A World Within A World

Open and exposed
we watched the tide.
A trail of white lingered behind the breaking waves,
bread crumbs left behind for our thoughts.
I looked at her, wind blowing that long straight hair
like it was in a battle with the elements.
We were forest creatures,
standing beside this place of water.
Sounds we had still not become accustomed to,
scents never experienced.
If we remembered the trail of ants
over stumps left behind,
if we thought of mushrooms
and ferns and the rotting mulch of our
rain-drenched home-
no, I could not think of it. 
We would fall.
There are some things we cannot do, not now.
A dotted line entered my consciousness.
Two double-stranded helixes.
A diagram.
Pure form, all lines and angles, twisting,
Making bodies, shapes, information.
I looked again at her,
A world within a world.
A rose, within a rose.
We watched the tide, the fading white to blue,
Blue to white.
Long trails along the water like our thoughts lingering
on far away places.
She was an angel beside me, one angel
consisting only of truth, of beauty which opened wider
the more I looked. 
We were forest creatures
made on the kitchen sink.
Dirt, the remains of bitter greens
and a splash of water. 
It was simple once,
perhaps it still was, but my mind
was running with shadows,

words,
with extra words
which seemed to spill over into the water
and run away from me. 
I could not even make a move
to chase after them,
I could not spook the angel.
I stood still
presenting myself with a bit of falsehood.
Direct correspondence could cause the
winds to change.
The gray pearl might dart, might
jump into the choppy waters
that seemed to so adequately mirror the
tumult inside.
We had wanted for nothing
there with the shade, with the dampness of
winters that never quite left.
Not now, there are some things I cannot say.
Not now.
The water speaks,
a rose opens.
The fractal widens,
showing itself finally to
my fractured mind.
The cracks widen,
it seeps in, finally finding the opening for which
it had long awaited.
My gates had been sealed,
tightened and bolted.
The sea air has done its work,
smelling as sweet
as all that has been forgotten.
Unhinged, I now grasp.
Another speaks
the words.
We forgot all the names.
In the garden
our jaws opened,
your own widening perception
blossomed.
Mine broke and crumbled.
Then we wanted.
Just briefly,
we wanted.
Speaking,
laughing
desire had been born.
Perhaps we would put it to rest.
The angel and I
the waters and the new passage available,
For a moment, a minute, a day?
We must jump,
Now.
The path is open,
oozing and bloody,
the seals and cement, the path
the darkness.
The secrets are open
available
and we must jump while we can.
The new world of waves
of seaweed and mermaids
in this new, unfamiliar world.
We finally jump away
from the trees and earth so familiar,
into the darkness.
A world within a world.

Drink Of Life

Drink of life- like my mother did once.
Not alone in the bedroom, she opened and took and the pungent seeds of time spilled into the darkness of space alight with imagination and moans and shrieks and luminous suns.
Let the blackness talk and whisper the secrets of life eternal, but do not mistake the body as its only source.  The sky is full and traveling is not done only in carbon and flesh.
Drink of life like my mother did once.
Then drink again.
Water like my father did once.
Again drink.
Like my father.
Forever is not the end.
End. 
There is only eternal
Return. Again.
Eternal return.
Again.
Eternal return.
Again.

An endless loop of purple and black, we sit in this circle and live out the revolution.
Time shifts as this carpet accepts our weight. As the walls hold us in and the black curtains postpone the sunlight from our eyes. 
We go back into the dream state and journey through darkness and quiet spaces while the walls melt like jelly. We walk through them, licking the paint until our tongues taste like ocean water. 
We circle back and flow in and out of the speckled windows, hearing the squeaks and moans of cars rounding the corner and delivery trucks halting by the door. The walls hold us in, ever intent on their quiet role, their shelter against the demanding brightness of day.  
Grinding and sliding through the maze of our consciousness- like a serpent, the circle comes back once again. It is my turn to speak. 
Cycle.
The ends are woven perfectly together and for once the ends of our fingertips flow out and back in like wisteria branches. Perfectly pungent and delicate- we glow imperceptibly in the darkness behind the curtains. Eventually the walls take in our vibration and the light between you and I starts to move like heat off a desert floor. Though my eyes are closed, I dance and dance, hoping over sand and the scent of old gun smoke and greased leather.
What is this space? I hear my mind ask. Never content to let the eyes talk for us, to let time shift and strain and begin to rewind and then leap forward in a spiraling dance around the circle of our words. And back again, receding into the darkness between the black curtains.
Endless circles as our fingers and toes merge back into roots and trees.

Eternal return.
Again.
Eternal return.
Again.

