The Last Painting

I remember the last painting he ever made.  The colors, the memory of its creation, its absence from the walls of the family home haunt me and often come to me in fragmented thoughts and dreams that rise from the black and green pools of unconscious thought and find my waking mind like water drawn to the surface of a desert by some miraculous force.
I wonder how much of his life, how much of my life was reflected in that paint, in the colors and shapes he brought into existence.  How much of it was a blueprint for what was to come, the tea leaves of a man brought to vibrant life by his own hands, delicately choosing the brush thickness and pigments that would forever remain, at least in my thoughts.

The metal easel was set up in the corner of our large, light filled patio, my red child’s size easel was close to his…papa bear and baby side by side.  The homeowners before us had added the patio and we used it for birthday parties and occasional grilling and for some time, perhaps years, I don’t remember exactly, an art studio. 
The walls extended just to hip height, above that it was windows to the ceiling. In the right hand corner, just off from the sliding glass door which led to the formal living room, was a world of paint and chemicals in small metal canisters with thumbprints over them in red and black and mixtures of the rainbow. 
Our large table he had made of an old wooden door that had been left in the garage and it was held horizontally by two wooden legs he had also made, using crude and rough lumber.  Serving as a thick six foot table, he pushed it against the wall which faced the wooden deck. 

In the corner, to the left of the table, were the easels, directly facing the blue pool just beyond the windows. He arranged his years of collected supplies in a methodical way along the back edges of the table.
Towards the middle were old jars in a variety of shapes and sizes which held the brushes. There seemed to me every size and option, thick-handled ones of smooth wood with a thick bunch of hairs at the end, other more dainty, with thin handles and perfectly pointed tips meant for delicate line work. Others had bristles in the shape of thin fans and there were dozens of other brushes, each designed for a particular purpose. 
To the right of the jars and brushes were the chemicals; turpentine and paint thinner and half a dozen others I never bothered to learn.  Beside them were empty jars to use during cleaning and a small pile of rags meant to wipe off paint and solution, though I ruined many of his brushes by neglecting this crucial step.
Along the back left side of the table were a mountain of white tubes, each one with a strip of color at the top which promised the containment of vibrant oil paint in every shade imaginable.

I knew he had been a painter, the walls of our living room attested to that. There were several rich and moody paintings of surreal shapes and people, the subjects of which seemed barely real. There was an aesthetic about his work that seemed to favor particular colors, or particular shapes of particular colors; he loved maroon, black, green and orange and touches of white for shading.
But though I knew he had been a painter, I had never seen him paint until the day he began his last.

The canvas on the easel went through a series of changes, I watched from my seat on the couch just past the other set of double sliding glass doors which led to the informal living room as he applied the first layer of white gesso, then later above it a background of dark green and black. He used the fine edge of his palette knife to push the paint on the canvas, the effect creating simultaneously smooth strokes with slightly  thicker edges, all of which made subtle mixed textures of the green and black paint, blending them in such as way that it was hard to tell what was black and what was green, they seemed to melt into each other, just hinting of the other’s presence, an allusion to color that seemed to me full of questions and mystery and deep penetrating substance. Two colors that were full and alive, whose presence seemed to go deeper beyond the simple thickness of the canvas, deep into time and lineage and space.

For weeks, perhaps months, I cannot remember, he added more. Above the magical darkness, suspended among the undulating green and black was a single leaf.  With no tree or branch beside it, the leaf hovered in bright contrast to the rich darkness and texture of the background. 
It had a somewhat tropical feel, with a wide face and slightly wavy edges that seemed to mirror moving water in their ripples. I watched its existence manifest with layers of green, dark and light along some contours and in other areas of the leaf a hint of yellow.
He added strokes of white using both the thick and thin brushes and created definition and shading and movement on an still surface.  To me, the leaf was bright and buoyant and perfectly contrasted the deep darkness where it floated.

I thought he was done, but then several weeks later he added more. They were big and bulbous drops of red, yellow and white water which, to me, looked angry and full of vengeance.  The drops came from the upper right hand side of the canvas and crashed into the delicate veins and cellulose of the leaf in the center, pushing into it and destroying its simple existence.
If the leaf had contrasted the color and mysterious mood of the darkness behind it, then the drops were in direct conflict with the mood of the leaf. To me they seemed to vibrate with vicious violence, intent on destroying the cool elegance of the leaf with raw red power.
I was scared of what the painting had become.  The drops of red and yellow and white filled me with a sense of fear. I cannot remember what I said to him, if it was anything at all. 

The canvas never made it to our living room walls where the few survivors of his days as a painter hung. I never saw it again.
It took years, but at some point the many jars of brushes, the tubes, the table, the easel, it all went away, perhaps slowly, perhaps all in one day, I cannot remember. I do know it was the last painting he ever made. 

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. 

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.

