the sun drenched sky. Until now, they had only heard rumors of this road, great yarns overheard in pubs and simple lines read in old books. But the storm clouds had opened one morning as they walked home in the quiet hours of a new day and as white gave way to the awaiting blue sky, they saw the rainbow highway. They stood at the bottom, standing just under the lowest dip of the road they could see, the spot that they just might have a chance of accessing if they could figure a way up. Bright speckles of light moved on the colored current.
There were large wooden ships and nearly invisible shapes that expanded and contracted like dancers. No one spoke, but they all wondered how to ascend. Just how did anyone get started? How can you get from here to there? From where you stand to the place of your dreams? From present reality to the farthest goal, to the unknowable without shape? To the places where dreams smoke and speak in other tongues, where creation is in the simmering pot, the golden cauldron tended by a silver spoon. Just how do you get from here to there?
Out through the black hole of a sparkling tunnel came a ship. There was the silhouette of a person, a young man along the side of the helm who looked to the landscape below while his right hand was raised to his eyes, blocking the gleam of the sun. His head was slightly lowered, scanning the ground patiently and then looking out towards the horizon. He looked out as though expecting nothing, as though he had looked out into the distance for a thousand years, seeing nothing but birds and water. As he passed along the lowest dip in the colored road his body twitched as he saw them, “Do you want to come aboard?” he shouted to them through cupped hands. “Yes!” they shouted in unison. They didn’t know who he was, they didn’t know were the ship was headed, but as the boy threw down the braided rope, they grabbed a hold tightly and started to pull themselves up using strength they didn’t know they had.