Stinging Bits Of Doubt

Work through the stinging bits of doubt.
They nip at the beautiful sphere we create, puncturing it slowly until it collapses under its own weight. I stare at it, deflated and crumbled as candlelight still flickers- the glow reminding me of what we could have made. I see my reflection on its distorted shiny surface. 
Work through the stinging bit of doubt.
They come up like weeds and sometimes I confuse them for tiny flowers and I let them open. Only when their faces shine up at me do I realize my mistake and see the death skulls laughing. But by that time I am far away and lost, floating on my wooden canoe. 
Out to sea I remember shore. Far away there is a house and a garden. Far away a sage bush goes to seed. Far away is a protector, but I can no longer see him beyond the horizon.
My habits have carried me out here and water spills in over the side. Salt oozes up my leg and I begin to crack. 
But there you are, holding the door open once again. The pathways are slightly more narrow now and the flowers have lost their scent, but here we are again in the dim afternoon light. The present is open and wide and we look into it with wide glittering eyes.
Once again we had stood on the edge, once again we clawed our way back from the crashing waves. Here we are again, a circuit of energy between us tasting of love.
Try to remember to breathe you caution. Next time breathe into the stinging bits of doubt, send some air into the caves. 

Dig In

Dig in with my feet. Dig in with those callused hands cracking and smelling of blood and iron.
Those hands of yours with the roses sprouting from below the white nails are leading to my bed where the sockets sizzle and burn, sometimes exploding like certain moments in a hot jungle with a stove nearby and a woman in a blue uniform caressing the colored light between us. Ouch, the fire of electricity snaps me up. Eyes, open. We know where we are.
Eyes open, we look out the window together and regard the little bird at the top of the tree. Ouch.  Another slap and yes, I am listening.  There is nothing that hurts more than a blind ear.  A deaf eye.  A mute look.
We stare out the window.  Stare.  Stare and state the purpose. Bird out on the tree, sitting on the tippy top, bending the last of that cypress flare.
What hurts more?  Out the window, looking in this bed and discovering the world beneath the covers.  Covers are for the modest and asses out- the narrow light coming through the window catches us, immodest and glaring white and covered with hair. 
The savages have come with urine scented hair and teeth, the shamans rarely stand on hilltops with white robes. No- the tribe has arrived, beautifully described with yellow teeth hanging from rope necklaces made of human hair- skulls used easily as drinking cups. All manner of earthly remains used for decorations and I was hoping to get one for the small altar.
Pain is my friend, without it I forget.  Without it I would forget myself in this warm house covered in sugar and red and white candies and the fluff of terrycloth and inertia. Pain is nothing my friend. Pain is everything.
I look into your eyes, share that spark once again.  The sockets will be jealous as will the memory of a story in my mind.
Can they see us now? Our colors pouring out the small shaft not always meant for light- grunting and brutal- the light hits us from behind, illuminating our forms on the white walls, casting a shadow that travels out and up- beating against the wall of the room, radiating out out out and up up up until we no longer recognize it, have forgotten what was done on the bed in the name of pain and practice and exchange. 
But the clouds are there and have been since we began, and they seize it all up and turn it into seed and send it back.

Thoughts In The Labyrinth

They sit in a circle in a dimly lit room.  Candles flicker on the fireplace mantle and cast shadows from the wiry kiwi branches onto the ceiling.  The black curtains are drawn and they are all alone- three bodies who try for a moment to leave the labyrinth and cortex behind, to emerge new from the trappings of intelligence and talk without walls. 
She looks at the man in front of her.  In most societies he would be considered an adult, a man with graying hair, more than forty years of age.  He sits in front of her illuminated in the golden light, imitating her sounds and creating syllables without meaning.

“dooooahhh” she says.
“dooahhhhhhhhh” he repeats one octave below.
“ti ti ta ma to sooooo.”
“ta toooo ta ma to sooooo.”

They all smile.  Someone shifts slightly on the futon.  A part of her ego breaks off and wanders down the labyrinth alone.
She wonders just where she is and who she’s with.  Who is the man in front of her?  The man making sounds? 
The strangeness of the moment hits her, rustles up against old thought patterns and rubs at convention.  Do adults do this?  Do they sit in a circle, letting the stars and night turn to day? Do they make sounds and sing together, pushing their bodies beyond normal comfort to remain seated in a circle?  Do they breathe loudly, moving their hands wildly as though there were music, though none is playing?

“MUUahhhhh, sahhhh, tiiiii.”
“MUUahhhhh, sahhhh, tiiiiiaaaaaa.”

Her ego searches through the known, all those layers sitting, accumulating since birth, waiting for a moment in the light.  “Known” meaning words, thoughts, convention. 
She looks again at the man, long wisps of white hair shine in the candlelight. 
This is not what adults do, though they could all be considered adults with driver’s licenses, bills, kids, cars, jobs- and yet they are not.

