Winds from Four Corners

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The Wheel Of Fortune

I looked into the mirror, there on the street. He was an Asian man. I was an Asian man. With a camera and flannel. I was a man. He looked at a woman in the mirror. He was a woman. I looked into a mirror on the street, and there I was, a man. There was a camera, a flannel, a full cup of curiosity. I was there, a man. A man with breasts, a man with a camera. A mirror revealed. There I was, on the street, with my camera, my curiosity, my heavy cup.

I looked into the mirror, and as I looked, I saw that I could have been her, there, on the other side of the street. There, on the sidewalk, a Latin man with a briefcase. A woman with a tiny white dog peeking from her purse. A flip of the wheel, the crowd chants, a smile of white teeth gleams into the camera. I watch from a blue reclining chair in a far away living room, a chair I have never seen, a chair I bought, a house I sleep in, the phantom in the mirror.

I look into the mirror, and there they are, a thousand reflections. She with her long blond hair, the man with the cigar, a naked child running through a mountainous garbage pile, the little dog with three legs, the man with his camera and a flannel shirt wrapped around his waist. There is the mirror, right on the street. There is the lens and the black eye of curiosity and an open iris hiding behind a wall of glass connected to a finger. There is a mirror, and I stare back with my own black eye. With my own purse and sweater, with my own ceramic cup that steams with fire. They all walk by, holding an ounce of me, a fragment of my reflection. I hear the sound of fortune, the tat-a-tat-tat of the wheel as it spins.

A flip of the hand, a tug of the wrist. The audience chants. The smile, so white and fake frozen. The lights of the studio audience dance: red, green, blue. They move. Lasered strobes of attention jumping from one object to another. Hop, flip, hip. Hope. The man, the dog, the woman and her smile. They could have all been me, and I watch through a lens, through a mirror that allows me to see, even months later, what I was and who I am and what we all could have been with just a slight turn of the hand, a spin of the wheel, and a jump in time.

Looking Into The Nameless

I knew then, through whispers and side-glances, as I know now, that I am different. That the compulsion to jump from fences stirred me even then, and I would run from the sofa, through a house full of cool tile, to the lush garden that awaited with green arms and promises I could never describe. And I would leap, throwing my body into trust I hadn’t the name for, into chambers I had yet to recognize. And I would land, spinning, on my head, smiling with the impact, alive with the hurt and dizzying reality of matter, and something else, something I have yet to place in a box and seal with a kiss.
I have used thousands of words, I have run around it in circles and created colorful stories that hint at its splendor, but I refuse to stare at it directly. I refuse to look it right in the eye and mark it forever with letters and obvious description. It is respect, colored by the sheer knowledge that I know nothing, that any word would fall a thousand miles short and cause bruising that could never heal. I have seen it spinning in blackness. I have poked the edges with a sharp stick and my prying mind and curious eyes that seek the details of all forms.
There is flesh, round and soft with pointed ends. There is darkness lit only by stars and the dreams of the dreaming. And I have walked through the tunnels of my mind and I have taken ships that led me to forgotten caves painted with orange and red.
I have looked, with my head bowed, and my body calm as a steady sea. I have looked. Into mirrors, into eyes that seem to look back with the same curious stare, my eyes, brown and almond shaped, alive with flecks of green I might soon forget.
It is all there, and as I know now, as I knew then, that this is different. Leaping from fences and rooftops, scouring the inner caves of ink and stinking rot, this is different. And I pull on thick boots and walk with my head bent, my arms open for others that might come running naked from the mouths of other caves.
And if they do, we will walk, through tunnels of brown and sooty black, and we will walk, through tunnels I have yet to touch and refuse to name.

