Instructions

When the springs were longer and the earth was not covered in salt as it is now, you once asked me how to construct a talisman. At the time I told you to gather yellow crystals along the ridge of our mountain and construct a bag of fabric and twigs. At the time, I thought you were not ready for more complicated instructions. It was not just the degree of difficulty you might have had in procuring the substances and objects, but I also thought you were not ready for the power of a more sophisticated talisman.
As I said, the springs have gotten shorter, and there are many we could count and remember in the years we have spent together, so as I survey the white streaks in your hair, as I watch what was once a more impatient, angry man and see the slow, deliberate person before me at the fire, as I observe in simple detail the careful watch of a man that has grown into what will be a fine king, I see that you are ready. 
It has taken years, harder work than I am sure you initially thought, but as I have tried to show you through example, change is possible. As I have told you many times, kings are not made by riches, but by metaphor, and you, now, have developed the awareness necessary to hold your many facets in equal balance, at least much of the time. No gold or jewels could make a finer king.
I see now that more detailed instructions will be useful to you, perhaps not now or in the upcoming cool weather, but perhaps soon. I will impart what I have. 
As I have said many times, both to you and to others, there is no truth, just versions of it.  Each one will look different depending on the man who perceives it, and although it may be redundant, I much emphasize, there are many ways to make a talisman.  This is simply my way and the way of my teacher before me, it is not the only truth.  You are free, after careful thought and consideration, to alter the instructions if need be.  This mountain will change and the instructions may need to change with them. 
As I am sure you have understood, though I will emphasize it again now, it is not only the materials which are important (for indeed they are), but it is the way they are gathered, the calmness in you body as you design and construct, the even flow of breath as you move over the mountain.  So if you must change something, do so always maintaining your awareness.
When I am gone, as one of these days my body will return to the soil and a new journey will begin, you may look though the leather journals of my office and find other instructions, not just for various talismans but other things you may find useful. I must once again state that the world of magick is vast and deep, so do not hold onto the instructions like the habits and identity you once carried like a torch before your heart. These are instructions, not rules.  Look at them creatively, like you are creating something from the other worlds and bringing it to life (and indeed you are.) Life takes many forms and at some points, you may find it necessary to alter.  Use your careful and creative judgement.

Now for the instructions:

Take a piece of virgin parchment, made from the skin of a stillborn lamb.
It will probably be cold to the touch, warm it beside a low fire of hot coals.
Use your finger to draw blood, either yours or that of your female companion.
She will give to you, as she always does. 
Take what you need, she is willing. 
After the skin of the animal is cured and soft, (this I know you are capable of doing as I have seen you do it many times) take the parchment and lay it flat against a wooden surface.  Let the moonlight cleanse it of human touch, of animal remains, of anything that ever was before. 
Now it is something new. 
Draw a star in the center.
At the center of the star, trace the image of the sun in red ink and paint its center in gold.
Let the parchment rest in the moonlight for several hours.
Roll the parchment into a scroll, as tight as you can make it. Fold it in half.
Set it into a jar of water and let it sit until completely tender and pliable.
Form it into an oval and cover with the red sand at the mountain’s base.
Dry it in the sun. 
The entire process may take half a moon cycle. 

The Dead Weight Of The Past

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

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

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

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

Endless Search

I come into your world.
I bring what I know.
The open door leads to a warm hearth and narrow bed.
I see in you the life I never had.
The hot cup of coffee for breakfast.
The sweet smell behind the ears, mended laundry.
Your face is missing in the red rocks of still giants.
The range and nights of smoky fires by a river.
You cannot be here, just as I could never be there.

I can not join your world.
I am gone.
I’ve stayed away too long,
I let the wind tear apart my cheeks,
let the moon see my secrets.
The open night sky has sewn itself into me,
making me its own,
making me a man of the wild,
unfit for the walls of your house,
the sweet soapy smell of your skin.

