Trace The Lines

I try to trace the lines back

The night was dark

Purple

Without stars

Do you know what I mean?

My body was twisted

and formed of clay and pale powder.

Thrown into the air

and endless rolling hillsides.

I try to trace the lines back

Red and white lights

streaked below the bridge.

Veins that carry flesh, soul, meaning.

I peek out from a blanket of forgetfulness,

stretching from California to Arizona.

Catch the road, straight and black.

Look for a star.

I try to trace the lines back

Somebody was there

a mirror

just past the shabby brick building.

I dismissed the thought

Curious, slashing in the wind,

those elements tangled me in color,

leading me to desolate places

surrounded by water

and black carrion birds.

I try to trace the lines back

There was a fluttering hand

the ropes of my bondage cut into me

the sound of an animal.

I am carried home unto awakening

can see forever in every direction

I try to trace the lines back

I cannot remember

I cannot remember what I was

I cannot remember

Thoughts In The Labyrinth

They sit in a circle in a dimly lit room.  Candles flicker on the fireplace mantle and cast shadows from the wiry kiwi branches onto the ceiling.  The black curtains are drawn and they are all alone- three bodies who try for a moment to leave the labyrinth and cortex behind, to emerge new from the trappings of intelligence and talk without walls. 
She looks at the man in front of her.  In most societies he would be considered an adult, a man with graying hair, more than forty years of age.  He sits in front of her illuminated in the golden light, imitating her sounds and creating syllables without meaning.

“dooooahhh” she says.
“dooahhhhhhhhh” he repeats one octave below.
“ti ti ta ma to sooooo.”
“ta toooo ta ma to sooooo.”

They all smile.  Someone shifts slightly on the futon.  A part of her ego breaks off and wanders down the labyrinth alone.
She wonders just where she is and who she’s with.  Who is the man in front of her?  The man making sounds? 
The strangeness of the moment hits her, rustles up against old thought patterns and rubs at convention.  Do adults do this?  Do they sit in a circle, letting the stars and night turn to day? Do they make sounds and sing together, pushing their bodies beyond normal comfort to remain seated in a circle?  Do they breathe loudly, moving their hands wildly as though there were music, though none is playing?

“MUUahhhhh, sahhhh, tiiiii.”
“MUUahhhhh, sahhhh, tiiiiiaaaaaa.”

Her ego searches through the known, all those layers sitting, accumulating since birth, waiting for a moment in the light.  “Known” meaning words, thoughts, convention. 
She looks again at the man, long wisps of white hair shine in the candlelight. 
This is not what adults do, though they could all be considered adults with driver’s licenses, bills, kids, cars, jobs- and yet they are not.

In another space she watches two young boys, both just a few feet off the ground.  She is supposed to be the adult there.  She feeds them noodles and bananas and makes sure they are warm and dry.  She comforts them after a fall and tucks them into bed with a lullaby.
And yet, she does not only do what the other adults do. Before bed she sits them next to her by the computer, she practices her singing while they watch and sometimes follow along, clapping as they sing along.  She imitates them in the hallway with her body, stomping her foot when they do, she jumps when they do, yells into the air when they do- they notice what she does and laugh- delighting in the exchange.
But that is not what adults do.  Not the adults they know.  She is their Other. She is like the graying man, a living signifier for another path. 

Center

The words came out of the girl.
Big pink lips and lusciousness that could only be described by words like liquid and voluptuous and moist.
We looked at her and flipped the pages, there were a thousand more with eyes like feathers.
The words came out of the girl and she knew- there actually could be no asking- it was the center and the center casts no shadows and there just must be a moment when she can let herself feel what it would be like without questions.  No answers either, just a place where the Real could come through the window like moonlight and stroke her with the softness of blue wings.

Center.
We try to maintain the center.
Center.
Center.

The windows were open and the bright daylight revealed all their flaws and they glazed over them like pink lip gloss or sticky donuts and their love coated them in candy without hard shells and turned everything pink and wet and ready for something more. 
More?  Yes, but not then. More?  YES.

They sat in the car, sunlight pouring in. She asking the question. The words again.
The center.
Snuggled against a wiry beard of black feathers, she breathed in the darkness of a scented garage and oils.
We find the center.  Look for it.  Walk towards it.

The sunlight came in and she closed her eyes, letting the struggle inside settle. The moon could be there with its jagged edges.  The silver light could be there with its calm.  It could all happen in that tiny space where his legs could barely fit and she rustled up against him like a pillow.  There were rooms with closed doors that she did not need to peer inside, places with more questions that spiraled like carousel wheels. 
She let the ruffling wings settle.
Those words, once spoken, fly from the open wind and beat out the story of a new memory.

