Habits

I sat on the cold wooden seat of my high-backed stool, my back straining slightly to keep me sitting up after the many loads of bread I carried from the truck across the street to the table beneath the shade of a palm tree.  There were other vendors all around in the park, each hoping for sales and a few goodies to fill their belly at lunch.  On display were varieties of tofu, French savory pies, elegant chocolates filled with the best fruits and cremes. There were dozens of people walking by, some holding tighter to their purses than others. It was a park transformed into a marketplace with samples and delectables, all surrounded by the smell of fresh roasted coffee beans.
For a moment it all felt very cluttered to me- different fabrics, sounds, so much movement and thoughts- I took a long breath and focused my attention. And as that strong moment of attention filled me, I looked from person to person, giving each a few seconds of attention: the bleach-blond rockabilly laughing, the Afghan guy smiling as he took a five dollar bill, his associate smiling as well, bringing his hand to his chest while referring to himself in conversation. A potential customer looking at her cell phone, a small boy eating a pretzel. 
All sound seemed to cease.  I saw each gesture as a manifestation of a deep habit.  Every smile and laugh, every movement and step. It was all habitual and mechanical.   
Each one.
Every one.
And as I turned from one person to the other and saw each manifestation, I felt apart from them, blocked from them by a bit of gray air around me that separated us.
For a moment, I thought they could sense my difference. I didn’t feel the attention of one person, but I felt as if they knew I was different. 
Could they possibly know?  Detached perception turned slightly cold in me as I began to fear them slightly, as I worried they would perceive me as other, as strange. 

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.

A Place in The Symbolic Order

She read the email on her small laptop with a slight sense of curiosity. It was a small update from her mom.
“Erin’s doing fine, she lives in Massachusetts, Tess lives in Germany with her boyfriend and she teaches English, Shelly lives in London.”
She nodded to herself. They were all short one-liners about friends she had lost contact with years before, but she felt satisfied and reasonably caught up. Then her brain did a little twist and she smiled when she realized she didn’t know anything. She had no idea what Tess saw every morning on her way to work or what her boyfriend looked like or how she felt close to midnight when she looked out a window. She knew nothing about her old friends, just a few simple words. Germany, boyfriend, teaching. Three simple words that helped her place Tess within the world. She had never even been to Germany, but she imagined Tess walking on a cobblestone street eating a sausage. It was her own imagination that made her feel like she knew how Tess was doing. Those three words gave her images, they gave her pictures and implications that had nothing to do with the Real, or with what was really true, but the three simple words satisfied her curiosity for a moment. Now she knew.

She wondered what her own mother had said about her. Did she make up a few lies or did she simply give them her location on the planet and another word about her job. They probably nodded and were satisfied, just as uncurious about the details as she had been. They would be able to imagine her somewhere within San Francisco and that would be enough. Everyone would nod while taking another bite of dinner, imagining her somewhere next to a red Golden Gate...yes, that was San Francisco She was placed, comfortable within the symbolic order. They would have no idea that she lived in a large studio with a backyard full of trees and flowering shrubs. They would not know that she woke up every Sunday morning and sold bread at the farmer’s market and felt tired afterwards and then would go home and start working and soon someone with a friendly voice would call her and she would smile and feel her chest lift and lift and a smile within her would burst and appear on her lips. They would know none of that, just as she knew nothing about them. She lived in San Francisco. Erin lived in Massachusetts. That was enough to know.

Because a simple word will easily place us within the symbolic order, what we do can easily be explained with a sentence.
“I’m a saleswoman…”
“I’m a musician…”
“I’m writing a story….”
“I live in London…”
You will see a head nod, the chin rising up and down slowly, yes… it is understood. They can picture someone behind a counter and a cash register. They can picture someone with a guitar and hear some music in their head, they can picture a book and a pen…it is all easily understood, you are now known. There will be no further questions, you have been placed within the symbolic order.

Because it can all be so easily explained, we can hide what we do. Never mind that the dark mystery envelops you in a crystal sheath and takes you beyond the realm of words, somewhere that cannot be explained. It is not for the world to know.
People are satisfied with a one-liner. Your emotions, the way the light fades slowly out the bedroom window and makes you feel like the twilight holds every secret in the world, it cannot be explained with a word and it can never be known. They think they know you with a word, let them. The things which cannot be explained with words will always remain invisible. If it cannot be explained, it will not be seen.
We can hide what we need from the world even when we live among the crowds in the city. We can even show ourselves to them, we can show our books and art, and as long as there is a word to describe it (colors on a piece of paper is called “art”) then they will feel like they understand. If what is true is spoken, then it will be changed. It cannot be otherwise.

A woman is working undercover for the CIA. She pretends to be the girlfriend of a gangster and follows him around the world, reporting his whereabouts whenever she can to the authorities. In her role as the gangster’s girlfriend, she pretends to be sexually interested in another man in order to lure him into her bedroom to gain his trust. It will be his trust in her which makes him go to a secluded field and wait for a man which will never show up, which is what the gangsters want. But after sleeping with him, she develops true feelings for him. What she had once pretended, what had once been a cloud of dust and lies has become real.

