Giant

The giant barks.
I bark back.
There is only one way for a giant to act. I know this.
I have read it in story rhymes,
so many stories, so many rhymes.
Then I finally encounter one, I am offended by what I see.

The giant barks, sitting on all fours. 
His sneakers chewed up and smelling of bile.
Where has this creature come from?
Not even the swamp down by Knott’s old road house could have produced such a dank creature.

This is not what I wanted to see this early in the morning.  Out for a morning stroll, thinking about a good breakfast, some sausage and black coffee, maybe a smile from Bettie. I wake from nightmares with visions like this, but to see it barking out on Upper West Tollridge like the full moon was out, like transformation is upon him- I must do something.

The giant barks and I bark back.  I release my savage dog.  The wild rascal I have tamed inside.  My skin starts to burn with the boil of hate.
Soon, the night is black, smelling of old rotten things and dark, still waters that have not moved in centuries.  I took him by surprise, myself, covered in the scent of fish, of old and new cigars.

When the giant barked, I barked back.

Within

Do you fear her? That woman with skin different than yours, with eyes that reflect only pure fire and determination?
Do you fear him? That man that lives a world away…whose sounds seem like rocks scattering on pavement.
Does their stare cover you with cold?

If you fear them, then fear yourself, for you are the man with icy words and you are the woman with death giving eyes.
You are what you think you aren’t.

So fear yourself. Fear the parts of you that remain covered in blankets and lies. Fear the self which hides, escaping only in gasps and bursts of red.

All that is not you is you.
All the things called evil, all the shades describes as dark, all the hairy monsters from fairy tales… they cling to your heart by invisible tendrils. They sleep in the caves you hide, in the places you cannot see.

An oval mirror hangs from the clouds, shining light upon a stage.
I am absolutely, completely oblivious to the Other within me. You…inside me.
It is there.
It is the dot of black in a canvas of white. The one dot.

In a clear blue pond resides a single pebble. Not just water, not just liquid…the Other.

I turn to look at the executives in their high rise suites with disgust. I cry when I hear about the man who could kill a young girl…I watch the bear in terror. I view them as totally separate. As something I could never be, of something I am not.
But that is a blind man’s fantasy. I am all the terror that could ever exist. I am the brute, the animal, the psychotic. I am the woman wearing a machine gun, the young girl holding bananas.

Everything I think I am not, I already am.
Right inside where I do not look, where I coat everything in a golden veneer and self righteous pride.
I am the bigot. I am the pebble in a blue lake, the single seed in a ripe piece of fruit.

Perhaps each twinge of pain can be a reminder. Every time I look at the dusty face of a man I think I could never be. It already exists. It is now. Just like I am nothing, I am everything. Every tendency, every shape, every manifestation of the human and its habits, every shift of energy that flows unabated.

There is no need to fear the Other.
I am the Other.
There is no need to fear the other.
I fear myself.

A Place in The Symbolic Order

She read the email on her small laptop with a slight sense of curiosity. It was a small update from her mom.
“Erin’s doing fine, she lives in Massachusetts, Tess lives in Germany with her boyfriend and she teaches English, Shelly lives in London.”
She nodded to herself. They were all short one-liners about friends she had lost contact with years before, but she felt satisfied and reasonably caught up. Then her brain did a little twist and she smiled when she realized she didn’t know anything. She had no idea what Tess saw every morning on her way to work or what her boyfriend looked like or how she felt close to midnight when she looked out a window. She knew nothing about her old friends, just a few simple words. Germany, boyfriend, teaching. Three simple words that helped her place Tess within the world. She had never even been to Germany, but she imagined Tess walking on a cobblestone street eating a sausage. It was her own imagination that made her feel like she knew how Tess was doing. Those three words gave her images, they gave her pictures and implications that had nothing to do with the Real, or with what was really true, but the three simple words satisfied her curiosity for a moment. Now she knew.