In another space she watches two young boys, both just a few feet off the ground.  She is supposed to be the adult there.  She feeds them noodles and bananas and makes sure they are warm and dry.  She comforts them after a fall and tucks them into bed with a lullaby.
And yet, she does not only do what the other adults do. Before bed she sits them next to her by the computer, she practices her singing while they watch and sometimes follow along, clapping as they sing along.  She imitates them in the hallway with her body, stomping her foot when they do, she jumps when they do, yells into the air when they do- they notice what she does and laugh- delighting in the exchange.
But that is not what adults do.  Not the adults they know.  She is their Other. She is like the graying man, a living signifier for another path. 

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. 

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.

Recognition

I walk the edge of understanding. A thin line with nothing below but life itself. I see it like a bird. The world we make with bits of mail scattered on the floor, string in the kitchen, cobwebs on the front stoop. It is where we breath and laugh, cry and scream. A life we are used to, one we know, one that stays. Earthly life with its marked streets and simple maps and clear colored markings. I walk the edge, balancing even as I sit cross-legged on my tan carpet, teetering. I look forward, into the speckled world of dominating blue and light washed hues.
When you sit in front of me, our eyes on each other, the room palpitating with yellow and whispers of bright explosion, my mouth on the verge of laughter, I look into you, into the you that is beyond me. I know then, for a simple true moment, you are the Other. You are Other. The word, making more sense than it can, than it should. The word, with all its explanations and discussion finally culminating in one moment, coming like a surprise wave out of the darkness, still focused for all its strangeness. It is recognition, taking me beyond the word, into gnosis.
Now as I write, so long since our last exchange, I sit in an empty auditorium. The chairs without people, the room full of judges. The many eyes of myself, staring into the empty stage, finding only me staring back.
I walk the edge, a clown balancing the egg of simple truth. I see you, your eyes, opening wide in the late morning sun. While what we know as life continues beyond the walls of our chamber, there is recognition. You are the Other. The boundary of my solitary stage is broken, for a moment, I am not in this room alone. I see you for what you are. I see the word, alive in experience. The light begins to shift once again, darkening the area around your face. My eyes are fixed, locked softly, somehow, on yours. There are no lines to define your shape, no word to describe your presence. There are only colors, vibrations dancing on a spectrum of perception.
One pure bit of experience, a simple understanding that we have tried to allude to with words and music and images that flicker across a screen. For one second, sometimes, bright in the morning, all of it, the explanations, the text, the examples, they all fade away and I see that the Other is right here, sitting in front of me, looking into my eyes.

Reminder

The TV was on and its volume was turned very low. I watched the bright Technicolor images move across the screen though eyes that were almost ready to shut. Letting my body melt into the plush suede cushions, I held the remote in one limp hand, ready for another attack of toothpaste and car insurance ads.
In front of me, people in bikinis and board shorts were furiously diving through a pool of mud, frantically rooting through the mess for little bags of sand in an attempt to reach the blue finish line ahead of the pack. As the screams of the contestants came through the living room speakers, I heard a faint sound from the other room, something foreign to the sound of cheering and sloshing that came to me through electric magic and science, or science that was so amazing, it was magic. Aiming the remote at the cable box, I turned the volume even lower and strained my ears for the sound, had I heard something?
Waiting…fixing my eyes on the hardwood floor…waiting…there it was, a little cry.
I left my embedded place on the couch and opened the door to the babies' room, where two dark wooden cribs sat against opposing walls, perhaps clearly defining the roles they would one day assume when they were grown men and left their wooden cribs and baby blankets.
Jonas, the six month old and the younger of the two, was crying. As I looked into the crib, I saw him on his back, his little legs wriggling in his sleeping bag-like-jumpsuit that covered both his legs. His tiny hands were balled up in fists.
Reaching into the crib and pulling his little body towards mine, his cries came up to envelop me. He was unable to clearly say what bothered him, but something was not quite right. Was it the lack of light? Was he lonely in his crib surrounded by only darkness and tall bars? I brought him to my chest, covering his body with my arms, stroking his head of thin silk hair, bringing him as close to my heart as I could.
I remembered the song practiced years ago while standing in a circle of three in a dimly lit room, it was the melody I strained to reach when it leapt up the scale. I sang it here now, in this dark room. I sang it for Jonas, ‘nothing ever has happened, nothing ever will happen…”
Over and over, the two line song came out, reaching up and then descending only to start over once again. He stopped crying quickly and I held him in front of me, propping his jumpsuit covered legs on my stomach. Jonas looked at me with alert wide eyes, eyes that were quickly turning from baby blue to a metallic brown. He wiggled slightly, his body bobbing and moving with currents of electricity and unanswered curiosity.
I stopped singing and looked into him, seeing nothing that can be explained, defined, or understood.
“You know,” I said clearly, “nothing has ever happened, nothing ever will happen.”
His eyes widened. We went into each other then, me looking into him looking into me. I understood it. Him looking into me looking into him, understanding.
There was no woman, no baby, no crib or parents at a party. There was no game show on a television in the other room and no sore muscles from a day standing in the sun.
Here the words made sense, in a chamber of feelings without words. In this place, we were the same thing, two parts of the same fabric, not separated by bodies and memories or contorted into a canvas of unequal shapes and designs where egos dance.
I had spoken and we both had heard. His sudden jolting was mine as well. Oh yes, nothing has ever happened. Nothing ever will happen. Nothing ever has. Nothing ever will.