A young boy wants to be a doctor. He sees his father dressed in a white lab coat, grabbing a thermos cup of coffee before heading out the front door to perform a few surgeries, and that is what he envisions for himself. He wants to be in that lab coat, kissing his wife goodbye before he goes off to save a couple of lives. The boy spends his evenings studying a mountain of books and because of his intense effort, he gets into college and then becomes an intern in a hospital a few miles from a choppy ocean. After a few years of intense memorization and fourteen hour days and many tests, his internship is complete and he is now a doctor. He now wears a spotless lab coat and walks on the shiny linoleum floors with shined shoes. Patients call him “doctor” and he interacts with them using a tone of authority. As a sign if status, he buys an expensive watch, which is what every doctor on his ward wears.
The only thing Real is the watch. It can be seen and felt. The symbolic order creates the “doctor.” There are extensive ideas of what doctors should do and wear. How they should act, what they should drive. None of these are inherently real. These things do not make a doctor, they do not determine if someone has the know how to set bones or perform surgery. A lab coat does not make a doctor, but within the symbolic order, it does. The role of doctor is adopted and acted out.

In the symbolic order, little girls are given dolls and tea sets and pink clothes. The babies do not come out of the womb asking for these particular things, but they are given them by adults because within the symbolic order, that is what girls play with, that is what they like. Little boys like sports because they are told they do. They prefer blue because they are given clothes in that particular color. Eventually, after enough time, little boys do actually like basketball and little girls really do like to play with their dolls. What was not real to begin with has become real. The girl is placed in the symbolic order as a girl, she acts like a girl and is given “girl” things and then, she becomes a girl. Pink clothes are not an inherent part of having a vagina, but within the symbolic order, at least in the United States, it is.

If a little boy is only given pink clothes and tea sets and baby dolls, he will probably grow up liking them and playing with them. It will be all he has ever known. But when he steps into the broader symbolic order, where most boys play with trucks and wear blue, there will be a serious clash. To the boys in his school, he will be seen as “other.” They will not understand why he is not like them, and they will search for a way to explain it and place him within their symbolic order.
Placing someone or something within the symbolic order is a quest for Order. To make sense of chaos. The boy who likes pink because he was given pink (just like the other boys like blue because they were given blue) will be called gay or sissy or whatever word can be used to place him in the symbolic order. It will be the word used to understand him. One word will be enough to provide the explanation.

Our purpose is to be awake within the symbolic order. It existed long before us, it will continue after the last breath of our body. Our purpose is to be free to fit in or not. Our purpose is to be awake enough to have a choice. The left hand path is the path of breaking the rules of the symbolic order.
The symbolic order has been given to us, it has been placed on us since birth. It was imposed upon us by parents and teachers, just as it was imposed upon them as infants. No one chose it, we stepped into the role that was placed before us and pretended to “be” until we “became.” The left hand path breaks the rules of the symbolic order. That is one of the choice at our disposal. We can also choose to fit into the symbolic order without becoming identified with it.

A little boy is dressed in a fancy suit every Sunday and brought to a small church with a white steeple. He copies what his parents do. He kneels and clasps his hands in front of his heart, he bends his head forward slightly and closes his eyes. He asks for things he wants while his eyes are closed and he imagines something, somewhere, fulfilling his wishes. Soon, after enough imitation, the boy comes to church thinking that he has made the decision, he has chosen this path for himself. He is now a full grown believer. He is too identified to see that the people around him on the wooden pews have all been taught this just like he was. They simply imitated the others around them, just like monkeys learn to ride bicycles and wash their socks or bang shellfish until the shell cracks.
We do as we were shown and religion is no exception. Our choice can be to come into the small church, to feel the pressure of the floor as we kneel, to drink in the scent of the candles, to close our eyes and act out the part without becoming identified, without being absorbed into the act, without letting the imposed symbolic determine the real.

The Jump

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

I looked into his eyes, “YES.”

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

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

“YES”

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

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

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

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

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

She went face first.

Over the cliff.

Head first into what was waiting.

