Without A Body

Those little fingers move, picking up a pen. Nubby pink toes grasp the air as they move her forward, keeping balance on the large globe beneath her feet. She turns her head to the right, her eyes searching for the bright flash of red that just blinked out of existence. She is a body. A moving, flesh covered body. She walks, breathes, talks, I see her jumping on a bright green hillside, her arms swinging wildly as the soft whiteness of her moves through space. And I see her as real. She sees herself as real. For what can be more real than a body? It is the eyes she sees through, the vessel that takes her from supermarket to concert to warm bed. Is it the body that defines life? I breathe, therefore, I am. I take four steps, therefore I am. I sing a little tune, therefore I am. If she stays still. If for some reason, her body no longer responds to the command of her mind and she sits in a padded chair, unable to dance, jump or walk, is she still “here?” Her body exists, we can see it. I watch it remain motionless as four small black wheels guide her through wide city streets, but what does she feel? Is she trapped? Made powerless and motionless by the body. She can see, perhaps she can talk, but what is still inside? What is it that looks out through those eyes, what is it that still questions? Maybe the being. Maybe the still sleeping machine without mobility. I remember having a sickened feeling as I watched a man in a high-tech contraption. His head was held upright by metal poles, a tube and ventilator helped him breathe. I though to myself, “I could never live like that. Wouldn’t it just be better to die?” Motionless, still except for, perhaps, an active mind. What are we without a body? Maybe this motionless woman paints the picture of what we will all soon be without a breathing, carbon-based body. Trapped? At the mercy of something else? Is this woman with shriveled legs and skinny arms more prepared for the black spaces of the Bardo? Will she more easily recognize the falseness of the body? The illusion of the self? Or will she travel the chambers, looking for something to enter, looking for someplace that she can be “herself” again? How do we determine existence? How do we extract it from the void?

Balancing on Trains

The subway rattles along its track. We are underground and the interior lights wash us all in a yellow haze. In front of me is a man standing close to the double doors. He is at least fifty years old, maybe a little more. His hair is completely white and his skin would be considered white by many people on first glance, but it is actually a deep shade of pink, almost red. He has on a pair of khaki pants and thick white tennis shoes. A loosely-fitted red T-shirt is untucked from his pants and revealed by his unzipped light white jacket.
There are plenty of seats on the train, it is Saturday and just a little after 3pm. I have left the hordes of tourists above ground and the commuters still have another day to relax before the cycle begins again. Instead of taking a seat, the man stands close to the double doors. His feet are spread wide apart, not horizontal and parallel to each other, but aligned vertically. His left foot reaches out a couple feet from his body and his right is extended behind him. His knees are bent slightly. Instead of holding onto the silver railing that outlines the door, he has his hands raised out to the sides, nearly halfway to his shoulders. His body sways back and forth, moving as the train does. His arms oscillate up and down, providing balance as the cabin wiggles forward on the tracks. His eyes are fixed on something low to the ground in front of him. His light colored eyes are open wide, nearly mesmerized by the object providing him a sense of stability.
The words that come to mind are “crazy and postal and bug-eyed,” but they pass quickly through me and I watch him with a small smile on my lips. I am the only passenger that has a view of his face, the rest of the half dozen people sit behind him. A couple of steps away from his wide stance are two middle aged Latin women. I watch them as they laugh and joke with each other, each so comfortable and happy. One sits slouched into the seat, the other sits a bit taller, but they don’t seem to think about their bodies, their shapes are now merely habit. They focus only on the face that laughs beside them. They each look at the man occasionally, but they do so as they talk and their bouncing conversation does not stop. I study their faces to see if they are talking about the man, but their expressions and body language do not imply that they see anything strange. There is a portly Latin man a couple of seats behind the women. He is dressed in dark slacks and a white button-up dress shirt. The other people are a blur, forms with no distinction.
I look to the man. His eyes as wide and focused as if he were watching the whole world crumble. I take a bit of comfort in imagining that no one else sees him, just as I knew this morning that no one saw the tears spill across my cheeks. The train had been crowded, but no one saw. Twelve hours later the world has changed, but it really hasn’t, and we stand alone.
The train lurches and the pink-faced man looses his balance slightly and stumbles to the right. He smiles and then after a few seconds, yells, “DAMN!” He looks at me with a smile and says something, but the noise of the train drowns his communication. I smile back, somewhat shyly. A little shocked at his loud outburst. He refocuses and opens his eyes and raises his arms. His hands are nearly parallel to his shoulders. The other passengers are watching him now. The women keep talking and laughing, but now they look at him differently, with the faintest hint of suspicion. He is not doing anything particularly odd, he’s just trying to balance, as he would on a surfboard, but given the place, given the norm, it is unusual. It is so unusual that he might as well be dressed as a clown and singing off-key. It is completely other.
Three years ago I saw a man practicing what seemed to be Aikido moves on the train, but besides him, every other rider I have ever seen walks immediately to an open seat, and if one is not available, they grab a rail and hold on. How can a man simply not holding onto the rails or taking a seat in a nearly-empty train seem so odd? Just this slight difference in body posture means the difference between “normal” and “weird.” Practicing balance. The man is practicing balance. No matter what is beneath the feet, no matter how the body is thrown, he works to maintain balance.
Before the sun had risen I looked at the tarot card of the moon. But it was not just a moon in the dark sky, the shape of the moon was yellow and embedded within the round shape of the sun. Below the moon/sun was a long path, on either side of which was a dog and a coyote, both had their tails and heads raised to the sun/moon. All morning and afternoon I had held the image of balance. It was a balance and merger between the conscious and the subconscious, between the dreams and waking life. The unification of the spectrum and the long path that led beyond the mountains.
I watched the man practice his balance. He used his time differently. Much different that anyone else around him, much different than me. The train came to a stop and the man stood a little straighter, the double doors opened and he looked at me, “Have a good day now!” he said cheerfully as he walked out the doors. I smiled at him and the train continued on.

