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.

Endless Search

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

You Are Dying

Do you know that you’re dying? Don’t stare at me with big wide eyes, You Are Dying.

Through the tunnel from the womb, into the cold air, breathing, gasping, a moment from death.
Our birth is an immediate tolling bell of what’s to come.
Our only disease is life itself.

We are dying.

Each breath,
another step
Each day,
a moment closer

There is no need for doctors or prognosis. Skip the tests, the transfusion, the trips to a place of many rooms and fluorescent lights. No man in a white coat can say it any different than I can… you are dying.

Let it sink it.
Let it go to the core.
And if your heart doesn’t start to beat just a little faster,
Then let the words go a bit deeper, for you still haven’t heard:
YOU ARE DYING

Look around, it’s time to pay attention.
There’s no time for anything else, no time for watching the spilled milk or crying for the crimes of the past. We’ve all been fucked, screwed and spit on. It’s part of the experience, like strobe lights at a rock show, it’s just part of the deal. As was once said by a great band, there’s no time for fussing and fighting my friend.

You’re dying, the light at the end of the tunnel is clear, the end is inevitable, you are standing on the tracks, you will be food for the birds.
And so now, take a breath. It is coming. YOU.

If only we could stop the little bits of swirling sand and dust clouding our vision. They are sentences from the past, nuggets of resentment hidden in clenched fists, your father’s wrinkled brow. They whirl so fast, blinding even focused eyes. Clouding the path, making enemies of friends, pointing towards the cliffs.

You are dying.

There’s no time for the complaining.
For the excuses, no time.
The habit of anger, resentment, comparison, there’s just no time. We all end up as dust.
Shall you spend your last few minutes squawking? Complaining about the tart strawberry, the irritating glare of the sun? The child laughing loudly?

There is just too much to do. So much to write, circles to build, songs to hear, careful steps to take. Don’t let it all evaporate below the sun, growing lighter and lighter by the minute, fading into nothingness.

It is all here, every laugh and cry, every person in your path, every sound floating in through your walls. It is all here for you to use, coming to you free and untainted. It is the raw matter for you to bend and shape, bursts of energy to wrangle and harness, converting into fuel and long sticks of light.

It is all here, take it before you’re gone. Before they mourn the bit of dust you were. Before your steps are silenced and forgotten. The path can use another set of hands. There are weeds and misplaced rocks, there are stories to write and gnomes to meet.

Did you know that you are dying?

YOU
YOU who read these words.
YOU ARE DYING.

Look around and breath it in. Then start to work.

The Cord

The typewriter clicked under his quick-moving fingers. Chik-chik-chik…the pace hardly ever stopped. Light would be streaming in from the window and typed pages would form a stack next to the typewriter. He would lose the sun and then be accompanied by a few of the strongest stars, and the manuscript grew taller and taller. He was unaffected by the hours of man, by the hands of the clock or the tilt of the earth. The sounds of the neighborhood did not disturb him, nor the snoring of his neighbor, Levi, that he could hear through the wall.
He would only break the rhythm of the writing when his body required tending, or when Mrs. Johnson from upstairs would come over to prepare him some lunch. She told him she could not stand to know a man was not eating and wasting away, so she made it her business to prepare him simple meals three times a day. Besides those necessary interruptions and an occasional walk to the living room window, his place was at the desk, before the typewriter and the clean white pages that he would fill with other worlds.
He preferred living in those other places, the realities he created. They were so much more interesting than the city that was just outside his 16th floor window. In his mind, there were no rules, no conventions, no limits as to what could happen. It was total freedom, and he dove into it everyday, as if finally, he was home.
The typewriter clicked.
“…Cintra held onto the helm. She could see the star system fast approaching. It was a cluster of white lights that sparkled brighter than anything she had ever seen. Moving in and out of the clusters were other space craft, smaller than the one she now maneuvered, smaller and more round, like shooting spheres that had the light-willed movement of bubbles. She was not quite sure which direction to turn. Would the smaller ship carrying her crew and supplies follow her into the cluster of light? Perhaps she should circumvent the stars and arc over them…She heard the phone next to her ring. She picked up the receiver, pulling the cord as far as it would go so she could walk towards the wide glass that was the front windshield of the spacecraft. Before waiting for a voice, she said, ‘Let’s go for it Kurt. Let’s see what lives out here.’ ‘OK Captain.’ She walked towards her seat and hung up the phone, resting it gently in its plastic cradle. She got into the chair and gripped the steering device.”
He pushed hard on the key for “period.” He did it more sharply, more exaggerated than the rest of the paragraph. This was getting good. He nodded to himself, enjoying where the story was taking him. He nodded softly, over and over, a small trance coming over him.
It was how he rested. Images of space craft took the place of words. He saw the dark sky of space, imagined what it would be like to approach a thick cluster of stars that seemed to vibrate a thousand times greater than the most populated city. He let himself feel the tension of the space travelers, the anticipation, the curiosity building as they quickly approached the lights.
His body jerked slightly as he heard the rattle of a key in the door. Without even looking up, he could see the round shape of Mrs. Johnson emerging through the doorway, her thick arm pulling the key from the metal hole. Her pudgy pink hand closed the door, locking the deadbolt, she took just a few steps to the small kitchen left of the door, then reached for the apron she left on a single metal hook. He could hear her humming.
He pulled the paper out of the typewriter, tugging gently on it from both corners so as not to bend it. He re-read the paragraph and found it pleasing, though he thought there would be more details he could add later. He liked the world. He read it again, still missing the one thing that would act like a siren to a reader far in the future.
The cord, the phone. In a world of easy space travel, he had inserted an object bound by the world around him. An object he knew, a thing he recognized. His publisher would glaze over it too, both unable to recognize an object from his unconscious daily assumptions.
He walked over to the window, looking out at the constant traffic of a New York street, where cars remained long and bound by the laws of physics. Technology moved so fast, soon engineers would realize that small, round, bubble cars made more sense. He heard the telephone ring and walked to the small wooden end table. He picked up the receiver, trying to untangle the gray cord as he brought the plastic piece to his ear.