The Boy Who Couldn't Read

He came though the door angry. Right away she could see the annoyance, not hidden at all behind his brown eyes. He didn’t make eye contact with her and he sat down with 18 years worth of sleep in his bones. While she had waited for him in the small, windowless room, she looked at the inspirational quotes and life suggestions taped to the wall. Probably hung there by another person who was a shadow of their own truth, a shadow of what they had allowed to die decades before. The quotes were truths and good advice, like “never give up,” but they had the mark of store-bought supplies, simple institutional decoration that came without the faintest hint at how to achieve such a noble goal.
The room in which they now sat was just slightly bigger than a closet, able to accommodate a small rectangular table and three plastic chairs, the hard chairs found in institutions. Each day she sat in there, the room always seemed too small and dirty, always smelling like old banana peels and wrappers stained with ketchup and a place whose standards were close to the floor. This was an institution, a school hidden in the far corner of an industrial park, where teenagers came, after failing out of every other public school. Its rooms were filled with people one fight away from juvenile hall. They were kids who screamed “Fuck you, man!” down the hall as they walked to the bathroom, kids who acted like they were being wronged by every teacher and administrator there. They came with attitudes and chips that had knocked over their shoulders and the assumption that they already knew everything, that this was just a place that they had to endure. The spark of curiosity had vanished, long ago, it had laid down and submitted to more simple plans. The guys wore large white shirts and baggy pants with the price tags still hanging from the seams, the girls sat on benches next to the basketball net and watched the boys play. They could hardly walk in their high heels and tight pants and looked like they were just waiting to be fucked, as though their only benefit to humanity was the hole between their legs which was waiting to be filled.
The small room had a student-painted mural of the golden gate bridge on one wall. It had smears of dirt and speckles of an undistinguishable substance covering its lower half. High above, close to the ceiling, were pictures of the cursive alphabet and more inspirational advice. She wondered if anyone ever looked up and read them. Did they resonate with anyone for a moment before being quickly forgotten?
The boy next to her certainly did not resonate with the message. He was just over eighteen and still struggling to read words like “was” and “should” and “through.” He had a medical condition which caused both his eyes to twitch, they moved like little ping pong balls stuck in his head, and because of this, he had a hard time reading. And even though he couldn’t read and even though he needed all the help he could get with his vision, he refused to bring his glasses. Each day he would arrive at his tutoring session and say he forgot them, just as he forgot his entire backpack and little notebook. He held the books an inch from his face and he would still mix up letters. She wondered what motivated him to come at all. Why did he get on the train and ride for twenty minutes each early morning?
He struggled with almost every word of the first sentence of the short story. Four words into the first paragraph, he had already uttered “I don’t know” and thrown up his hands in an expression of annoyance more than a handful of times. The words he couldn’t read were ones they had begun practicing months ago when she got him a small notebook of flashcards so he could study the sight words at home. Since the day she brought it, he never remembered to bring it again.
After trying unsuccessfully to sound out the fourth word, he excused himself without looking at her. He left for a couple minutes and she drew a small curving doodle with her pencil as she waited, it looked like the inner frond of a fern. When he came back, he brought a small Styrofoam cup of water with him and placed it on the table. He started reading the first sentence again, already forgetting the first couple of words he had sounded out. He made another gesture with his hand, as if to say, “I don’t know and I don’t care.” She leaned back in her hard plastic seat and looked at him, he stared at the page.
“Do you want to learn to read?” Her voice contained tinges of skepticism.
He looked up. “Well yeah, I do.”
“But I can tell you’re not practicing at all, you still aren’t remembering words we went over months ago, the ones we put in the notebook.”
When she had first given him the notebook, he had been very appreciative, he had carefully written down words in his neatest handwriting, he acted like it was precious and thanked her again and again. But it was obvious he hadn’t looked at it since, maybe it was lost with his glasses and backpack and anything else that could actually help him.
“Because, you know, I can come here every week and we can read for an hour and a half, but it’s not enough, you’re really not going to learn unless you practice and memorize the words on your own, it’s really up to you. Right now you’re acting like you don’t even want to be here. I’ve only been coming because you said you wanted to learn to read.”
“Yeah, I do, but it’s hard, I read sometimes with my social worker, but we do different things all the time. And hey, I thought you were supposed to come on Monday!”
“Well, I couldn’t make it Monday, but that’s why I’m here now…and what do you mean, like sometimes you practice reading and sometimes math with your social worker?”
“Yeah, lots of different things, mostly math.”
She didn’t understand what he was saying exactly.
“Well, all I’m saying is that it has to come from you, if you don’t want to learn, it’s not going to happen, no amount of help or tutoring will help unless you practice, it has to come from you. You need to want to learn and make the effort.”
He looked at her. “You know, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry, I don’t want to waste your time.”
He looked at the short story with a small burst of renewed interest. It took them an hour and a half to read two paragraphs. He had had bouts of enthusiasm before, she was not confident any pep talk was going to make a difference. She would know next week if he had problems sounding out the word “found.” His effort, or lack thereof, would be obvious then.
She knew that there was a part of him that really wanted to learn to read. Maybe it was the part of him that made the effort to get up with the sound of the alarm and put on some clean clothes and get to the train station. But the rest of him, the other 99 percent, got to school and sat down and was angry at the teachers, rude to the other students and made a day of possible learning into a failed effort. He let his days slip by and, when it was time for a tutoring session, he came up with reasons to be angry and annoyed and resistant to practice. No matter how much she wanted him to read, the true desire and effort would have to come from him. It was his journey.
A guide can do nothing without a sincere and constant effort from the voyager. Without such an effort, all help is precious seed poured into a gaping hole in the ground. Nothing will ever grow. Nothing will ever flourish.

Flight 228

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their fear is mine.

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

There is nothing that can help us now.