The Power of the Secret

He woke up frightened. His chest was a rock of fear and his arms were covered in a glossy sweat. Someone knew what he had done. It had been many years, but now someone knew. The deed was out in the world. It swirled in the light of the sun and then found him in his dark apartment in the layers of night and dreams. How the rock had been turned, he had no idea. But the worms were exposed and a wind had drifted towards him and disturbed his still body.
The note had been left on his car. Such a small innocent piece of paper, no different from any of the other pieces of abandoned trash that coasted down the street until finally drifting to the sea. Only this one was not lost. It had not fallen out of a blue trash can on an early Tuesday morning. It had been folded with care and written with a precise hand that revealed black block letters. It was for him. And it found him. It began with his name and was attached perfectly to the side of his car. How he wished that a strong wind had shaken it loose and sent it running through grass and cityscapes, but it didn’t.
He grabbed it with curious eyes and slightly shaking hands. It was on his nightstand now. A small white innocent piece of paper, only its message was a demand.
“I know what you did. I want two million.”
He was over forty. He had done many, many things he was not proud of. Things he would never tell his mother. He had lived a wild life for many years. It was the consequence of money and fame. It was the consequence of being a male. It was the consequence of abundant energy and the pursuit of the unknown and the love of a female body. He had been ripe and he had stepped into the world wanting to lick it all.
As he sat in bed in the early morning light, the smell of coffee coming from the kitchen, he knew there were some things he would not repeat if given the chance. They seemed fun, they seemed okay at the time, at least some of them for a few minuets before rationality and consequences caught up to him, and although he tried not to live with any regrets, still there were some things he would not repeat. There were some things he didn’t want exposed. He was a public figure, he needed to fit, at least partially, into what the majority of his audience viewed as “appropriate.”
What did they know? Was it that one time on Christmas Eve? Or that one comment he said while intoxicated. What did they know? Which secret? There were a handful, some he didn’t want to think about.
His mind went to his family. He thought of their faces bunched in disappointment. He winced, his chest hurt. The walls began to push against their wooden supports, it felt like they could crumble. His skin glistened.
He looked within and suddenly he knew what they knew. His body was still wet, his heart still raced, but he knew. And now, he had to reduce its power. The secret, the deep, deep hole in his chest that spun like a wild storm would have to be revealed. His mouth would bring it forward. His words would expose it and turn it over and over until there was light. Until the eyes of the world judged him. He would tell them all, and he would drain the secret of its power. With each sentence, spoken live and slowly, he would let the flashlight of a million eyes do their work.
It was only a secret if no one knew. It only held strength as long as he locked it up in fear. Blackmail could work only if he held tightly to the moment, if he clenched and gritted his teeth and pushed the rock further into the moist dank earth. It was only a source of power if he kept it hidden in the closet of memories.
There would be no money. There would be no dark well within his chest anymore. Tonight he would expose himself, he would reveal his secret, he would tell them all and they would reject him or laugh, but the secret would be drained. The power of that little folded note would be worthless, because they would all know. And the secret would die under the sunlight. Such is the nature of secrets.

Brian David Mitchell

In this realm of the human. In this society we understand filled with cars, TV, politicians, ads, churches, movies, restaurants, laws…in this realm, in this American culture, there are shared symbols. Each single person will look at the same advertisement (or a thousand other things) in a different way based on their own upbringing, knowledge, memories, etc., but there is a basic shared language that exists between the bulk of the population. The shared collective symbols of right and wrong and beauty and ugly and funny and colors and laws is what allows millions of people to interact with each other through language and action. We can look around and see people behaving in generally the same way as we do, this we consider “sane.” Millions of people in America share the same “symbolic order.” The symbolic order are the words we use to explain our human experience. Words to describe our emotions, to describe our experience, words to describe our actions and understanding of events. Because of a general consensus that there is a God in the sky that created life on earth, because a majority of people share this “symbolic order,” (they use words like god, heaven, hell, creation, bible, etc) they all consider themselves normal and sane.