The Wheel Of Fortune

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

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

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

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

The Cosmic Cycle

The great cosmic cycle moves without a thought. Not a wind, not a purple flower with its little face to the sun disrupts its movement. It is I that watches through a closed window. Me, that observes the sunshine and rain. Tiny droplets roll down the window in a path towards the sidewalk. I watch them race to the concrete. But it is not the end. They will stay just a short time, then travel once again. Up. UP to the ever- present blue. But I watch the wet gray ground while they sit, not static, but patient. A lacy curtain reminds me of the rays of sunshine to come. Mini streams roll down the valleys of a cement driveway, past patient cars and silent trees that stand like brave tall men in the breeze. The needle-covered soil takes what is given. Silently, the seeds of life enter, bringing with it the desires of the sky. Those blackened clouds, pregnant with the hope of sprouts. With the unending goal of perpetuation. This is the cycle. The circle of the cosmos. From life to birth, death and transformation. Rain and sun. Evaporation and storms. I watch from a window, a piece of the circle. And I watch with thoughts. With emotion. With desire. I see her out in the rain. Naked. Her body glistening with beads of the sky. Crystal clear on her white flesh. Her hips move with the thump of the raindrops. The melody of a flute is within her and I watch as the rain holds her in its cold arms. She spins, her ratted long hair follows like a trail of comets. The whispers of clouds bring new forms. Little purple flowers. Overflowing rivers. A wet dog. With it comes lightning and a new language I long to decipher. I listen, from behind the closed window. The clock is locked in place, yet I watch it all in passing. Moving so fast, but the clock remains fixed. I watch from behind the window, through the glass, through the lace curtain. Rivers come from the sky. They come from the clouds. From the cycle that continues without a greater power pulling the strings. I am the rock in a stream. The pebble that drifts as the current moves without guilt or desire. There is no emotion, no sentimentality in this cosmic movement. Just colliding rocks. Smashing air currents and electrical pulses. There is no greater power. As I watch, the window is clear and the clock stands still.

