Winds from Four Corners

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Facing The Beast

How can I write about something if I myself cannot even do it? If I let my red dragon tail twist and bend, knocking over buildings and my prized statues and half built friendships? How can I even begin to instruct? To write?
I hold it in my mind for less than a second. Its concept a small flickering flame in the tidal wave of oily black liquid and molten rage. I know what to do, I have heard about it so many times, I have practiced it in the quiet of my bedroom for months every morning, but when I see the tip of reality, when I encounter the real-life moment begin to blow and the filaments inside that hold me up begin to burn, then I run.
Running takes many forms. There are the tears, the ones that lately have become giant orbs of rage seeking to destroy myself and others. The visions of metal flying, sirens wailing, crushed bones and rivers of blood.
There is the hiding. The rage that wafts like air through wall and carpet, the absence of words the only mark of strangeness. The seed of resentment I hold on to for days, years.
Holding and holding, stroking, watering, kissing. I keep it mine, reminding myself of it when all is well, and then I remember, and then I’m mad once again. Cold with fear and rage. Closed as a cement box.
I see it all. It is not right. I am under no delusion of pureness, authority. I see the error in my words, in my steps, in my gestures that signify more than my tongue could ever spit, but they keep coming, for this beast is wild. It lacks a master. I am the beast.
So how can I write about it? What can I say if I watch the city burn, the statues crumbles, the houses cave? I watch, hating the terror, but doing nothing to stop the flames.
I feel three threads, tugging. Around one nipple is the Voyeur, watching it all melt. Around the other is the Mender, seeing it as pettiness, knowing it should end.
But around my heart is the braided rope, holding on to the pain. It holds its indignant head high, feeling righteous, waving its colored flag.
I feel them all, yet I sit paralyzed; not acting, not changing, letting the center rope pull me to the grave.

Everything Is Nature

The room is lit with a bright artificial white glow. The space is wide and long and the powerful light bulbs hide high overhead, their distance is like the sun, far away but felt by everything beneath it. A long stretch of black and white ads run across the back wall of the bowling alley. The smooth wooden floors of the lanes gleam with thick varnish and a weekly dousing of wax. Echoing through the space is the low rumble of heavy bowling balls. They hit the wood of the lanes. They hit the white pins waiting at the end. The temperature is a perfect 69 degrees. Everything about the room is artificial. Without a word, it manifests its aim, the geometric perfection of clean lines. There is no wave, no tilt, just constant even shape. There is nothing natural about it. Not the wood floors, long cut from the old growth forest. Not the paper used to create the ad campaign along the back wall. The bowling balls and white pins are smooth and nearly perfect. Nothing about this chamber is found in nature. There are no rocks so round, no trees so straight. It is a created room, a created game. But this is nature. It is here, on earth. On a flattened piece of land, in a city shrouded in mist and lit by a distant sun, it is “natural,” mutated and rearranged, but “natural.” The sun, a million times removed, is still present here. The nearly flawless shapes and lines, they exist because of the gleaming orb a million miles away. The wood of the floors grew with heat. The metal foundations were forged with tools from the earth and fire. The artificial composition of the pins and bowling balls are a conglomeration of substances transformed through human hands and ideas. And the humans playing the game, walking in mismatched shoes, smiling after rolling a gutter ball. They exist only because of the sun. Light brings them food, it nourishes plants and animals. Light gives them the ability to build and create artificial worlds with bright lights and wide lanes. The room does not smell of dirt and pine. It houses all the strange creations of the world, but the elements of the earth are still present. The life blood, the moving red vein, is here as well. The flowing red vein moves through the people, moving and walking and rolling. It moves through the filament of the lights overhead. What was once a living, breathing tree is the ground at their feet. What were once buried elements in the soil are now bowling balls. Everything has been transformed, but it has come from the one source. The source of it all. The sun. And while they play indoors, while they try over and over to hit straight rows of white pins, the sun shines outside. Far away, perhaps covered by clouds, but it shines. There is nothing unnatural, not in the cleanest white room, not in the grocery store or chemist’s laboratory. This is nature. Every thought, gust of wind, packaged food, water bottle. Each object is affixed with a million invisible tendrils, tied one to the other, eventually finding its way back, winding and curving through machine and heat, finding its way to the brightest star.