When there is a disconnect, when a minority of people (or perhaps one person) has a symbolic order (a collection of words used to explain their experience, etc) that does not fit within the larger symbolic order, there is conflict. These people are considered “insane.” They understand and explain the world with different words.

Brian David Mitchell believes he is a man of god. He was a street preacher in Utah in early 2000. Many people would have regarded him as a semi-delusional zealot who believes he can hear God. Many people pray to god. They talk to him, some think they hear answers, all of this is considered sane by the majority of the American public. But when a man does nothing but stand on the street and preach and shout and lecture to the passers-by about the word of God and Jesus, the majority, even the church going people, think that the mind has slipped.

Brian David Mitchell had constructed a world around himself, as we all do, to explain his existence. In his world, God speaks to him, God commands him. In his world, his symbolic system, men may have more than one wife. Men may do what they want with their women as long as they are married. Within his symbolic order, he believed that people must be humbled. They must experience the low-human state so they can one day experience a higher one.

There was one family that did not believe he was completely insane. The Smart family of Utah hired him to help repair their roof. He worked at their house for five hours one day. One night, he cut a hole in their screen, broke into their home and kidnapped Elizabeth Smart, the 14 year old from her bed in the middle of the night. He took her to the woods. His wife gave Elizabeth a robe and told her change to change into it. A small ceremony was performed and Brian David Mitchell proclaimed Elizabeth as his wife, he raped her afterwards, as he would many times afterwards. When his first wife complained that he was having sex with Elizabeth too often, he began to rotate between them. Elizabeth was found nearly a year later. "Anything I showed resistance or hesitation to, he would turn to me and say, 'The Lord has commanded you to do this. You have to experience the lowest form of humanity to experience the highest.”

Brian David Mitchell and his first wife are in police custody. They are both declared mentally unfit to stand trial. It is Mitchell’s explanation that the court sees as unstable. Although many people in this country pray, when God is used as a reason to commit a crime (actions the collective accepts as “wrong”) the general consensus of the explanation is “insanity.” This explanation is not shared in the symbolic order of the larger society.

The writer of a particular article about the Elizabeth Smart case used words like “horrific and sick” to describe Brian David Mitchell. This is the conflict. One man believes he is doing what God wants him to do. He is humbling a young woman so that one day she can reach a higher state. This is what he actually believes. This is how he actually understands the world. The police, the criminal justice system, her parents, neighbors, journalists, the Americana public see this act as the raping of a young girl by a crazy zealot. One deed is thought of as righteous, the same deed is seen by others as evil. Both are words used to describe an action.

Even in custody and in court, Brian David Mitchell continuously sang hymns to himself until he was removed from the courtroom. Perhaps the world around him seemed crazy, full of evil men who had no contact with god. Perhaps he sang to remind himself that he was the one with the truth. He was the one with God on his side. He had to sing to protect his world. He sang to protect his symbolic order, the world he had built for himself, the only world that still had a place for him.

The Question

There has been a lifetime without understanding. A simple word. As though words were simple. As though a mere string of letters could ever begin to describe the shifting of something so subtle. Uttered, spoken, shouted with disgust, thought of with envy. A word. The simple word. The complex word. The question remains, what is it? The study has given me more questions. The statements, the answers, the thoughts, the ideas…they have all fallen, one by one. 2,4 ,6, 12, 16…the understanding has fallen, there never was an understanding, just the knee-jerk recollection of the letters.
How many more words are there? How many more ideas…how many more things that are stored up with no real study, with no real questioning? There is a lifetime of rusty accumulation. A lifetime of words, a lifetime of supposed understanding and usage. I ride the wheel and I am left holding an empty bag. The wind blows and I hear an echo. I truly don’t know. I have never known. Each thought is an elusive grasp into the fog of truth.
For what is truth? What is understanding? What is power? Traces run along the ground, I run my fingers along their trail. But where do they come from and where do they go? I look forwards, backwards, I call to my friend… “where are you?” there is no answer, just another gust of wind.
I have been listening to the sound of wind, the sound of dust hitting a window over and over. I have listened to its bell for three decades. I have called to it, played with it, danced with it…I have never known it. I have never looked beneath that skirt, never studied the shape of the long first letter, the curve of the last. And I haven’t looked in. I haven’t felt the muddled ball that whirls in a fog of letters and symbols and blue and black. I think I see traces, I think I can poke it…and maybe, maybe…but I look into the distance with squinted eyes. I look out and know that the earth is covered in fog and letters dance in the wind and my fingers are covered in slime and my mind is coated in an even thicker sludge.
First, I will need to scrape the green ooze off. First, I will need to sit with the stillness, the evaporated shapes, the missing thoughts. This is not ignorance, this is the understanding that I have never held between my fingers.