The Battle For Words

The battle of language
For language
We are twisted
Searching
If only it could be one way, then we could rest
If only they could be one way, then I would understand.
The battle for language
It wraps me in its wheel, taking me, taking me
Not, I am not your lover
Raping me.
The wheel,
It does not ask if I can breathe
There is no consent
I am a body, plunging to earth, into the earth
The wheel
I see my eyes spinning, eyes spinning
Words
The battle for words, it comes through me and out.
If only there was one way to be, then I could know.
If only there was the word, the word, I search for the word.  What is this?
What are you?
Who are we together?
I fight for the answer
There Is no answer
The battle for the words,
Take me take me.  I am your slave.
Rape me with your contortions and I’ll search the world-grasping for the one thing- only one thing.
The battle for words, of words.
I struggle for the ways to be.  Definition, oh it would feel so fucking good.  If only I could define this, set it straight, keep it there for all eternity, there are plenty of me- those who would enjoy it.  oh predictability, you are my lover.

Take me, take me. There is no asking.  Born to struggle in this word game.
My eyes spin.
I see you in my eyes, you are me as she is me as we are all together.
Just as he said- they said - or me, we have no words for this and I am drawn into the pile of shit that would have us all be defined.  Oh, it would feel good on that corner of the white hospital shelf, but this is gritty and dark and the fight takes my heart- beating- it feels so good and hot tight in this hand.
This is the battle for words and we are drawn down in its tight embrace.  Give a kiss, won’t you love?
Give a kiss, for this is the battle.

The Unreasonable

The heart moves like a winged bird- white fluff that dances on the water of the lake.  A smooth wind takes it, transforming it into the magic of light and moistened clouds ready to spurt their seed. 
There is a man in the clouds, tall and dark and outlined in the golden rays of the sun nearing dusk. A bright burst moves across the sky, fervent in its need to explode outward.
End and beginning are the same. It goes without thought, without any implied intent. It is movement without rationality. Words without meaning. 
Their beauty is easy to read, the light easy to spot and wish upon, but there is no reason. No man in the clouds that makes the stars twinkle. 
The sand is a bad place for a head- take it out and behold the blackness of space, the limitless that cannot be understood. 
It is not for you to comprehend, it may not be for you to know. 
Shopping carts and diapers, packed stadiums of hungry onlookers, waiting for a preacher to deliver the message of god.  We are a pack of wolves and the body wants the taste of flesh. 
Each prayer is an invitation to death, open the book and begin to sing. 
What is it that you desire? Maybe the clouds will give it to you, maybe the idol of stone will speak, maybe the invisible which cannot be proven by any measure will dance. 
Is the stain on the tortilla enough?  The bush that burns?  The fluttering heart that can only be described as a whisper? 
Sit in the temples, rise and fall at the command of the man dressed in white. Do it because you are told, do it for the children.  Do it because everyone else does. 
They will mark your house with stones, the windows will be broken, the lawn dug for your grave.  There is no choice here, not in this country of laws, not in these places of worship. 
Thought is for the heathens, questions are for the devil. 
There is only one path and it has already been decided- not by you, but the people before you.  The way is cleared, swept by slaves and those already condemned to death, they wait in cages until the flames rise with the call of the chosen. 
Your dress will be torn when we arrive, your lips will be chapped, you will be thirsty, prepare for the voyage and bring the book.

The Dead Weight Of The Past

What is it that he said so many years ago? Those words that went into her, dug into the muscles of her being like they were made for her cavernous places. Fitted just right, sculpted to stay there for decades, to resist change in all its forms and call to her like a siren’s deadly song. When the moon was ripe and the waters within her rattled with the call of wolves, the little steel sinkers would brush up against a few spiral shells and other lines and hooks left by other people, and though they swayed slightly in the current, they remained firmly planted.
“You’re dead weight,” he said, putting her down.
Exasperated, he continued, “there’s no way I can carry you.”
She looked to the ground, saddened by how her piggy-back ride had turned sour; all the joy she had initially felt gutted by one knife-shaped sentence.
“You don’t know how to use your body,” he said, “you just hang there like dead weight.”
She kept her eyes low, ashamed, but not sure what she had done wrong or how she could change. No matter what he said, he somehow, within the unspoken space between his words and the way his tone hinted at a past she was still unclear of, he always seemed to make a comparison between her and the other girls he had been with, girls who had not been dead weight. Others he had been able to carry and hold against a wall and fuck, but not her. His words, like a stone wrapped in white cloth, sunk to the bottom and settled in. He would send others soon.

