The Sealed Temple

“Just as a pool is of little use when the whole countryside is flooded, the Book is of little use to us now. So we will read it everywhere. Together we will find it on the pillars, on the walls, on the street itself. It is present all around us.”

At some level I know he is here to help me; or at least I believe he is sincere in his wish to help. But I am still hesitant to trust him completely. He is a stranger, a complete unknown, a kind of latent danger walking beside me. I look away even as he walks by my side.

***

A large group of school children in uniform gather right in front of us. The boys wear green shirts and blue shorts, the girls wear blue shirts and brown skirts. A line of buses waits at the end of the block to take them somewhere else, a field trip of some kind.
I overhear the children talking.
“There is no God,” a boy says, “no truth, no spirit, no moral order. Nothing. The basis of life is sex. What else can it be?”
“Lust is the highest that life can offer,” a girl answers in a mocking tone.
“Fuck ‘til you drop!” another boy says. And they all laugh.

***

I see a single half lit gas lamp at the northern gateway to the Sealed Temple. ‘Maybe there is water behind these doors, maybe there is blood.’ Maybe there is only solitude.

“You know me” he says.
I nod. I know what he means but I can’t explain it, even to myself.
Without a pause, he continues:
"I think of you most often when I'm in airports. It’s the same for you."

I see a white ghost standing by a stone pillar. I see her as somehow everlasting and infinite, standing on the motionless foundations of the Sealed Temple. She's missing a face, part of her head, her arms, parts of her hip and leg. She is still recognizably a woman even through the thick scales that cover her skin. I sense that she cannot be pierced or burned, she cannot be wet or dry, she can barely exist.

***

“The Book says:
You will see a large skeletal bat flapping its dark wings above your head. You may look up but only briefly. If you look at it too long, it might look back at you. Then all will be lost..."

***

September 26

A second cracked pillar was discovered today.
At the base of the cracked pillar I found a little white bird. The bird was missing a wing and had a black mark above the eyes, on its head and on its beak. I took a photo of the black mark. I had seen this black mark before painted on a sidewalk. A small black box. Some kind of icon.

The Builder says the pillars were constructed in January. The cracks could have happened any time after that. The Temple is expected to remain closed.

***

(With my old friend, I once met a man who taught people how to meditate. I sat among other young people that my friend had invited and I quietly listened to the man talk.
At one point the man looked at me and asked me if I had read the Book of War and Understanding. I said I had read some passages but I had never read the whole thing.
He looked at me quietly for a long time and then said:
"There's no need to read it, you know? The Book is all around us right now if you only look carefully - if you know how to look."
Later we did a group meditation. He asked us to imagine the night sky. I looked up within my mind and I saw that the stars had become numbers, zeros and ones flashing in the dark. I saw them glittering over a long cement bridge that was also covered in lights.
I heard his voice then, talking very quietly to all of us:
"This is a liminal place, a space of transition. Like an airport or a train station. A place where you are not there yet but you are no longer here.")

***

The Builder says the Temple has become a place where people feel afraid.
“It's just not a safe place for kids or families. We have missed the mark. We have missed our opportunity.”

***

(From the distance I saw the dome of the inner sanctum, covered in yellow and black. I couldn’t find my way inside that day. I might never be inside. Not even within my mind. The trees waved in the wind up above me, like a forest suspended in the air - a forgotten paradise floating in the sky.
The meditation teacher said: “You will return to this place many times. This place is yours. As you return to it, it will become more and more specific, more and more real. Eventually you may not be able to tell any difference between what you think is real and this place you have created in your mind.”)

***

The Builder made very clear promises.
“You will be able to enter and leave the Temple at any time. For periods of seconds, minutes, hours or years. Enter at any time. Leave at any time. The choice is yours.”

***

(I saw a simple greeting written in orange letters. It was nailed over a door made of silvery steel.
Large orange letters with an exclamation mark to emphasize them: “Welcome!”
But the doors were closed and the greeting was empty and touched with a melancholic sadness.)