In Bondage

And yet, in another form it dwells. There are so many rocks on the shore, all from the same massive cliffs. It is gray and hard with some dark caves that hide the whispers. And he stands at the podium, a well dressed man. Lights all around. Reporters and cameras. The talk, the strings of words and punctuation that wrap around and form a concept. The pack of brilliant speech writers who so blindly follow a man. Or they follow the money, or the ideology, or the power. Those sentences, they convince the majority of young boys to pick up a pen, then hold a gun. Then run and follow and sleep and yell and smoke. And maybe they’ll come back. Maybe they won’t. Maybe just a part of them will make it back, just a small part of their brain or body. They are so young, so eager to make their claim on the world. So eager for adventure, so eager to die, to spill over and into the unknown that waits with white and yellow and red explosions. But they are slaves to the machine of bondage and slaves to the force of war and corporate power. They have been convinced. With simple words, simple phrases that reach out to them with purple tentacles that clasp onto the things they know as ideals. Those words attach themselves, they bite with venom and they stay, they linger and they pull the strings. These are the boys that will give their lives. Give their lives for a carefully devised speech, for a carefully devised strategy that requires force and brute strength. What this country wants requires taking. They need guns, steel, ammo. They must be a sacrifice, and there is a willing martyr. An army in fatigues will lay down and die so that American corporations can gain access to new markets. They will die so that America can gain more power. They will die all so that a very few, so very few, can control more. And they are the pawns, the fatigues in bondage. The young eager men who moved without choice, without freedom. They give their breath for a machine that knows no limits, love, reason. They sit and listen and march. They move in tandem with a larger force. Men behind closed doors design their fate. It was never for freedom, never for democracy. Those words are meaningless, meaningless for the men in the suites that sit behind locked doors, men who are always safe. It is others that give their lives for their simulated ideals, others that die for an idea of something, perhaps never really knowing what it is. They are in bondage. Boys who move for the strength of American power. The ones who thought, perhaps ever so faintly, that they were doing something great. But they were the bodies. Simply bodies. Bodies moving for a larger force, a larger cause that knows no human interest. It is the pursuit of power. Always more power. And power, that elusive word that seems to have no real definition. Only the traces of its movement can be seen, like a streaking cloud. Is it tangible? Can it be seen or touched or felt by those who do not have it? America, the great brutalizer. America, the great bully. America, the great weapon maker. They are asked to give their lives, to die for the accumulation of another man’s power. And they say yes, as they have nothing else left to say.

The Penis

They drive through the desert in their open green trucks. He stares into the yellow flat lands. Not a tree in sight, just the cracked earth and small gray bushes that have lost all their leaves in the drought, now they stand like skeletons naked in the sunlight. The hot air whips at his face. He squints, but he is used to it. The pain of dirt and pebbles and flying sand landing on his skin does not bother him anymore. When he was ten, he would cry when a rock scratched his skin as it flew through the air in a sandstorm, but now he just squints and tightens his jaw.
The caravan has thirty cars, each one with ten men. At fifty miles an hour, they send plumes of dry land spiraling behind them. He does not have to look, but he knows that each one of them is hard, that the bulge in their pants protrudes with eager anticipation.
They drive towards their village, the small collection of huts that is now theirs. Soon they will claim it. Each woman will soon know that she belongs to a new man. The village awaits helpless with no men, he knows, for they have slaughtered them all just ten miles away. The bodies lay dead and bloody in the sun. As their cars left the scene in no particular rush, he saw flies landing on their lips and wounds. Soon the vultures will come.
The defeated men had fought to defend their village, the men in the trucks had fought to take it, and they have emerged victorious. He shakes his head, “the fools had no chance,” he thinks.
Now they are going to take it. The women will be opened. Each one, multiple times. Their bulges are eager to take what is theirs. He looks on, expressionless.
“Those women, crouched in their tents are mine. The little girls are mine.”
He feels anger inside. He feels disgust.
“The old women are mine. The little boys are mine. They are my property, mine to use, mine to destroy.”
He wants them to understand this. He will show them. He will take them. He will put himself inside them until they all know that they are his. Each man in the caravan has won his prize. They have fought and seen spilled blood and lost comrades. They have lived for days without food and water and still they have fought, and now their new property awaits, perhaps unsuspecting, perhaps nearly dead with fear.
He will show them that they are his. With each thrust they will know. They will scream his name. And they will remember. It is his right. And tonight, he will do as he pleases.