She wondered what her own mother had said about her. Did she make up a few lies or did she simply give them her location on the planet and another word about her job. They probably nodded and were satisfied, just as uncurious about the details as she had been. They would be able to imagine her somewhere within San Francisco and that would be enough. Everyone would nod while taking another bite of dinner, imagining her somewhere next to a red Golden Gate...yes, that was San Francisco She was placed, comfortable within the symbolic order. They would have no idea that she lived in a large studio with a backyard full of trees and flowering shrubs. They would not know that she woke up every Sunday morning and sold bread at the farmer’s market and felt tired afterwards and then would go home and start working and soon someone with a friendly voice would call her and she would smile and feel her chest lift and lift and a smile within her would burst and appear on her lips. They would know none of that, just as she knew nothing about them. She lived in San Francisco. Erin lived in Massachusetts. That was enough to know.

Because a simple word will easily place us within the symbolic order, what we do can easily be explained with a sentence.
“I’m a saleswoman…”
“I’m a musician…”
“I’m writing a story….”
“I live in London…”
You will see a head nod, the chin rising up and down slowly, yes… it is understood. They can picture someone behind a counter and a cash register. They can picture someone with a guitar and hear some music in their head, they can picture a book and a pen…it is all easily understood, you are now known. There will be no further questions, you have been placed within the symbolic order.

Because it can all be so easily explained, we can hide what we do. Never mind that the dark mystery envelops you in a crystal sheath and takes you beyond the realm of words, somewhere that cannot be explained. It is not for the world to know.
People are satisfied with a one-liner. Your emotions, the way the light fades slowly out the bedroom window and makes you feel like the twilight holds every secret in the world, it cannot be explained with a word and it can never be known. They think they know you with a word, let them. The things which cannot be explained with words will always remain invisible. If it cannot be explained, it will not be seen.
We can hide what we need from the world even when we live among the crowds in the city. We can even show ourselves to them, we can show our books and art, and as long as there is a word to describe it (colors on a piece of paper is called “art”) then they will feel like they understand. If what is true is spoken, then it will be changed. It cannot be otherwise.

A woman is working undercover for the CIA. She pretends to be the girlfriend of a gangster and follows him around the world, reporting his whereabouts whenever she can to the authorities. In her role as the gangster’s girlfriend, she pretends to be sexually interested in another man in order to lure him into her bedroom to gain his trust. It will be his trust in her which makes him go to a secluded field and wait for a man which will never show up, which is what the gangsters want. But after sleeping with him, she develops true feelings for him. What she had once pretended, what had once been a cloud of dust and lies has become real.

A young boy wants to be a doctor. He sees his father dressed in a white lab coat, grabbing a thermos cup of coffee before heading out the front door to perform a few surgeries, and that is what he envisions for himself. He wants to be in that lab coat, kissing his wife goodbye before he goes off to save a couple of lives. The boy spends his evenings studying a mountain of books and because of his intense effort, he gets into college and then becomes an intern in a hospital a few miles from a choppy ocean. After a few years of intense memorization and fourteen hour days and many tests, his internship is complete and he is now a doctor. He now wears a spotless lab coat and walks on the shiny linoleum floors with shined shoes. Patients call him “doctor” and he interacts with them using a tone of authority. As a sign if status, he buys an expensive watch, which is what every doctor on his ward wears.
The only thing Real is the watch. It can be seen and felt. The symbolic order creates the “doctor.” There are extensive ideas of what doctors should do and wear. How they should act, what they should drive. None of these are inherently real. These things do not make a doctor, they do not determine if someone has the know how to set bones or perform surgery. A lab coat does not make a doctor, but within the symbolic order, it does. The role of doctor is adopted and acted out.

In the symbolic order, little girls are given dolls and tea sets and pink clothes. The babies do not come out of the womb asking for these particular things, but they are given them by adults because within the symbolic order, that is what girls play with, that is what they like. Little boys like sports because they are told they do. They prefer blue because they are given clothes in that particular color. Eventually, after enough time, little boys do actually like basketball and little girls really do like to play with their dolls. What was not real to begin with has become real. The girl is placed in the symbolic order as a girl, she acts like a girl and is given “girl” things and then, she becomes a girl. Pink clothes are not an inherent part of having a vagina, but within the symbolic order, at least in the United States, it is.

If a little boy is only given pink clothes and tea sets and baby dolls, he will probably grow up liking them and playing with them. It will be all he has ever known. But when he steps into the broader symbolic order, where most boys play with trucks and wear blue, there will be a serious clash. To the boys in his school, he will be seen as “other.” They will not understand why he is not like them, and they will search for a way to explain it and place him within their symbolic order.
Placing someone or something within the symbolic order is a quest for Order. To make sense of chaos. The boy who likes pink because he was given pink (just like the other boys like blue because they were given blue) will be called gay or sissy or whatever word can be used to place him in the symbolic order. It will be the word used to understand him. One word will be enough to provide the explanation.