The Quest

The quest for rightness. The quest to accumulate. It is the currency of power. The sun, the explosion, the internal censor within that seeks explosion.
We drop bombs out of rightness. Invade out of certainty. All the while, one part of the brain needs to believe. Lie after lie. Everything is absorbed like nutrients for the unconscious. We will believe anything, we are selfish. We are singular machines with the desire only to survive. This is what believes the lies. This is what understands superiority, this is what takes the fallacies of what is given. We invade. The world explodes. Machines die. How certain must one be to take gun and leave for war? How certain must someone be to arrest and shoot another?
We come, with the certainty of the sun. Never dying. Never ending. Any questions are burned up with the heat of the fire and with the burning core of delusion. The illusion is a circle, complete and impenetrable. The flag is our eye, the colors of our blindness. We quest after your blood, your resources, the trees, the air in which you breathe. We are the takers, the accumulators. We need more. Always more. We expand with your contraction, grow as you pale. Your exhale is our inhalation, our sprout, one more explosion, one more kernel of power.
Understanding is perfect, simple, believable. Force comes from the sky, from the point of a gun, from the threat of extinction. Power comes with your death, with your blood, with the repeating lie. Accumulation is our need. To grow and grow and grow. There will never be enough, not for this machine, not for this force, not for this great striving.
This is what we know. This is the west. This is the need to travel forward.
Our sun, beautiful sun, give us more so that we can take!
Power comes with the explosion, with another blast of force. The flag is the symbol of our desire. The beating wind the far-off sound of a war drum. The exploding fire our rapid hearts. Your death is our growth. Your release is our expansion.
Energy. The building. The transfer. The movement to and from.
This is our quest. We know it by other names, but this is what we seek. Like quick rapid fire…the lines move, the words change, the actions turn like dancers. New people, new lines, a new game. But the quest is always the same, we are the accumulators.
We seek your energy.
We seek your blood.

Never Too Late

When I looked at the birds, I saw the wind. I saw the moment of freedom that cannot be truly savored unless the cage has been experienced. There they are, way up there, specks in the blue canvas of a sky that knows no bounds. Blue turns to the speckled expanse of black and I am unable to watch.
But some can fly. Some without wings. Some without a body. We just need to learn. Whatever this body does. It might teach and eat, it might build or destroy, it might sit at an object they call a desk, it can learn to fly.
Just don’t get too caught up on the image of flight. Flight is not just a wing, not just the taste of a summer breeze tinged with jasmine, not just the rush of movement.
You can learn, but will you? Will you cry when the new nubs sprout at the place you knew as shoulders? Will you shout as the homes you knew melt into the shimmer of lakes?
A new freedom comes with the turning of a new moon. We watch from a balcony and howl in unison.
It is not too late, but we must shout and sing.
It is not too late, but we must dance, we must move.
The launch pad awaits a sure step. We await ourselves, or the thing we know as self. It does not come cheap, nor fast. But it can come.
It is never too late to learn to fly. The portal can open, deep inside that lump encased in bone. The door can open, deep in the beating organ known as heart. Steps are not always needed. Skips, jumps, hops, they will all do.
It is never too late. And so look to others that have gone before. Look for the keepers of the way…their dust is gold….their eyes a black that writes poems and sings to hummingbirds and worms alike.
For to fly is to transform knowledge. To fly is to learn and to learn again. To have learn how to learn. To learn to transform.
It is never too late. This is the sprouting of wings without feathers, flight without distance, sight without eyes. This can be the beginning. The real. The wind. The moment. There is nothing to believe, because there is no faith. But there is the taste of jasmine stained wind and there is the hurried laughter from a morning of narrow escapes.

Consequences

It was late at night and it was very dark. The clouds were hidden behind a thick layer of fog and the world moved around her in only three colors: black, gray and white. The roads were nearly deserted, just a bus with its hazard lights on blinked quietly as she passed. And she drove on, driving up the twisted road that skirted like an asphalt snake along the edge of San Bruno mountain, her car’s headlights outlining the bulbous forms of gray clouds that enveloped her like a hungry ghost made of mist and sheets of moisture. There was a musical piece on the radio, an electronic composition without words that seemed so tender, coming right from the unknown heart of its creator and entering hers with an unrelenting curiosity to see what lay open in the late hour. Small tears pricked her eyes as she reached the crest of the hill. The music was too beautiful, how could something like this arrive to fit the moment so well? This was music for the tender dark hours, when night and day blend into one. When the sleeping and the awakened dance between clouds of fog and pull dreams from the void. The music held her, as though the notes themselves were made to caress her curvaceous tears, as though the notes knew why she would cry and they pulled the tears out with a little more force, taking her with them on their voyage through time. As the road flattened out, she suddenly realized she might never know the composer, another song would come on and the beauty of what she had just heard would remain forever in her memory, encapsulating the moment like a dream. Someone, somewhere had made this music, and that person would never know that now, there was a girl driving in a small black truck in the middle of the night, going home. She could never tell them that the notes cast themselves around her like a magic circle, holding her as no other piece of music could. It was made for this. It was this. She was that, and it was her. It took her hand and led her down a psychedelic road where owls feed and coyotes sometimes wander. It held her in its palm, a loving teacher that pulled on her metal gates just a little more. “Open up,” it said. And whoever made this piece…they would never know. What were they doing right now? Sleeping? Eating? Working? Making love? The infinite consequences of their creation were unknowable. Once born, the creation had its own life, moving through time, radio, stereos, ears…moving into and out of perception…being heard by some, being shut off by others. Were there others crying? Others dancing? A thousand ways this piece could go…its creator would never know.
The consequences of what we create are unknowable. We create for the sake of creating, we do for the sake of doing, and then, it is sent, it goes out into the world, drifting like a carefully constructed leaf in the wind. Will someone catch it? Will it go straight to the sea, straight to the blue waves that will swallow up the orange and yellow and green? Or maybe it will drift to land with the high tide, and perhaps a little girl will pluck it from the ocean foam. And maybe it will end up in her collage of thoughts and dreams and her memory of changing seasons. There is just no way to tell what will happen, so we just let them go. Just as we were once let go, like tears already dispersing into the fog before the song that provoked them has come to an end, like ribbons of stardust dancing in the bottomless void of the infinite night.