Later, when his tattooed arms were gone and the smell of his cigarettes had been washed from her hair, she knew someone, just for one night, that did hold her against the wall of the white tiled shower with his grip. But the stone was still there.
Those things that he said so many years ago. Did he throw those words to hurt her, for pleasure, to get the many things he desired? His gallons of milk required with every meal. Orange soda, the only other liquid he would drink. The unfiltered cigarettes, the potatoes and pork chops and marijuana so he could pretend to desire her. All the things he wanted, that he said he needed, they all required a sacrifice and with each demand, she left a part of herself in the supermarket aisle, left it there to be swept up by the nighttime staff. When they went back home, all she wanted was an orgasm, but he blamed her for his inability to stay hard. She was too wet. Too wide. Too desperate, too loud. He told her each reason, sending more stones to the bottom.

In all the years they were together, she never saw him completely naked. He walked out of rooms backwards, unwilling to let her see every part of him. Did he believe himself to be dead weight? Not his body or his size or the way he held his body, but the pain with which he came. The heroin he took, the cigarettes he smoked, the marijuana he inhaled, were they the worldly manifestations of the hooks that had been thrown into him so long ago?

The other night, laying in a warm lap with the black curtains drawn and candles flickering across the white, naked wall, in a room that he had not known and would never know, she said, “make sure to tell me if I’m like dead weight.” It took her many days to remember were the words had come from, for they did not originate in her. They came up, out of her mouth, unearthed in the calm, clear waters of that long night. Those words, left by someone else, now they were her own fears, her own worry, her own weighted anchors.

Solar Energy

I was on the 38, the orange bus that always takes me to the same place. Every morning, five days a week. My regular job. The one I do because I have to. The one I should be proud of but I'm not.
I like to take some time before I spend those eight hours sitting inside a box. I like to take my time before I get there to take a little flight into unexplored territory, to make a switch in dimensions... you know what I mean?
It's something similar to those digital abstract graphics. You know the ones I mean. You see these digital colorful patterns repeating over and over across a sheet of paper. There is nothing defined in them, no clear distinct shape you can recognize. However, if you stare long enough, if you concentrate on readjusting your eyes, all of a sudden, your eyes discover something three dimensional floating inside the picture, something that wasn't there before. Something that was there but you couldn't see it. Not before you readjusted, your eyes, your basic way of looking. A landscape or an object or a group of bodies, all floating in space. Invisible one moment, visible the next.
I play a similar game when I am sitting every morning in the back of the 38 Geary bus. The one that always takes me to the same place. At least it seems to be the same.

This morning I had the intention of playing, just as I usually would. I love playing. I always have. I love to sit and watch, looking out at the world through a transparent bubble of open presence, carefully readjusting the basic elements of my attention. I keep on doing that until I make the switch, until the switch happens. That's what I call it. The switch.

This particular morning, even though the intention was there, I felt as if my body was lacking the necessary energy to accomplish it. My mind was too busy, my attention jumped from one place to the other. This concern here, this memory there, an old conversation, a coming confrontation. I couldn’t pin it down, my mind that is. Flying around like that, I couldn't use it to make the switch. I couldn't be still and quiet long enough.
'There must be something I can do’ I thought. ‘All I need is energy, but how can I generate energy now? Where can I find it? How can I make new energy flow through me? What can I do sitting here in the back of this bus?'
I looked around, trying to see if there was something inside the bus I could use for my own purposes. I noticed how almost everyone inside the bus had their eyes fixed on their cell phones or their books. Hardly anyone was observing what was happening around them.
I then noticed the light dancing inside the bus as it rushed down the street. The light entered through the subtly curving windows, it reflected off the smooth surfaces, creating elusive shining shapes and shadows. It created quite a spectacle. A spectacle without an audience, other than myself. All of it was coming from the very bright sun outside.
'That’s it,' I thought. 'I could use the solar energy. This energy is available at all times. It has always been available. I just have to use it...I have to figure out a way to use it!'
This realization made me remember something I had seen in the news. A powerful political movement that wants to use solar energy as a way of generating electricity. I thought that maybe that there was some kind of relationship between my current thoughts and the things I had just read. A source of energy so evident and so all encompassing that we would tend to forget that it's there, always there.
I looked down at my own body, seated as I was next to the window of the moving bus. My body is a machine like any other. Made of different materials obviously. But still a machine.
I began to concentrate on extracting this energy. I pictured it flowing up my spine, spreading through my muscles, my nervous system. I felt it surging into my heart. I could feel it inside of me. Even if it was my imagination to begin with, the results of my concentration were not imaginary at all.
The machine was moving now. I could feel the motor running inside of me, roaring like a small counterpart to the big motor of the bus on which I was riding. That big orange metal machine came to a stop. It was time for me to get off.