Lineage of Desire

The family continues. Or it, as an organism, desires to continue. Despite murder, after betrayal and retribution, after an affair stained with indecent thoughts, the family continues. It is a lineage that travels though blood, mingling and marrying, sharing saliva and mucus, eventually forming other, smaller life forms, who in turn, reach out with tentacle-like arms to find those with a slight taste for blood and reflexes that can easily pull a trigger.
The family continues. It is the desire and impulse, not only of two-legged mammals that claim dominion over the earth, but in every creature that fucks and dies. To continue on, to multiply, to produce more. It is programmed so deep we don’t need brains, even single cells divide and divide and divide, creating more of themselves, not all too different from the warm blooded beings we call offspring. And though our babies cry and smile, it is nearly the same movement through generations, each new life engendered by the one preceding it.
In an old story told to me at a young, open age, it was Abraham who was asked by God to take the life of his son. It was a child hard to come by and with a quick slice of the knife the boy would die and the lineage might end, which would be the greatest of tragedies, but Abraham was willing to make the sacrifice.
My parents told me that story, and now they sit it their marble house, waiting as the clock ticks and no grandchildren are born, it is the greatest of tragedies. For when I die, they will die. The little branch will end, snubbed out, finally, after dozens of incarnations.
In my immediate family, the entire younger generation is female. There are six cousins, all female. Two of my cousins have children, all three of them are girls. Growing up, it was assumed I would have children. But as a minuscule deviate, I always imagined they would carry my last name. In my name I felt all the generations before mine and as a tribute, as a way to preserve them, I thought the most important thing to do was continue the family name, to insist that the next generation not assume the names of their fathers.
It seemed so important. I wanted the family to continue, not just in bodies, but in name. In name as a symbol.
It is different now. Entire species of animals go extinct under the hand of an indifferent man that uses the earth’s plants and soil for profit. Races of humans are taken out, babies are killed for preemptive retribution, one name seems to make little difference.
Is it the wish of every being to keep living? A life eternal, maybe not in their first body, but in the smaller bodies that come after them. Can my child take what I have not finished and redeem me? Can they carry on and change what I have failed? Is this the hope of any parent, that their failings will be altered, the dark memories of their lives changed for the better?
I sit on the edge of this bed and look at the white wall, there is no one who will redeem me, my failings will be my own. Each jealous outburst, each painting left undone, they will be mine. Those are the curses of the invisible generations and their echoes will reverberate through time, just as I carry the unfinished goals and dreams of the generations who never saw me, the ones that exist in faded photographs and memories that I can no longer retrieve.

Cutting The Cord

She takes one small breath, her first. The earth has opened up with light, long awaited through the long meaty tunnel. It is cold, her body feels a sensation without description, a pain without concept, just the raw brutal force of chill on still warm flesh. She takes another breath, her second.
A woman is crumpled against the backseat of a four-door car. Her open white thighs reveal streaks of pale blood that have yet to dry. She leans against the cold vinyl seat of the car, exhausted, sweaty and smiling. Beyond the window of the stopped car, there is night all around. A moon glows somewhere in the sky, only no one notices. The wind beats against the window of the round-edged car. And inside, in the yellow glow of an interior light, they can all see, something has come out.
Creation has turned along the wheel. For a moment, they all ride the second hand together, watching, breathing, crying as a new being emerges into the human realm. It has come, from a place that knows no buildings or cars or sympathy. This new thing, this new creature comes without language. Without concepts. From one realm into another, tonight, this thing has come
The night is cold. The young body feels the air with stark attention. This is the steady re-supply of nature. Whatever words and thoughts and explanations were used to create this little being, this is nature multiplying. This is creation. This is change. Replacement. One body spawns another. One gives as another takes. The night is so dark.
After the pains have left, the crickets take over the sounds in the darkness. They are in between towns. Like a piece of blood cut in the cord that must be tied. With this birth, they are bound.
The baby will learn, the baby will follow and imitate and the habits will be passed. From one generation to another. This new life will be stamped with all that has come before. It will turn into the human, it will live in this realm, in the world of language and thoughts and the mind. It will grow, until one day, it too will re-supply the earth with another young form, a new little body that will also come thoughtless and empty of language.
But now, the night is cold and the crickets sing. A little baby breathes. The force of creation moves.

Cloven Foot

She looked at the painting for the first time. It rose from the wall, levitating in its massive form and monumental message, leaving its gold frame far behind on the white background. Small and open-mouthed next to its size, she gazed up at the man that was not a man, at the animal that was not quite an animal. The beast that was not on all fours, but wearing a tailored jacket and a small hat that had holes for his horns. His face was red and long and hairy beside the ears. He stood in the middle of two iron gates, held slightly ajar with the weight of his body. Behind him a city burned red and hot. His lips betrayed a small, sly smile. Half a dozen women with large round bellies were in various states of falling, some lay lifeless on the cobblestone streets. Babies lay in piles by closed wooden doors. Just behind the gate was a copulating couple on fire, streams of smoke rose from their flesh into the dark night. He stood at the gates of this mayhem. His kingdom or his punishment? His legs were long and hairy, with thin ankles and the strong thick thighs of a horse. His penis was long and engorged, sticking up like the black spikes of the metal gates. He leaned on one of the open gates, leaning just slightly on his right elbow in a gesture of satisfaction and contentment. A creature completely comfortable in the chaotic setting of smoke and dim, reddish lights and the smoking couple and fallen babies and women who would never be mothers. His left foot reached out to her, a cloven foot of gray with streaks of black. His other foot hung back in the shadows, five toes of a pale, reddish hue. The ground below him was a mixture of dirt and black ash, beyond was a barren landscape of dead trees and smoking bushes.
“This is us,” she thought. “Our lineage vilified and made shadowy and dark and full of horror. This is the full blooded fear of man. The fear of birth and death. The fear of sex and pussy and earth and the mushrooms which spawn beneath the visible surface. We have watched through centuries, as large skirts have given way to slips and then jeans. Watched as the fires burned flesh and the screams curled with the smoke. We have watched it all. The vilification. The quest turned to the dirty kiss. We watch still, knowing, just as the smile implies, that what we do will always remain in the realm of the mushroom and the roots. The fires will come and play with the land and play with our flesh and we will be of the darkened shadows and the red clouds. We are of one, of the other, of earth and air, stardust and bright light.”