What Do You Do?

The question is…what do you do? I thought about it all night, long after the movie credits played and the characters faded from the set. I watched their forms fade as blackness overtook their shapes. They had picked a path, one of the four dirt paths available on the wide plane of Mississippi; long, wide spaces of opportunity whose future remained unknowable in the distance. The road ended at the horizon and promised nothing...just darkness and haze. Just pick one and start walking. Four choices, four paths, four ways.
So what do you do?
What shall run through me?
There are roads that lead to life, paths to a simpler type of death, paths to sleep.
Where do you want to go?
Can you find the will to keep walking, to keep lifting up one foot after the other when the rain starts pouring and each sound of roaring thunder warns you of the choice?
Through hunger, through self doubt.
Choose a path and walk.
Walk it well.
There are pawn shops along the route and crusty hotels and sweet women who’ll grab your wallet and smile as they hide it in their shirts. If you want to learn, start walking. Choose a path and walk. The lineages come down like raindrops. They are as close as dandelions, and you could grab them, if only you weren’t so blind that you can’t even see the grass.
Four paths.
Four choices.
Can I walk until the locusts come to blind me and the devil comes with shiny white teeth and a smile that doesn’t hide the sweetness of my captured soul?
Can I walk into the storm?
Muddy toes, cold skin, squinting against the wind. It’s me that brings the devil, me that paints the sky with rain, me that tightens the noose.
What can I do to open the door, unbolt the lock and turn on the lamp?
Can I allow it all to run through me?
Moving through each little open pore, each tendril of matter and stone, like electrons run through the filament and light my little room.
Can I just breathe and continue to walk and let it move me, coloring me in its travels?
Can I make enough space, open this little cold heart and sacrifice it all to let it move?
This is a vessel, a fleshy, bloody capsule that needs to be emptied just a little to let some fresh water in. Like tubes of paint waiting for a hand, like windmills waiting for a strong gust.
Let this body be the brush, the hand, the willing embodiment of Real movement.

Binary Tree

The last dash of the “t” is in place, the words are checked for spelling, the sentences for grammar…I wrap it all up with a colorful graphic that exemplifies the text and send it off, through the system of tubes and invisible helping hands that deliver it to curious brown eyes that read it with interest in a dark, warm room. And I take a breath, a plane roars across the sky like a metal dragon and then…silence…the void…there is nothing here. All is blackness and I stand naked and alone, wondering what will come next. A flicker zig zags across my mind sending sparks to retrieve my attention, oh yes, I remember, there is another text to write. There is never an end. There a dozens of notebooks, each full of ideas and within the scope of this lifetime, there could not be enough time to finish them all, and even if I did, there would be more. Each fork in the path, each level of completion leads to another task waiting to be done…a new piece of writing, a new dance. There is never an end, just the cycling of energy from one form to another. The last breath will be the beginning of another branch. A thousand lifetimes will pass and each will lead to the same set of steps, the same writing, the same brown eyes that hold the world in their soft gaze.
The infinite tree, with its infinite forking branches, spiraling off into the colorless sky of a million suns. It is never the end, unless I stop looking, unless I close my eyes and cover my head in a blanket and fall asleep within the deep knot of its trunk. The branches may exist, the endless work may exist, the infinite lifetimes may exist, but what can I do when my eyes are closed? They may spiral around me like sequined circus clowns and spring fairies, but how shall I fly without wings? I may be walking the small, slick branch right now, walking along its curving path into the orange sunset, and yes, I think I am, I feel the fading rays against my skin, but still, my eyes are closed and you promised that we would walk through the doorway together, is it still true? Each branch leads to another segment, another fork in which to choose a path, will it be the left or right? And when I come to the end of this small wooden segment? What then? Left or right? And on other trees, there are three choices, should I take the center path? Should I take the path of crying, the path of fear, or the path of containment? Intellectualizing is simple, the choice is objective and thus, clear. But sitting there, heart pounding, fear licking at the heels, demons whispering in each ear, dragons tugging at the nipples, the steps are difficult to gauge, the distance of their points cloaked in a haze. Visions of a lion strike my face, oh, a wet tongue has found me. The cry of an eagle warns of other, even more difficult choices to come. There will be no end. On my back is a tattooed map, it traces the covered veins below. Go! Go! Go! There is not much time. There is no end, it stretches on and on, two choices at each fork on the road.
Will it be life or sleep?
Work or death?
The path must be walked, decisions must be made, words must be written, melodies must be sung.
There is an infinite amount of choices behind us.
There is an infinite amount of choices ahead.
But the choice is always the same.