Rockabye Baby

I heard him from the living room as I was browsing TV listings with a responsive remote, heard the small little gasps he made seeking air to fill his little lungs. By the time I opened the door to his bedroom, the gasps were turning into high pitched wails. I reached into the wooden crib and opened my hands for his little body, bringing him to my chest. I carried him from the room, leaving his brother in the arms of his own dreams in the darkness.
“What’s wrong baby?” I asked with concern, giving his downy covered head a few soft kisses.
In the dim light of the hall, just a few steps from the kitchen, he was not consoled. Wiggling in my arms between gasps for air, his face contorted into a red mess of anger. A sudden fear ran through me, “he’s choking.” I held him upright and patted his back and he cried harder. He wasn’t choking, just mad.
“What’s wrong baby?” I asked with a smile, looking at him.
His face was completely red and his little mouth opened wide with each wail, showing the pink soft gums that would one day house two rows of teeth.
Cradling him in my arms, we went back into his bedroom, I groped around his cradle for the pacifier I expected to find in the left corner. When my hands found nothing, I turned on the light to look again, I still didn’t see it, though I had the memory of his father placing it there earlier. I took a quick look at Noah sleeping in the other crib against the wall, his body in a contorted angle on one side, undisturbed by the noise.
Jonas continued to scream, and we walked back into the hall, taking a few steps to the kitchen. Moving him into another position in my arms, I scanned the kitchen, searching for another pacifier and finding one the side of his automated jumper. I inserted the pacifier into his open, crying mouth, he did not latch on.
I brought him into the living room and sat on the suede couch. I sat him on my lap.
“What’s wrong baby?” I asked smiling at him.
I kissed his head again, feeling the few wisps of his silken hair on my lips. I tried the pacifier again, he didn’t want it.
“What’s wrong baby?”
Not a bit of anger or agitation in my voice, just pure questioning.
“What’s wrong honey?”
I tried holding him in a variety of ways, but nothing seemed soothe him.
Then my eyes fell on the mechanical baby swing by the window. I tried to lower him into the seat, bumping his little head on the three stuffed animals that dangled from the upper plastic arm of the mobile. I realized that his legs couldn’t spread because of the baby suit he was in, it was like a sleeping bag over his legs that snapped at his chest like a vest. I pulled him towards me again, brushing his head against the stuffed hanging animals once more. I let out a little embarrassed laugh and his little face scrunched tighter.
I unsnapped his jumper and then his legs were free, I lowered him into the seat. There was a seatbelt, but I didn’t worry about snapping him in. I sat right in front of him, just inches away and turned on the swing.
“Rockabye baby, on the tree top…”
I held out my two index fingers and he grasped them, holding on tight with his own little fingers. I looked at him, his eyes were still all scrunched up and wet, his mouth was open, showing his red gums.
“when the wind blows, the cradle will rock…”
On the edge of my mind, I remembered the preschool I had worked in for a week, one of the little boys there liked the song, “itsy bitsy spider,” and we sang it to him over and over when he was crying.
“when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all.”
I opened my eyes wide as I sang, smiling at him.
After repeating the song several times, insisting on the melody, his crying slowed, then eventually stopped.
He looked at me, with his eyes that were turning from blue to brown. They would open wide as I reached for the high notes with my voice. I pushed on him gently with my fingers even though the machine was rocking him, pushing just a little so he could feel me. He looked at me, seeing me, seeing deeper than what was available in the mirror. I looked into him, seeing beyond the baby, seeing a universe of beings.
“Rockabye baby, on the tree top…”
As I sang, and as his crying became a thing of the past, he would break out into a quick smile every now and then when our contact grew strong, then he would sharply turn his head to the left or the right, grasping for something with his open mouth.
I kept singing, kept looking at him, kept providing a bit of pressure with my fingers as he rocked up and down on the swing. He repeatedly returned my contact, his eyes opening wide from time to time, perhaps seeing sound and feeling color. Between phrases I would purse my lips and blow on him gently, letting my breath move across his soft face.
Experimenting, I stopped singing for a moment. When I did, his body would start to squirm once again, preparing to cry.
“rockabye baby, on the tree top…”
I started to forget the lines, or I was repeating them so much, it seemed like there were lines I had skipped, but I kept going, dropping any armor and image, just giving my rawest self.
Soon, I felt like improvising and started making up another melody. From time to time, I went out of tune, and found it difficult to get back. I kept my eyes open, a smile on my face even when I remembered another me that would care about performance.
But here, with him, my desired image was easily dropped. I felt only love for this being in a little body. We could be together without my human ways, I could give my voice to him, calm him, love him with my most intuitive self.