Death

A college-aged boy in a white T-shirt and jeans stands in front of a crowded room. His round Asian face looks towards the white pull-down screen in the center of the classroom wall. An unused microphone rests in his left hand. The room is dim, the only light source comes from the projection itself, which is a picture of the same boy, in another place, a different time. The boy in the photo is in a light filled greenhouse. His hard city mask has fallen and he beams into the camera, holding a red ripe tomato in each hand. In the dark room, down a windowless hall in the basement of the science building, the boy looks at another self. He cannot recognize himself. He brought the slides, he practiced the presentation, but the face that appears to be his own is a stranger.
Who is that? he wonders. He is without the requisite white bandana and required mask. The boy in the room has been overtaken by death. He stares with eyes blinking. He looks, searching, searching for the self he now knows. Searching for…something. The projected photograph is a sudden flash…something used to be different. For a moment, maybe as quick as the snap of the shutter, he was different. He smiled because of tomatoes. His fingers were dirty and his car was useless and all his friends and family were miles away. He was no one to the soil, no one to the trees. But he coaxed life from a seed. And life was given. Birth happened, and the tomatoes were proof.
The photo which he stares at now with strange curiosity, is a reminder of another life, one that faded the moment he left the greenhouse. A tarot card drifts to the floor. The boy doesn’t see it, he doesn’t feel its subtle wind. It lays facing up, a skeleton in armor tramples all with his horse. The flag of death waves in the red sky. A fallen king lies next to his forgotten gold crown, two children weep at the feet of the white stallion. Are they in the path? Is the horse’s shoe a moment from their heads?
The boy with the microphone does not see the fluttering death flag beside his own head. The stench of his physical death will take years, but this is just as foreign. It’s like looking at his own corpse, except…it is not. His corpse looks at the being left behind. The being forgotten, flowering just for a moment. Open and light-filled and caught forever. Caught for a moment that will always exist, even if it has moved beyond the recognizable.
Death came uninvited. Death came when the boy began to think, when he began to be “himself.” When he returned to life as though nothing had happened. When he got into his car, put on his bandana, and tried to explain his experience. But death happened. A moment of sudden life had exploded out of the rotting experience of a machine, and that moment lives on in the photo. It lives in the dim room, lives in the moment. It is the reminder that flowers can bloom in the mud, that a burst of lighting can cause a fire. But the boy standing with the microphone is a reminder that death is never far away. It is ready, with horse and flag and armor, ready to snatch it all.
The class waits expectantly for the explanation of the photo, the description of his experience and the things he learned. But there are no words for the captured moment. No words that can describe the bliss of creativity and birth. Nothing to explain the smile and the love of two tomatoes and the energy of a being spilling forth. The class is silent, waiting for the unexplainable to be explained.

Piece Of Paper

She looked out the window and saw a small scrap of paper blowing in the wind. It was a small yellow post-it note and the wind pushed it to the fence where it stayed tangled in the bunches of wild mustard plants and yellowed bits of grass that clung to the edges of the yard. A white moth-like butterfly flew over the wooden fence and disappeared into the eucalyptus grove that covered the hillside below. She stared at it, at the little trail of darting white that had faded into green and silver. Her house was warm, and because of the heat inside, she indulged in wearing only purple panties, that had lace along the edges, and a striped purple T-shirt. Her legs were bare except for the pink slippers keeping the bottom of her feet warm. She wanted to go outside and get the little bit of paper. She wondered what it said, where it had come from, who had dropped it. Would she find her own writing on the yellow paper? She wanted to go outside, but, although the sun was out, she could see by the rustling eucalyptus that it was windy, and wind, at least here at this elevation and so close to the sea, meant chill. She was not anxious to let the wind brush past her and strip from her the warmth she had accumulated over a night of sleeping under thick blankets and warmed by space heaters in every room. But what was on that paper? How come she didn’t just look right past it the moment she saw it? How come it didn’t just fade into the other images that she took in and let wash over her without a second thought? Was there something different about this piece of paper or was she just getting fixated on something, finding meaning or hidden purpose when there was nothing there. Maybe there would be nothing on it. But why couldn’t she just stop and go back to her computer and start writing? What kept her standing here at the window, so close to the cold wind that managed to find its way in despite the glass barrier? She thought about all the things she had lost over the years. The small chunk of Tibetan turquoise stolen from her bathroom. Her stacks of vinyl records. Her purple and white batik shirt that just went missing one day, the blue v-neck T-shirt that Suki had given to her before her parents sent her to a rehab facility in the mountains. Could this piece of paper be one of those things, a precious bit of her or someone else, something that was about to drift off into the bushes any moment, only it had stopped here for a brief second, waiting by the fence and held close by the mustard stalks.
Act now! This is the chance. Move and grab the curiosity in front of you. Act now, or it will disappear forever and you will always wonder, you will always stand by the window and wonder about that thing which called to you and you did not respond.

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.

I Built A Wall Around My Self

A thick wall of mortar and stone and cement and glue, an amalgam of parts and substance, encrusted ideas and fossilized bones. Part wood, part stone, part metal…affixed with barbed wire along the steep edges and stuffed with body parts and memories and the collected refuse of so many lifetimes. Like the builders of the great wall of china, this wall is composed of forgotten flesh and metal hammers and the silenced stories that were swallowed and with a single final breath.
And the wall, it was constructed without plans, without consent or even a crude brainstorm sketched on a crumpled napkin. Its ongoing construction has lasted more than twenty years, the ongoing project that never comes to a close…the workers in orange vests continue to show up, rain or shine, as they have for years, each bearing my face and my dirty hands, yet I have no memory of digging the foundation. There are no pictures that shed light on its beginning, no memories that flutter in my fragmented mind, reminding me why there are piled bricks and shovel handles and femur bones protruding from the great walls.
Its erection must have begun before my first memory congealed, perhaps watching helplessly from my crib as my mother left the room, perhaps when I cried unattended in the shadow of the forgotten moon. This wall began without my direct knowledge, and yet, it was I who built it. These hands who I look at with a stranger’s eye, these rough hands put each piece in place, each stone dug from the ground, each row of brick, each scoop of cement in place, this work was done by me, me alone.
Perhaps each smooth stone was inspired by an event, an interpreted stare, a defeat, an imposed darkness…inspired and then, because I remained asleep at the wheel of this four limbed vehicle, I gathered my stones and I mixed my cement, like a one eyed witch stirring a pot of some foul smelling potion, and I placed those hard rocks firmly in place. With thick resolve, with renewed wrath, with victory playing in my ears, I watched the substance harden by the second, gray mush to thick glue to unconquerable solid strength and, surrounded by stone and brick and metal, I basked in the solitude of my defense, my fortress, my singular city.
I awake for a second from this chamber, and clearing the sleep from my eyes, I see the walls have spawned another life topped with sparkling horns of fire, and a beating heart and they have grown beyond my control, beyond the thickness of my desire, beyond my understanding…I put them here, but I cannot get them down. The walls are so thick, covered in spikes and razor blades and blood-covered thorns and I want them gone, I want to step outside these walls and taste the air of freedom, true freedom from self imposed exile, but I cannot climb them, I cannot scale them, no ladder is tall enough and the helicopters do not come this close.
And then, as I sleep, I retreat into the cave.
Sometimes I am in the middle, wishing for a door, yet finding the bed is all too warm and comfortable. All too familiar in its smell. Which way is right? Is there a wrong way? Is there black or white or red? Or are all these colors merely shades in an illusion of rainbows that peak in the height of my delusion. The walls are thick, and the sounds of music flows through me like a ghost, the heart within me accepts its message and I search for the door once again.