The Staircase

The row of marble stairs rose before him, a stairway that went up and up, then disappeared in the puffs of gleaming white clouds. He stood where the stairs seemed to begin, on a carpet of soft brown soil that housed a few vibrant spouts of green grass. Those tender blades had found the sunlight, and he smiled for them, for their unyielding push towards the sun.
The stairs seemed to begin where he stood, but as he imagined his place on the green and blue sphere, he wondered if perhaps the stairs began much further away. He closed his eyes and imagined buried steps of marble, submerged in the earth, worms using the flat surface for a bed. Or perhaps the stairs continued even further, emerging on the other side of the earth, where men in purple robes stared at the same staircase, wondering if they too, could find its end.
But the words confused him. Where was the “end” and what could be the “beginning?” It was just as likely that the staircase began in the clouds…the words merely indicated the direction of the voyage, not the truth. What would be the beginning for him could be the middle for another, and the end for another man. Or maybe there was no end…it could just be a long staircase that spiraled through the earth in both directions, moving into the black space beyond the atmosphere where both ends linked.
He opened his eyes and looked. The stairs were so smooth, and not just plain white as he had originally saw them. Each step was a subtle swirl of color. Tiny lines of yellow and tan and cream and white, they all moved and tumbled on the flat surface, a painting of color. And he wanted to begin, he wanted to know how far it went and how far he could go. But the question remained, how would he begin?
Of course it seemed easy, one step at a time, a simple movement of the muscles in his legs, one after the other, up and up. But he could see it went on for miles, miles and miles, and then disappeared in the thick cover of gray and blue clouds that had formed. The clouds looked heavy and thick and held the promise of heavy rain. Maybe now was not the best time to set out climbing a slick staircase.
And there was the other matter of food. He would have to carry his provisions with him, maybe water too. How much could he possibly carry on his back? How far could he go before he lay exhausted and thirsty on the marble steps, dying from his own curiosity?
He sat there, at the foot of the steps, on the soil that felt forgiving beneath the weight of his body. He sat with his legs folded beneath him and thought of all the things he would need, of all the problems that he could envision, and he sat and thought and kept looking up to the staircase, the huge marble steps that went on as far as he could see, up and up, a beautiful spire that twisted with strength and the promise of something, something he could not hold between his tongue.
But the same thought kept emerging…where did it go? Was there an end? Or would he find a beginning? Or would he climb for years before emerging stained with soil in the same spot he now sat?
He wanted to start running up the slippery steps, but part of him held back. There was planning that needed to be mapped out, provisions and equipment to buy. But he sat and stared while his mind jumped from thought to thought. His body wanted nothing more than to move. But then he thought about his muscles, was he really prepared for such a feat? Would it be better to work out for a couple of months, to build up the strength in his body for such a climb?
He felt his body pulling, “come,” it seemed to say, “come, and let the mind follow if it wants.” But he continued to sit there, while the light of afternoon began to fade into darkness. And he closed his eyes, imagining himself on the staircase, pursuing the one thing that seemed important, and perhaps it was, and perhaps it wasn’t, but it did seem that way.
He felt a sudden chill and opened his eyes, and the staircase was gone.

Everything Is Nature

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

The Question

There has been a lifetime without understanding. A simple word. As though words were simple. As though a mere string of letters could ever begin to describe the shifting of something so subtle. Uttered, spoken, shouted with disgust, thought of with envy. A word. The simple word. The complex word. The question remains, what is it? The study has given me more questions. The statements, the answers, the thoughts, the ideas…they have all fallen, one by one. 2,4 ,6, 12, 16…the understanding has fallen, there never was an understanding, just the knee-jerk recollection of the letters.
How many more words are there? How many more ideas…how many more things that are stored up with no real study, with no real questioning? There is a lifetime of rusty accumulation. A lifetime of words, a lifetime of supposed understanding and usage. I ride the wheel and I am left holding an empty bag. The wind blows and I hear an echo. I truly don’t know. I have never known. Each thought is an elusive grasp into the fog of truth.
For what is truth? What is understanding? What is power? Traces run along the ground, I run my fingers along their trail. But where do they come from and where do they go? I look forwards, backwards, I call to my friend… “where are you?” there is no answer, just another gust of wind.
I have been listening to the sound of wind, the sound of dust hitting a window over and over. I have listened to its bell for three decades. I have called to it, played with it, danced with it…I have never known it. I have never looked beneath that skirt, never studied the shape of the long first letter, the curve of the last. And I haven’t looked in. I haven’t felt the muddled ball that whirls in a fog of letters and symbols and blue and black. I think I see traces, I think I can poke it…and maybe, maybe…but I look into the distance with squinted eyes. I look out and know that the earth is covered in fog and letters dance in the wind and my fingers are covered in slime and my mind is coated in an even thicker sludge.
First, I will need to scrape the green ooze off. First, I will need to sit with the stillness, the evaporated shapes, the missing thoughts. This is not ignorance, this is the understanding that I have never held between my fingers.