Climbing Aboard

Staring brightly into the sky, they dreamed of rainbows that never ended, of colored trails that flew around the earth like great open freeways of possibility. The singular road forked with smaller trails and disappeared over bridges and down pixie-dust covered tunnels. Rainbows arched in the sky like Becky had once described over a pipe of psychedelic grass and created concentric circles that looped back in on themselves before branching off into the distance that was lit with the hope of red and green and purple. The roads moved like pretzels and clovers and dove in on themselves, leading to other planes where rainbows were called by other names and seen with different eyes and painted with other colors. They stared at the rainbows from the ground, their necks pinched and eyes wide with the energy of amazement. How would they ever find a ladder big enough to reach the road?
They just needed to get to the lowest point on the road, but even that was close to the hawks that coasted the sun drenched sky. Until now, they had only heard rumors of this road, great yarns overheard in pubs and simple lines read in old books. But the storm clouds had opened one morning as they walked home in the quiet hours of a new day and as white gave way to the awaiting blue sky, they saw the rainbow highway. They stood at the bottom, standing just under the lowest dip of the road they could see, the spot that they just might have a chance of accessing if they could figure a way up. Bright speckles of light moved on the colored current.
There were large wooden ships and nearly invisible shapes that expanded and contracted like dancers. No one spoke, but they all wondered how to ascend. Just how did anyone get started? How can you get from here to there? From where you stand to the place of your dreams? From present reality to the farthest goal, to the unknowable without shape? To the places where dreams smoke and speak in other tongues, where creation is in the simmering pot, the golden cauldron tended by a silver spoon. Just how do you get from here to there?
Out through the black hole of a sparkling tunnel came a ship. There was the silhouette of a person, a young man along the side of the helm who looked to the landscape below while his right hand was raised to his eyes, blocking the gleam of the sun. His head was slightly lowered, scanning the ground patiently and then looking out towards the horizon. He looked out as though expecting nothing, as though he had looked out into the distance for a thousand years, seeing nothing but birds and water. As he passed along the lowest dip in the colored road his body twitched as he saw them, “Do you want to come aboard?” he shouted to them through cupped hands. “Yes!” they shouted in unison. They didn’t know who he was, they didn’t know were the ship was headed, but as the boy threw down the braided rope, they grabbed a hold tightly and started to pull themselves up using strength they didn’t know they had.

Far Away

I heard his voice, the deep, deep laughter that made me think of density, of hard, rich wood and the palpable thick air of a forest floor covered in a shaded canopy. I wanted to describe the sound with my hands, I formed a ball shape with my skinny fingers, holding onto the air as though it contained a thick brilliant rock, something I almost couldn’t get my hands around. He laughed again, shaking the earth with his bodily rumble. The content of the conversation was almost irrelevant. Through layers of fatigue and inattention, I barley heard his concern, some young Tibetans were turning to violence to make their struggle heard. Would they become like the Palestinians, hungry and tired and frustrated? Tired of occupation, tired of the old ways that produced no fruit.
But I barely heard that. I was tired from a long day of selling soap at an outdoors farmer’s market and when the music stations became fuzzy going through the metal doorway of the Bay Bridge, I tuned the radio to Heart and Soul, a BBC Christian-slanted show on religion. On the air was the voice of the Dalai Lama. He talked about his possible successor, he wasn’t sure that there was even a need for one. He addressed the speculation of a female taking his place as a political and spiritual leader. He said “why not a woman?” and laughed with every muscle he had.
I pictured the male and female monks on a bed, laying close to each other and not touching, not talking, just moving and sharing in each other’s energy. I saw the cold stone room, they lay on the bed in their robes; from his depths into her, from her void into his, from his presence into her absence, from her love to his attention, …Is it easy for them up there in the cloistered halls of a monastery? Away from soap and markets and ordinary people walking around with strollers and wedding rings and cell phones? Away from this black truck, these tires which take me over a bridge. Away from the skyscrapers which roll out like empty promises on my right.
I forgot so much today. I walked around quickly, looking to the vendors on each side of me while my body continued forward without an instant of attention. I was not a well-honed beam, but rather a spattering light in need of repair. I talked without need to the vendor on my right, I ate ice cream without attention, I looked at my hair in the reflection of my car to check its state.
It’s so easy to forget it all. It’s so easy to think of myself as a girl who drives every Saturday to the market and sells soap. It’s just so easy to forget it all…to look at the couple holding hands and reach out to them with my machine-desire of sticky happiness. If I lived there, out in the mountains and surrounded by a sea of maroon robes who had accepted their lives as something “other”, as different from the world of TVs and magazines and the semi-annual sale at Victoria’s Secret, a sea of maroon robes who had sacrificed the body’s desires for another way, would it then be easier for me? Is it easier for them? How can I learn if I can’t even remember? How many days can I spend on the tight rope? Not quite them, not quite other.
He laughed again. I pictured his round, tan face. A picture of deep lines and clear glow. The picture from the bumper sticker, “Get Stoked!” it said, right next to that beaming face. That face on the bumper of a new station wagon that was always parked on Hwy 9, just a few hundred feet from my house in the Santa Cruz mountains. That car parked a couple feet from the entrance of a little wooden shack, another picture of the Dalai Lama facing the street through a glass window. I drove by a million times, always turning my head to watch the withered prayer flags blowing in the wind, wondering each time what lay inside and then quickly forgetting as my car continued on.
How many things have I let it slip from my mind? I would drive pass the beaming face, wishing I could be stoked, but I had school and bills and a boyfriend on drugs who needed money, lots of money to help his pain. Could I ever be stoked? So I drove on by, letting the whispers of prayers fade from my skin.
He laughed again. Such a deep sound full of curiosity and delight. A sound that has given up on the reason to laugh and just fell through the air like a rock with wings. Did he need a reason to rumble the rocks of the earth, to rattle the fragile speakers of this car? It was as though he was saying, “let me get inside you, take a vibration of me with you.” Maybe then I would finally be stoked. Or maybe I would quickly forget.