Our purpose is to be awake within the symbolic order. It existed long before us, it will continue after the last breath of our body. Our purpose is to be free to fit in or not. Our purpose is to be awake enough to have a choice. The left hand path is the path of breaking the rules of the symbolic order.
The symbolic order has been given to us, it has been placed on us since birth. It was imposed upon us by parents and teachers, just as it was imposed upon them as infants. No one chose it, we stepped into the role that was placed before us and pretended to “be” until we “became.” The left hand path breaks the rules of the symbolic order. That is one of the choice at our disposal. We can also choose to fit into the symbolic order without becoming identified with it.

A little boy is dressed in a fancy suit every Sunday and brought to a small church with a white steeple. He copies what his parents do. He kneels and clasps his hands in front of his heart, he bends his head forward slightly and closes his eyes. He asks for things he wants while his eyes are closed and he imagines something, somewhere, fulfilling his wishes. Soon, after enough imitation, the boy comes to church thinking that he has made the decision, he has chosen this path for himself. He is now a full grown believer. He is too identified to see that the people around him on the wooden pews have all been taught this just like he was. They simply imitated the others around them, just like monkeys learn to ride bicycles and wash their socks or bang shellfish until the shell cracks.
We do as we were shown and religion is no exception. Our choice can be to come into the small church, to feel the pressure of the floor as we kneel, to drink in the scent of the candles, to close our eyes and act out the part without becoming identified, without being absorbed into the act, without letting the imposed symbolic determine the real.

The Discovery Of Habit

The house is shining with the bright light of a new day. The cream colored curtains float like sails beneath the golden light of the incoming sun. The house is ringing in its coldness. The thick Persian rugs do little to deflect the chill of polished wooden floors and pale-green walls. Two rooms away, a TV is on and a little Korean boy sits on an overstuffed couch, absorbing the sounds of barnyard cartoon characters while he slowly eats his breakfast of fried rice and a single peeled banana. Two chambers away, past the kitchen, through the dining room, and beneath the ivory archway into the living room, is where I sit, on a mauve loveseat that’s parallel to the similarly styled couch.
I want to use the word hollow…I see a female standing at the edge of cliff while fluttering bats shake the night through her hair. I feel the coldness of the house, the artificial sounds of the TV…something is strange. It is my perception. It is me standing at the side of the slate rock cliff. It is I looking down at the collection of me that is the bottom. The thing that I fear, the thing that keeps me staring in wide-mouthed awe is the subconscious motivations I have just glimpsed. It is that, pulling back the blankets, opening the eyelids and discovering a naked creature that moves without thought, that moves as though pulled by levers and strings. The moment of discovery is truly shocking, like a zap to the core that laughs in my face as I discover the true intentions behind my own behavior. The behavior I have spent a lifetime justifying, spinning webs and circles around it with my mouth. It’s not that I lied. A lie requires some sort of consciousness. This is beyond a lie. These are the lies that I believe as truth. The things I call ideas, philosophies, thoughts, life choices. These are the things I call “me.” And I both want to laugh and cry as I look into the abyss of my machine and glimpse the habit behind the impulse.