Nothing Ever Has Happened

Like wind that has no power, like a wave without sound, void of temperature or sensation, rolling past a body without shape or skin…the thought came over me. More than the thought, the moment of clear understanding, like the bell I ring every few minutes, sending its deep resonating power through my ears, penetrating the still air and layers of consciousness. I felt the moment come through me, roll through me, like an understanding that has traveled with a comet, past stars, though many outer levels, into this labyrinth. “I cannot be born” Oh. A tear stings. “Die.” Oh. “Exist.” Ouch. “Or change.”
The candle flickers in front of me. I take a deep breath. The body does. The body is born, the body dies, it changes…but the thing that moves through it, that thing inside this breathing flesh, it does not. There is no beginning, no end. It is. The thing with no shape, no characteristics, no form. I see.
Thank you. Thank you for the cosmic look into the blackness. Nothing ever has happened. The question I asked so long ago finally means something, the question is itself the answer. Depending on who does the asking.
Nothing happens to the unnamable. Nothing happens to the void, the void in which I am part of. Things happen to the body, or at least they seem to. The body can grow old and die and still, nothing ever will happen.
Two things happen simultaneously. One of flesh and nature, the other an eternal cosmic stillness that resides inside the movement of the body and light.
I sit in the garage, while the cold summer wind tries to make its way through a fleece blanket. This does not have to be learned in a cave deep in the Himalayas. It can be understood in a basement, with only a flickering flame and the sound of typing and sporadic coughs in the background. It can happen to a girl who talks slower, as deliberately as she can as other thoughts vie for space in her brain. And as thoughts seep in like oil into the bay, as they move like tendrils of smoke from the incense that burns a couple of steps away, a soft wave of knowledge rolls over the shores of consciousness.
Oh, and the tears.
The picture morphs like heat waves, taking on a manly harshness, becoming gentle, becoming a monster of blue and yellow and then a vague Mona Lisa smile. This woman from the corner house, twenty minutes from a place I call home. She is a part of me now, as much as she ever was, as much as I was blind to understand it. As I am one and there is no other. The body I never knew, but we are One. My mouth will move tonight, and while nothing has happened, it will. And I will watch and you will show and I will talk.
You were never born, I will never die.

