The Order Of The Factors

I woke up this morning with a sense that it was too early to be up. It was a work day, but it wasn't time to work yet. I still had a couple of hours. I didn't want the night to end.
I had woken up at the wrong time but I was fully awake, all drowsiness had left me like water falling from a bucket, leaving it empty and ready for something new to come to fill it.
I looked at the clock and saw that it was an hour and half earlier than the time I usually woke up. A pain on the side of my hip had been bothering me for several weeks. It wouldn’t let me sleep for long no matter how hard I tried. I tossed and turned during the night, repeatedly pulled out of restless dreams by the recurring shocks of deep pain coursing through my body like tiny messengers wrapped in red flame.
I was wide awake but I didn't get up from the bed. Instead I lay there, vainly trying to understand what had just happened. My eyes were open but I just stared at the gray ceiling in a kind of dazed stupor. The questions that invaded my mind didn't have enough of a clear shape to require answers. Instead they just floated through my consciousness, mute witnesses to aftershocks of searing pain.
Without saying it to myself, I was making a last ditch effort to sleep some more, to find some remaining crumbs of restful peace before the day actually started. Maybe if I stared long enough, sleep would overtake me and I would recede into dreams for just a little longer, enough to let me flee the looming and unavoidable reality.
But my efforts were in vain. I was wrestled out of any remaining sleepiness by my insistent thoughts, by my shapeless questions, by my undefined images.
I looked out the window and saw that the sky was still dark, a dark blue fading into a lighter grayish color, a heavy night that was slowly but stubbornly changing into another ephemeral day. A touch of red was timidly showing up in the distance, over the roofs of the Victorian houses, all the way to where the very top of the Golden Gate Bridge could be glimpsed surrounded by white shining fog. A clear promise that the sun would be coming soon. Unusual for a city as foggy as this one.
I decided to get up and do something I hadn’t done in a very long time: I would watch the sun come out, I would watch it unfold its warm morning light over the city, a spectacle I once enjoyed in my youth but which had been nearly forgotten with the passing of time.
I stood up, went to the closet and picked some sweaters and shoes in case it was very cold. It's usually cold in this city where I live, very different from where I grew up. I'm still not quite used to it. Something inside of me still wishes it was different. As if the weather would follow my wishes, as if my wishes had a grain of objective truth hidden within their multiple subjective folds.
As I went through the choices in my closet, my memory went back to a particular day in the past. I couldn't remember the details of the day. I couldn't say what had happened or what I had been doing. I could only remember that I had been looking for something. It had been a day when, no matter how much effort I put into my search, I couldn’t bring myself to find that thing which I was looking for. I remembered that I eventually found a solution. The way I finally did find what I had been looking for was by sitting and contemplating the world around me for a long period of time. Quietly. Softly. Subtly. Without rush.
To contemplate in length seemed so easy, so simple. And yet I had not done anything like it in such a long time. Like waking up early, like looking at the rising sun. Things I had forgotten.
When I first moved into this apartment, I made sure I went out to the balcony early to sit and contemplate. I would do this for at least thirty minutes every day before engaging in my daily routine.