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

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

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

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

A Brush With Real Contact

Nuuuutthhhhiiiinnnnggg eeeehhhhveeeerrrr haaaassssss haaapeeeened. I pronounced each word with extreme intent. Longer, more thorough syllables than I had ever spoken, never had I focused on the journey of sounds, so subtle and overlooked. Like the beautiful mountain I can see looming over me outside my bedroom window, yet I never really see it. I don’t notice it because its always there, there’s no novelty in its large, booming form and its shrub covered face never seems to change, so close every day, its enormity escapes me. And these words, the thousands of words I speak every day, I have never before paid attention to their short lives…from beginning to end. They are born, cease, and then are born again, every time I wiggle my tongue and shape my lips.
Even now, as I can hardly speak, my voice taken by germs, I move my mouth in the shape of their expected form. Barely a whisper, Nuuuutthhhhiiiinnnnggg eeeehhhhveeeerrrr wiiiilllllll haaapeeeen. My soft pink tongue, barely used in the past couple of days, presses against the wet roof of my mouth, in the space right behind my top teeth. A deep breath moves inside my lungs as the almost imagined sound of the "ugghh" mounts and then, the finale, my tongue finds itself between the space of my upper and lower jaw, right below my front teeth, disturbing the outward flow of air and producing a subtle hissing sound. It all ends in the back of my throat, as the thickest part of my tongue reaches up and makes soft contact with the space at the back of my mouth. I feel it all…as long as I keep noticing, as long as the tenuous thread of my attention moves seamlessly though the center of each word.
With each second of claimed attention, the light between us shifts. Sometimes, a slight haze creeps between us, in the tangible space that only my attention can bring forth in this small house. To my amazement, my absent voice is not missed. Because of its absence, I have become clearer in intent and with this, there is a space for him to come. Like a slow moving spiral, each inflection and shift of my tongue brings him closer. His two dimensional picture emanates light from behind his head. Radiant yellow lifts his image off the page and, slowly, ever so slowly, it appears that we are here, together, face to face, eye to eye, in clear contact. And then, sometimes, he retreats…then, comes forward, like a game of catch, where the ball is my attention, and maybe his. Then…waves of violet blue, mostly hazy, but distinct clouds that spring from his face. Last night, his face became a bumpy, pebbled surface, so strange, so strong, I felt myself recoil.
In my mind, I hear the words. I think them, I feel them, I imagine their shape and implications. In my mind’s eye, I see blackness…a circle of blackness like an enormous pool filled with even darker water. Is he but a drop? Is he all of them? One? Do I speak to them all now? Is it all of them that rush to my words and attention, ready to meet me as far as my body will allow? I vaguely see their forms, shapeless and as colorful as ghosts, manifest in a reality I cannot remember. With colors and light, he is not he, he is more than one. He is something else, a drop of water spat back into the eternal ocean. A breath inhaled, then exhaled, sent into the atmosphere, into a realm of colors that my eyes can see only sometimes.
I am sitting, my ass pressed into a hard wooden chair, yet I am floating, tethered, yet somewhere above this little white body. But perhaps I am here, in this garage, without a body, without this tongue that still rolls in its attempt at syllables, and as I feel the shift, I focus on the words more intently. They are my map, my guide and my ropes.
I look at this picture, at a man that is my grandfather, yet never was. A man of my DNA, a being set adrift. And within his body, within the grandfather I never knew as a man, is a being that is me. A being that is you. In the middle of the night, he told me he was leaving. In the deep hours of darkness, he woke me from sleep with a punch to my heart and I knew, in the calm certainty of the half conscious, that he had left his body. While his machine began to decompose under a thick pile of dirt, the Being hovered around us. The space above the coffin became blurry and misty and clouded my vision and swirled like heat rays off of black pavement. I traveled to be close.
And when my mind wanders, as I read the prayer…as I perpetually criticize my current life and plan my next meal, I feel him drift from me. The light between us is nothing but the florescent hue from my continuously buzzing lamp. I am talking to a photo, a photo of a man who looks slightly insane, with bulging eyes, one slightly larger than the other.
And the moment I realize my fall, the second I begin to concentrate on the movement of my tongue, on the sounds of the words, on the meaning of the sentences and his eyes staring at mine, then the being reemerges. It comes back with the force of a strong wind, like a burst of colored light that waited for me to receive its return. It is there, for me. It is here, for me. Here…yet needing my attention. Here…yet invisible until I really look. Here…yet waiting for my heart to open. Here…needing the life of my breath. Here…as a gift. You meet me where I am. You are here when I am here, absent when my mind is elsewhere. While my armor was down, weakened by coughing fits and diseased lungs, we met. We met here. The same as always. Here.