New Life Forms

It was an idea found within the pages of a small paperback, sitting among hundreds on a dusty shelf, out of sight in a dark garage that smelled of mildew and curiosity. Buried in the pages, well after the colorful cover of four purple tentacles probing a busty young woman, the slimy arms spreading a look of shock across her face from the inside; after a thousand words that built momentum and teased at the sexual longing of orifice-less creatures, the doctor took his singular syringe and gingerly poked the bacterial cell, inserting a synthetic chromosome into its DNA, a synthetic chromosome based on the naturally occurring bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium.
By his calculations, the synthetic chromosome would live off the host for a while, feed off of it, incubate, grow, and then, in the final stage of the process, the synthetic chromosome would be powerful enough to take control of the host cell. The result of this takeover…an artificial life form.
I read the passage and felt a quiet grayness begin to tug at the corners of my vision. Could this be real? I looked down at my naked body, white and soft on the plush blanket below. My toes wiggled hello. My fleshy vehicle of movement, like the small metal box that takes me quickly from point A to point B, this curved tube of veins and blood that moves because of a fleshy pump, this is the vehicle that takes me from bed to desk, from sleep to dancing invocation. The “I” that writes these words is part of the machine, the thoughts, the fingers, the mouth that pouts from a night of crying…I am the host to another, the organic bacteria that hosts the silent watcher trapped within a forgetful creature of anger and rage and sexual fever. The machine eats its dinner, the machine dresses in pretty skirts and stays warm in the winter. The machine enjoys its bite of chocolate and does what it needs to do to stay breathing. In nearly every moment, only one force moves this small vehicle, it is the desire of self preservation, the “I,” the ego.
And then, in moments in the dark, when the lights of the road take on a quiet pattern and everyone in their metal boxes feels like kin, then the presence of another emerges and in those moments, no worry seems important, every fear seems like a waste of time and time itself seems truly short and precious. And then the organic bacteria takes over once again.
And I look down at my typing fingers, long and skinny and crowned with stars. Through a strange turn of events, I find my machine working…writing, creating, doing what is asked of it, despite the habits. Despite yelling at slow drivers, crying a couple times a week, looking for sweets in its fridge.
The machine, the limbed body with fingernails, the body that seeks comfort and death, this machine sustains me, it is what I need to work on earth, it is a host, a host for the Being. Perhaps one day, a new life form will emerge, strong and willful and in service to the Absolute. For now, I work with what I have.

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.

Into the Chasm

My white horse stares with me into the abyss. I can see layers of crushed civilizations mixed with the silt sediment. The color of decaying bricks, once the structures of great buildings, now, mere dust in the great cycle. Nearly pulverized, their color leaches into the surrounding rocks, creating bloodstains on the silky gray stone. That is only the first layer of inner earth. The others are right beneath, pushing and vying for archaeological admiration. It is a hole that grows wider the deeper I look, like an inverted triangle, I stand near the apex, drooling into the widening expanse of colored darkness. I strain my eyes, but there is no bottom. The end I seek is not there.
The source, the beginning? No, just more.
More.
This I sense with every power in me. My horse knows it too, for I feel him shivering, not with cold or fright, but something less obvious. It disturbs our cells. Frightens our skeletal system. What stands before us goes on forever. Deeper and deeper, deeper still it goes. We can begin the voyage through its time, our time. We stand on the ledge, fearful. But the way back, the path we walked to stand at this ledge…that path is blurry. It grows with vines, snakes litter the way. I don’t know where it was, what we were…once, long ago.
Were we ever there?
We are only here, at the beginning of everything.
We are here, looking into the mouth that birthed us. Into the remains of all that ever was. Waves of red translucent air blast my face, like the hot exhaust from a race car. Is this fear? My heart beats steadily, but something inside is in turmoil. What is this? Am I supposed to see this? Should I be here, looking down into this? There was never a beginning, I can see that now. Diamonds leap from my pocket, anxious to stay behind. They depart, hoping to catch a fast wind back to the land of the known. The cities of now, clogged with their dirty air and pearly hands. I look up, this is not the edge of the chasm, for I am merely wedged on the side of a layer, looking into the channel that runs through all our lifetimes.
I look up. There is another, feeling the same moment of red and heat.
Wait… there are sparks of blue. Moving from the center of the chasm in a circle. Counterclockwise, the flecks of blue take a steady course, swirling from the center point outwards…towards me, towards all sides of the Great Hole. They are firm in their flight, as soon as one moves slightly from the center, another takes its place. The lights, no bigger than a small coin, have filled the void, a constantly darting swirl of tiny shimmers. The ones that finally reach the walls of rock and matter instantly burst on contact, a tiny spark followed by a moment of calm, replaced only by another electrical burst as another piece of blue makes contact with the people of stone.