The Seed

The rain clouds had parted and the small patch of earth was damp, emitting a scent that only some knew how to enjoy. Those close to the soil, with orange leaves in their ruffled hair and thoughts of worms and horned beasts. It was a smell they both relished, unlike anything they could find in clear glass bottles. It was not the smell of elegant women, nothing like men in dark suits and slick hair. Nothing like glass buildings or sterilized hospitals. It was a forgotten odor, like the medicinal pollens and balms that had been burned and stuffed into floorboards that swelled with age. It was earth, birth, death. It was change, decay and rebirth. They knew the smell, they sucked it into themselves. It was time.

The two young sisters slept with their windows open. Sleeping with the moon, awaking with the sun’s first kisses. Winter or summer, they dreamt with the elements, living with the constant changes.

After months of wetness, the clouds had parted, like they always eventually did.

It was time. A new season had come, taking its first look at the new world. It was ripe.

The girls gathered the few tools they needed: a shovel, the small yellow watering can, and a basket full of seeds. They entered the narrow yard overgrown with weeds, their eyes shaded by the thin brim of their pink and yellow floral bonnets. The sun warmed their pink cheeks and lips, urging them forward, giving them a bit of encouragement with its heat. They inhaled deeply, at the same time, each one listening closely to the sound of the breath beside her.

Without words, they moved together. Clearing weeds into a tall pile, turning earth with the wide shovel mouth, carving out shallow trenches. When the trenches were prepared, they each took a handful of seeds, scattering the seeds every few inches and then covering them with dark soil.

They worked for hours, planting chamomile and foxgloves, lettuce and sage. The girls looked into the sky and began gathering their tools, they could smell rain.

Big, giant drops of water came, fertilizing the soil and each newly planted seed. It was the Father, the tidal force of dominant energy coming to give the little bits of information what they needed. The girls watched from their tiny second-story window, watching as the skies opened and water poured. It was essential, it was right, it was the way.

When the last bit of moisture disappeared into the soil, they ventured back into the garden, checking every day for the first sprouts. Wide eyes marveled at the birth process. The seed was information, the soil was the womb, the rain the sperm, the sun the food. Each one worked together, seamlessly, a merging of forces that would give birth to something new. A new life. A new plant. A little bit of information, a seed. It needed all the right tools, all the elements.

All the little seeds that had stayed dormant for so long, just waiting. Maybe the moment would never have come. Would they have known, could they just have sat for years on the wooden shelf, never moving, always in the same form, the same little bit of information contained in a thin shell, unused, unchanging. Did it know? Did it want to grow? Was there consciousness in that little seed, or something that could only become consciousness given the right conditions.

That was what they both had been. A little bit of DNA, a little bit of information. Each one of them had needed the right conditions. The right elements had combined, creating two little girls. Each thing that grew and died, that took a breath and pulsed, it had all begun from a tiny seed of information. Something that could be, manifested potential without a present or a past, eternal design waiting for time to come and press it into service.

Jungle Monkeys

It is a monkey
a monkey with a veil,
and when I finally manage to grasp
just a little piece of white lace,
I catch a look in the mirror.
There is a gasp,
coming from someplace within.

A wide face, hair covering my cheeks,
black beady eyes stare back, blinking every so often.
There is hair,
coarse brown hair
both above and below the veneer of pink skin

I have seen otherwise
all this time.
Looking through the haze
of human,
and different,
and other.

But in these eyes
I see an animal,
a machine,
eat, sleep, and breed
programming.

There is nothing else.
No desire beyond the obvious,
No emotion
beyond empty gestures
and thin words.

This is me, it took a sleepless night to see.

It took all my life.
It took the allies.
It took a gentle hand to discover what I was

What I have been
What I am
What I will continue to be.

I am not now, what I could be.

Flying,
moving through dark space,
arriving at clusters of exploding stars,
Talking to beings with no mouths and eyes.
And we talk, and they share, and we merge,
Dancing as one fleck of light

Dancers among millions
on the dark stage of the universe.

The body is gone
The concerns of the body
The worries of the monkey

Eat
Sleep scratch
fuck
Clothes
warmth
Food
hunger
Anger
Jealousy
Hatred
Envy
Desire

It is all gone
Discarded with the old skin
that lays like a crumpled laundry bag.
And now I travel
I reach for a hand in the darkness,
Finding light

I am not now, what I could be.

I am still chained to the circus tent.
I perform my tricks
I ride a red bicycle
Circle after circle
Decade after decade
Lifetime after lifetime
I like my dress
with tiny blue polka dots
I like my bed,
My sleep, my endless state

I am a monkey
And I see my reflection
sitting in the park
with a sandwich,
In the sports car
Waiting for a bus
Walking on a sidewalk
millions like me
in a forgotten human jungle,
in a place that lacks vines and trees,
but I can hear the shrieks,
if I look
with just the right eyes.

We are not what we could be.
What we could be
What we could be
What we yearn to be
What we yearn to be

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 Attempt

The school is closed on this early Sunday morning. The imposing shapes of the administration buildings stand silent in the background, and just a vague sense of silenced authority finds its way to the parking lot. On this weekend, as with all weekends, there are no cars in the lot, and the recently paved black asphalt is the perfect floor for an education without curriculum and standardization. This is the self-created flat-land of trial and error. The place where there is only will and peer pressure and broken bones and the decision to try it again.