The Boy Who Couldn't Read

He came though the door angry. Right away she could see the annoyance, not hidden at all behind his brown eyes. He didn’t make eye contact with her and he sat down with 18 years worth of sleep in his bones. While she had waited for him in the small, windowless room, she looked at the inspirational quotes and life suggestions taped to the wall. Probably hung there by another person who was a shadow of their own truth, a shadow of what they had allowed to die decades before. The quotes were truths and good advice, like “never give up,” but they had the mark of store-bought supplies, simple institutional decoration that came without the faintest hint at how to achieve such a noble goal.
The room in which they now sat was just slightly bigger than a closet, able to accommodate a small rectangular table and three plastic chairs, the hard chairs found in institutions. Each day she sat in there, the room always seemed too small and dirty, always smelling like old banana peels and wrappers stained with ketchup and a place whose standards were close to the floor. This was an institution, a school hidden in the far corner of an industrial park, where teenagers came, after failing out of every other public school. Its rooms were filled with people one fight away from juvenile hall. They were kids who screamed “Fuck you, man!” down the hall as they walked to the bathroom, kids who acted like they were being wronged by every teacher and administrator there. They came with attitudes and chips that had knocked over their shoulders and the assumption that they already knew everything, that this was just a place that they had to endure. The spark of curiosity had vanished, long ago, it had laid down and submitted to more simple plans. The guys wore large white shirts and baggy pants with the price tags still hanging from the seams, the girls sat on benches next to the basketball net and watched the boys play. They could hardly walk in their high heels and tight pants and looked like they were just waiting to be fucked, as though their only benefit to humanity was the hole between their legs which was waiting to be filled.
The small room had a student-painted mural of the golden gate bridge on one wall. It had smears of dirt and speckles of an undistinguishable substance covering its lower half. High above, close to the ceiling, were pictures of the cursive alphabet and more inspirational advice. She wondered if anyone ever looked up and read them. Did they resonate with anyone for a moment before being quickly forgotten?
The boy next to her certainly did not resonate with the message. He was just over eighteen and still struggling to read words like “was” and “should” and “through.” He had a medical condition which caused both his eyes to twitch, they moved like little ping pong balls stuck in his head, and because of this, he had a hard time reading. And even though he couldn’t read and even though he needed all the help he could get with his vision, he refused to bring his glasses. Each day he would arrive at his tutoring session and say he forgot them, just as he forgot his entire backpack and little notebook. He held the books an inch from his face and he would still mix up letters. She wondered what motivated him to come at all. Why did he get on the train and ride for twenty minutes each early morning?
He struggled with almost every word of the first sentence of the short story. Four words into the first paragraph, he had already uttered “I don’t know” and thrown up his hands in an expression of annoyance more than a handful of times. The words he couldn’t read were ones they had begun practicing months ago when she got him a small notebook of flashcards so he could study the sight words at home. Since the day she brought it, he never remembered to bring it again.
After trying unsuccessfully to sound out the fourth word, he excused himself without looking at her. He left for a couple minutes and she drew a small curving doodle with her pencil as she waited, it looked like the inner frond of a fern. When he came back, he brought a small Styrofoam cup of water with him and placed it on the table. He started reading the first sentence again, already forgetting the first couple of words he had sounded out. He made another gesture with his hand, as if to say, “I don’t know and I don’t care.” She leaned back in her hard plastic seat and looked at him, he stared at the page.
“Do you want to learn to read?” Her voice contained tinges of skepticism.
He looked up. “Well yeah, I do.”
“But I can tell you’re not practicing at all, you still aren’t remembering words we went over months ago, the ones we put in the notebook.”
When she had first given him the notebook, he had been very appreciative, he had carefully written down words in his neatest handwriting, he acted like it was precious and thanked her again and again. But it was obvious he hadn’t looked at it since, maybe it was lost with his glasses and backpack and anything else that could actually help him.
“Because, you know, I can come here every week and we can read for an hour and a half, but it’s not enough, you’re really not going to learn unless you practice and memorize the words on your own, it’s really up to you. Right now you’re acting like you don’t even want to be here. I’ve only been coming because you said you wanted to learn to read.”
“Yeah, I do, but it’s hard, I read sometimes with my social worker, but we do different things all the time. And hey, I thought you were supposed to come on Monday!”
“Well, I couldn’t make it Monday, but that’s why I’m here now…and what do you mean, like sometimes you practice reading and sometimes math with your social worker?”
“Yeah, lots of different things, mostly math.”
She didn’t understand what he was saying exactly.
“Well, all I’m saying is that it has to come from you, if you don’t want to learn, it’s not going to happen, no amount of help or tutoring will help unless you practice, it has to come from you. You need to want to learn and make the effort.”
He looked at her. “You know, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry, I don’t want to waste your time.”
He looked at the short story with a small burst of renewed interest. It took them an hour and a half to read two paragraphs. He had had bouts of enthusiasm before, she was not confident any pep talk was going to make a difference. She would know next week if he had problems sounding out the word “found.” His effort, or lack thereof, would be obvious then.
She knew that there was a part of him that really wanted to learn to read. Maybe it was the part of him that made the effort to get up with the sound of the alarm and put on some clean clothes and get to the train station. But the rest of him, the other 99 percent, got to school and sat down and was angry at the teachers, rude to the other students and made a day of possible learning into a failed effort. He let his days slip by and, when it was time for a tutoring session, he came up with reasons to be angry and annoyed and resistant to practice. No matter how much she wanted him to read, the true desire and effort would have to come from him. It was his journey.
A guide can do nothing without a sincere and constant effort from the voyager. Without such an effort, all help is precious seed poured into a gaping hole in the ground. Nothing will ever grow. Nothing will ever flourish.