Time

My eyes are heavy with sleep. As they linger in the memories of colored dreams, my mouth yearns for the taste of black tea and cream, a signal from my tongue that morning has arrived. The day is bright and young and there are plenty of cars on the road. I am slightly startled by the realization that lots of people get up this early; when I’m usually warm and naked and covered in a heavy blanket, there is an army of school buses and brightly vested crossing guards and morning commuters with coffee for a carpool companion.
I brake at the first stop sign I see. On my left, I notice a plump orange cat trotting down the street, he’s just about to turn the corner and head south, his small padded feet are soundless on the sidewalk. Just as he’s about to pass the first house, he hops onto the house’s front stoop effortlessly, and then he continues for three trots until the step ends and then he jumps back to the sidewalk. I am struck by its fluidity. Walking, jumping, continuing on. He moves as he wants, without a second of hesitation. There’s no time for thought or calculation, he just moves as he should, so inhuman, so unlike me.
I smile as I press the gas and continue on. I make up a two-line ditty about the cat as I drive, one sentence ending in a high note, the other line ending in an extended low note.
I enter the freeway, cars pass me, I pass others. The light is bright, the golden rays hit the side of my face, I like it, but still, I move the visor to block some of its strength. The road curves, winding through the wooded hills just a couple miles from the coast. In a thicket of cypresses, I notice a slated structure of wood at the top of a hill and I’m surprised I’ve never noticed it before. Is it a sculpture? A church? My question is answered as the small gold cross comes into view.
The three lane highway gently winds and I feel my chest making itself known. I bring my attention in constantly, my face is relaxed, there’s not a sound coming from the radio. Just me and the world beyond. This drive is one I make twice a week in the early afternoon, and usually it seems as quick as a blink, but today in the early light of morning, it feels like the journey of a lifetime. For a couple of seconds I panic, wondering if I’ve passed the familiar exit, but no, I see a sign for the junction I need to take in the distance.
On my right is a pretty lake, the deserted body of blue waters that seems too picturesque to be without mansions in the hills beyond. But somehow, it has remained calm and undeveloped. Sometimes I notice hawks circling above, today, it is only my chest that circles with energy.
The well worn journey is different today, although I don’t realize it until later, until the moment has passed and I am once again “myself.” The usual commute that zips by in a whirl of daydreaming and talking voices and instrumental sounds that cascade to me from the local college radio. Today, it’s me and the world, me and my presence, me and my attention, on the lake and the cat and the sculpture of a church that sat there for years without my notice.
It’s me and everything I see…and really, it is not me, it is Us…This, Here. This morning, some of the many “I’s” are actually here, present, and we look into the world and see wonder and secrets and silent steps that are filled with a thousand teachings. The journey is long, the minutes are themselves full and expanding, pushing my perception of the world to the brink. The cars move forward and then recede from my vision. We are all here together, in this bright morning of circling energy and colored visions. Today, I can see them. Broken from the usual habit of mental chatter, I have more time, an extended reality. The drive is the same, just as many miles, just as many minutes, and yet, there is more of it today, more that I see, more that I can feel, more to take and transform with words and shapes and sounds.
How much of this have I missed through the many years of sleepwalking? How often have I truly been alive?