Two dozen teenagers are gathered on the periphery of the asphalt, close to the sidewalk that wraps around it like a thick barrier. They stand there, patient and attentive, but with their hands on their own skateboards, ready in an instant to step into the sacred space.

In the center of the lot are metal rails and obstacles meant to be jumped onto or over, or coasted against. They have brought them here, carried in backpacks and bicycles, easily assembled and built for the moment. These are self-imposed obstacles, and they’re here to be used. To hit, to land, to wail against.

In the center is a young man. His slim-fitting black pants do nothing to prevent him from attempting another trick. He has tried it over and over, weekend after weekend. Sometimes he gets it. Sometimes he pushes himself with his right leg and rolls over the asphalt gaining speed until he is just a few feet from the metal bar. Then he puts a little more weight on the back tail of the board and uses his right foot to push the wooden board up just a little higher. Sometimes he gets it. Sometimes he makes it to the rail and then falls off. Sometimes he makes it to the rail and grinds the bottom of his board against it till it ends. Sometimes he even lands on the ground with both feet on the board. Sometimes he falls off halfway through. After all the attempts, he has still not got it quite right, not enough to be consistent. So he tries it again.

His loose black T-shirt billows with the force of the wind. This is the moment. The gathered on-lookers watch him, and though he has made it to the rail, nearly to the end, he looses his balance. His arms are still out to the sides for balance, his right foot tilts awkwardly on the board, just about to fall off the platform completely. His right foot is bent and raised slightly towards his chest. He knows what’s coming, and he smiles.

The trick has failed. There will be a fall, he will have to roll as he always does and duck his head, and just as he feels his entire body shifting with gravity, he smiles. Another attempt that has failed. But after the fall, he will try again. There will be a line of guys, they’ll attempt the same trick. And he’ll be standing there, watching them, as they watch him now. As he waits for another turn, he’ll watch their footing, the speed with which they approach the rail, the timing and pressure on the nose of the board. He’ll watch it all, looking for another subtle movement to use and push him along. It’s balance, timing. Above all, it is will. There is so much to remember and execute, he has to do it within seconds. If they are watching him from the sidelines, they’re learning from his mistake, just as he learns from them. He smiles. It was a good attempt, another jump into the unknown, taking all the knowledge he could remember and use. And though he jumped, though he ground the wheels for a few feet, it just wasn’t right. When he falls, the sun will still be shining. The clouds will still be scattered. He will be one jump wiser. If he can just remember it all, he can try it again.

For the brief moment, he is suspended, not quite the victor, not quite the fallen. He knows his mistake. He smiles and waits for the crash.

Lucifer

As humans existing in a world beyond our immediate control, we have developed habits that attempt to provide a sense of stability. One manifestation of this can be seen in the way we cling to our ideas, morals, images, thoughts and feelings as "fixed." Thinking, believing perhaps, that they are and have always been true and will always be correct.

Lucifer, among modern Christians, is associated with Satan and the Devil- they are one and the same. Like all our common perceptions- about the world, our environment, ourselves- an idea changes and evolves…it is not fixed and has never been stagnant.
Always, where there have been people, myths, stories, and words have been morphing, in a state of evolution.
What many Christians consider common knowledge: the story of Lucifer as the fallen dark angel; has been added to, developed, changed, embellished, and re-written.
"The scholars authorized by ... King James I to translate the Bible into current English did not use the original Hebrew texts, but used versions translated ... largely by St. Jerome in the fourth century. Jerome had mistranslated the Hebraic metaphor, "Day star, son of the Dawn," as "Lucifer," and over the centuries a metamorphosis took place.
Lucifer the morning star became a disobedient angel, cast out of heaven to rule eternally in hell. Theologians, writers, and poets interwove the myth with the doctrine of the Fall, and in Christian tradition Lucifer is now the same as Satan, the Devil, and --- ironically --- the "Prince of Darkness."
Christians believe that Lucifer, the being, has existed since, or near, the beginning. But the concept of Lucifer as Satan did not appear until the Bible had gone through many translations of the old testament (from Hebrew, to Greek, to Latin).
A Latin word, Lucifer means bringer, or bearer, of light (lucem ferre), known in Roman astronomy as Venus (the morning star).
"In the original Hebrew text, the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah (which is the only place Lucifer is mentioned) is not about a fallen angel, but about a fallen Babylonian king, who during his lifetime had persecuted the children of Israel. It contains no mention of Satan, either by name or reference."
This story and now common belief for millions has not always been a truth, it has changed. With every translation with every new interpretation, new layers and meanings are added.

It is important to notice how easily we settle into a "fixed" idea, perception, or interpretation . Religion, sense of self, morals…a multitude of image-like perceptions.
And precisely because we change, because our stories change, it is important to notice. We should open our eyes,expand out heart and senses and notice just how much is in flux, sometimes it takes centuries, sometimes only a couple of years, but the change happens. Allowing the process, noticing it, seeing how all is ever changing…this will open up space for our fixed images to break.
Perhaps the lines will become a little more blurry between us and them. The words we associate with our own identity may shift or lose their importance and maybe our mask will begin to melt.

http://www.lds-mormon.com/lucifer.shtml