I kept this up for a while, until one day I suddenly dropped it. I couldn't really say why. I can't even say for sure that I noticed when it happened. Suddenly it was gone. Like so many things, it just fell out of rhythm, out of step. Maybe I didn’t get that much sleep the night anymore, so it was harder to get up early. Maybe I was just too lazy one day and I preferred the warmth of the bed sheets. For whatever reason, one day I didn't do it. And then one day turned into two, and two into three, and soon my thirty minutes of contemplation were gone and forgotten. Like old shoes or lost memories.
Today I once again remembered. Why did I remember today? I was struggling with pain all night, pain that wouldn't let me sleep. I couldn’t go back to sleep even when I tried with every trick I was aware of, every trick I had been taught.
It then occurred to me that it would a good idea to do that thing I used to do. The pain didn't allow me the easiest route so I had to pick the next option in its place, a route not so easy but full of its own rewards. As simple as that. So unpredictable. So completely beyond my conscious control.
I geared up and went to the balcony like I used to do.
Now the sky had more pinks and oranges than earlier, the darkness had disappeared rather quickly and had left behind a glowing whitish blue that suffused everything with its freshness and light. I heard a bird singing in the distance, I heard the honking of a bus coming from a few blocks away, I heard the tinkling of a little boy's laughter, I heard the murmur of a large sprawling city that was slowly waking up, maybe lost in its own city thoughts, maybe struggling with its own kind of urban pain that forced it to awaken from its concrete slumber even if it would have rather stayed asleep a bit longer, even if it wasn't quite finished with its strange city dreams.
I stood there looking and listening. I noticed my mind getting distracted, a stream of thoughts trying to explain what was happening, what I was trying to do, why I was doing it, how it would happen.
"Focus your mind on what you are seeing, don't worry about your tasks for the day, don't worry about what happened yesterday, don't worry about what will happen tomorrow, just place your mind on this that is in front of you, I just have to remember that one project that is due, I have to remember, I can't allow myself to forget. I just don't have to remember right now, right now I just need to look, look at all of it, but I should make a note, a mental note, but I have to set aside the mental note in order to look, look openly, look without thinking, just remember to get the laundry later, remember later but forget it right now..."
I slowly slid into disappointment. I was disappointed with myself, very disappointed, disappointed because I still remembered, I could still remember what it had been like once. I remembered that I didn’t use to do this before, I remembered that my mind had once been quiet, I remembered that I didn't have this long train of thoughts invading my sacred moments of open perception.
This didn't happen before. I used to contemplate and feel…feel and absorb all the beauty I could take into me, without getting distracted by explanations, without being pulled by responsibilities, without being shaken by running thoughts about obligations and random tasks. I could just sit and look and absorb. I got very disappointed and the dark disappointment just added to my struggles, a speeding downward spiral, a sliding avalanche of negative emotion I couldn't stop or set aside.
I opened my mouth to take a long, deep breath. I went back to a particular memory from my childhood, something I always wished for, something that always made me long to go back, even if it was only to live that one little moment, a tiny scene from a not so pleasant past.
I was probably 10 or 11. My father had promised to take us to the beach the next day, but only if we finished our homework in time. I loved the beach, I was really excited to go, but I had a lot of homework to do and I wasn't sure that I could finish it in time.
I made sure that I got up very early to do my homework before the trip. I jumped out of bed as soon as my eyes opened and I picked up my school notes, ready to start working. The homework was to fill a sheet of paper with the following phrase:
‘The order of the factors doesn’t alter the result’
The teacher wanted us to memorize this by writing it many times on a piece of paper. This was the way we were taught back where I came from. Repetition and repetition and more repetition. Rhythmic cycles of linguistic instruction, calculated to drill thoughts into a young mind overpowered by constant change.
I was getting ready to sit at my desk to do the homework, when I noticed that outside the window there were some extremely beautiful colors, shifting and shining and sliding and twisting just outside the glass.
I got on top of the desk so I could look at them. I stood up on the desk right in front of the window, my eyes wide open, my mind wide open, my attention wide open.
I saw the sky turning from deep black to shining orange and then to bright blue and white… I saw flocks of birds flying by, I heard the noise of some of the people in my house waking up, my father walking to the bathroom and yawning, my mother turning on the stove while whispering to herself. I heard a car passing by with the radio on, I heard distant footsteps coming from a block away, the sound of high heels tapping on cement.
All of it fit in perfectly. Like an enormous jigsaw puzzle made of sound and light, a puzzle I had never before been able to decipher. Everything fit with everything else. Nothing was out of place. Nothing was to be discarded, nothing was to be occluded, nothing was to be set aside.
I saw some black birds flying in perfect formation over the roof of the house across the street, I heard roosters announcing the coming of the brand new day, a new day which I was a part of, a day which I was meant to live.
I was taken away by all this perfectly coordinated beauty for what seemed like forever. I must have stood there on the desk, looking out the window, for at least a couple of hours. And yet it felt like nothing. No struggle, no effort, no pain, no purpose. I had completely lost track of time while I looked out the window, time had ceased to run in the way that I was used to. I forgot where I was or why I was there. I forgot everything except for the beauty that was all around me, the extreme and perfect beauty that surrounded me from all directions, the vibrant breathing beauty that called to me, that made me feel welcome, that made me feel alive.
I found myself standing on the balcony now, trying to do the same thing I had once done so easily, that thing I had done which I never meant to do, that thing which just happened on a morning so long ago.
But I was running into serious difficulty now, I was stumbling and crashing into intangible obstacles. I was having problems with this thing which once had been so simple, problems with something that had once seemed to flow unimpeded, soft and smooth and natural. It was not so easy anymore, not as easy as it once was, not easy at all.
Maybe I thought about it a bit too much, maybe the thoughts of loss were like dark clouds that prevented me from seeing openly. Maybe I had lost the gift of simple observation somewhere along the way and now I couldn't say where or how it had happened.
‘I used to have the experience and not the explanation. Now that I have the explanation I am looking for the experience. I can only find it if I get rid of the explanation that I once worked so hard to find. The experience, the direct experience, just like a child, just like the child I once was…just like the day I was working on my homework and the morning went away in a maze of colors and sound and light… the order of the factors does not alter the results… the order of the factors does not alter the results… it doesn’t matter what comes first, the experience, the explanation…the order of the factors doesn’t alter the results…'
And the morning opened up before me, slowly but surely, while I quietly did my homework, the homework I was finally understanding for the first time, the homework that spoke in a rhythm of simplicity and recurring sonic beats, the homework I still had time to finish.

Fading Light

I lay on my bed as the last of the sunlight fades, giving us, this small little planet, its final heroic effort of the day. In a dim room, bright orange light streams in through the window, hitting just three different spots on the walls. I lay on the bed, just minutes out of the shower, my hair now wet and cold. My pale legs are covered in oversized black sweats with jaggedly cut ends and a man’s thin striped pajama top.

I look at the last bits of light, feeling suddenly aware of the calm chamber.