Precious Moment

The day sparkles with freshness, made new by gusts of forceful wind that rustles silvery leaves without rest. The light is high overhead, the brightness of a wish just past. My heart has been aching since the morning, noticed in a moment of stillness when all I could feel was the pounding in my toes and the ache of my wrists and the extra pressure in the center of my chest. It stays in me, a continuing presence as long as I can maintain this quiet in my mind. The sacrifices are made, held tightly inside, and I look for my ring of keys.
The day is bright, the sun is high overhead, winking its rays through the glass of the car, through the tinted lens above my eyes, through the delicate membranes that are my windows to the world. The light is clear, I feel myself in the car, aware of each turn of the wheel, aware of the narrow road down the hill with five sharp turns. I move out beyond the dotted yellow line, there are no cars coming and I’m safe, but I feel the strength of the car, I feel the weight moving at thirty miles an hour, fast enough to smash the delicate connections between fiber and blood.
There are three stop signs before I get to Mission St and as I brake at each one, the sensation of fragility compounds. Maybe it’s the man wheeling around his trashcans to the curb, maybe the woman walking across the street talking into her cell phone, or the man sitting in his car at the red light beside me.
Something comes thorough me, coming in, moving out, twirling inside. I do not name the cause, I wouldn’t reveal the source, I can only recognize the moment.
Without the radio on, without yammering or melodies…the day seems brighter, harsh in its generous opening. It’s not the strength of a fight or the pounding of a bat, it’s more like the opening of a sun that has remained shrouded in petals, the glow is harsh, the reality is painful. My chest thumps with more pain than I usually a notice, a nice, dull, achy pain that sits well, a feeling I have begun to consider a long lost friend that I welcome with a smile.
“Oh, you’re back! It’s great to have you home!”
The skin surrounding me seems so temporary… I feel the forceful weight of the car, I feel the fragility of the moment like an egg shell rolling down the street. The mortality of the breath, the temporal nature of me.
The other day, she loudly laughed and then she said, “You don’t know when you’re going to die!”
“Oh yeah,” I thought… “I can’t count on eighty more years.”
One wrong move, now, and everything could be altered. I imagine myself in the hospital on a ventilator.
I hear his voice, “We might be able to be together after this, depending on how much progress we’ve made during this cycle.”
I scan the crosswalk carefully for walkers. I check the rear view mirror. Time is precious, the body is precious. The moment is precious and delicate and I feel it as though for the first time, in the brightness of a sun high overhead, in the freshness brought about by the wind and an aching heart.

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.

Powder

Before I had a language to describe them, long before the nature of the Pull was described to me, and years before I began to understand the savagery of my eternal habit, I lived in the hole for a couple of days in early spring. In the waning months before my degree would be awarded, in the tautness of a rubber band about to break, I smoked from the crinkled hands of demons.
The house was always bathed in a yellowish hue, but it couldn’t be blamed on the light bulbs. It was the inhabitants of the chamber, the vermin clothed as humans, the sticky sludge that resembled normalcy, the fluttering shadows that projected life. The colors looked like a couple, it acted like a pretty girl with school books and thin tank tops, it seemed like a skinny guy wearing an oversized suit, and they were that, and they were not. I tried to conceal it in the corners of my heart, in the caves where secrets lay and rest, where they spin their wool and catch blood-filled mosquitoes with eyes that have long ago been sewn shut. I tried to hide them away, but blood always found its way below the door. The gray cloud above my head shaded the perspective, the steel ball shackled to my ankle ate away at my voice and jingled with each step on the pavement. The pain was written on my face and the disease dressed itself up in purple spots and lay quietly on his skin and the house smelled of vinegar and burnt tin foil and the books absorbed the smoke like the thick leaves of a jungle.
I did not know the language, then, I could not describe the pull, but I smoked from the hands of red demons. Disguised as the glass vase for plastic roses, hidden in the product of water and fire and metal and coca leaves that combined into a surge of power, it was a brief full body orgasm that colored me green and left me wailing without tears, hungry with no need for food. I smoked from the bumpy skin, I heard the bells of their choir and I sat still while the earth spun and my stomach took a ride on the roller coaster that always ended twenty seconds later. And I stood in line again. I called for the conductor, I looked for the tubes and the white rocks and the dirty spoons. And again I took the ride. And when it was over, when I was on my knees and drooling and looking for the foil, I took it again. The same rusty car, the same plastic seat, the eternal loops that held me by a plastic belt. I called for more in the shower and spun as the water beat my body. I sat on the patio, surrounded by dying plants and a created world that made no sense and under the night sky that felt more ugly and brown than I had ever seen it. I sat and heard the bells.
He finally fell asleep and I felt the pull calling the deepest holes in me, I followed my body into the yellow room and found the spoons and the powder and the carton of baking soda. I wanted to make rocks from powder and hear the choir and shake with the bells, I tried ‘til 4 am until the small bag was empty and every ill-cooked rock traveled in wisps of smoke to my lungs. It was almost dawn when I looked in the mirror and I saw a strange woman from a bleak distant land. A woman in the clutches of a force she had no language for. A stranger from a parallel world, a whore, a student, a woman…all could be possible, all were before her for the choosing, there were some of each in her eyes. The bumpy hands were tight around my ankles, the choir sang without rest and I decided then, this would not be the path. I closed the door. I felt them call for many days, the demons kissed my ears and played in the corners of my mind, but I buried myself in books, in the one clear goal that was only a couple of months away. Working this way, I washed myself clean of the powder.