***

(I met a man by the side of the road. He asked me if I had read the Book of War and Understanding. I told him I hadn't. I said: “I’ve read some pages here and there. Or people have read them to me. But no, I have never read the whole thing.”
He smiled and said: "No need to read it now. That time has passed. Instead, I will guide you through it. We will walk together around the perimeter of the Sealed Temple and the Book will reveal itself to us. Its pages are even now wrapped around the Temple and over the streets that surround it. The Temple may never open again. But all that matters is that the Book is easily accessible. You can walk by it and not be aware of what you see. I will show you how to find it and I will show you how to follow the shifting shape of its thoughts.")

***

I see crystalline flowers flipping back and forth on elastic stems, a dance of wind and weight and color, a gentle teasing - the flowers get very close to each other but they never touch.

***

“The Book says:
You will see three musicians made of bronze and silver dancing slowly through time, so slowly they may seem to be standing still; but the movement will always be there, the dance will continue. You will see bolts holding their limbs together and the curves of their bodies will draw shapes over the sky. The musical pulse will be so slow as to be physically heavy, the beat will be so long as to be lost for days… and even longer.
These musicians have no attachments. They are equally disposed towards their family, towards their enemies, towards their friends, to those who support them and to those who are hostile, to the good and the evil alike. They are unaffected by the results of their music;
even while playing, they really do nothing at all.”

***

I see a black tree in the shape of a church. A sign on the tree announces that this is a public place, a place where anyone can sit, where anyone can talk and rest and meditate.
But it warns that there will be no sleeping here. Sleeping is not allowed.

“You ask yourself who I am, how is it that you know me, how is it that I know you.
What I can say is: of all that measures, I am time. I am the destroyer of all; my hunger consumes the world. But my hunger never ends, and the world is infinite.”

I see triangles over cubes over rectangles over more triangles, pure shape, pure form. I sense that this is where it all comes from, and this is where it all goes.
I sense the man nodding even while I look away. I haven’t said anything out loud.

Whenever I turn around to see him, his face has been subtly transformed, as if the light is changing it. It makes me feel dizzy, confused. It makes me feel as if, even while walking outside, I am alone in a small room with this one other person, a familiar stranger, someone I can almost recognize.

***

September 25

Today a crack was discovered in a steel beam beneath the hanging forest. The beam is on the eastern side of the third level of the Temple. The entire Temple was immediately evacuated and closed.

***

“The Builder fights for his creation, knowing he has no way of winning. But he does it anyway. The worse thing that could happen is for him to deny his destiny, his true nature as a Builder. He would then be lost, lost in an endless ocean, a ship without a port. He could stay lost for a very long time, even forever.
The only way to avoid this aimless drift is to continue to be a Builder, even if he is now the Builder that failed. He will forever be remembered as a failure.”

***

“The Temple was a lively place for a brief time. There were two restaurants and a bar, which was happily and noisily patronized at night. There were two stalls actively selling newspapers, magazines, sandwiches, drinks, candy and cigarettes. The stalls were open from dawn until late at night. (Of course, the Temple itself was open at all times.) People constantly circulated in and out. Many of them simply wanted to have a look inside. There was once an arcade located close to the third gateway. The arcade was seedy, as was the surrounding area outside.
I used to play cards in the arcade. I would play for an unusually long time. When nobody was around to play with me, I would just arrange the cards in different orders. In some way they spoke to me in a language only I could understand. On one card was a white flower with wide open eyes, a white flower sliding up on waves of red and yellow. Another card had a single dripping blue point, under it there were blue curving handwritten letters.”

***

“There is a sign that clearly states our destination is beyond reach. It is painted in light green letters over a surface of dirty white metal. It has recently been repainted in red emphasizing its primordial warning. The hanging forest has many gateways, many ways to enter, many ways to leave. Today they are all closed. We don't know if they will ever open again.”

***

(Suddenly it becomes clear. We should have died that night. That was the night of our death. The night when the soldiers took us away. Suddenly I don’t see it as something bad that could have happened, but simply as something that should have happened, something predetermined and certain, an integral piece of the overarching framework of reality.
But we didn’t die. And from then on we have lived in a kind of after life, a life beyond death that leads to a kind of flight, a levity that allows us to fly freely above life.)