Red Moon

I drove in the early morning hours, while the sky still held on tightly to its black and the stars were sparkling, beaming in their true nature as suns. Both hands were on the wheel as my body tilted slightly to the left as I became one with the curve in the road. I stopped as the headlights illuminated a red and white sign. A moment of rest. There were no cops, I was completely alone in the darkness, and I paused. In front of me was the city. Far down the hill, miles into the distance, it was laid out like a softly slumbering child. The street lamps flickered, soothing vibrations of light drifted towards me, like the stars high above that I could never reach, even if I drove for a thousand years. The houses were just faint ghosts in the darkness, un-aided by the bits of light from the street or heavens. I could vaguely distinguish the soft rolling hills that made the floor of the city. I could sense the whispers of houses, condensed together, side by side, it was just the gentle rise and fall of little boxes that revealed the quiet hills. Even from my height, the freeway was an obvious snake of electric lights. I could not hear the mechanical river, but headlights appeared sporadically every couple of seconds, unimpeded in their journey forward. The train station paralleled the freeway, cutting through the city with its silenced roar of regular intervals. I could see the linear track, outlined and quietly resting in the glow of its bright bluish lights. Beyond the city lights, far ahead, was blackness. The dark was the great mouth of the ocean, and it was not silent, it roared with life in the dark and in the light. There was no distinction for its sound and movements, it came and went continuously, beyond the seasons, beyond the clock. And although I knew it was there, its sound did not carry to the height of the small mountain; but it was there, like an abyss just lingering, filled with life beyond measurement, patient and never gone. For centuries it lapped the shores, the empty hillsides, the horse and carriages, the electric cars. Wave after wave came, rocking the shore in endless cycles. Above the water, hanging low in the sky, was a crescent moon. Its open chalice reclined as if providing a bathtub for fairies, and it hung beautifully against the blackness. But unlike any other night, any other night in my memory, the crescent that hung was red. A burnt red-orange. I gasped, my mind flipped through the possibilities for this wonder. A layer of fog? No. Eclipse? No. The moon is red! What celestial occurrence could make the silvery slice red? I had seen yellow moons, big and nearly taking up the night sky, but nothing close to this color. And would the explanation change its beauty or magic? The moment, a little girl in a little black car, perched on a hill in the darkness, upon a rotating earth suspended in a universe of planets and suns and comets and gas. The moon, a constant, the constant companion to this planet. Alone at night, I reach to it as my friend. You, who are so strange. I, upon, the crust of this planet, among the city lights and construction that cover the crust of soil like a metal rash. Beyond the surface, there is moisture and gas and small particles. Beyond the surface, there are icy bits of rock and planets of fire- atoms that combust and implode, there are rings of rocks and holes and billions of suns surrounded by their own solar systems. Beyond that, it’s incomprehensible. I ask "what?" I ask "why?" I shake my head- answers are impossible, I don’t even really know the questions.