'But now that I have my motor on, why not take a quick dimensional flight as I walk from here to the office?' I thought.
Using the same energy I had newly acquired, I propelled into a new adventure. I allowed myself to fly among the thick coats and hands grasping plastic cups of Starbucks coffee. Following the movement with my eyes, I let myself be blown away by the spectacle. So available and yet so easy to miss.
I remained conscious of the place where I ultimately needed to land….'right there on Montgomery street, that’s my destination.'
I flew freely and gracefully, from Bush to Sutter, from Sutter to Post. I started to slow down as I approached my goal until I finally made a full landing in front of the building that I knew so well.
Just as I landed, I noticed something at the on top of the gateway that beckoned me: a sign, a big star with the words "solar energy" written underneath.
'Ah!' I thought, 'In case I forget here is another way to remember!'

I made a full landing and made my way towards the elevator. I was a little disappointed that I had so much fuel, but couldn’t really take any real journeys inside this building. It's not too safe to take flight inside buildings such as this one. Too many eyes, too many ears, too many rules, too little sky. So I forced my self to land, to put down those invisible arms which were my landing gear and allow me to come back into the world of simple phrases spoken in a reasonable voice.
I did keep my motor running, just in case. It's so difficult for it to turn on and so easy for it to fall away and be forgotten.

I stepped out of the elevator and slowly walked trough the hall that leads to the entrance to the office, my office in a manner of speaking (although I certainly don't own it, it is more precise to say that it owns me.) As I approached the predictable day, with the predictable grounded people who had apparently forgotten all about flight, my body felt heavier and heavier. With each step the weight grew on the sides of my head, the place where sometimes wings could sprout. The motor started to fade, the energy I had just recently managed to accumulate was already going away.
'How do I keep it going?' I asked myself. …'It's as if the gum I had been chewing started to loose its flavor. Why keep chewing it if there isn’t any flavor left?'
But maybe there was some flavor left, maybe I could still find it. Maybe the sun hadn’t stop providing that dazzling juice which I had called energy, maybe it was still coming down all around me, an orgy of generosity so overwhelming that it could only be ignored.
'Maybe if I try once again?'

I entered the office and was greeted unintentionally by a bunch of tightly knit eyes and serious faces. The entire office had gathered in the reception area. There was a large meeting going on. One of those monthly meetings where they discussed revenue, premiums and profit and other stuff I still didn’t understand or care about. I couldn't bring myself to understand or care about these things, even if I was supposed to care, even if was supposed to understand. I couldn't find the handle that would make these things appetizing.
The others gave me a quick glance, then quickly returned their eyes and attention to the standing man who was talking. He was giving them, (or us I should say, as much as it is difficult for me to conceive of myself as part of this particular structure) the news of how much money we were generating by our dally confinement to a desk chair.
'Well, it's all the same, it's all about energy. How much we make, how much we use, how much we generate and get in return.'
Since I didn’t care much about the results or performance of this particular machinery (even if I probably should have, even if I was supposed to), I returned my attention to my own energy. My own machine.
It was quite difficult to do this. The larger machine that engulfed me kept insisting on using my will as its fuel. It was a role I couldn't fully accept and yet I couldn't reject it either under threat of starvation and other unwholesome consequences.