My hands rest on my stomach, my feet are extended, supported by a jumble of three blankets that cradle them. Tiny gurgles call to my fingers below my pillowy stomach skin.

“Just be here,” I think to myself.

My chest fills with air, then deflates slowly.

I look to the wall on my left, the wall my bed presses against. There is a rectangular orange-gold piece of light, like a bright framed piece of sunlight on the wall. Cutting through the center of the light is the dark shadow of a cross. I stare.

“So pretty, I should get my camera…” But I don’t move. My hands stay on my stomach, my legs remain in the folds of soft blankets.

The cross, such an intense symbol; a torso and head, two arms extended, two feet pressed together as one. I see Jesus on a hill, I see myself in the morning, just after 7. How long did it take for people to realize the shape could be used for killing? For the structure of torture?

Perpendicular to the wall is the French glass door that leads to my kitchen. The top half of the door is bathed in soft yellow light, though the top-center of the door is glowing orange in the sun’s last rays. I realize the light is coming through my small window (parallel to the wall with the cross), hitting the doorway, then the glass is reflecting the image on the wall.

I look back and forth between the wall and the door, not needing to turn my head.

To the right of the door, directly in front of my body, on another small section of wall, are a few fragmented pieces of light, long jagged rectangles and bent circles and little speckles.

I think about the photographer I used to work for, Emily Payne. “It’s called the sweet light.” I can hear her say it, holding her big black camera in her hands. I imagine photographers around the world waiting for this time of day, waiting till they have the ‘right light.’ Do they stay indoors like inverted vampires, waiting only for a special hour? How many moments do they let pass? Is everything overlooked until the sweet light emerges?

I look up to the cross and the door. Has the light changed? It must have, the sun is fading by the minute. I search the color of the door. It’s just a bit paler. Still bright, but lacking intensity. It’s fading in front of my eyes and I can’t even watch it, I can’t see its fading unless I look away and then look back.

I turn to the wall. The cross has lost an arm. It looks like a T on its side. I should have gotten my camera. I could have written something about this and I would have had the perfect pictures to go along with it. I stay in bed. It’s too late now. “Just watch it, it’s fading away.”

How often had I missed this light? Maybe it would be the same tomorrow. Or nearly the same. The earth would not tilt too much in one day. What if I had not laid down? Would I have just sat at the desk, doing something, oblivious to the light around me? How many times have I done that?

I look up again, the light is dull.

“Just be still and watch…” I keep wandering away, I can’t even watch the light change for a few minutes without drifting.

The cross has become a single vertical line. The French door creaks open, pulled by the crack of the open window 15 feet away. As the door comes forward, the cross shifts, creating one solid black line, then another slightly lighter shadow line behind it.

Then the door creaks closed, and a single line emerges on the cross once again. The door’s bright orange light has faded almost entirely. I know that soon it will be completely gone, maybe then I’ll wonder what happened, how it left so fast.

I look over at the speckles of light on the wall perpendicular to the cross. The light there has faded too. Watch it. “Don’t take your eyes off it, watch what’s left.” I hold my eyes. Its fading…but a part of me cannot believe it. I realize I can barely watch it straight on. It’s almost painful. Why can I only see something changing if I look away?

The door is now dark. The cross is gone, and just a few sprinkles of light remain on the wall next to the door. I watch them, intent, finally holding my attention fixed as they fade. Dark, darker, then they are gone.

The phone rings.

Ghost Guest Geist

We prepare the space.
I, in my dirty jeans and yellow gloves, with piles of split lemons on a table. Each one gives beneath my grip, spilling its sour self to the floor. I push the mop, up and down over faded linoleum, humming a soft tune, because though I sometimes forget, music turns a chore into creation.
Fresh cut flowers sit in a short jar on the round kitchen table. The windows have been opened since dawn first broke, bringing in the smell of a cold spring and the faint whirring of dragonflies. I hear the sound of a vacuum cleaner downstairs, and I feel the dirty remnants of a used-up week disappearing into the black hole of plastic parts and noise.
This is our role. The vessel must be prepared before the Guest can come, before the guest can fall from an upside-down kingdom and land in the cushioned chair of our living room, or another body ripe for the taking. When the walls ring with the scent of myrrh and candles provide the only light, then the guest comes, the ghost. The guest.
It comes through, knocking over u’s and h’s and it takes a reminder to know that they are one and the same. That the man knocking on our door was a copy in flesh, a spark of what was to come.
“Geist!”
I hear someone call, and I turn, flipping through the dictionary until I realize once again, that words move like liquid over tongues and years. Adding u’s and h’s, transforming meaning until it takes a mind-shattering look to see their similar shape.
The same old name, with new letters, now books, new times. The same thing, a new form. Flesh to air, blood to power.
I look at my friend, at his plump smiling lips, his bobbing head. The hole was opened, the dishes washed, the bells rung, the seed planted, the intention set. The walls move with the beat of a ghostly guest, a dancer with no feet, a shaker with no hips. But the walls shake, and I feel my head turning, spinning, moving in ways that it has never moved.
I am spinning, moving through crystal water, bending and turning, following the curves in the music while my mouth runs to keep up.
The guest is here, though we only talk about it afterwards, when the lemons are squeezed again into brown mugs and we sit, using words that always come up short. The geist was among us, jumping between body and wall. Using the vessel, the one of concrete, the one of bone. Taking the water, the sound, the spirit, the space, taking it all for a ride, a lift to the place that can only be experienced.
The ghost is the clear water, the guest for which our doors are opened and the floors are scrubbed and our bodies are cleansed. We prepare for the three, the trifecta, the trinity, the one. I turn on the porch light and set out an extra cup, though there is no flesh and blood, though there is no hand, we set the cup, the plate and serve our snacks.