Labyrinth Walk

I stood on the border looking in. There was a great circular labyrinth in front of me and I stood on the edge, where the stone edged path began. Should I go in? I wondered. Is this the time? I wondered. Will there be another opportunity? My mind was clouded with thoughts, tinged with self conscious doubt and human concerns. As I whirled in the pro and cons and brain activity, I felt the moment closing. It was moving past, rushing like a slow current, but definitely moving…drifting through my finger tips as I stood there debating. The moment moved as would the stream past a rock, unafraid to leave me in its wake. I could feel the three women behind me squirming slightly, their bodies preparing for departure, ready to move up the hill and begin our lunch. I felt it all passing. I knew it was leaving, maybe forever.
A small bird chirped in a nearby tree. A soft breeze blew wisps of hair across my forehead. Without a thought, my foot took a step, my first step on the labyrinth. And as my foot took the step, my mind was surprised. It had been left out of the decision. It was being taken for a walk. I thought, "oh, I guess I’m doing this." And my mind was shocked, but willing to go. I looked down at the path directly in front of me, at the narrow bit of dirt outlined in gray stones. I remembered myself. I remembered what to do. My right foot touched lightly upon the path, I felt the earth beneath me, I felt the heel as it made contact with the earth. Each step was slow, each movement deliberate and noticed.
Nearly thirty steps in, my mind started to dart. "Was this a good time for this? Will they be mad? Did I mess up the space? This is probably taking too much time!" And then, a calmer voice, another "I" said, "you’re doing it now, you can’t turn back, you’re in the middle, you made the decision…so do it as best as you can." My hands were swinging, the air drifted through my curled fingers like soft kisses on a journey. My left knee bent as my body prepared for the next step. I turned the corners carefully and slowly, watching the ground as the outlined path turned back on itself. "This just keeps going!" I thought. I put my attention back on my feet. I felt my arcs stretch with the forward movement of heel to toe. The breeze touched me again and tousled my hair.
When I had started, I heard the voices of the three women on the outside. I imagined how they saw me, how I looked from the outside. They kept talking and I felt safe in their neglect. But when I was focusing on my feet, somewhere along the way, their voices had dropped away. The space was silent except for the rustling of nearby leaves and the occasional car tires swishing on the asphalt of the road below. It was me and the labyrinth. Me and the elements. Me and my effort. Perhaps me and their attention.
The rings were getting smaller, I turned corners more often until I reached the center. In the small round center was a mosaic stepping stone that had small stones and beads upon it. I closed my eyes. I saw small sparks of electricity playing on the canvas of my eyelids. I raised my hands out to the sides, opening them wide then raising them above my head and finally bringing both hands together in front of my chest. Oooooommmmmm, the sound was not as pure as it is when I intone it sometimes, alone in my bedroom, but I noticed that fact objectively and I held my attention on the sound and my diaphragm, even as the sound cracked slightly. I pulled my stomach in as my rounded mouth continued with the elongated sound. I stood in the center, feeling the soft breeze, feeling the sun, hearing the sound of birds, feeling quiet, yet electrified and alive. My ego had fallen and I was overcome with a sense of lightness.
My body turned back. I took a step, I raised my leg like a solider, placing it firmly on the ground. I took another step, a very short one on the tips of my toes. I walked back through the rings, sometimes emphasizing the movement of my hips like a supermodel, other times walking erect and with a sense of formality. Other steps, I glided. I alternated between movements, improvising each like a chaotic dance with my attention as the thread of consistency. And the more I played, the more alive I felt. My smile increased the more I played and I shed more of myself upon the soil.
There was nothing else. My past was a distant part of my imagination, the future was never coming. There was only each single step and the thousands of movements which seamlessly created it . The labyrinth and I were playing. We were lovers in union. Dancers intertwined. Actors upon a stage. Beings in a living void.