A Glimpse of a Stranger

I had just turned the corner, leaving the humid bathroom to billow steam in my wake, and I took another few steps, passing the short wall between the bedroom and kitchen. It was there, on the paneled gray wall of my bedroom, that I first glimpsed the stranger. She was naked and glistening, as through a towel had not fulfilled its duty. Small beads of water clung to the ends of her curling brown hair, they stayed on the tips, threatening to drop, threatening a free fall at any minute and a plunge to the linoleum below, but they never seemed to release their hold. In the long rectangular mirror that affixed itself to the wall like an open window to another realm, I saw a stranger.
I had almost missed her, I had passed by quickly, barely making eye contact, but in those brief, almost incalculable moments, I witnessed a stranger in my home, and I returned to the window. They were eyes I have never seen. Droopy and slightly sad…how long had she been crying? After a momentary glance, I almost remembered a girl like this, where had I seen her? Was it the same skinny, long face? No, it couldn’t be, this one’s much more pale. Isn’t this the girl with a collection of eccentric clothes that spill from her closet like oozing rainbows? No, it can’t be, this girl is too thin, the clothes would hang from her like unkempt rags on a maypole. Maybe it’s the same girl that lives in a converted garage, in the small space that has turned a Korean family into landlords. Maybe she listens to the sounds above, to the ever-present noises of their life…to their booming TV, always in the midst of an action film, to their garage door opening as someone backs the minivan down the driveway, leaving to purchase more of life’s material essentials. Is it her?
If I stretch my mind like an unbaked pretzel, I can almost remember a time when we might have been friends, perhaps even shared the same warm bed and soft lover. But his person… there is nothing familiar in her almond shaped eyes. Her pale lips are nearly invisible among the angles of her face...she looks so sad. Has she always been like this?
Is this stranger always at my side? Driving with me to the supermarket on dark, cloud-filled nights, grabbing a fistful of Kleenex while tears escape like convicts in a jailbreak or laughing with me after a long session of love making…am I this stranger? She is in my home, but could this, in fact, be her home? Who is the stranger? Who is the one thinking? Which one of us is writing? Which one of us is gazing at the stranger…her or me? Could we be the same?
I have her dreams and curse her parents. I know the names of her long-lost friends that never call, memories of working at Baskin Robbins and laughing at a coworker who collected calculators. Why do I think I know this person? I share her memories, but, who is she? Her eyes are slightly wide in alarm, her face betrays her fear. Is she dead, or struggling within a rock? A rock that has all the illusions of life, a life submerged in hard soil and buried beneath a condo complex, but yet, she can look out her window and see rain.
The stranger grabs a lipstick from the bathroom, she puts a thick coating on her lips. She rubs a little pink blush on her face, like an out of focus image whose lines begin to merge into shapes, the stranger begins to fade. Now, she is a little more familiar. But is the stranger gone? Or just buried a little deeper in the soil? Another mask hides the inconvenient truth, another masks hides the pain of reality. Do you want to accept the illusion or face the fact?
You are an illusion. I AM an illusion. I am a stranger. You are a stranger. I coat it with makeup and clothes, with stories and memories and hopes and desires, but I am living within the body of a stranger. Shall I become a part of the circus, forgetting my character, forgetting that I am confined within a rock that keeps a thousand chains around my neck, holding my heart captive? And yet, I think I can drive anywhere. I think the ability to take a plane ride makes me free.
The lipstick is another layer of delusion, a way to comfort the discomfort when confronted by the stranger. A stranger that leaks out of every pore, every open hole, every fleck of brown within the iris. You can see it. That stranger is here, now. Right in front, naked and tattooed, a skeleton with breasts that moves as the earth turns, every second, but does not feel a thing. She does not feel it all shifting, she does not know that it all stays the same. She knows nothing, and she stares at herself, wide eyed and scared.

Discipline

For her, discipline used to be synonymous with punishment. In the world of the little girl, discipline was her mother with furious eyes and steaming anger quickly approaching her with a large wooden spoon. With every swat on her fleshy buttocks, her first understanding of discipline was etched.
When she began school, discipline took on a new dimension. It meant studying over books and doing homework. At first, she didn’t think the work was too hard and she liked filling out the answers in the appropriate lines. There was a sense of satisfaction in completing her assignments, a wholeness in the activity her young self enjoyed.
In middle school, the concepts became more difficult. It required an effort, the work required studying and practice and review. She tried her very best to get good grades, she wanted the praise of her parents when the report card was sent home, she wanted to see their smiles, their approving nods and hugs.
Then came high school, harder still, demanding even more effort. She struggled with her geometry class, all of the formulas and angles and numbers, it was all so conceptual and none of it came easy…she fought to understand it but her effort did not result in good grades. She remembers the day she brought home the first "D" on her report card. She thought it would be the end of the world. She imagined the look of disappointment in her mother's eyes and the gruff tone of her father's voice. "No! Not a D!" Maybe they would go get the spoon again. Walking home that afternoon, she berated herself for not trying harder.
To her surprise, her parents, although not pleased with her grade, were understanding. Perhaps sympathetic from their own memories of geometry, they encouraged her to try her best and to not bring anything lower than a "C" on future report cards. She was stunned by their reaction. She interpreted their understanding as a license to goof off. There were no consequences, no beatings, not even a harsh tone from her father and because of this, because there was no punishment, any sense of self discipline she had once had to get good grades flew out the window.
She spent the rest of her time in high school doing the minimum amount of work required to get a "C" on her report cards. She developed a consistent habit of giving the least amount of effort and energy to her tasks and skated just above the rim of failing. Even today, she recalls bragging to her friends that all she had to do was listen in class and she could get a "C" on a test. She never took one single book home. She didn’t study or spend her weekends trying to grasp the difficult texts of literature or the new ideas presented to her in classes. She took pride in her lack of effort. She wore it like a pretty new dress, with her head up and chest out.
Not any more. Instead of the badge of honor, she holds the memories of her past like the painful glimpses of a diseased relative. She thinks often of her moment of realization back in high school, the moment her machine smiled and took over and battled down the weaker part within her that wanted to work and complete tasks and feel the palpable sense of wholeness before beginning on the next project. That day of the "D," her machine won, the lazy and sloppy machine won. Sometimes she spends whole afternoons imagining what would have happened if she had tried harder…she probably could have gotten all "A’s." Maybe she could have gone on to college and become a doctor. If she had made different choices, maybe she could have been better able to provide for herself and her family. Maybe she could have avoided living in cockroach ridden apartments and living off Kraft Macaroni & Cheese made without the milk and butter, made with only water.
But snapping out of her afternoons of despair, she remembers that looking back with regret is only another way to avoid the work of the moment. There is no way to affect the lazy machine of the past, but now, she can begin to rein in the deeply ingrained habits of half-hearted effort and learn the delicate art of true discipline.