Sculpted From An Alchemist Dream

I hear whispers. They come from the darkened alleyways and linger in the narrow stairwells. From the sewers they rise, snaking around my legs and urging me on, there are secrets to discover…hidden cookie factories and old tea tonics, dragons that sit under plastic awaiting their birth each New Year’s Day. I pick up the gray video camera that has hung around my neck like a dead snake. The object is hard, cold and small…it’s all but dead. No soft breath, no lungs, no heart. My fingers reach for the circular knob that activates the machine, Biiiiiinnnggg…there’s the green light. It’s waiting, now it’s time for me to act. The screen reflects my perception of the sidewalk.
Chinatown is clustered with German tourists. They stand, just as me, filming the swinging paper lanterns, just like me, they turn their cameras toward the rooftops and preserve forever the small windows with laundry hanging to dry. I hold up my camera and trace the lines of a man as he takes a photo of his plump wife. The video camera trails him as he walks down the street eating from his bag of fortune cookies. I follow him until the smell of sweet bread assaults me like a lover in the morning. I turn to the right and see a bakery laden with sesame encrusted buns and a crowd of small Asian women waiting to be helped. My eye is transported through the camera….my attention travels through the machine, the gray piece of plastic that comes to life in my hands. I watch them for a moment, but they live on endlessly in the code, women who fill their bags with cookies and moonpies.
I drift away from them and see a family gathered a couple steps from the entrance. There are two little girls sitting on the ground, one is probably six, the other three. The older sister has her arm wrapped protectively around the younger one in a gesture of fierce love. The mother of the two is kneeling in front of the three year old, fixing her shoe. The father is close by, leaning on a metal post. No one notices me. No one sees a young woman with a camera pointed directly at them.
Standing there, watching them, I feel the sweetness of love from one sister to another. Will their love turn and wiggle and flitter through life’s complications? Will the younger girl lie alone in her bed decades from now, remembering something soft and tender that breathes on her like an alchemist dream? Or maybe she’ll forget everything, her memory robbed like so many other things that get lost along the forking path. I stand and record, until the shoe is tied and the older one reaches down and extends her hand to her little sister.
Their forms drift out of site and I am left with their memory, their tender forms. I step into the shaded quiet of an alleyway. On the right is the open backdoor of a flower shop, the room is covered in buckets of dyed carnations and bright daisies. Five feet away is a doorway outlined in aqua tiles, the address reads “79.” The little gray machine is my third eye, my hand moves with it as I scan the shiny tiles, left from a era when color was king, when cars were moving rainbows on the highway of asphalt. I capture the Germans sipping “horny tea” at a tea bar, I grab bits of their words, sentences in their lives that flop on the floor like forgotten fish, but I swoop them into my net and store them for later.
The streets are crowded and they give me a piece of themselves that I will mix with the graffiti covered vegetarian restaurant and the old woman sitting on a stool at the far end of a jewelry store. I will mix her with the images of barbecued ducks and the young couple that kisses by the mammoth lions who guard the gates of this old town. With their forms, with captured words, with the stolen kiss and the forgotten newspapers that blow like runners down a hill, we will sketch a new story.
Like the Tequihua that we are, the builders, the masons, the musicians, the creators that we are, we will shape it into something new. An ordinary creation. A creation from the ordinary.