Passing Generations

The high school was designed in the customary sprawling fashion as befits Southern California. Instead of a central building with multiple floors, the layout was single storied and extended lengthwise for half a mile, from the science rooms at the top, down to the pool, tennis courts and football field. The design vaguely resembled a large cross, at the tip of each point of the cross were “quads.” A quad was a conjuration of classrooms in the shape of a square donut. Along the sides of each quad were rows of maroon lockers and in the center, where the donut hole would be, was open space, usually dying grass.
The school had central point, it was called “central quad.” It was a park-like space, with various wooden benches and short cement walls used as seats. There were a couple of picnic benches, areas of lawn with mature trees and islands of shrubby bushes that produced clusters of red, orange and yellow flowers. Through the large space, like a sparse spider web, were cement paths that led to each quad.
During lunch, and in the seven minutes allowed between classes, students would congregate in the central quad and in other spots on the campus. Like self-segregating animals claiming territory, clicks of teenagers remained loyal to a designated space and returned to the same spot every lunch, day after day, and year after year.
The popular kids, otherwise known as the “soces” (derived from the word “social”), congregated a couple of steps away from the administration building. They sat on the short cinderblock horseshoe/bench that was uncovered by the eaves that stopped just short of them. There were white and purple irises on either side of the horseshoe and pots with flowers that hung from the eves behind them. The soces tended to be rich, white and blond. They played soccer and football and many of the girls were cheerleaders. They were the all-American standard, their pictures could be cut from magazines.
The smart kids, many of whom wore glasses (also known as the nerds) sat on the lawn in front of the school, a couple steps away from Indian Hill Blvd. The Latino kids sat by the vending machines, on the large cement stairs that separated the upper quads from the lower quads. The punks, and there were only a handful of them, sat on the maroon bench close to the library.
Then there was “the block,” a maroon-painted cement block in the center of the lawn, in the exact spot where if imagined, the lines of the large school-cross would meet. This is where the “alternative kids” sat, the ones who bought vinyl records, listened to college radio and dressed themselves in thrift store clothes, and judging by image, tended to be more artistically inclined. When I arrived in the high school as a freshmen, “the block” was occupied by mostly seniors and juniors, although there were a couple of sophomores and one freshman, Sid, who had been accepted into their ranks.
As freshmen, we were very similar to the alternative kids on “the block,” only we were a little more radical and had no male counterparts. We were a dozen mostly short-haired girls that dressed in old clothes, hung out at the record store and had hard feminist leanings and authority issues. We were called lesbians and man-haters, although almost everyone had a boyfriend from time-to-time. Although some of the girls were friends with the older kids on “the block” and many of us dated, we kept to ourselves and sat at the horseshoe between the trees, a cement configuration of benches that looked like two parentheses facing each other. We sat there during lunch and I often watched the people at “the block”, I watched how they interacted, what they wore…I watched Jean and Mimi, the couple who kissed. I watched Leandra and her big jiggling breasts beneath her ironic thrift store T-shirt, Winslow and his old man clothes and slouchy posture.
By the time we were juniors, the bulk of them had graduated and we, next in line to the alternative throne, migrated to the red cement block, claiming it as our own. This was the block of countless alternative generations. Just as new Latinos entered high school and stood on the stairs, just as freshman football players began to stand at the soc horseshoe, we took our inherited spot in the central quad. We sat there for two years, each new year bringing new, younger additions. They would be the generation to replace us, the kids who would, by merely standing at “the block”, show the incoming freshmen where the alternatives would stand.
A couple years after our graduation, the school removed the block from the central quad. But alternative kids still stand there today. Even though the actual physical block is gone, “the block” is still there.
Year after year, the same kinds of people stand in the same places. It’s a legacy that is passed through shared visual cues, shared heritage, social status, music and dress. It’s passed on by the way we identify ourselves and others. Are we in this group, or that?
Like parents teaching their children the ritual of Christmas or Hanukah, we’re not exactly sure why we put lights up, not really sure about the origin of the potato pancake, but we eat it anyway. The grandparents before us did it, we do it, and the kids will end up teaching it to the next generation. It’s not quite the biological impulse to reproduce and eat, but it’s the human impulse to gather with those like you, to stand next to your clone and reinforce the same shared ideas. It is the impulse for a legacy, a lineage. The danger is the dilution of the original purpose and meaning. Why do we do what we do? Why do I desire marriage? Why do I eat cheese and not cats? Why do I stand by the maroon block?