Intimate Space

I watch with an open mouth. I try to shut my mouth, but it doesn’t seem possible to sit from this balcony’s edge and look onto the yellow and gold light of the stage without wide open lips. It doesn’t feel right to watch with a closed mouth. I note that I’m breathing though my nose and let the jaw hangs as it wants. A part of me keeps pulling my attention to look to the left, looking for a hand, an eye, a sentence whispered. I feel the tide pulling out towards the west, but I follow my mouth and move forward, giving my heart a center seat. I push my body forwards, my body moves north and I follow.

I look from the cellist to the drummer, jump like a pinball of shiny silver attention from the drummer to the guitarist, from the piano to the violin, from the violin to the conductor with cards and a waving baseball hat in his right hand. He puts the card down, picks up another, places the hat on his head. All hands are up, 14 hands. Pointing. A smile from the beaming violinist.

The balcony melts into a garage, we watch their improv session, not a concert, but a group of people playing, laughing, it’s fun and I somehow have a voyeur’s eye into their moment of creation. A few hundred eyes share their intimate space, scrunched tighter than usual, the lights are hot, but it is theirs. A sphere of intense communication, not an eye darts away. They stay together, moving up, where we could go if we keep on working.

My ears hear noise with only an occasional nod towards melody. My eyes see something, translate gesture into music for my slower ears. I coax my mind into relaxing, let it jump from yellow headband to waving hat, a hand over the mic and guttural bursts of energy. 14 instruments, taking turns, jumping, one eye towards the center in camouflage that’s disguised by the stage, one eye moving always around the semi-circle, those ears which remain open, an entire body like a cup full of hot water that remains still without burning. Pointing, the smiles, hands raised, another quick end, then a jump into rhythm.

I watch their eyes, yearn for something like that. They are talking, I can hear their words come out like screams and vibrato. Zorn writes something down on a piece of paper, he closes the cap of his pen. In the back is a man with a glowing Mac, his left hand moves delicately in the air and I hear corresponding sounds move towards us through the speakers. To his right is a balloon. A dark haired man licks the plastic world, I feel his wet tongue and the sex of a man and pink balloon.

They start fast, building into a fever pitch that starts to turn black, then moves towards red but never falls over the edge into green. The vocals, going so rapidly, the vocals, dark screams into a microphone, the smile, so insistent and so close to the floor.

Deer Hunter

Everything was known. The limits of the rural town punctuated in the center with smoke stacks, the babushka that walked slowly to church every afternoon, even in the snow. The tiny grocery store that was stocked and always full of etched recognizable faces. Everything was known. There wasn’t a stone he hadn’t seen, not a person he couldn’t call by name. Those friends he had known since infancy, boys he had grown up with until they were full chested men ready to serve god and their country.

He could walk the streets of the town blindfolded. He could walk from his house, down the narrow treeless drive and go down the hill, knowing exactly as he was passing the Mason’s house, walking steadily as the street sloped until the shops of downtown appeared, he could smell them, could imagine their worn shutters and screen doors. Following the street, he could walk towards the edge of town delineated by the raised train tracks that created a tiny tunnel for the semi trucks that hurtled through town towards the plant.

Every breath he took came from that air, every sip of water fell towards his sink from the mountain chain in the distance. Everything was known. His friends with their worn out jokes, the clear beer glasses and the familiar bar. The seasons shifted, colors changed from orange to white to green to yellow and then back once more. Trucks came and went, paychecks were delivered and cashed. It was a familiar rhythm of gentle movement, but everything seemed to stay the same, it was all known.

But sometimes they escaped. Filling the car with the bodies he had grown up with, bringing along their guns and cans of food, they would drive recklessly to the purple mountains, going up and up the curving slopes until the air was thinner and colder, until thousands of trees did not appear to be the same and instead looked different and new. He would walk with the only man he trusted, climbing boulders in clear silence while they tracked the signs of antlers and nibbled leaves. He saw her walking through the trees, evading him, almost. He went towards it, taking her down with one shot, because even the other bleeds.

He drove back recklessly to the known, down the dark slope towards the familiar lights of the bar. There was blinking neon sign with its comforting welcome, the pool table, the waiting frosting mugs, that smell which was so familiar he could no longer distinguish it from his own.

And then he was taken away. A big jet engine and a uniform and god and country gave him the ride. He went to where the syllables all sounded different, where bodies lay for the flies and even babies were red targets. There the familiar memories crumbled and the smell on him changed. He couldn’t walk blindfolded here, there was jungle and bombs and soaring bullets. He managed to keep his breath and mind and was eventually flown back to the known.