Time

My eyes are heavy with sleep. As they linger in the memories of colored dreams, my mouth yearns for the taste of black tea and cream, a signal from my tongue that morning has arrived. The day is bright and young and there are plenty of cars on the road. I am slightly startled by the realization that lots of people get up this early; when I’m usually warm and naked and covered in a heavy blanket, there is an army of school buses and brightly vested crossing guards and morning commuters with coffee for a carpool companion.
I brake at the first stop sign I see. On my left, I notice a plump orange cat trotting down the street, he’s just about to turn the corner and head south, his small padded feet are soundless on the sidewalk. Just as he’s about to pass the first house, he hops onto the house’s front stoop effortlessly, and then he continues for three trots until the step ends and then he jumps back to the sidewalk. I am struck by its fluidity. Walking, jumping, continuing on. He moves as he wants, without a second of hesitation. There’s no time for thought or calculation, he just moves as he should, so inhuman, so unlike me.
I smile as I press the gas and continue on. I make up a two-line ditty about the cat as I drive, one sentence ending in a high note, the other line ending in an extended low note.
I enter the freeway, cars pass me, I pass others. The light is bright, the golden rays hit the side of my face, I like it, but still, I move the visor to block some of its strength. The road curves, winding through the wooded hills just a couple miles from the coast. In a thicket of cypresses, I notice a slated structure of wood at the top of a hill and I’m surprised I’ve never noticed it before. Is it a sculpture? A church? My question is answered as the small gold cross comes into view.
The three lane highway gently winds and I feel my chest making itself known. I bring my attention in constantly, my face is relaxed, there’s not a sound coming from the radio. Just me and the world beyond. This drive is one I make twice a week in the early afternoon, and usually it seems as quick as a blink, but today in the early light of morning, it feels like the journey of a lifetime. For a couple of seconds I panic, wondering if I’ve passed the familiar exit, but no, I see a sign for the junction I need to take in the distance.
On my right is a pretty lake, the deserted body of blue waters that seems too picturesque to be without mansions in the hills beyond. But somehow, it has remained calm and undeveloped. Sometimes I notice hawks circling above, today, it is only my chest that circles with energy.
The well worn journey is different today, although I don’t realize it until later, until the moment has passed and I am once again “myself.” The usual commute that zips by in a whirl of daydreaming and talking voices and instrumental sounds that cascade to me from the local college radio. Today, it’s me and the world, me and my presence, me and my attention, on the lake and the cat and the sculpture of a church that sat there for years without my notice.
It’s me and everything I see…and really, it is not me, it is Us…This, Here. This morning, some of the many “I’s” are actually here, present, and we look into the world and see wonder and secrets and silent steps that are filled with a thousand teachings. The journey is long, the minutes are themselves full and expanding, pushing my perception of the world to the brink. The cars move forward and then recede from my vision. We are all here together, in this bright morning of circling energy and colored visions. Today, I can see them. Broken from the usual habit of mental chatter, I have more time, an extended reality. The drive is the same, just as many miles, just as many minutes, and yet, there is more of it today, more that I see, more that I can feel, more to take and transform with words and shapes and sounds.
How much of this have I missed through the many years of sleepwalking? How often have I truly been alive?

Taormina

The sky is a little particle of dust fallen from heaven, just a rainbow colored sprinkle that oozes to life with the press of a child's finger. A tiny little hand that waves from the open window of a train as the countryside passes in and out of our vision, a tan blur of hillsides and bare branched trees. Small flecks of persimmons, bright as the harvest moon wizz by like a blur across a screen. Each panel passes, click, click, click, like fast edited scenes, and my memory captures it like the camera I never had. A woman with laundry in a wicker basket, hanging each item out in the sun pale autumn sun. The bare tree, full of sweet orange ornaments, just waiting for a farmer to harvest it or a poet to transform it. Honor this beauty! This silent gift that will stay, even after the years click on, tick, tick, tick, tick, as fast as the second hand on my pocket watch. It’s just feet from the passing train. The golden hills, the trees lined up in exact patterns, put precisely in their place at birth. Solid rows in each direction, we call them Berta trees.
The man comes for my ticket. I see him twenty feet down the aisle, sending fear through me as I see his official hat and bag filled with empty paper tickets to issue. I look for my ticket, but it’s lost in the red bag and I run to the bathroom, shepherded by the flock of boys who hope to squeeze into my pants. Their attention grows when the official passes and their arms begin to surround me and they keep asking "why, why?" but no, we can not make love in the train bathroom. I will not drop my cargo pants, stained in olive oil or lift my flannel shirt that, in and of itself, is an assault to the dictates of fashion. I see the tracks when I look into the toilet bowl, the gravel covered tracks are a fast moving deposit for our waste and I wonder about the people on either side of the tracks. Do their vegetables grow strong with the fertilizer? Do they sit on their porches in the setting afternoon sun and speculate at the passing people, moving by at 60 miles an hour, passing them forever, never to return.
And I want to talk to them and hang my laundry too and eat their orange fruit. But how can I ever return? There is no sign announcing the place. This is the place in between other places. It is lined by pretty bare trees and the orange fruit of fall and the gray clouds of coming storms that follow me like a welcomed plague. I only have one moment, one second, to freeze them in my mind.
The woman, with her dark blue skirt, large from a lifetime of pasta and pure green olive oil, hangs her laundry on the lines by the train. Will her clothes smell of silent stories and passing lives? Will their fibers hold the encapsulated gazes of those that saw them, just for a second? The white shirts on the line…the little jeans of a child, the long dark skirt of a humble woman.
Frozen in time, for once, the memory is even better than the camera, the camera I do not have. The language I do not posses.
12 hours later, we snake along the coastline, I see a beach so pretty, so tropical, with lush trees and flowers, and out the window is a vision of paradise with blue water and a little island, shaped like a bunt cake and topped with a medieval house like a candle holding the possibility of dreams. I look out the window, enraptured, this place… I have to know its name! Where am I?
I look to my right, out the window, looking for a sign, I smile in the beauty of this colorful land. I grab my paper and pen, ready for a sign, I hold still as the island passes quickly, the vision in my mind, the hope that I can find this place once again. I look up, in the seat across from me is an elderly nun, she smiles and says "Taormina." My eyes widen, I point out the window, I point down, indicating the earth… "Taormina?" I say. She nods and I hand her the paper and pen to right down the name. She smiles softly, her face an orb of kindness, of understanding.
She reads me, like the verses of her bible, she reads me, clear and loud. She knows. I feel warm, good to be known, for a second, good to be read, to be understood, without language, to be read like a book that hasn’t yet faded into oblivion, to be ingested like a landscape that passes so fast by my window that I can only barely grasp it in the tenuous theater of my mind.