Genes

They walk as a small group down the barricaded street. They move as a tribe, three generations of faces that have mingled with sex to produce the new human painting. The eldest has white hair, but a piece of her face is reflected in her daughter, not overtly, but the resemblance moves like a soft whisper, landing like a delicate hand upon her flesh. The daughter is wearing a summer dress, her dark brown hair is swept up in a pony tail. Her youthful reflection trails after her own daughter, a three year old that is the perfect blend of genes. With one eye, I see her father, with the other, I see her mother. A completed fusion of male and female.
Three generations share their skin, share their genes, a slight dilution with every man that enters, painting what has been with his own new brush. The genes trail over generations, each copulation resulting in a new form, slightly different than the face that came before it, but still, harboring the same set of eyes.
I watch them walk past me, undeniably a family of blood. They have transported the face and ears for millennia. They are the carriers of a line. How long has their DNA been moving, slowly, winding its way through history like a patient snake, carrying everything it requires within its code.
My own face comes from an older generation. My grandmother’s eyes, I saw them in the old photo before it blew away in the wind. I remember her eyes. The eyes of me. Passed from my father, dominated in utero…I am the result. The blend that seems to have no visible trace. The photos look like strangers, I must have come only from her, from the power in her code.
And I watch them pass, the family of blood, of shared looks, of shared traits. They smile, they know me. I see their progression, the noses, the eyebrows. The miniature lineage of looks, walking before me like a strange sideshow.
Was I once a part of their line? Did we share a distant past, a distant source? I look at them now…can we trace our steps and find a beginning?
I watch them and my mind wanders. It moves to the seashore. It moves to a great ape. It watches the dilution of river water into an ocean. The source of what? Source…is this a word with any meaning?
I stand outside and ponder. The sun moves past a dark formation of clouds. The sundress does not look as inviting.
The child runs towards a small dog whose ears reach the asphalt. What quirk of nature designed an animal whose ears drag across the ground?
“Why are they so big?” I ask in childlike wonder.
“To fly,” the girl holding the leash responds.
I can accept that answer.
Nothing is beyond possibility.
Not when we have all the time in the world.

Influence

There once was a kernel of knowledge, and although it is described as a kernel, its beauty and wonder stretched further than most eyes could see and went deeper than most could even begin to imagine. It lived in a clear void of light and constant movement that displayed itself with rays of electricity that darted like fireflies across the blackened expanse. The kernel lived eternally, existing before beginning and lasting beyond end…and although the kernel would bend and re-form and breathe, it always remained a kernel, a nucleus around an orbiting mass. The kernel was boundless, able to touch and transform itself through solid matter and muscle mass. It remained contained outside the world of laws and concrete, outside of human society, yet, it traveled and moved through their realms. It journeyed in and out of the earth with the help of human bodies through a system of paths and golden corridors and sparkling moments of serene attention. The earth was cluttered with metal buildings and rigid gray institutions that were rooted in generations of dogma and habit. It was full of gluttons and those who could not eat. There were morals that were woven through generations like woolen thread and pretty fashions that changed like the seasons and boomeranged with the wind. There were men who desired power and beautiful women, there were women who hoped for fine hats and smart children. Some wanted gold and rugged health, some read mountains of books and drew pictures of the world’s monuments on white napkins. There were people who believed in law and order and there were slaves who were forbidden to read. There were women forced into small rooms with only a fire and a cooking pot and there were certain plants which were forbidden by those in power.
The kernel existed before all this, long before human history and moral codes and lawyers and banking institutions. There was once a man who had a moment of blinding insight. He sat under a blue sky, his thin legs were crossed as he sat close to the earth. The wind blew across his face, and for a long moment, he felt inhuman, he was, in this awakening, open to knowledge beyond the human world. He was experiencing the kernel. Everything he had been taught as a young boy was irrelevant, what he felt, now, was beyond the people of this world and everything they created. The knowledge, the kernel, was far beyond his social status and beyond his ethics. As he sat, he felt a channel open up within him and a radiantly blue cord flowed into his heart with the force of a runaway train. He received it, his body slightly fearful, but his will was open and receptive. In this moment, though his direct contact with the kernel, he developed a way. A way to live, a way to walk, a way to experience the universe, a way to work. He developed a set of tools so that others might open up to the channel as well.
While he was alive, his ideas spread. His students spoke to others who spoke to more people. A large web was formed. After his body died, his way of life traveled across seas and mountains, from person to person. Schools were built to study his way. For thousands of years, his way was passed through language and books and song. The popularity was not without consequence, though, and his way had become words…a religion…an idea or philosophy that someone could try out and perhaps quickly move on to the next tantalizing idea promising inner peace. The initial discovery of the kernel was diluted into an organization with leaders and foundations and bureaucracy. There were workshops and seminars, people paid hundreds of dollars for a couple of life lessons on anger and love, but in the end, there were no life teachers and guides. Some tried the way and gave up after a few weeks. Some tried it and devoted the rest to their lives to it. Movies referenced it and it became a household name, along with the other religions with scores of followers. Entrepreneurs made T-shirts with quotes and people browsed bookstores with hundreds of titles in the genre.
This Way, this way of living life and working with its electrical nature, began with a man that had a deep moment of awakening, a true moment that left behind a changed man and a path into the void. But after thousands of years, moving through continents and people, many of its secrets were lost or misunderstood, its power became diluted as people without teachers experimented with the ideas and then became dogmatic. People practiced what they thought was the way, they claimed it as their own, yet they had no direct contact or connection with the man who had opened to the source. The initial knowledge was so contaminated by the human world that most traces of its way had been lost on the human machines, its power to awaken, its "ways" that required devotion and constant attention were lost on the sleeping, even the sincere workers had no real power or skills to do the work required and nowhere to get it from.
But still the kernel exists, it stands outside, now, living, alive, moving, shifting, glowing. There are other lines. There are other channels that run from the kernel and others that run in, feeding it the nutrients of attention and work. There are long lineages of work, passed from person to person, always under the shadow of secrecy. There are too many chances for contamination if the ideas are distributed freely. This knowledge is beyond humans, it lives outside of humans, but it can pass through them, like sparkling ions through a willing conductor. A direct channel flows from the kernel to the people, and, from them, the energy flows back into the kernel. A circuit in constant movement. The eternal kernel flows out, passing from one person to the other, and the energy comes back, slightly more diffused, back to the source, where the current flows out once again. This has always been so. It cannot be otherwise.