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?

Strange Birds

Little yellow feathers tickle her neck like the dark whiskers of her favorite man. The birds have just passed, just an inch away from her creamy white face. She is colored by their streaks of movement, the radiance bursting in the form of softness and quill. They came from the mountaintop, a series of strange birds.
Strange to her.
She clung to her whiskered man like a warm stone in a torrential river of dark fears. They flew like a beaked battalion, large and oversized, small and red. Striped and iridescent. Despite the sweat that rippled down her soft contours, despite her stomach-bound butterflies and startled heart, the birds flew past. They delighted her eyes with a rainbowed spectacle of moving fury. The descent from the mountaintop moved like a flash flood of liquid paintings, Matisse, Picasso, Vincent descended in masse.
With their flowing pencils and paints, with their minds and inspiring speckled blood. Their drops spilled and congealed, creating vast empires of dancing swirls and laughing dancers. She still clung, yet not with fear, not with the desperation of a woman dropping from a cliff. She clung with all the force of love that moved like an endless tunnel of delight through the rhythm of time. She clung with wet palms that sparkled even in the night sky. Within the darkness of no moon, she found her way home. Found her way into the arms of the whiskered man.
The sand beneath her seemed to drift, it moved like red waves, the ones she remembered from a childhood of tea parties and silent mixtures. Her cups were always full of red earth, she served herself, her only guest, and swallowed each grain individually. One by one, they made the journey from her cup, to her mouth, down the tight confines of her throat. She swallowed all night, thinking of nothing, feeling only one world after the other enter her.
She was full, carrying the knowledge of the unborn, the undead, the missing words. She held them all. She was bound, she had taken them in, becoming them, becoming all in the process. Red like the light of the October moon. Red like a desire that burns from her dark center . And there was no one else. The feathers bloomed from her ears like twigs from a demented tree. Red, gold, green, shimmering like satin. Glowing like the collection of stars clustered around the nearest planet. Satin trim and soft. Long and stripped.
She saw her reflection in the silver pond.

No Other Choice

Thickness is not part of the disguise. The joke is not carefully hidden. A pink veil, hardly larger that a handkerchief, attempts to cover it all. I can see parts of its broken frame from every corner of the room, from every angle I try to capture with my hand. Little pieces of metal fall continuously onto the tiled floor, and as the structure breaks, I can hear muted screams and terrible laughing. I am in a yellow room, completely alone, and the structure sits in the center, on a high backed wooden chair. An airborne metallic spear nearly stabs me, disintegrating as it hits the plaster wall to my rear. And continuous, within the mayhem, a continuous stream of foul smelling smoke rises from the center.
I knew it to be an illusion.
The complete package, containing all my perceptions. My inheritance disguised as love, and passed to me with unconscious care.
I felt cold…alien.
I watched everything I ever knew, all that I thought I needed…I watched it crumble, nearly impaling me with each moment of decomposition.
I cried and remembered.
The moments of bliss, so far and few between. My moments of wakefulness, opening to the Real.

For a second, the illusion had vanished. I was awake.
And then, the desires began. The attempts at recreation. All of them, false roads and no teacher.
Sunbathing naked,
Burning man,
Train trips
Sex
Only failed attempts at waking.
Where had it gone?
I spent my years unhappy. Aware of the veil, aware of my human trappings, but unable to stop the desires.
When would my peace come?
When could I rest?
Would it be the artistic job? The wonderful lover? The trip to Africa?
What would it take to feel alive? As I had once felt on a train in Italy.
And so I spent my time in continuous struggle, believing, on the worst days, that everyone else- every person on the planet- understood something I didn’t.