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.

Red Moon

I drove in the early morning hours, while the sky still held on tightly to its black and the stars were sparkling, beaming in their true nature as suns. Both hands were on the wheel as my body tilted slightly to the left as I became one with the curve in the road. I stopped as the headlights illuminated a red and white sign. A moment of rest. There were no cops, I was completely alone in the darkness, and I paused. In front of me was the city. Far down the hill, miles into the distance, it was laid out like a softly slumbering child. The street lamps flickered, soothing vibrations of light drifted towards me, like the stars high above that I could never reach, even if I drove for a thousand years. The houses were just faint ghosts in the darkness, un-aided by the bits of light from the street or heavens. I could vaguely distinguish the soft rolling hills that made the floor of the city. I could sense the whispers of houses, condensed together, side by side, it was just the gentle rise and fall of little boxes that revealed the quiet hills. Even from my height, the freeway was an obvious snake of electric lights. I could not hear the mechanical river, but headlights appeared sporadically every couple of seconds, unimpeded in their journey forward. The train station paralleled the freeway, cutting through the city with its silenced roar of regular intervals. I could see the linear track, outlined and quietly resting in the glow of its bright bluish lights. Beyond the city lights, far ahead, was blackness. The dark was the great mouth of the ocean, and it was not silent, it roared with life in the dark and in the light. There was no distinction for its sound and movements, it came and went continuously, beyond the seasons, beyond the clock. And although I knew it was there, its sound did not carry to the height of the small mountain; but it was there, like an abyss just lingering, filled with life beyond measurement, patient and never gone. For centuries it lapped the shores, the empty hillsides, the horse and carriages, the electric cars. Wave after wave came, rocking the shore in endless cycles. Above the water, hanging low in the sky, was a crescent moon. Its open chalice reclined as if providing a bathtub for fairies, and it hung beautifully against the blackness. But unlike any other night, any other night in my memory, the crescent that hung was red. A burnt red-orange. I gasped, my mind flipped through the possibilities for this wonder. A layer of fog? No. Eclipse? No. The moon is red! What celestial occurrence could make the silvery slice red? I had seen yellow moons, big and nearly taking up the night sky, but nothing close to this color. And would the explanation change its beauty or magic? The moment, a little girl in a little black car, perched on a hill in the darkness, upon a rotating earth suspended in a universe of planets and suns and comets and gas. The moon, a constant, the constant companion to this planet. Alone at night, I reach to it as my friend. You, who are so strange. I, upon, the crust of this planet, among the city lights and construction that cover the crust of soil like a metal rash. Beyond the surface, there is moisture and gas and small particles. Beyond the surface, there are icy bits of rock and planets of fire- atoms that combust and implode, there are rings of rocks and holes and billions of suns surrounded by their own solar systems. Beyond that, it’s incomprehensible. I ask "what?" I ask "why?" I shake my head- answers are impossible, I don’t even really know the questions.

On A Game Board

My left hand is on the top left curve of the gray steering wheel, my right hand is a mirror of it, gripping the thin piece of plastic. I feel the urge, the desire to release my left hand and caress the smooth, long fingers that grace the nape of my neck, but I cannot…there is too much at stake. The paved road is worn and bumpy, there have been too many cars travelling too long and too fast. The white lines clearly indicate our prescribed path and I need every bit of attention to stay within them. My eyes awaken to the game, and we are among the many players in shiny colored objects moving across the board. The road begins to split, green signs with block yellow writing point in different directions, my left hand reaches for the knob, it turns on the blinker and we merge seamlessly into another path. The metal machine is powerful, I awaken to that knowledge with a tinge of wide-eyed fear. Can I handle this beast? This is more power than I should be granted, the force of our velocity is too great. I imagine turning the wheel sharply and driving us over the freeway’s edge, sending us plunging into the bushes below. A red car passes us on the left. Another player moves. A discarded piece of trash drifts in the wake of rubber tires and disappears beneath the hood of the black truck. In front of us, a red car changes lanes. No one talks. There cannot be words, there cannot be listening. These moves require me, they demand my attention. There’s a shiny building over there, the reflective windows shoot back our vision. In the mirror, I see the green player switch paths. The cement bridge is wide and thick, the tires are making gripping sounds. The wind pulls us onwards and in the distance, the buildings loom in the hazy sunshine. My hands are on the wheel; my face, nearly expressionless; my eyes, dead ahead. The wheels pull us onwards. The pedal moves us onwards. The freeway begins to end, taking us down one last curving slope, we are moving too quick and I grip the wheel and press the brakes in muted panic. This is real and unreal. There is a red stoplight, I gently push on the brakes and we are still. My heart beats, my eyes are dead ahead, a girl in calf-high leather boots walks along the crosswalk, her arms swing confidently at her sides. A young woman crosses a couple seconds behind her, she’s wearing tight jeans and black high heel shoes, the jeans are a little short. Two other girls, they are more round, wearing jeans and sweatshirts. The wind blows and the tree tops on the curb rustle. There is a trash can, it’s green. The light is still red. The light is green, my foot presses on the gas pedal. Our turn to move. There are other cars on both sides of us. There is a red light ahead, we slow down. We stop. There are groups of people at the crosswalk waiting for the signal. There is a man in a maroon turban talking on a cell phone. They cross, I look at them as ghosts. We are ghosts. A bicycle. A man. The building. We turn left. There are cars ahead, my foot presses the brake. Onward. Raw. Data.