Well Done

The day was strange…I was strange. I still held onto the anger from last night. A little bubble that I could not burst. A vague layer of gauze, the almost transparent film of sadness cloaked my inner fibers. I could see through it, a small part of me knew that the sun was shining and I was breathing and my love was strong, but another part of me held onto the small bubble of insecurity and sadness and a little gray cloud lingered over me.
A steady stream of passersby smiled at me as we made eye contact. I sat behind my small booth of incense and soap and sachets. Maybe the fragrance of the forest brought out their smiles. I looked at my cell phone for the time, it was almost 2pm and I still had not eaten, I left the stand unattended, grabbing my phone and tucking it in my back pocket and headed to the Thai food vendor for a couple of vegetarian egg rolls. When I reached the head of the small line, I realized they had sold out, so I ate a small bowl of rice with peanut sauce, and for the first time in my two years of working the farmer’s market, I bought a Thai iced tea. I took a long sip from the straw, the sweet milk and tangy black tea felt wonderful in my mouth, delicious sliding down my throat. I walked through the crowded market, sipping on the tea more slowly now and I let myself be distracted by the many people around me and the colorful vegetables that lined both sides of the street.
Back at my stand, I saw a couple patient customers waiting for me. I put the tea down and started offering samples and making change and offering smiles. But something was different. There had been an internal shift. My voice was louder, my eyes were a bit wider and when I talked, I moved closer to the customers, leaning in on the table that separated us and moving into their space. With this new internal state, I talked without fear or hesitation. Usually, I would sit on the back fender of my truck and try to play the salesman part smoothly, acting as if I didn’t care whether they bought or not, but always hoping they would. In the current state, I talked, and gave suggestions, but I truly did not care if they bought something or walked away. I had become less identified with the result. I knew that I was different, I knew the black tea had brought it on and as it passed through me like a series of waves, I started to feel just a little out of control, like I was swinging my body wildly to an invisible symphony, spinning and spinning and my arms were out and my head was swaying…but I might just hit a wall at any second.
Just then, an old customer who had become a friend came up to me. As we talked, we were interrupted constantly by curious customers who stopped to pick up Douglas fir sachets and tried to smell the packets of incense through the cardboard boxes before I offered them the open packages. I noticed the difference, the more Steven and I talked, the more people came up to the tables and attempted to interact with the scented products, the heat of our linguistic exchange got the atoms bouncing, bringing moths to the flame.
"wow, you’re doing great business!"
"it’s because of you, I was sitting like this all day," and I imitated myself sitting on the car’s fender, watching the crowds pass.
He laughed.
"well, good, I’ll stay."
Another person walked up and I offered a smile and a "hello." The girl smiled as she smelled the soap and I launched into some facts about the soap. She nodded and we fell silent and I looked at Steven, "wow, I’ve only had a couple of sips of the Thai iced tea and I’m all messed up!" I looked at him with wide eyes.
"well, you’re a dancer, things come into you and you’re really sensitive to them and you react."
"yeah, but just a couple of sips!"
"you’re sensitive," he said with a shy smile.
I looked at the red cell phone on the table. "I guess I should start cleaning up, the market is almost over." I turned behind me to the open truck bed and I looked at the long inventory list on the clipboard and my pen that was sitting beside it. I surveyed the contents of my truck bed. There were open cardboard boxes and big empty plastic bags and plastic storage boxes. I looked over my shoulder at the display table, there were baskets of sachets and a rack of incense and soaps and teas and smudge sticks.
My heart started beating, the tea had tapped into my stream. I looked around, slightly disoriented, unsure where to start, how to begin. It was a process I did every Saturday…empty the contents of the car onto a retail friendly table, and then pack it all back up at the end of the day and drive off to the warehouse. But today, the task seemed huge. I felt faint wisps of panic, I heard the silent explosions in my bloodstream.
Then I stopped. Steven had been talking and I had been half listening to him, but he stopped for a minute. I held steady for a moment. I reached out extremely slowly for the black pen, I bent over very, very slowly to write the date on the inventory list, then I put the pen down very, very slowly. I stood up straight, very slowly and looked at Steven, a calm smile on my face.
"well done," he said.
I smiled and said nothing more. He began to talk a little bit and I listened while packing things away. I took no more sips of the tea.

The Elephant in the Well

In late August 2008, a baby elephant fell into a well in north central Sri Lanka. The concerned villagers knocked down a section of the cement well so the elephant could escape. After crawling out, the elephant began charging the very villagers who had rescued it.
I’ve fallen in…into the realm where words define all shapes. Where I truly believe I am Me. I’ve been in here for years, swimming in small circles within this cage. Between breaths I look up and see the sky, I see the people in rags that peer over the sides, throwing down bits of food and small orange flowers. I keep swimming, never quite dying, but never really living. The walls are high….cool and smooth stones form the walls of my circular home. I keep paddling, knowing no other way. There is nothing to grab onto, no crevasse in which to burrow. I’ve fallen into the largest of holes, the water is at my neck, and if it rains, I’ll be covered for sure. I look up from the bottom of a towering well, the light of day is bright and visible. Above, I can hear a few voices, faint and singing soft melodies. They have sent down an orange flower, cradled in the beak of a small song bird. The sky changes, I see blue, then clouds of red, then wisps of passing rainbows. But I am at the bottom, in the hole of water dug deep into the red earth.
My falling…it happened without thought. I cannot remember another way. Was it my first breath which began the fall? I am in deep murky water, and yet, those that offer me help, those that break the walls so I may run and breathe…it is those people I run to destroy. I do not run to the poachers or the politicians, I charge towards the ones closest to me, the ones that still clutch rocks and hammers they used to break me free. These are the ones near my feet, the ones I can kill with a breath. Within me I just cannot see the people that have sacrificed a part of themselves so that I might touch land once again. After their work, after their gifts, I run towards them with all my force, unable to control my habits of the wild.
Truly, I am unaware of my self. I run to kill the first threat. Just a baby, but I see danger everywhere. In the smiling man, in the song I cannot sing. In the fog as it rolls towards me, bringing disguised shadows and darker fears. I am drowning in the waters of my own creation, but I am unable to see the glittering plates stacked high with gifts and knowledge, held by the most beautiful of hands. Take your freedom and use it they chant. But the quest for water does not leave. Thirst deeper than my mouth, thirst deeper than the most water-less of deserts creeps, and I go looking for the watery filled wells. It is my habit to fall. Sometimes I wait for a willing hand, but will they come again? If they do, this time, will I remember their sacrifice?