I have stayed away too long, but maybe I was never there.
A stranger, a wild child itching to break free of mother’s arms.
A lone drifter.

I wander.
I look for home, for rest, for the end;
but they are not in houses, in open arms.
They are not in anything I seek,
but still I look.
Behind the mountain, across the stream,
under rocks, in the houses of other men.
I can hear voices, a howling wind, screams of women I loved but never knew.
I wander, searching.

I am the ghost without eyes.
The spirit who grabs onto any change of season, yet finds no rest.
There is no home, but my quest remains.
The endless search for those things I believe are real.

There is no home.
No destination, no goal.
I am a drifter. Searching.
Sometimes finding that glowing piece of light,
but it melts as the day turns into a black canvas,
and then I feel it again,
the shrill high call of the wind.
The shadows, the swirling stories of open fires and sunrise over the mesa.
I cannot be of another world,
I am a searcher.

The scene is dark, the home is not mine.
I am of the wind and its journey entwines with mine.
I am of the sun, moving always.
Shadows are all I know.

I search because I know nothing else.
Could it be any other way?
A home and kin and rocking chair by the fire?
A woman smelling of sunshine?
A child with my eyes?

I wander because I know no other way.
I am of the light,
of the places without walls,
of the fire without end.
The search with no conclusion
the seeking without end.

I am the searcher.
I cannot be found.
I cannot find.
I can never rest.

Solar Energy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Eyes

I looked through his eyes and the world took on another color. The trees were tinged with a bit more orange around their pointed tips, the sky seemed a tad more shiny, just a few degrees brighter than the way I remembered it being.
I had lived with a slightly dull sky, clouds that were white and trees that were green and yellow. Color was a thing which was learned, like religion and dining room etiquette. We had been a family of green and white and pale blue skies and now that my vision had shifted, it was not just the hues which had changed.
My breathing was somehow heavier, coming from deep in the pit of my stomach, deep in the bowels of this creature I had come to know as myself, but it was all different now. A heavier breath pushed my lungs out and up, my mouth had to open to compensate for the highway of air that sought to escape. Each inhalation came with a ringing tone, a sound only audible to me and the tiny birds in the trees just outside the window.
I had stepped into his skin, taking on a new set of habits, just as deeply imbedded in the fibers and filaments of his being as the ones I had somehow, wonderfully left behind. Baggage left in the train station, I no longer needed it. I was free of myself.
My morals, my interests, the groups of words and movements that could have been described with my character, all of them were scattered letters now without a source of light. Things which had been. Bright stars that had fallen, finding themselves now without pull.
Nothing I knew would work now.
But light seeks a source, and soon I flowed into him. I looked for a door, a small little door that I could jam open with my shoe while I sought to understand. His motivations and secret desires flowed, moving through me, up through the pit of my stomach into the wide open highway of my mouth that was his breathing. I was him. I was me, no longer able to distinguish the me that was with the me that is.
The outside world is no longer relevant. Convention, morality, right and wrong, they were for the rest of them, for the masses that submitted and followed without question, without a chance to ever fully become and blossom. They would stay like closed up rose buds on a thorny branch, waiting for a sun that was forever blocked by clouds.
Dreams were different. The nebulous figure of mother. Harsh, imposing icy looks that lasted for days. A kitchen filled with every needed implement of torture. Skies that could only bleed red.
I cried in the mornings. They were no longer his dreams, they were mine. The day was different now, the colors of the trees changed. The sky became purple, the birds no longer sang.

The King

What is the king like?

The chorus rumbled, loosening the answer from their stomachs, letting the deep sounds and grumbles manifest into words they knew the crowd would recognize. Things formed. Small things turned into larger shapes that had tails and wagons and little bits of paper that drifted after their tails like sparklers on a warm summer’s night. The room cleared of other thoughts, waiting expectantly, patiently. Silence rumbled from the stone floors and the mosaic tiles along the walls, waiting. And as they waited the things edged forward, the sounds moved into formation, and then the tongues sprang to life, knowing where to go, how to move.