We all sat in an artificially warmed room. From the shifting light of a glowing electronic box, we watched others like us self-destruct. Through this new form of entertainment, through the captured pain of another girl who walked and talked like Jennifer Lopez in a movie wrought with conflicting personalities and alcohol… through this, I saw myself.
“I started cutting myself when I was thirteen,” the girl admitted to the video camera. “That’s why I like tattoos, it’s a way of doing it without anyone knowing.”
There were a couple seconds of silence in the room. The sort of time that stops and quiets even a large TV and two speakers. There was something, something moving, shifting on the currents of artificial warm air, moving through the layers of my body and the soft fabric of the chamber. I felt my body, laying curled up between two pillows. I felt myself still, hardly breathing. A couple minutes before, I had just admitted that I had thought about cutting myself. I remembered laying in bed, in a heap of hysteria five nights ago. I had imagined myself walking to the bathroom and parallel to that vision, I had the thought that perhaps cutting myself would feel good. That night I didn’t get up, I didn’t walk into the bathroom, I drifted to sleep under a cloud of sadness and awoke nine hours later with anxiety ridden dreams grasping at my heels. And as we watched this girl on TV, I remembered that I had thought about it too. I had never done it, but I had thought about it. Now, as she admitted that her tattoos were part of her same habit, I realized that I too had a body covered in blue and green ink.
The show was paused. “Did she just say something about you?” I heard my friend ask. Another second that held still in the well of time.
And then I saw. I could think of at least three tattoos that were spawned from a feeling of anxiety that rattled inside like a soot covered wind I could not shake. There was the time Jay (my old boyfriend) was in jail and I was lonely and scared and felt like the entire world was just too strong and corrupt, it was then that I had the lute-playing mermaid tattooed to my belly. There was the unfinished doodle on my inner left ankle. It was me, that night alone in my apartment, while Jay went out to score some heroin, me that had picked up the tattoo gun on the coffee table and plunged the needle into my white flesh. I picked it up out of terror, terror he would not come back, terror that he would. That dark night, I was overwhelmed with his burden and disease, his recurrent need for money that weighed on my young shoulders. And then there was the word “warrior” on my left thigh, the permanent black letters that appeared only a few hours after discovering that another girl was visiting Jay in jail (at a different time), another layer of his lies revealed. I drove straight to a tattoo shop singing and crying to the lyrics of “I will survive,” or if I didn’t then, then I did many times later. The tattooist had looked up from his hunched position over my leg and asked me “what’s up with this word.” The explanation was crooked and an attempt at ego preservation and a self conscious attempt to hide my own addictive fixation on one diseased person. The man nodded while looking straight through my eyes, sensing the pain that my facial lines and puffy eyes had already outed. He nodded and kept working. And that night, as I walked through Bookshop Santa Cruz with a bandaged leg that stung with every step, I held my head higher and noticed that people seemed to be looking at me differently, as though they could see that the orgasmic pain had lifted a dark cloud. And there were more tattoos…stories and motivations even more murky and submerged in layers of hidden consciousness. I had painted large artistic circles around the reasons for a body covered in mermaids and foliage, explanations to justify the act. But now, I had glimpsed the energetic contortion, the habit and reaction I could no longer hide. And now here it was, here it is, explained in raw simplicity by a brown-skinned girl that still had a mark on her arm and streaks of tears across her cheeks.

The house seems strange around me, but it is me, not the dwelling that reeks of strangeness. This raw truth, this evidence has opened before me like a gutted pig. How strange to be fooled by myself. How strange to talk and ruminate and make complicated explanations for a behavior that goes deeper than skin and deeper than bone and deeper than the existence of this machine. I am ruled by these habits, these things that I cannot even see. The nature of lies goes deep. The nature of self delusion goes deeper. We have pulled a small layer back and looked inside, a small bit of the subconscious is revealed, naked in the light of day. It is shocking to get a glimpse. So shocking to realize the extent of circular lies and grand explanations.

Whore of Nothingness

It is the moment that makes itself known. The timeless chamber that is both wide and deep, kept clean and soft by the waiting whore that watches the space. She stands alone beside the great opening, mouth wide and red, moist and dripping. Her long black hair swirls above her, moving like a slow tornado within an underwater kingdom, radiating with the calmness of fluttering stars. Black winds move about her with an air of caution, not the kind humans recognize as fear, but with the reverence reserved for contained power. The currents move in and curl, twirling with the prettiness of invisible smoke, shifting and sprawling like a thousand tongues at work. Licking, covering their symbols with the juice of desire. Their utter devotion is what makes them salivate, forcing themselves to cover their great god with gifts of attention. Within the open portal, the whore moves along the periphery. Like a lady in waiting, wearing the darkest gown of soft black silk. There is nothingness surrounding her, open land and air, all painted shades of black, yet she seems to wait in a contained sphere with the sprawling trees that resemble oaks, but come from another place where names are meaningless and everything is known or taught through intuition. It is there, where the heart is the ruler of people, and the toilers bend over daily, accepting their true nature as false; where they lower themselves in gratitude, accepting their humbling like obedient servants to an almighty power. Extending beyond the horizon, rows and rows of them are kneeling, the great moon is full of power this evening, and the light of countless centuries burns down upon their exposed necks with the coolness of a smothered fire.
The light enters her, with the softness of a warm kiss and the harshness of a terrible rape; moving together in truth as they enter, rocking her center, stuffing her with all that comes from elsewhere. She goes flying back, yet remains still, altered with each step she takes around the portal. Around she walks, from above, she is a flowing black creature made of light and rain, from below, a towering goddess composed of fire and stone. She stops at each of the four rocks laid about the portal, one for each point of the cross. At each point, she stops, bending to kiss each one. She waits for another entering. The whore lifts her dress, exposing the fatal whiteness of her flesh amid the glowing darkness surrounding her. With nothing below, she readies herself for the energy approaching. It comes screaming with a silent voice, painting the black world red with invisible colors. Her heart quickens, her womanly opening expands to accept the gifts. And like a glowing sword, she feels the nothingness move inside. Pushing itself with the force of nothing, with the strength of all, without words and sounds, devoid of any tangible attachment. She radiates from the inside, with the heat of a million worlds, a thousand words and places that have been stripped and condensed to pure energy. They are inside and she pushes the gifts into the darkest depths within, her eyes are wide, her mouth open and wet, her flesh is sticky. She is the whore, the vessel of nothingness.