Kitchen Nightmares

They send him pleading letters. Within, the words are desperate and begging for help. Begging for guidance. The problems are mostly cloudy, rolling ambiguous shapes that never seem to point to a definite solution. They are not sure exactly what is wrong, but their restaurants remain empty, and each day, new worry lines etch their marks within the soft folds of weary flesh. Their hearts are burdened with thoughts of bankruptcy, home repossession, guilt and pain. Their worries are marked by heart attacks and restless nights. In this state, the restaurant is a temple of gloom, and those that work and eat there are poisoned by its desperation and deepening failure. After fitful nights, the owners wake up, seized with the burden of another day. More of the same. And so, in a last measure of self preservation, in an attempt to resurrect themselves from the pit that they have learned to call home, they write to him.
Like a gleaming messiah, he shines and comes to them with sincere wishes for success. It’s his love of food that makes him move. His supreme respect for taste and pleasure. He comes to help, he comes to ignite passion and integrity. He comes, demanding personal responsibility and a desire to change. His authority is based on a lifetime of accumulated knowledge and on his undeniable success. Restaurants, TV shows, adoring food critics; he has succeeded in this business. He has knowledge.
And they write him for help, and if they are lucky, he comes. He comes with an open heart. He comes to see, to identify the problems and the very bad habits of these establishments. As he observes, he notices the flaws, the rotting food in the fridge, the lazy wait staff, the nervous manager, the cluttered atmosphere, the over complicated menu, the owner who invests all his money in white china. As the teacher begins to identify the problems, the owners, the cooks, the staff- they begin to resist. Many of them fight back. They argue…they become identified.
It is mostly the owners that resist. Even though they begged for his help, now he is here, criticizing their home, their dreams, their work, their identity. And as their sense of self is called into question, as they reel from the criticism which they take as a personal insult, they fight against him. They walk off the job, they yell and cry. They hate the man that has come to help them. The man who has nothing other than their future success on his mind. Yes, he hopes for a good show, for good ratings, lucrative advertising, good pay, but first, he comes to save a failing dream. An idea that had been put into action without a plan. It is his hope for them that keeps him there. During the name calling, during the childlike tantrums of adults, he stands, grounded in his mission.
The owners knew there was a problem, it was why they wrote for help. Their mounting debt and empty restaurants were the symptoms, but when the root of these problems are discovered and brought up to the sunlight, it is these same problems that they resist changing. The owner who clings to his plates, the owner who cannot stop trying to do everything. The owner that clings to the outdated decor. If they can see past their egos for a moment, if they can take his advice, if they use his advice, they usually see results. They see increased sales, compliments on the food and a returning sense of humor.
The teacher has walked this path before, many times, and he stands firm, rooted and waiting for a moment of insight to rupture the ego; within this space changes can be introduced. And sometimes, when the results become as obvious as day and night, there is a moment of true realization, and a new way of being emerges.