What is the king like?

The answer came.
He’s arrogant and proud and likes the best things of everything. Deep red wines looking like fresh blood swirling in a crystal goblet. Satin sheets for him and his room of full-hipped lovers in little more than colorful scarves. He takes milk baths and freshly made goat cheese served on bejeweled platters. His world is that of comfort and opulence, pride that manifests only from his material power and earthly wealth.

The king? He cannot see that death comes to all, then beneath all spun, golden robes, beneath all skin are bones and flesh that eventually, sooner or later, turn to dust. Blinded by his gilded palace and bountiful gardens, his earthly finery and servants responding to his every desire, he has forgotten that death comes for all things.
One day he will take his last breath. He is not prepared. The core-shattering moment will come, it will come like a new dream and he will look out over the abyss and see that his life was full of things and pleasure and matter, but it was devoid of help.
Help would not come from slaves and servants and the maids of his palace. Help would be uncomfortable, it would pull at the self he had created, it would twist him in all directions, leaving him panting, looking for the window. But he has no help and he takes his luxury for immunity, but death does come.

He cannot see the moment, but the banished witch in her hut watches the events in the smoke of her fire. She can see his gasping last breath, the moment of transition when he truly realizes the time he has wasted, that he has done nothing that will take him towards the clear light of awakening. She watches the curling twists of smoke, knowing she cannot help him, for one must seek help.

What is the king like?
The chorus takes a breath of air, preparing for the next stanza. Again, inside, their answers release themselves from the inner walls of their bodies. They merge deep inside, then find their way out into the air in recognizable form.

Miles away from the thick woods and icy river and old witch, far down the path that turns to gold by the wrought iron gate of the castle, lives a king who is blind to the clear light. In the middle of spring, two days before the new moon, two lankly and well dressed men arrive at the palace gates. Seeking an audience with the king, they claim to be tailors of the highest order. Their credits include royalty throughout the old world as well as the new. Across the deep oceans of the globe, the most important men wear clothes made by their hands. Their secret is the magical cloth, they tell him. Cloth that can only be seen by the most deserving, royal, important men, all others are blind to its magic and colorful wonders. The king, knowing himself to be a man of the highest order, has the tailors make him a new set of clothes for the upcoming spring parade.

What is the king like?
He is dying, not from disease or old age, but atrophy. He breathes, but he dies. He lives, but he does not work, there is no world for him beyond matter. The skeleton behind his meaty cheeks has turned into vague promises he does not intend to keep, promises of the real, promises of a day that will be beyond his control. He cannot imagine such a time. His coffin is empty, for he does not believe in death for the glorious.

After many weeks of working in the stone room on the bottom floor of the castle, the tailors finish the king’s new clothes. In a room full of mirrors, they help him step into his beautiful new pants, his fabulous new shirt and electric robe. The tailors smile and nod, congratulating themselves on a job well done. But as the king looks into the mirror, he sees only thick bare flesh.
“Now you are dressed as all important men should be! And remember, only the truly deserving will be able to see your clothes, this magical cloth reveal true virtue.”
As he looks at himself, naked and covered in patches of thick hair, he nods, remembering his position, his stature, his glory. He begins to nod. “Yes! What fine work you have done! Amazing! Truly a work of art.”

What is the king like?
He is covered in the veil of his habits. A thin, silky veil that blocks out light. It covers him in worn patterns, making his sticky flesh turn to stone with each repeated thought and gesture.

With his new clothes he walks proudly into the square just beyond the iron gates to the castle. Nearly all loyal subjects of the kingdom are gathered on each side of the golden road that leads eventually to the river. Man, woman and child crowd to take a look at the king.
They all hide their surprise as they see him stride confidently down the road without any clothes. By the tallest black walnut tree one small child, no more than five years old, cannot hide his surprise as his parents do:
“The king is naked!”
The witch can see the child is not dead. The child is not stuck in patterns made of stone.

Essence

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

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