Labyrinth Walk

I stood on the border looking in. There was a great circular labyrinth in front of me and I stood on the edge, where the stone edged path began. Should I go in? I wondered. Is this the time? I wondered. Will there be another opportunity? My mind was clouded with thoughts, tinged with self conscious doubt and human concerns. As I whirled in the pro and cons and brain activity, I felt the moment closing. It was moving past, rushing like a slow current, but definitely moving…drifting through my finger tips as I stood there debating. The moment moved as would the stream past a rock, unafraid to leave me in its wake. I could feel the three women behind me squirming slightly, their bodies preparing for departure, ready to move up the hill and begin our lunch. I felt it all passing. I knew it was leaving, maybe forever.
A small bird chirped in a nearby tree. A soft breeze blew wisps of hair across my forehead. Without a thought, my foot took a step, my first step on the labyrinth. And as my foot took the step, my mind was surprised. It had been left out of the decision. It was being taken for a walk. I thought, "oh, I guess I’m doing this." And my mind was shocked, but willing to go. I looked down at the path directly in front of me, at the narrow bit of dirt outlined in gray stones. I remembered myself. I remembered what to do. My right foot touched lightly upon the path, I felt the earth beneath me, I felt the heel as it made contact with the earth. Each step was slow, each movement deliberate and noticed.
Nearly thirty steps in, my mind started to dart. "Was this a good time for this? Will they be mad? Did I mess up the space? This is probably taking too much time!" And then, a calmer voice, another "I" said, "you’re doing it now, you can’t turn back, you’re in the middle, you made the decision…so do it as best as you can." My hands were swinging, the air drifted through my curled fingers like soft kisses on a journey. My left knee bent as my body prepared for the next step. I turned the corners carefully and slowly, watching the ground as the outlined path turned back on itself. "This just keeps going!" I thought. I put my attention back on my feet. I felt my arcs stretch with the forward movement of heel to toe. The breeze touched me again and tousled my hair.
When I had started, I heard the voices of the three women on the outside. I imagined how they saw me, how I looked from the outside. They kept talking and I felt safe in their neglect. But when I was focusing on my feet, somewhere along the way, their voices had dropped away. The space was silent except for the rustling of nearby leaves and the occasional car tires swishing on the asphalt of the road below. It was me and the labyrinth. Me and the elements. Me and my effort. Perhaps me and their attention.
The rings were getting smaller, I turned corners more often until I reached the center. In the small round center was a mosaic stepping stone that had small stones and beads upon it. I closed my eyes. I saw small sparks of electricity playing on the canvas of my eyelids. I raised my hands out to the sides, opening them wide then raising them above my head and finally bringing both hands together in front of my chest. Oooooommmmmm, the sound was not as pure as it is when I intone it sometimes, alone in my bedroom, but I noticed that fact objectively and I held my attention on the sound and my diaphragm, even as the sound cracked slightly. I pulled my stomach in as my rounded mouth continued with the elongated sound. I stood in the center, feeling the soft breeze, feeling the sun, hearing the sound of birds, feeling quiet, yet electrified and alive. My ego had fallen and I was overcome with a sense of lightness.
My body turned back. I took a step, I raised my leg like a solider, placing it firmly on the ground. I took another step, a very short one on the tips of my toes. I walked back through the rings, sometimes emphasizing the movement of my hips like a supermodel, other times walking erect and with a sense of formality. Other steps, I glided. I alternated between movements, improvising each like a chaotic dance with my attention as the thread of consistency. And the more I played, the more alive I felt. My smile increased the more I played and I shed more of myself upon the soil.
There was nothing else. My past was a distant part of my imagination, the future was never coming. There was only each single step and the thousands of movements which seamlessly created it . The labyrinth and I were playing. We were lovers in union. Dancers intertwined. Actors upon a stage. Beings in a living void.