The meeting finally ended (as all things end eventually, even if it doesn't seem like it at the time.) I walked towards my cubicle, and grabbed my coffee mug, as I usually do. I didn’t know if I needed coffee. (If I doubted it, I probably didn't.) But I did know that I had the habit of getting coffee every morning to start the day.
Before I sat for 8 hours straight in that chair, I liked to take a quick detour to the downstairs cafeteria. I would meet the Mexican ladies that worked there, serving drinks and food to the many creatures like me who were serving an indefinite sentence in this luxurious prison. I liked to chat with them every day. I liked to be reminded of my origins, the rhythms of my early thoughts, the melodies of my most basic language.
I liked to speak freely in Spanish with them. There was something so comfortable, so honest, so naked, and so delicious about it.
Inside the office I felt as if my origin had to remain hidden. I had to wear a particular uniform (the uniform of executives and executive assistants, which only pretended to be free but had very distinct rules in its practical application.) I had to speak a foreign language and I had to speak it in a particular way, modulating my voice to be comfortable but not too casual, firm but not too harsh. I was always adjusting my appearance to maintain a particular illusion for the sake of the others. (I didn't have a name for this illusion, but I had learned to recognize it, I had learned to create it. I could taste it, I could sense it all around me like a palpitating mouth made of metal and electricity.)
All this work on maintaining appearances could get very tiresome. Downstairs with the Mexican girls that inhabited the cafeteria I could briefly drop the disguise and breathe calmly, even if it was only for a few minutes.
There was also another distinct flavor to our conversations, something that set them aside from all other conversations I could have within this building. Sometimes we remembered our childhood, our lives back in the lands of brown dust and bananas.
We all came from underdeveloped countries, places where people are very poor, not too well educated, where people struggled to survive from day to day. These were places where life was quite difficult, where life is still very difficult to this day, much more difficult than anything experienced by the executives that surrounded us.
We shared these memories with each other. While talking to them, I would remember that I was in the distant United States, the pearl of the North which beckoned to all of us from the distance like an emerald city in the horizon. I would remember "Estados Unidos" with all the implications those words carried, the good and the bad, the seductive and the fearsome.
I would remember that I now lived surrounded by gringos, gringos obsessed with “making money,” gringos obsessed with "looking good," gringos obsessed with "getting ahead of the pack," with "being on top." They all had it so easy! They grew up without any real obstacles, certainly not the kind of daily obstacles we knew! They had time to get a regular education, they had the luxury of being picky with their food, they could indulge their days in cuddling their overdeveloped self esteem.
We, the Latins, we came from poor backgrounds where people struggled to survive. By remembering how different our lives had been, we remembered how strange this place was. By invoking our Latin sisterhood, we also invoked the foreign, we made it come out into high relief. The foreign was all around us, the foreigner with a different language, the foreigner with a different understanding of life, the foreigner with different ways of seeing.
I was now part of that foreign world. I worked among them. In many ways I was one of them. But down here in the cafeteria I could see them once again as the Mexican girls saw them, as I once saw them before I got too close.
As I mentioned already, I liked to switch dimensions. Talking to the Mexican girls allowed me to do so. Ultimately, by talking in our own language, we invoked the sun of our tropical countries. The damp heat of a day outside in the open air, surrounded by palm trees and mangles and wild vegetation growing freely around us. Our feet remembered a ground of raw dirt, instead of ceramic tiles, where we used to wear sandals every day instead of high heel shoes.

I left the girls and the cafeteria. I could only have a brief moment there and the moment had passed. I walked back to the elevator, coffee in hand. As I was approaching it, I noticed a girl I knew. She was a Salvadorean like me, another Salvadorean who worked undercover in these regions of quiet greed and silky hardships.
I had learned from the Mexican girls that she was from El Salvador. I had talked to her before, thinking we would connect at some level. At the very least, we would be able to relate to each other based on our common nationality, our related memories. On top of that, given that we worked in this same building our jobs were probably very similar. We had come here from almost the same place, to do almost the same thing.
It was as if she was a mirror of me, a reflection that had sprung from me a long time ago and I was now finally coming to find her (or was I the reflection and she was the original? was she the one finding me?)
Based on all these various similarities, I figured our contact would come smoothly and easily. But, in practice, it was not so easy. In fact, it was awkward and easily broken. There was no clear reason for the difficulty that I could see.
The few times I talked to her, I found that she was making a strong effort to avoid talking in Spanish, an effort to maintain her ‘office-English speaking-persona'. She would hardly ever speak Spanish, or say much about herself to me. Maybe because those few times I saw her we had been surrounded by other people in the elevator, maybe the presence of those alien eyes forced her to hide her true face.
But this time, we were all alone in the elevator. It was only me and her. I felt very free to invoke my Salvadorian nature to her. I was already vibrant with its tropical syncopated rhythms after talking to the Mexican girls in the cafeteria.
I asked her how she was doing, how was her baby, how was everything. I asked it all in a very Salvadorian way, emphasizing certain syllables, dropping certain vocals, shifting certain consonants. I wanted her to come out and speak to me in Spanish, in our language, the language that drags memories back out of that place where we have left them, our home, the turbulent chaos where we grew up, where we played, where we cried and suffered, where we had our first living taste of reality.
She answered all my questions in Spanish. We exchanged questions back and forth for a few moments. I could feel she was getting comfortable talking to me and that made me happy. In the middle of the conversation I realized that I had never asked her specifically what she did, what kind of job she performed within the building.
The elevator kept going higher and higher, my stop was coming soon. So I rushed and blurted out the question that had taken up space in my forebrain:
“Y en que es que trabajas?” (What do you do for work? )
She replied almost immediately.
“Yo trabajo en…” ( I work in…) “….en, …en” (in...in...)
I realized she was making an effort to say it in Spanish. I had forced her to switch to this dimension with me and now she was having a hard time remembering how to describe what she did in the language of this other dimension. It was as if I was forcing her to change her currency from dollars to colones and she was having some difficulty doing the calculations.
“Trabajo en….” ( I work on…)
She made another effort, but the word didn’t convert easily enough. She still had to work on it a bit more. Her face showed the amount of effort she was going through.
Suddenly, the elevator stopped. The doors opened. I said to her:
“Me lo podes decir otro dia.” ( You can tell me another day).
But just as I stepped outside, she yelled at me in a voice full of sincere triumph:
"ENERGIA SOLAR!!" ( SOLAR ENERGY).
She said it just in time, right before the doors of the elevator closed, sending us both back to the foreign dimension that was our daily residence.
My mirror reflection had just confirmed my thoughts of the morning, in a manner too oblique to explain, too complex to repeat. I had inadvertently switched dimensions once again. You know what I mean?
As I walked to my cubicle, I looked at the thick windows, at the bright sunlight that managed to make its way through them, at the living energy that was so easy to miss unless you shifted your way of seeing, so invisible unless you flipped the switch.