But when he saw the smoke stacks and roads and faces it was not the same. They were the same, but he was different. A part of the other remained in him, hollowing out the familiar and turning it into images that rubbed at his heart, touching it all the wrong way.

He drove towards the mountains again, doing what he knew, what he had always done. He brought his gun and his cans and walked slowly and quietly, just as he had always done, following the nibbled leaves and the traces of antlers.

When he saw her, a wide body and dark eyes staring back at him, he did what he always did, raising his gun. One shot, that was what he always wanted. But the other stared back at him, and this time, he saw. He had been changed and this time, there was no need to shoot.

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.

Executive Decisions

I once considered them monsters. Men without conscience in dark expensive suits and gelled back hair that reeked with the scent of hundred dollar bills and imported cologne. I pictured them as clearly as a dream, surrounded by smoke and ash, rising higher as they trampled over bodies in their shiny leather shoes. They never thought about the blood or the oil, the trash they left or the babies born without arms and organs. Men who lived so far away from the rubble and graves that their gated bubbles allowed in only certain parts of reality. Reality that smelled only of roses, filled only with the sound of cartoon cash registers opening and closing. Cha-ching!

Late at night, surrounded by books and pipes and stories I could hardly bear, I cried. How did those monsters sleep and move and breathe? How could a mirror not crumble with their stare? Were they just hollow shells of flesh, content with their bank accounts and fresh strawberries in winter and champagne at every meal? This was the evil in the world, the web of corporations and their flesh-covered robots that breathed in stocks and exhaled only blood. Money was their god. They sucked on half-dollars and bent over for the penetration of rising stock, orgasming into the bright red passing numbers of the trades. Maiming, bodies…it was just part of the game, those born without fortune.

I studied them in school, corporate criminals. Men who pushed hard towards the bottom line, relentless in their pursuit of power and wealth, one begetting the other in a perfect circle. In round table meetings, they decided to knowingly sell faulty cars and tainted food. They used algorithms to determine which would be cheaper, settling the wrongful death lawsuits or a massive auto recall? They were monsters that hid behind a massive establishment, never finding the harsh eyes of the jury upon them.

I thought of them as inhuman, men who could put money before human life.
I thought of them as monsters, until I became one, until I glimpsed the world through their eyes.

Early Saturday morning I loaded up my truck with baskets of fresh baked artisan bread. It was bread I was proud to sell, being both beautiful and delicious. I was in one of the worse neighborhoods in San Francisco, at the very end of Revere St, where the slumping houses gave way to gray warehouses on the edge of the bay. Here, there was graffiti and piles of refuse and old rotten couches on every other corner. Old Victorians sat crumbling, sagging under the weight of years and poverty; and shriveled, skinny prostitutes wandered the streets, looking for another way to score. It was trash and dog shit that littered the streets, and I drove through there every Saturday morning to load my car with handmade bread.

It was an overcast morning, but the air clung to my skin in humid clumps of moisture and I felt the day growing hotter with each minute. My truck was packed with an umbrella, two tables, and all the bread I could hold. There were loaves covered in sesame seeds, others with poppy, a bin of long plain baguettes. I closed the hatch of the truck and walked to the driver’s door, opening it and taking off my thin sweater before I got in. A sound made me look up and towards the back of the open bed truck. I saw a fluttering and before my mind knew what was happening, I was walking towards the bed of the truck, yelling and waving my hands. A tiny bird flew up and away from the bread basket, beating its wings as it dropped a few of the stolen sesame seeds. It flew back to the withered sapling that stood next to the blue door of the warehouse.

I looked into the basket. There were over ten loaves of bread in there, each one covered in bright white sesame seeds and a golden crust. I looked at them, searching for a sign of the bird; a hole, a place without seeds, I could find nothing. An ethical dilemma had been born, brought into existence by a hungry bird and my own conscience. I had no idea which loaves had been contaminated, if any. I just didn’t know. I knew I would not want any loaf in that basket, but I couldn’t just throw the entire basket away…could I? Should I? There was a chance the bread was fine, but there was a chance it was contaminated. It could make people sick. The possibilities played in my mind. Customers retching, wondering what they had eaten.

I got into the car and drove over the bridge to the market.

When the tables were arranged with a red table cloth and all the baskets, I stood, waiting for a customer. I still didn’t know what to do. The first customer of the day was a loyal regular. He reached out and grabbed one of the seeded breads, though luckily he picked one that was close to the edge of the basket, the least likely place to have been touched by the bird. After he left, I walked around the table and inspected the bread leaves another time. I couldn’t see any sign of the bird, but I grabbed the four loaves in the middle, the most likely ones to have been contaminated and put them behind the table.

These were regular customers, how could I knowingly put them in danger? But what if there was no problem, then I was wasting bread. Which was more important, a few sick people or the sale?