She might never be a doctor or a lawyer, she might never have a high paying job or a lavish house in the hills, but the material benefits of a lifetime of good grades would not bring her any closer to wakefulness. The obvious consequences of lazy habits and bad grades were monetary, she did manual labor and assembly line work, and came home to a crumbling apartment. It is not the financial reality of her life she needs to change, but the deep negative habits of laziness, learned young and practiced often.
Her machine will fight and the undisciplined robot must learn to push through the desire to goof off or fantasize about a future that never was. The work begins now. New habits are forged with sweat and persistence and, sometimes, a rapidly beating heart. Discipline does not come naturally or easily. It is a delicately crafted inner art form that can take years and lifetimes to master, but each step taken today is an effort in the right direction. Slowly and delicately, she can begin to move towards a new kind of discipline, without fear, without the weight of past failures, without the promise of future delights. Somewhere beyond these barriers, the real work begins.

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 Elephant in the Well

In late August 2008, a baby elephant fell into a well in north central Sri Lanka. The concerned villagers knocked down a section of the cement well so the elephant could escape. After crawling out, the elephant began charging the very villagers who had rescued it.
I’ve fallen in…into the realm where words define all shapes. Where I truly believe I am Me. I’ve been in here for years, swimming in small circles within this cage. Between breaths I look up and see the sky, I see the people in rags that peer over the sides, throwing down bits of food and small orange flowers. I keep swimming, never quite dying, but never really living. The walls are high….cool and smooth stones form the walls of my circular home. I keep paddling, knowing no other way. There is nothing to grab onto, no crevasse in which to burrow. I’ve fallen into the largest of holes, the water is at my neck, and if it rains, I’ll be covered for sure. I look up from the bottom of a towering well, the light of day is bright and visible. Above, I can hear a few voices, faint and singing soft melodies. They have sent down an orange flower, cradled in the beak of a small song bird. The sky changes, I see blue, then clouds of red, then wisps of passing rainbows. But I am at the bottom, in the hole of water dug deep into the red earth.
My falling…it happened without thought. I cannot remember another way. Was it my first breath which began the fall? I am in deep murky water, and yet, those that offer me help, those that break the walls so I may run and breathe…it is those people I run to destroy. I do not run to the poachers or the politicians, I charge towards the ones closest to me, the ones that still clutch rocks and hammers they used to break me free. These are the ones near my feet, the ones I can kill with a breath. Within me I just cannot see the people that have sacrificed a part of themselves so that I might touch land once again. After their work, after their gifts, I run towards them with all my force, unable to control my habits of the wild.
Truly, I am unaware of my self. I run to kill the first threat. Just a baby, but I see danger everywhere. In the smiling man, in the song I cannot sing. In the fog as it rolls towards me, bringing disguised shadows and darker fears. I am drowning in the waters of my own creation, but I am unable to see the glittering plates stacked high with gifts and knowledge, held by the most beautiful of hands. Take your freedom and use it they chant. But the quest for water does not leave. Thirst deeper than my mouth, thirst deeper than the most water-less of deserts creeps, and I go looking for the watery filled wells. It is my habit to fall. Sometimes I wait for a willing hand, but will they come again? If they do, this time, will I remember their sacrifice?

In An Empty House

The machine remembers the feeling easily. Like a forgotten song that conjures up memories of an almost forgotten past. She sits in a cold house. Despite its lack, it’s still a better refuge than the last one. She finds it hard to work. Unfamiliar smells, uncomfortable seating, worries that nip at her mind like a merry-go-round of maniacally smiling horses. She hugs the heater, which sporadically spring to life whenever it’s abused.
Living in the detritus of others used to be a constant. Moving in with the roaches when any space became uninhabited. That was life. A constant of cloudy moments, never quite comfortable, never quite having a comfortable bed in which to sleep or a place to eat. Machine comforts.
She pines for an illusion of safety. And she sits, finding it difficult to work, difficult to concentrate on any task. She is cold, hungry, tired. She wants to sleep, curl in a tight fetal ball and drift as if there was no work to do. But she doesn’t. She cannot. She remembers the words, she hears the voice speaking… "you work in whatever space you find yourself in…we work if we’re happy, we work if we’re sad. We work."
So she pulls her face from the carpet, makes herself write an intention in her little book, a manifestation of her Will. Yes, she will write. She will begin to move her energy and push it beyond the place her machine wants to dwell.
And despite the machine’s current situation, this time, it is very different. Now, she has a constant beacon. The one thing that does not change within the constant shifting of the universe. The very strange world, where there is both no change and constant change. This existence that offers us a delusion of time, where nothing happens or ever will, and yet, this sense that there is no constant. And both are correct. And both are barely understood in her child’s brain. She clings to the glimmer, the shiny sparkles of glittering dust that make sense. I think I get it…just barely, she smiles.
She types, she tries to capture the slithering words that move like snakes up and down her fingernails. They climb up the ladders she has laid out, thick and made of wood, the footless creatures avoid the splinters at every rung, red and black, green and brown, they move silently, fast as clouds on a ferocious day. Move! Demons! Run as if the alarm is ringing. Dance upon the hot coals I have laid before you…burning and smoking, simmering upon the cauldron of knowledge I stir forgetfully each day. The wooden spoon clangs against the metal, adding yet another sound to the gamelan melody that circles the sphere.