***

He speaks again:
“When your mind finally overcomes the confusion of good and evil, of certainty and solid absolutes, you will attain a state of holy nonchalance. Then, and only then, you will be able to hear the things you hear, and see the things you see. Until then you will remain blind.”

I see a couple of giant bloodshot eyes. They stare up and out from under a giant leaf. It seems to me as if they are full of hunger and yet they also hold a certain hint of doubt. The mouth is hidden by the leaf, the head is absent.
I see tall long rectangles of darkness surrounded by pillars of gray stone. I feel a sense of solid permanence. People come and go all around me. The Temple remains.

“You have always enjoyed talking with mysterious strangers who stop you on the street, isn’t that right? Sometimes they speak to you as if they know you. Right? I am just one more. Just like the others. And you can listen to me, just like you have listened to others before.
I am the process and the pain; I am a living drug and the sound that emerges from the breakdown. I am a kind of gift and the fire which consumes it. And you? You happen to be the one to whom this is offered. Today. Right now.”

I see concentric circles around a black box. We stand together at its immediate perimeter. There are other larger circles around us, larger and larger circles getting lost in the distance. We are so close to the center and yet the Temple remains sealed.

***

“The Book says:
You will see flowers birthing interstellar biological spaceships and complex sentient servants made of light. You will see a living garden of delights extending in all directions.
Here you will learn of the five elements, the five elements necessary for the completion of every wish and effort. You will need the body, constructed from binaries that flash across the night. You will need the means, which are predetermined and remain steady. You will need the mind, through which the garden will lose its randomness. You will need the action that may lead you to fall into a state of knowledge. And you will need the secret will, which you must never allow to fall into decay. These are the five elements in all possible actions, right or wrong, good or evil, selfish or selfless, dark or bright.”

***

August 10

After so many years of work, the Temple is about to open to the general public. It is six levels tall. Two additional levels are underground. There is a hanging forest above it and around it, and giant metal spires reach up to the sky like frozen rocket ships. The perimeter is covered in a kind of lacy shawl - a reminder that something fluid and feminine lives among these heavy towers of concrete, among these rivers of steel and asphalt. The insides of the Temple are composed of curving paths that lead visitors through different chambers and halls. In order to create a structure that blurs the distinction between roof and ground, the hanging forest integrates vegetated hills with giant domes that allow light to go through to the halls below.
A solitary woman in a dark thick jacket and a knee length skirt waits for the doors to open for the very first time. She tightly holds onto her purse.

***

(As I continued to see the glittering stars above the cement bridge, the meditation teacher spoke again: “All these visions before you are radiations of your own thoughts. These are your thoughts shining down upon you. They haven’t come from anywhere else or anyone else. They’re yours and yours alone. Don’t become attracted to them- don’t become weak or afraid. Stay in the mood of a man witnessing his own body drifting down a river. Don’t try to grasp at anything. Don’t try to stop the flow of the water.”)

***

(Many years later I found myself inside a small plane. Beneath us was the city I saw when I was a boy. I recognized the clock tower, the bridge and the waters of the bay. I could even see the dome of the temple, the spires seemed so close I felt the urge to reach out and touch them. To my young self, this looked like an exotic and romantic place. I could see masses of people going everywhere, a throng of ants moving in all directions. A boy in a sleeveless jersey and long blue shorts, a woman in a blue dress that showed her bare shoulders, a tall black man wearing a white hat backwards, holding a phone in his hand.
With me in the plane were two young girls I barely knew. They were looking for a man I used to know; an old friend, a friend I hadn’t seen in many years. They had asked for my help in finding him and I had agreed. From the plane, we looked in every corner, every street, every empty lot. But it was impossible to find him no matter how carefully we looked and by the time we landed, I was ready to give up. I felt as if we were hungry ghosts looking for something we would never find.
Later that night, the girls managed to find my old friend in the flashing darkness of a dance club.
Both of them rushed towards him with wide open eyes and mouths. My friend looked like a giant next to them, a thick solid brown giant covered in tattoos and scars. They looked like vicious tiny wasps running after him. It then became clear that they were very angry and they were looking for some kind of payback or revenge. If I had known this, I would never have agreed to help them in their search. I left the club right away, unwilling to be part of this unfolding scene. I heard later that there was violence and blood in one of the club’s bathrooms. My old friend got taken away by the police and I never saw him again.
I felt sympathy for him. I knew what it was like to be taken away by fearsome men with guns. One night my mother and me got taken away. We were meant to die that night. It was all agreed and pre-established. But somehow we didn’t die. There’s a kind of privilege in living beyond the night of your own death. I see us now as ghosts, beings beyond death whose only goal is to explore the dark, to search and search, without any clear sense of what we are looking for or what we can find.)