To Reveal

Many years ago, a famous poet from El Salvador talked about the writing of poetry to my mother, while I listened without being seen. He was trying to communicate something very subtle, very elemental and intimate. He said that in the true writing of poetry you must rip yourself apart, you must reach inside, grab the innermost tendrils of your nature and pull out hard with all your strength, spilling yourself outwards in a messy explosion of blood and guts. It must hurt and it must be uncomfortable. Anything short of that he would not consider poetry. When I heard those words I felt the twinge of truth inside me but the understanding didn’t sink deep enough, it floated around on my surface, reappearing every once in a while as a memory or a linguistic code.
Many years later, playing guitar, I heard someone say that distortion could be used to add to the guitar but that it was commonly used as a way to hide, to protect yourself from criticism and deep examination. By implication the same would be true of all other guitar effects. They can all be used to emphasize and highlight the core musical motif that is being played (in this way bringing it to the forefront and making it more alive) or they can be used to protect the player from displaying mistakes, vague intentions and unclear obfuscation. Again the message tweaked me delicately and the sensation of intuitive understanding ran through me like lightning but I pushed it out to the surface. Again I remembered the words, and assigned a label of "true" to them, but didn’t really swallow them completely. I let them float around the tip of my tongue but didn’t open my own throat to take them in.
Ultimately it was impossible. It is only through direct and constant creative work that such a truth can be swallowed. No amount of communication can replace that. Knowing that, understanding that from the inside out, I make here a new futile attempt to make this communication, in the hope that it may spark practical constant effort.
In the process of constructing a new piece, a new world, a new multi faceted universe of simple elements coming together to form a complex whole, a single clear and simple gesture will always be at the core. This is not an "idea" or a "message" or a "moral" or a "lesson". I don’t speak here of political communiqués or the exploration of deep psychological issues. Instead I refer to a simple shape, a straightforward curve in the fabric of reality, that resides at the core of this new Universe you now create. In the visual realm, this is a shape, a particular curve or form that resides at the heart of the construction. In the world of sound and of text, this shape may be more elusive but it is just as real and just as simple. To maintain a good, clear focused contact with it is difficult. It requires intense and constant attention. It requires some kind of knowledge of the law of octaves (whether direct or intuitive) to prevent the inevitable deviations that will make your focus float away from the original impulse. It requires a clear and honest ability to look at yourself and your habits, to recognize when these habits are taking over and to have enough skill to stop them from doing so. It requires the skill to add without hiding or subtracting, to bring in extraneous elements without destroying the foundation in the process.
None of this can be learned in theory. You cannot learn it by reading it here or anywhere else. In fact, it probably won’t even make any sense unless you are currently involved in the process of constructing. Only with that as a context will the words carry enough referential weight and practicality to have any meaning. A true and sincere effort may be made to attempt to reveal this but you will have to be in a particular inner and outer place to have any chance of receiving the communication and taking it deeply enough for it to have any effect. In this there are many obstacles, but there is also hope. But if the initial effort to reveal is not there, then there is no hope.
The nature of the initial shape is not important. Any shape will do, taken from anywhere through any process or method. What is important is to be constant in your work with it, to be truthful and sincere in your effort to reveal it, to allow it to come forth and take on its hidden significance, a shining clear light that will be found in any one thing and in all things. The secrets are everywhere. When you understand this and you develop enough skill to create with a shape (any shape in any form of construction imaginable) then your search for truth is over and your work has begun.
When I first heard these things, both in the examples I have pointed out and in others I may have left out, I did not truly understand them. They were words that had the ring of truth and that I would store away in my mental filing register for future reference. The same will be true of anyone that reads this text without a context or a real Necessity. This is then a message in a bottle, lost in a vast ocean of thoughts and opinions, aiming to somehow find its true recipient. This text is a seed scattered to the winds in the improbable hope that it may find a fertile breeding ground in a receptive Being ready and willing to bring it to Life.

Confirmation

The sky is gleaming. After preparing the space, I walk the perimeter, giving thanks to those forms that have helped create it. I stand in the middle. I close my eyes, as I thank spirit, a dozen birds soar over my head. They fly above, directly overhead they move in a raucous formation.
A smile crosses my face, and I feel the vibrating of their wings as they circle. They are in time with spirit, at this moment, they are the voice of spirit. Yes, we are heard, loud and quite clear.

Yes, even though you appear to be clueless, to be simply following the guide’s instructions, yes, we are heard. They fly in a circle above, and land in the star jasmine next to me. They continue their melody and play, granting me the noises of a lovely chatter.
I have never heard them so loud, like giggling girls, drunk on wine for the first time. They have never made themselves so known.
Yes, spirit sent them. A direct line to the mysterious center. Oh, thank you for revealing once again. Thank you for opening with wetness, for allowing me a glimpse, for my smile.

The hours have passed and I sit in my room, gently fighting back the waves of sleep that pursue me. "I must finish this," I think. This , my task of will. This, my clear objective. Everything inside wishes to end, to shut this computer off and close my eyes. Blissful sleep awaits.
But quitting is the sleep of my machine, not just the need of my body. It is the manifestation of a tendency- a superficial desire to stop before all is done well. It is my habit- screaming for me to listen- they have the right answer.
My eyes are sagging slightly at the sides. I think of my master, working hard. Hard for us, hard for himself, hard for all beings everywhere… so I continue to write.
It is with his example that I continue. I learn from another. As he has learned from another, as his teacher learned from another. This lineage is clear, not by name, but I feel it. From one to another, passed for how long? How clearly important it is for me to grasp this moment, this fleeting bit of time that slips with each blink of my eye.
Another is gone, I thought too hard about this sentence, and another bit of time has gone. And they have stopped. Give me more time to understand. I heard that when my attention grows, the moments will spread out and I will be able to feel and perceive more. Now, it is all I can do to stay awake and write these thoughts. This stream of consciousness with no point I can discern except the act of doing- perhaps that is the point.
This is my link to spirit.