Skeleton Memory

I saw the skeleton in her face. Blue eyes turned into black holes of the dead. A skull in a cave, resting on the long lost path. She sits in front of me now, breathing, moving just slightly. In the left eye I see something strong, in the right, something more caring; as a whole, when my eyes relax, there is something else. Softness.
And the skeleton emerges. And I feel the enormity of death. The ever-present that can shift this space in seconds. Every breath, a precious gift that I never respect. Every tear shed in identification, a wasted moment, a bit of energy expelled in clear ejaculation. But the tears slide down my cheeks. In identification, in understanding, in fear, in relaxation. I see myself, a girl, sitting in a garage, looking at another girl.
Nothing ever has happened.
Nothing ever will happen.
They are looking at each other. They’ve been this way for a while. Thirst, sore limbs. My head feels crooked. My nose drips. The skeleton. What will I feel on my deathbed? Held down, moments from my last breath, will my mind worry about the roommates, the sex, the jealousy? Will I go over and over the pains? The suffering? The weirdness? What will be the regrets?
The wasted time…the wasted time…the wasted energy…the un-given love…the useless ideas and thoughts I used to distract myself from the Real. The light comes. The darkness arrives. Where is my place? My numbers…are they shifting? The body, the vehicle for the unseen, it holds all of the Real in its withering, useless grasp. The kisses, they were wonderful. The beautiful chance to learn something beyond the normal circles of consumption and death.
Why, as I’m alive, as I’m breathing, do I choose to liter the path with the glittering junk of machine waste? The path is silvery and elegant, yet it passes through the most difficult of lands. Through jungles of wicked forms, through the dirtiness of a consumed mind; into the depths of purple sheets and slithering leg-less animals. I crawl, simple and mute. To death, I crawl.
Each day, a chance at something high. And each day, I push us back into the land of machines, pink and brown, pale and slimy…this must be the landscape I desire. The realm of my birth. Ahh, but a voyager in the hollowed space of a small Jewish girl. She cries often. She worries and frowns, finding herself in the strangest of places; where the fog rules the weather, where men love more than once. Where the energy of the city is still palpable in the moist night air.
The woman that laughs, high and explosive. The man that makes her smile, that pushes her into tears. She takes the bait…each time, she takes it and swallows. Diving far, fast, into the murky water, blue and dark. Thick with ocean weeds and colorless fish. I go, in search of mermaids. They told me she was there. Waiting on a golden rock. But it is you, beautiful love, with your black curls and dark knowledge.
Allow me to love you, if I know how. Permit my ugly childish ways, for I know nothing. My death is near, I fear its greatness.
Nothing ever has happened.
Nothing ever will happen.
I fear the nothingness that I sense. My numbers…endless? Or just definite? This body, easily squashable, you know what will remain. I almost grasped it. I stared out the window, no words, no thoughts, just the strangeness that swept over me…the numbers, the unchanging code. Can I surrender? Can I sacrifice myself to understand? Can I let go so I may begin to truly learn? May I keep breathing, so I may try again tomorrow.

Self Remembering

Even though my eyes have been open, I see for the first time in weeks. My body moves with a robot’s grace. It slithers through the drive-in, quickly ordering the simplest of lives, the thinnest morsel of consciousness. Little slivers of meat are barely warmed, placed on a hotplate to bake in the tepid currents of a half life. I open my eyes. For a moment I am here. I find myself driving. Dozens of other cars swarm around me, vying for speed. Ahead, the road stretches, almost endless in its reach, cutting through valleys and oak covered land.. On both sides, hillsides roll with a golden elegance, soft and contoured, sweet as a warm body waiting for a firm touch. I look around for the first time in months, I feel for a sparkling shadow of a second. The strangeness, the utter strangeness of waking in a moving car. Of waking with eyes already open, a body already dressed. Glitchy electronic music is playing, water bottles are empty, laying upon the seat beside me. I find myself moving fast, nearly 80 miles an hour. Just where am I going? For a moment, I am startled and confused, unaware of the original purpose this body set forth.
The eucalyptus trees that line the road are familiar, I have been down this path before, but why? Where am I going. For a moment, I am outside the skin, watching a pretty girl holding the steering wheel with both hands, surrounded by the last bastions of nature on a dwindling coast. Her chest expand as she grows slightly taller, her spine untangling itself from the coils of sleep. She sees tall trees that dominate the view, a moving black shape grabs her attention as she raises her head to the hawk circling the skies above her. She shivers, clueless about the destination. Keep driving she thinks, maybe you’ll remember.
And then I am in again. Unaware of the pretty girl driving. Where did she go? I look out, from eye sockets, from brown irises that belong to me. I am sitting in a car. I am driving, I am going to work. What shall I eat for lunch. Maybe I can convince the boys to eat sushi with me…I drift in a haze for twenty minutes. I worry about my new roommate, I feel the strain of a restless night of sleep. I feel tired. I am tired. Why is this person going so slow? I take a deep breath in, filling my lungs to the hilt. My heart returns from the depths, pounding with a ferocious beat. I feel the energy that circles within.
As I bring my attention inwards, I see the pretty girl again. She is driving. She is sitting in a black truck, going slightly too fast. Her hair is a mess, but she says she likes it that way. She drives, her eyes are just slightly more alert, the pupils just a little larger than usual. Her heart is beating with just a little too much intensity. And she drives.