Pressure

Sometimes all it takes is a little arm twisting, a few spanks, or applied mental teasing. A little bit of stress to bend the machine into working a bit faster, a way that moves more smoothly, more unexpectedly than the pseudo-intellectual frontal cortex.
In the front, the intellect rests in a silver throne and red satin pillows, relishing its command over all organs, cells, and movement. But it is truly a blind king, with only half witted subjects duped into its madness. The real king is the force and energy that stems from the back, from the unencumbered place of deeper, quicker, more intuitive knowledge. This is the domain of clarity. The movement here is quicker, faster than the pompous king can comprehend. It moves faster than doubts and rationalizations. So fast that the pseudo-intellect can have no hope of catching up.
And it comes from pressure. From need and urgency. The Urgency that exists in the dominion of chaos, where everything flows, where creation leaks like golden life sprung from slimy cracks in ancient stone.
In our endless sleeping state, all we see are comfortable beds and leisurely walks. Slow cooked dinners and hammocks in the sun. Every minute that makes its rounds around the endless wheel…a measure of movement. They are all lost…an endless march towards all and none.
A march in place, a march to the left, to the right, moving to the center and disappearing. Going to the dimensions of mathematicians and shamans, tasters of fruit and fungus. Dwell here, within this space of shifting lands.
The space without words.
There are no second thoughts. There are no worries about syntax and ego. It comes. It spills with urgency and purpose. Need. Black rivers and red skies. Laughter thunders in the distance, rattling clouds of moving sunshine.
Captured in a bottle, my love forever stays upon your shelf. Take me with you to the other side, where your secretive dreams are recorded an dissected. On nights covered in black and moist air, you searched for water within rooms of neon and beer. Stale everywhere, but within your red sphere. The moment had begun. With quiet. With the hush of observed holidays and empty streets, we began.
I began.
You opened the door, holding it like a gentleman…into the garden of kingdoms and blue glory…I went with eyes half open and holding your soft hand, poised to catch me falling. A forceful tug pushes me back to center. To the razors edge I walk without finesse. Marked hands and feet dirty the path.
Although it is laid with fine powdered gold, I constantly spit on it, a testament to my zoo-like tendencies. Like a monkey in a cage, I scream and fuss, waiting to be noticed and ogled. A little push, a forceful yank. A bit of metal pain to get it started.

The Impulse to Finish

The human machine, at its most basic level, has as an impulse to finish- to end something; whether it’s a project, a sexual union with an orgasm, or our lives- with death.
Deep inside, beyond rationality, we want to be DONE. It is submerged, hidden among the many folds and crevasses in our subconscious.
It is the uncomfortable present that we wish to push beyond and get rid of.
The machine fears intensity, in sexual encounters, when all the senses are heightened, the machine- alive with energy and emotion, seeks an end.
More than anything else, it needs to release the mounting energy and pressure inside, and so, as a culture not used to sustaining heightened states, we orgasm.
The human machine has evolved to die- to finish this experience. It is the orgasm of the breathing machine. With the last breath, the machine impulse to be DONE has conquered.