Black

I spin the paper color wheel. In the color spectrum, black is the culmination of all, black it at the center, black is all around. Red, white, yellow, green, violet, aqua, every shade in between the primaries, every subtle hue and variation, blended and pure, black contains them all. It is the ultimate mixture, the pure blend. The night sky, shining in darkness, it contains all our naked desires, all the brutal thoughts covered in polite conversation and gracious smiles, all the loving smiles that flow like a river without end, without a source, without an ocean a thousand miles south. The starless black covers me, seeping through my open bedroom window unabated, invading me like the man I love, coming in and conspiring with all the sparks I cannot name. Darkness is the universe I perceive, finite in my understanding, infinite in truth. The name given for hours without sun, it covers the blue of day, the light of nothing with the culmination of all. It is the immense dinner plate with everything heaped upon it, gravy mixing with peas and touching the virginal apple pie. Everything that ever was, every thought that burst shining with splendor from an idealistic youth, every hearty chuckle of laughter from a newborn just discovering their hands and feet, every groan from lovemaking at its peak, all this is mashed and mixed and spread across black. Next to the lumpy sauce and sparking water. Next to the shiny fork that wishes it could poke the voluptuous girl in fishnet stockings, while she hopes you peak into her uncrossed legs. The little candle burns softy upon the table, lapping gently as the waves of wind and hot air caress its flame. Beyond the lit kitchen, the night outside is dark, the wind is roaring and trash cans slide down the street in gusts of released tension. Misfit cans make their escape, rolling without a thought of destination. I hope to stay and avoid the wind. I hope to stay and hold the softness of your skin in the dark. I hope to kiss you in the all consuming darkness of your room and bury my face in the finality of your hair. Blackness is me and you, in the man who died a couple minutes ago in a burst of warm white cream and a final grunt. It is the girl walking hurriedly down the sidewalk with a cell phone in her hand. It is the gray tombstone in Germany and the Dodo bird. It is the amoebas that spawned life, it is the asteroids that tear through the atmosphere and dissolve into dust before they meet my upturned face. Black is the stew of eternity. The witch’s cauldron of peas and carrots, stones and hearts, swords and fingernails and dinosaur bones. Every sound that has been made, every emotion felt, every orgasm that escaped. Within it, within this color, is everything. Each shape, each equation and unsolved problem. The sweat of your passion, the tears of my pain. The screams of the dying as they struggle for their last gulp of air, the shouts of rebellion as fire lights the night. Each century with its layers of texture, each murmured prayer and taste of salt. Each myth recited and kernel of knowledge discovered. Blackness holds it all. We are in its arms and it rests like a lover in mine. We are here, the collectors, the deconstructionsts. The observers and creators. The destroyers. The writers, the ghosts that pick up lost pieces and make puzzles from mosaics. Foraging with blindfolds and baskets, we gather small sounds and memories to form our songs. My voice cracks as I wander half blind in the night, singing a soft melody while burning trees remind me of your flesh.

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.

Heart Shaped Stone

The first white heart shaped rock that tumbles past my legs makes me think of you. Instantly, I reach into the cascading water at my feet. Moving past, with an objective force that never dies, never loses its purpose. The little heart slips from between my fingers, hitting the ground with a bounce, then gliding on, just a hair above the stone filled landscape. I plunge into the waters, my fingers search for it. Beneath the weight of clear liquid, I open my eyes; the salt of heavy water does not sting, but I am solid in my purpose, only the single vision of your presence pushes me forward, searching for a gift. Submerged to my hips in warm waters, I am amid calm and tumultuous movement. It does what it must, what it knows without thought. Without teachers or cues, the waves push in and out, in and out…in and out. A constant… they move with the moon, caressing the weather, soothing the heat, screaming with the gathering of dark clouds. Entwined until the last bomb extinguishes all, until the planet freezes or blows again into the smallest of particles.
Will I laugh, lost in the blackness of your chin, among the shadows created by a myriad of twisted vines? Will I cry, devastated by the loss of your warm arms? Will I transcend the ideas of simple emotions, my thoughts disguised as truth? Will ideas fade into the nothingness of light I have heard of but cannot remember?
Matter, water, spirit, blending into the strangeness of a forgotten invisible flower. I dwell in the land of stones, multicolored rocks with the letters of your name spelled upon them. But to the remains of my mind, they are simple symbols, devoid of meaning. I see only curved lines, or perpendicular arrows that intersect. There are no sounds in this land, no language that I can hear.
When will the stones begin to talk? What must I learn to receive their gift?
An old cotton skirt hangs off my hips in shreds. Barefoot, I climb small hills of tiny rocks. At each crest, I see a thousand other mounds in each direction. I walk over them gingerly, the pebbles in my pocket create a subtle symphony for my steps, matching the rhythm that forces itself from my body. My bare breasts jiggle with each movement, dark from the sun, they give homage to the light each morning at daybreak. A wanderer in the desert landscape of a thousand stones, I journey, with only a memory to keep me sane.
The water, the heart shaped stone…did you ever have it within your grasp?
Or was it only an attempt quickly washed away by an incoming wave?
Does it sit upon your altar, or within the shrine made of mermaid bones and silken fish tails, where tiny teeth and lost jewels create the mandalas that decorate underwater graves?

What Will You Be?

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

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

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

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

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