On The Brink

It is just a string that keeps her from going insane. An invisible thread that ties her to the one more firmly planted. The earth is ripe only when sleep drifts from the eyes of the weary, and she is not yet among those counted. There is concrete and tar, little else. To move in the warm contours of soil and brother sand that exist in brief dreams of almost forgotten rooms. Woolen rugs and tapered yellow candles. Tent flags? Crushed slivery leaves and stone bowls of water. This is concrete, hard and unmoving.
She stands at the corner, undecided about the direction, south, north, east…do they lead to the same place? The streets ahead are gray, slate and drab and littered with old sandwich wrappers and discarded paper cups. The mottoes drift away on the wind, forgotten like each burp and French fry. The gutters are a collage, a temporary museum to the unwitting Mexican artist. The dark roads are long, each one of them marked by sign postings and shiny buildings that reach to the heavens in false praise. Clouds disperse in the wake of their unmoving weight. They move slowly, without care, without emotion. Their form merely shifting for the oncoming force.
A sharp edge plays with the tension in her back. It applies the mute song of a 90 degree angle, talks the only way it can. She gazes in the four directions. A bus baring a thousand Asian immigrants passes, rustling her hair. Taxi cabs, one after the other pass. They are but passing colors and shapes. She sees them as unsentimental players and nothing more. They move and go on command, the drivers, their cars, the lights and roads and all those upon them. She swims with them, a sparkling fish in their school. She reacts with a grimace to the woman on a cell phone, presents a smile to the ranchero. Acting on impulses, she drifts like a kite caught in the clutches of a hurricane.
She walks the edge between realization and death. An elongated honking horn, the stretching music of a car in flight. It winds, finds itself in the coils of her intensities, pulsing with the cold movement of mechanical life. You are here, she hears in the distance. The cries of bats and ocean waves creep in, the screech of old brakes and country songs curl together like strands of DNA. Distortion like no other she has heard. Teetering, she allows the weight of the building to hold her.

Perception

I am a girl who feels scared- feeling is a perception.
I am a girl who has white skin- this color is a perception.
I am a girl that likes the taste of cookies-her taste is a perception.
I am a girl who dances- is that what that is?
But, truly, what is this girl?
Not a girl, not a feeling, not a sight, not a taste…everyone perceives these qualities in different ways. Some may like them, desiring to see her again, others may be completely repelled by her smell. At some moments, I may agree and identify with my own perceptions of Self, at other times, I may completely hate them.
And still, this perceived Self, none of these are her. Lydia is not even her name. There is something... what it is cannot be described. To do so would be a voyage into the realm of perception.
The mirror shocks me. Who is that? Well known eyes are not familiar. Everything about this creature is a stranger. And yet, I sleep with it, laugh with it, indulge it with cookies and jewelry. This creature calls itself by the name "Lydia". This creature has an album full of pictures and a thousand memories of being "Lydia".
My mind has left, launched to the outer cosmos- travelling recklessly at brutal speed; and with it have gone my assumptions, my ideas, my preconstructed perceptions. This creature sits at a computer desk, struggling with a heavily beating heart, not remembering, not even knowing if "up and down" exist, if I am alone or cradled. Scared or okay?
None of these words will do, and yet, they seem to be the only language I know. Without perceptions, what is there? Just a huge expanse of nothingness that has no qualities or titles. No tastes or sounds. Maybe there are sounds. Long drones and whistles.
But to experience those would require perceptions…so perhaps, not even sounds accompany this drifter. Is it drifting? It just Is.
Not floating, not dancing, not moving, not rotating, not pulsating, not laughing, not crying, not sucking…its just there…here. And all this seems too much for the creature at the computer to understand…what should it do?
This non-human, non-writer.
This non-woman.
It is in shock.

Bringing the Attention Back

Attention moves like an accelerated moon, waxing and waning by the second.
With a lot of time and practice, it can be controlled and held for long periods of time.
This developed controlled attention can be placed on a person, activity, or experiment without the machine slipping into other thoughts, worries, or ideas.
But attention is never a constant- it is a flow that shifts and moves.
Just as all of the cosmos are ever changing, wakefulness and attention are never achieved and maintained continuously- nothing in this infinite grandness is stagnant or final.
States of consciousness move like storms or sweet kisses that come to a close.
This is simply the way of nature, attention and focus will drift, and it is our work to bring it back to the moment.
It’s here… it’s gone, thinking about blueberry pancakes…bring it back to the moment, put attention on each bodily movement, yes, yes….
And it’s off somewhere else…when you realize it, bring it back.
Repeat this process until your last breath.