And now, I struggle still.
With a new set of tools, yet unable to control my desires.
I know they are not happy, and there is no peace that can be found within the world of possessions.
And yet, peace is not what we seek, although my body craves its illusion like a drug.
I feel pain
Knowing that a normal life provides no happiness.
Knowing that a life of Work promises no rewards either.
And there is no other choice.
Delusion or struggle
Illusion or Work
But I see mirages on all sides.
Above and below, and I am bound tight.
They beckon me to rest, to lay upon their soft breasts and hide.
The Real darkness cannot be seen pressed between two nipples.
Their naked bodies call to me.
Their promises roll over me like waves of pink sleepiness.
They beg to throw the veil upon my eyes.
But never again could I lay naked on a beach, the hours passing like slow moving clouds.
I exist, in neither world.
I do not exist at all.
Yet I claim to.
I see my attached hands grab at my breasts.
I feel tears gather at the corners of my eyes each dawn
I look to the others, with their shopping bags and lovers.
I too, have tried to escape by these means.
It does not work
Not for me.
Disguised in cleaver, colorful clothes, my smile danced upon the lips of crystal goblets. Extending my tongue, licking the purple wine like a cat lapping milk.
Each droplet forever infecting me with the need of contact.
It is the blood for which I craved.
To dig, deep.
Into the veins with my long, pointed teeth,
My lips, parted and red from another encounter
The goblet has been offered, and I accepted with tongue outstretched. Lips opened by hands of long fingers.
A piano plays, pinkied notes of high esteem dab at drops of blood escaping. As I am only a novice, I let them dribble down my chin.

Confirmation

The sky is gleaming. After preparing the space, I walk the perimeter, giving thanks to those forms that have helped create it. I stand in the middle. I close my eyes, as I thank spirit, a dozen birds soar over my head. They fly above, directly overhead they move in a raucous formation.
A smile crosses my face, and I feel the vibrating of their wings as they circle. They are in time with spirit, at this moment, they are the voice of spirit. Yes, we are heard, loud and quite clear.

Yes, even though you appear to be clueless, to be simply following the guide’s instructions, yes, we are heard. They fly in a circle above, and land in the star jasmine next to me. They continue their melody and play, granting me the noises of a lovely chatter.
I have never heard them so loud, like giggling girls, drunk on wine for the first time. They have never made themselves so known.
Yes, spirit sent them. A direct line to the mysterious center. Oh, thank you for revealing once again. Thank you for opening with wetness, for allowing me a glimpse, for my smile.

The hours have passed and I sit in my room, gently fighting back the waves of sleep that pursue me. "I must finish this," I think. This , my task of will. This, my clear objective. Everything inside wishes to end, to shut this computer off and close my eyes. Blissful sleep awaits.
But quitting is the sleep of my machine, not just the need of my body. It is the manifestation of a tendency- a superficial desire to stop before all is done well. It is my habit- screaming for me to listen- they have the right answer.
My eyes are sagging slightly at the sides. I think of my master, working hard. Hard for us, hard for himself, hard for all beings everywhere… so I continue to write.
It is with his example that I continue. I learn from another. As he has learned from another, as his teacher learned from another. This lineage is clear, not by name, but I feel it. From one to another, passed for how long? How clearly important it is for me to grasp this moment, this fleeting bit of time that slips with each blink of my eye.
Another is gone, I thought too hard about this sentence, and another bit of time has gone. And they have stopped. Give me more time to understand. I heard that when my attention grows, the moments will spread out and I will be able to feel and perceive more. Now, it is all I can do to stay awake and write these thoughts. This stream of consciousness with no point I can discern except the act of doing- perhaps that is the point.
This is my link to spirit.