The Egos that Flee from a Sinking Ship

Crrrrssakkkk….the sudden breaking of glass as a dark shape lands on the windshield of a tiny blue car. As the fleshy body hits the solid mass of glass, she thinks to herself, "I think I’m getting hit by a car now." Her back lands on the windshield. Her eyes are open and she notices the blue sky above. How long does she stare at the sky?
It is such a pretty morning, it’s a sunny California spring day. She sees the sky, as though she’s never quite noticed it before. It’s blue. It’s open and wide. "I think I’m getting hit by a car now." Her brain gives her some sensible information. It’s objective, without worry or fear, just information. She is being hit by a car. It’s something that she has heard of, something she’s seen on TV, and it’s happening to her.
She looks at the never ending ceiling of earth. slightly hazy, but still clearly blue in the early morning. Where is time? Her brain is unguarded, left alone in this moment. The many "I"’s (the multiple egos that usually pull her in all directions) have fled, and her brain is slow to comprehend what is happening.
With the sudden impact upon her body, all sense of time is assaulted, revealed for its true transitory nature. At this moment, time reveals itself for its falseness.
Time…the great perception. Without an "I" to perceive it, any "I", it moves like clear molasses through a vacuum of images. Mistakes happening within fractions of measured time, yet being felt as though through the eyes of many years.
The many I’s have scrambled like a group of confused chickens…have they been hit? Has one of them been hit? The windshield of the dirty car has broken into a thousand tiny fragments, revealing the blue hue of an objectively clear pane. The driver, a small brown woman, has her mouth open, herself not quite understanding the nature of the shape blocking her view. And the shape, the body of a tall woman, designed by nature to work fields and bear children, is observing the blueness of the sky. With the impact, the driver hits the brakes, the girl flies forward, landing on the pavement. Her head makes contact with the ground. "On no, am I dead?"
She wonders. She lays still with her thoughts. She cannot answer her question. There is no "I" to respond. Who is asking the question? The brain? The personality that wishes to keep breathing? Time has abandoned her. No, it is the many I’s that have left, and in their absence, she does not feel time. She lays on the hard earth, paved long ago with black tar. She asks herself: "Am I dead?". In the silent absence of time and under the endless blue sky, there is no answer available.

The Present In Between

I look up at the pink tiles, wet with the spray of warm water from a leaking shower head. The small rectangular cube is illuminated by a single light above, its golden glow makes shadows of the falling water droplets and the one thin, glistening body that stands in the center, doing its best to avoid contact with the tiles.
Is this mine?
Is this me?
I look to my left, the tan plastic shower curtain. With slightly squinted eyes, I slowly turn my head to the right. Strangeness invades. This is a body I clean, with warm water and soap…I do what I have been taught, the necessary steps to maintain this body. But this is simply that…a body, a biological machine that needs to be scrubbed clean from time to time, to prevent the accumulation of pungent smells and flies.
But the tiles seem unreal.
No, they seem too real.
Small pink squares, line after line of them decorate the interior of this stall. Blue bottles, plastic jars and razor blades. An array of soaps and scrubbing devices. I know these instruments, these objects, but they are strangers of plastic and colors.
Startled, yet manifesting calmness, I continue in a progression of learned habits. Soap lathering, hair scrubbing, face washing. My brain asks, "am I here?" And I am, in this exact moment of alert attention, surrounded by the new vision of wet tiles and billowing steam, something is here.
The human, the cynic with all the answers, has been tucked aside, momentarily silenced by a flowing river of crystalline liquids and fast moving currents. Something new and startled emerges, blinking into the warm mist and bright light. The moment laughs and tumbles, spins and skips like a dandelion running on the breeze. The body holds steady, with soapsuds and streams of water cascading off mountainous pink nipples.
And the seconds roll out like a never ending line of marching soldiers, meeting the future with a series of soundless explosions and colorless paintings. The endless wheel in motion, made of sewn body parts and purple ribbons, it turns and turns, moving like a backwards clock. The past and the future forever maintain their stations on the periphery, along the gentle curving arcs that create the sides and roof; the only constant is constantly moving. Past and future melt together, fusing at the juncture which touches earth. Rolling so quickly as to be barely recognizable, the present blends with the movements that reach both in front of and behind it.
The water continues to run, quickly finding its escape from the moment.