I realized it then. I am not pure. In me lies the flecked specks of every monster. In them must lie the sparks of flowers and soft kisses. In me is that which I despise. Now, I could see the bridge.

The Guess

What I almost certainly do not know is that I am blind. BLIND. My sight is an illusion, a minor hope of a machine caught up in kaleidoscopic movies that repeat endlessly. I cannot see. Not you, the dog, a tree, a new facet of thought. Every contour is clouded in a haze of fog and thick assumptions. You are what is past my nose. You are beyond the thin skin that contains my brain. Because you are not me, I cannot see you. You are a cloud of pale skin. A sound that echoes from a distant hillside. A fleeting movement that jumps through a tiny hoop.

You are equally as blind, caught up in the illusion that wraps us both in a tight jacket. Two people, perceiving themselves as right and correct. Two people, seeing only fuzz and gray clouds, hearing selected words from long sentences, getting lost in the white spaces between. The other is beyond. The tiny shape of a walking woman, the tropical tree, the fresh picked banana. They all exist in a world of color and form that I watch as though through a television screen. You are not real. The metal jug, the dirt road. Not real and foreign, past what I can ever understand.

I watch from an overstuffed couch, watching the lights move, watching it as complete fiction, for it is. Though I cannot tell I am on the other end of a screen, another light that moves vaguely in the distance.

I am blind, though so are you.

Both of us trapped in the skin that contains a sense of self. There is me, there is you, the Other. I am blind and cannot know, and the guesses begin. All the assumptions, all the conjecture that rolls like a snowball in a cartoon of pigs and rabbits.

It catches speed and I grasp at words. “woman, poor, fertile, bound…”

They are words and I attach them to you, to her, to all those that move on the horizon.

But another one comes, “young, marriage, style…”

More words. More assumptions. I will never know. You are the shape beyond my skin, you are the Other, and I can only make a guess. How can I talk to the past? How can I talk to a shape without blood? The past and future blend together, I grab with dirty fingers, searching for another word, something to hold, something that will make sense and fit easily in this small wooden box. You are the captured cloud, the note hidden below my pillow in a place I will forget to look. You are the shape that will never be known, you are the Other.

First Look

There is me.
I see my hand, my eye, my skin.
I look through these brown eyes.

I look at you.
The other.
You.

You who are not me.
Beyond me skin,
past my eyes,
beyond my hand

You, that I can touch.
You that I can see.
You.

The other.
You, who are not me.
You are the Other.
You, who are not me.
Not my skin, not my hair, my ears.

And because you are not me, I am not you.
Through your eyes, I am the Other.

I am not you.
Not of your hands and skin, not of your body.

No matter how much I may long to merge, no matter the hours I spend staring into your eyes.
I am the Other. Just as you are the Other.

Cherry blossoms drift between us, their pink wings fly, and I know that they too, they are not me. Not my skin and flesh, having nothing to do with my bones and eyes. The are the Other. All that is not me. All that I can see and everything I cannot.
For everything is the Other. Everything past this wall of pale skin and this head of short dark curls. The hills and their stories, the trees and their years. They are all beyond me, by definition and purpose and being. They are all things with other lives and other hurts and laughs.
The wall containing me is my prison and my castle, the way I was birthed, the way I have known. Only now, perhaps now I get a glimmer of the Other. The fear of you, the fear of me.
We look at each other, two sets of eyes wide open and staring, each looking into the Other.
But what if we see?
And what if I only feel one heart beating?
What if I stare into the reality and not the illusion?
Is there me?
Is there really the thing with hair and teeth and skin?
Is there a Me?
Is there a You?
Is there an Other?

Is the great illusion the only way to live?
To survive beyond the white walls of an institution and small capsules three times a day. How long can this be explored before we fall into smelly pits and metal cuffs…I see you as the Other, except those times in which we join, when your eyes look like the golden pools that I remember from a dream, and your skin tastes like mine baked beneath the sun. Then the illusion fades, and I see the Other, wrapped in red threads and dark curls, looking like my image in a mirror, looking like it was never anything Other than me.

The Dance of Play

There is no right and wrong, just play.

I pick up my magic scepter, a thin green extension of will and mind.It is the instrument of my child, the toy of the girl.It is long and thin, found in the garden by a girl with strawberry-smelling curls and a laugh like wolves.

I dance within the circle, pointing to each member of the orchestra like a conductor in wool pajamas, though no one sees me and no one responds, I point with a smile, cheering them on with my scepter and hips.

Somehow the music found its way in, and I jump and move, half child, half woman, half creature. Half guest. And when I divide like that, the numbers don’t matter, the calculator hangs by a sorry string on a doorknob and I sing out 5,3,8,3,8,7 Hey! And the numbers dwindle in significance, though their accumulation births the thing before you, a woman with white breasts and wide hips and lips verging on pale.