Essence

The question was asked, and I skirted it like a child running from a wave moving quickly across wet sand.
What is my nature? Too many things cloud my mind, opposing thoughts, statements made and then refuted. I search through the mess, looking for a simple answer. But even that word hurts to look at, like a glare from the sun that could burn to the core of me, making me blind and sweaty and full of hardened thoughts. And so I run skeptically, chasing foam and seawater though staying clear of its chilly touch. Every answer is a guess. But maybe that’s fine, just a tiny lap of water on my calves won’t hurt.
And so what am I?
Am I the moving arrow? The thing moving through time, the constant motion of work.
Eternal.
And this thing, this essence... I truly search for some word, anything to describe it, but it slips through even the most outstretched part of my mind. This thing invisible yet tangible. This thing, quiet and eternal. Energy. A lost sentence made of color, shape and turns.
My function? I am the vessel, the thing through which creation moves.
I am the open door, the portal to the other sides, the other places, the realms where there is different knowledge, knowledge without facts and dates.
On earth, am I the Other way? An example of something else, one of the many paths.
I am another option.
Am I the fish in the river, a creator on earth, choosing time over money?
Colorful, lazy, moving, working through tears, watching sunsets and computer screens.
Am I the future teacher, now the student?
I am a link in the chain, a pink tile in the mosaic of our lineage, another vessel that leads forwards and back. There are truths that cannot be explained, and with each small remembering, I become a stronger link into the past, connecting to the future that waits for my return.
I am the door.
I am the dreamer alone in my bed. I am the dream of another playing with fire and paint while eating donuts. I am the being that struggles under a cloak of confusion and learned rubbish.
I am the vessel, the fleshy pot holding something precious inside, the thing I have glimpsed rarely. This thing that I cannot describe, the essence I search to understand. I am the hidden, the cracked door. The flickering light.

And so I play with the thoughts, searching slightly for something, something, anything.
There are a dozen question marks behind my thoughts and each answer depends on the day, on the rain, on the mood in which I sit and listen.
A thousand changes and the questions turn in on themselves, becoming laughter blowing in the wind, a hint of jasmine as we tilt closer to the sun once again.
My essence is the shifting of time.
Constant.
In motion.
So close.
Yet somewhere beyond the stars.