Now, there is only play. And when I slip, I imitate myself in a frenzy, turning the fall of a foot into a wild move. Play. It becomes part of the dance, the un-scripted move; chaotic, controlled, graceful, disjointed. It was all there, moving in a twisting tornado of movement. And the melody kept pumping my heart, cheering those little sock-covered toes. Jumping over wires, missing the flame of a candle, kissing those eyes that found mine, dancing with my green scepter, the pointer of desire, the cane of a vaudevillian, the green finger to the clouds, the channel towards the unknown.

It came though, like a prince from heaven. From a sky that may be underground, or within, or both. The rules are wide, the rules bend like putty and squishy breasts and plastic nipples squeezed between white fingertips.

There is no right, there is no wrong, but there is play.

There are words, there is movement, and sound. And as I move through them, I join the different points with gold and blue threads, using the attention of a woman and the joy of a child. They melt, forming the carpet for your soft white feet, the landing for a prince, the home of the voyager.

Art And Perception

It is opening night in the SomArts gallery and the covered walls are still fresh with the first round of energy and enthusiastic eyes that fill the large room. In one particular corner, at the far end of the gallery, are two small pictures covered in glass and surrounded by a thin wooden frame. The drawings speak for themselves, yet they do not have a mouth or tongue or voice. But they do speak clearly to those that see. To those that look with a second’s glance. They speak clearly to those that take in their shape and color and let the lines filter in through the layers of experience and mind and consciousness. They go in, turning and twisting, becoming new things in the subconscious of the viewer. They flow like smooth driftwood in the river of the mind, hitting stones and spinning wildly through tiny rapids. Art speaks through the interaction. Each new interpretation is a communication. It happens with each single person looking at it. Each person, who brings their own world understanding and luggage of signifiers and interprets the drawing in their own way. They don’t even have to think about it, the shapes move in like a quick fire, transmuting before the eye can blink. Just a single glance is needed, the mind does the rest, moving the shapes like a multidimensional Rubik’s Cube and spitting out dreams. And just like a river, the painting is never the same. On first glance, it looks like the same stagnant piece. The men look at the same two drawing as the other couple before them. The image hasn’t moved. There are still two penises, one shaped into a high heel shoe, the other creating the barrel of a gun. Moments later, when the two men leave, the drawings will stay in their corner of the gallery….only…something new will jump when a new set of eyes come to rest on them. It is the nature of art, alive in the perception of it. Born anew each moment through attention. The drawings on the wall switch from moment to moment, from person to person, from eye to mind. Art carries itself, rising up from a piece of paper like a flag blowing in the wind. It is the painting, the image and lines and color that talks without sounds and without a body. It speaks independently of the artist. The long forgotten hand and brush mean little any more. That hand was merely the vehicle for creation, the body for birth. Once finished, framed, hung…it changes. It moves. It talks. It gives over and over. A new meaning, a new word. From body to body, it changes.

The Jump

A man showed up at my door. He was tall and a stranger. The kitchen light was bright, the day outside even more blue and full than I expected when looking out my wide bedroom windows. He stood leaning against the door frame, bringing whispers of deep color. There was silence as our eyes traveled together. silence as he stood before me, still and calm. The seconds became twisting curls of life until he spoke. “Do you want to go for a ride with me?”

I looked into his eyes, “YES.”

A man showed up at my door. He sat on my faded blue carpet with those long legs crossed. The walls were a carnie’s cage of baby blue. The air held the wafting scent of sweet bread and a winter’s approach. “Do you want to go on a journey with me?” he said with a smile while a slight chuckle dusted his lips. I held my answer. I walked through the night, passing Christmas lights and moving through gusts of cool wind. I walked with a twin, passed muted Victorian architecture and slumping telephone poles. It would be the last time I would see her shadow.

The night faded and then the sun was up once again. I held a small telephone to my ear, feeling the hardness of its plastic, feeling the machinery of its shape. “Did you think about my question?” he asked.

“YES”

There was silence. I looked into the world of the blue carpet. Long beams of sunlight moved through the tall plate glass windows and caught my arm with a small kiss. “Would you like to know my answer?”

“I already do. I heard it in your voice, the way you said ‘yes.’”

And then the waters opened.
The dark night opened its cloaked arms.
The gusts of wind were no longer tinged with bloody fear.
The lights held more than their fair share of meaning.

A man walked into a crowded train car just as the sun was setting.
And he could have found another seat.
He could have remained silent, upholding the unspoken rule.
But the lens opened. The voice cracked into rainbowed pieces.
The door remained cracked, just enough for a narrow-waisted girl to squeeze through.

And she could not dive. She could barely swim. But she did jump. There was no grace.

She went face first.

Over the cliff.

Head first into what was waiting.