Recognition

I walk the edge of understanding. A thin line with nothing below but life itself. I see it like a bird. The world we make with bits of mail scattered on the floor, string in the kitchen, cobwebs on the front stoop. It is where we breath and laugh, cry and scream. A life we are used to, one we know, one that stays. Earthly life with its marked streets and simple maps and clear colored markings. I walk the edge, balancing even as I sit cross-legged on my tan carpet, teetering. I look forward, into the speckled world of dominating blue and light washed hues.
When you sit in front of me, our eyes on each other, the room palpitating with yellow and whispers of bright explosion, my mouth on the verge of laughter, I look into you, into the you that is beyond me. I know then, for a simple true moment, you are the Other. You are Other. The word, making more sense than it can, than it should. The word, with all its explanations and discussion finally culminating in one moment, coming like a surprise wave out of the darkness, still focused for all its strangeness. It is recognition, taking me beyond the word, into gnosis.
Now as I write, so long since our last exchange, I sit in an empty auditorium. The chairs without people, the room full of judges. The many eyes of myself, staring into the empty stage, finding only me staring back.
I walk the edge, a clown balancing the egg of simple truth. I see you, your eyes, opening wide in the late morning sun. While what we know as life continues beyond the walls of our chamber, there is recognition. You are the Other. The boundary of my solitary stage is broken, for a moment, I am not in this room alone. I see you for what you are. I see the word, alive in experience. The light begins to shift once again, darkening the area around your face. My eyes are fixed, locked softly, somehow, on yours. There are no lines to define your shape, no word to describe your presence. There are only colors, vibrations dancing on a spectrum of perception.
One pure bit of experience, a simple understanding that we have tried to allude to with words and music and images that flicker across a screen. For one second, sometimes, bright in the morning, all of it, the explanations, the text, the examples, they all fade away and I see that the Other is right here, sitting in front of me, looking into my eyes.

The Mysterious

I see a thousand mirrors in all directions, all obscured by a thick fog that emerges from my own eyes.

The mysterious engulfs me. There are no final answers, or maybe any answer at all will do. (I know this.) (I don't know this.) There are no reasons that can't succumb to cruel twisting by my restless mind. I can stop myself from doing or speaking occasionally, but my thoughts run through me unbidden, like a horde of unruly children. They make reality in their image. They create the dark funhouse through which I now roam, eyes peeled open, hesitant, unsure of the next step.

There is so much that is completely out of my hands. (I know this.) (I don't know this.)



I hear the sound of a chainsaw up on the hill that overlooks my home. I hear it come and I hear it go, then I hear it come again. I picture the man using it, I picture a thick piece of wood breaking in two. I feel the deadly vibration of the metal blades. Lethal danger and usefulness in a single vibrant machine.

These things I do, these things that I leave nameless, they never had a safety seal. To truly live- to be truly alive is to awaken to that which is uncomfortable, scary, and dangerous. (I know this.) (I don't know this.)

The outside world, the concentric circles of wonder and danger, it is all ruled by that same incessant clamor that dominates and defiles the fragile sanctuary under the dome of my skull. The twisting habits of my mind call things to me in secret, without my consent, making of me a sleeping witch, a conjurer of illusions which can only fool me in the end. The unspoken things die away in the world of endless electronic babble.

The universe outside is still wild, uncontrollable, and unpredictable. Stars are created and burst open into cauldrons of silent destruction, earthquakes ejaculate fire from the depths of the earth, humans continue to die despite modern technology and all the disposable prayers of all the corrupt religions that cover the planet.



Through the wall, I hear the neighbors bickering for the remote. I hear them often.

There is danger as the machine perceives a threat, there is danger while moving against the current, there is implied danger whenever something happens, almost anything at all. The perception may be very subtle, as subtle as the touch of a single current of wind slipping through the cracks on a window, a voice through a thin wall.

There are things without name or face. Lacking these qualities, they borrow names and faces from the storehouses of my mind, long corridors of dusty boxes and broken toys. When the borrowed guise no longer suits their purpose they vacate the shapes and sounds that once clothed them, and I am left with their empty shells, shells that refer not to their nature, but to my own, as it is from my nature that these shapes were borrowed.

The mysterious is forgotten, denied, wrapped in linguistic structures. When it shows its face I will call it an exception and the enduring rules will be maintained. Maybe it is the other way around. It is the bugs, the quarks, the exceptions that are the rule and my desperate attempts at order are the exception. (I know this.) (I don't know this.)

Maybe I was once a tribe. Now I have been broken into small nuclear units in a larger world, units weakly held together by national borders, language, government.

Instead of embracing beauty in an existence of chaos and moving artfully with the flow of energy- I struggle, I crave safety. I let others decide what is good and bad for me. Laws are crafted in far away rooms- old dying men determine what is legal and illegal, moral and immoral, good and evil. I take it in and abide, sometimes shaking my head, something nodding as I slide back into sleep.



There is a flock of birds outside my window competing for scraps of bread. Their cries are shrill and pregnant with desperation. Not unlike my own cries of need when a wave of energy has become too much and I find an urgent need to release.

My brittle fortresses of order will eventually crumble. (I know this.) (I don't know this.) The hot breathed broken faced Real will lumber and slither and dance in, wreaking havoc over my bones and rambling thoughts, thoughts now bodiless, flowing out free as they once were, broken up, discarded, bits and pieces of moments that will never be together again, not in quite the same way, raw matter to be absorbed into the icy turbulent endlessness of the Real. I am always grasping for answers and peddling them and buying them and clinging to them, but they are only words clung to in desperation. (I know this.) (I don't know this.)

Maybe when I look I can’t see the contour of my face or the glint in my eye, but as I hear that bird chirping like a metronome at 5 in the morning, as I see school children running to the white ice cream truck, the mirror reflects more than the skin over my cheekbones, more than the black sphere at the center of my eyes.

I am hiding from the true answer, I am always hiding from the mysterious abyss that looms beyond the constructs of the tongue. (The tongued mind wagging furiously as though it could fan off the eternal with its chatter.)

I have never been free of the mysterious, it was always clinging to me like a skin. But some part of my self, some part of me, recoiled from it and began to spin the great con to hold it at bay.

Deeper even than the body, reflected back are the habits I carry from form to form. Quick moving bursts of energy that move in cyclical patterns, shapes that are hard to grasp, but I can see their trail. Fallen timber, cyclones of anger, streams of tears. If I look, I can see the path of each invisible impulse, like subatomic particles in a cloud chamber flying towards unknown destinations, leaving behind a record of their passing.

Safe, protected, secure, assurance, solid, invulnerability…
these words have cloaked me in artificial meaning and false structured reality.

If I claim to have answers, I am once again a liar, an artisan of the con. Always. There are no exceptions. There are no answers. No words that can hold the Real absolutely. (I know this.) (I don't know this.)
All that I have experienced has been a play of consciousness. There are no reasons but mind, there are no words but sound, there is no band but only silence.

Lusus Naturae

They were born with legs but no arms.
Arms but no legs.
A body that stands alone.

There were pinheads and worms, bearded women and clowns.

We watched with fascination though slightly cracked hands, watching with horror, watching with sorrow, looking with a mixture of disgust and pity.

The claw-footed man. The freak of nature. The DNA that mixed and morphed. The body that was tangled and torn. Beneath the tent they were the wonders of the world.

The amazing twelve fingered man.
The magnificent musical stylings of Max, Block Head.

We came for the hot dogs and cotton candy. Came for the beach. The waves and sun, the slides, the lights.

They hide, not in the shadows as we would all expect, but beneath colorful canvas tents that announce their arrival. We wait for the right time, letting the lollipops sit, letting only parts of our imagination wander into the tent. When we finally move through the parted doors, we find nature staring right back. Birth and bodies in all forms, hands that have twisted and turned into tails. Legs that are arms and hands that are ears.

Their bodies point to our own destiny. It is not all two feet and two hands. There are variations in the middle, some that twist, some that never separate, some that never grow. I look into the mirror, looking through cracked hands that cover my eyes. They are words, those bodies, those things, they are words stripped of love by the candy-eating crowds.

They watch us through bars, through social walls made of heavy brick. Babies stare, mothers cry, I watch through the thin cracks between my fingers. Cross yourself and pray. They move from field to field, town to town, carrying their lions, their tricks, their wonders. They are the freaks, sparking stares and quick glances, sudden bursts of curiosity and horror.

This ticket allows me to look. For thirty-five minutes and a paper ticket we stare at the distortion of nature, the wonders of the planet, the amazing freaks of the sideshow. One ticket and the world opens its sleepy eyes, the people that hide from missing toes and extra eyes.

We who call ourselves normal, who hide our perversions and defects. We who have no extra arms, but carry everything inside that begs to rip apart and turn into evil eyes and sword swallowing demons. All of nature twists inside us, turning and re-combining, turning us into mutants.

Soon I will don my silver sequined hat and fishnets. Soon I will be Lydia the tattooed lady. Soon I will be the wondrous mystery from Egypt, the gypsy with three eyes, the mother of twenty snakes.

Soon the hidden cracks will leak, the hands will spread wide and our true selves will pour, decrepit and slow, hissing as we meet the wind. There will be secrets and slime, muttering and new positions added to every act. Soon it will all begin, but for now they stand alone, the freaks beneath the red tent.

Judgement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Judge me,” the white bodies call.

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

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

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

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

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