***

“I remember when I’d stop in at a store in the lower level to buy candy, nuts, juice, magazines and even a plant. I loved to walk past the cocktail lounge and look inside.”

***

A thin old woman approaches us. She holds an even thinner old cat in her fragile hands. She looks at me and speaks:
"She's getting so thin. I've tried wet food and animal vitamins. I took her to the vet. He offered nothing but a lack of bright ideas. We've lived together for 9 years. She helped me find a home. She never judged me... she was the best friend I ever had! Maybe there’s still hope somewhere nearby, somewhere I can't find at the moment"
And then she walks away.

***

“The Book says:
I have given no persons permission to sleep, lie or in any way remain within the doorway to my Temple while the doors remain closed.
It must be understood that perception is higher than matter, and your mind is higher than your perception. Above your mind is the sign, and above the sign is the eye. Once you know what is most high, let the eye remain open. Read the sign above your head: ‘Wake up’
Once awakened your first impulse will be to triumph over your enemies. Don’t forget. This is not just the Book of Understanding. This is also the Book of War. It is not enough to Understand. It is also necessary that you fight. It is precisely through this violent victory that you will know
that you have finally come up from the abyss of deep sleep. It is only through the violent struggle that you will finally open your eyes.”

***

(I can’t help but think of her, of her hopes and dreams, of the things she was told and the things she believed. She still believes she can unseal the Temple, or that she must try. Or that she must appear to be trying.
At this moment, I know that I don’t need to change anything. The Temple is precisely as it is and as it will be. As it should be. As it ever was.
I can explore it, I can walk its long perimeter, I can find new things each time I come around. Here and now I live at the doors, I brush my hands at the gates, I feel the subtle shaking of the pillars.)

***

“I understand it’s hard to look at me. But listen. Something that may seem like poison at first,
may taste like nectar in the end… this is the joy of walking the perimeter, the joy that emerges from a mind at peace with closed gates. I stand next to you, as the taste of cool water when you are thirsty, the radiance of the sun when you are cold. I am the gentle word that alleviates all fears, I am the sound that makes your heart burst, I am the courage that makes you human. I am the smell of wet earth and the red burning of the fire; I am life. You don’t have to turn around yet, but you will.”

***

July 10

“The hanging forest will be open to everyone. The Builder says he envisions school children coming through for tours and lessons under the shade of the tall trees.
‘When you climb high above street level and you find a dark dense forest, your perception changes,’ the Builder says.
The hanging forest will also be accessible by plane.”

***

(When I closed my eyes, I looked for indications for when and where to enter and found all the doors crossed over by yellow tape. All the gateways had been annulled, forbidden, placed on permanent hold. It may take a while before this place opens again, I said to myself.)

***

(I went back to that night of nights, and I saw a ghostly cup which held a tiny blue bottle inside.
I knew immediately that the blue bottle held some kind of deadly poison. It had been waiting so long for us to arrive. I saw again that I had been given a kind of privilege. We had left the blue bottle unopened. Somewhere it still waited for us. But for now we could fly high above the city and explore it without any rush.)

***

(I say the teacher’s words softly to myself: All these visions are radiations of my own thoughts. They haven’t come from anywhere else or anyone else. They’re mine and mine alone.)

I saw four white arrows that pointed towards each other in a self referential circle. The circle wrapped upon itself. At its center was a simple message: "Too much information can make you fall within yourself. It may then be difficult to find a way out."

I saw a mountain of many colors, all these bright waves of color slipping and sliding against each other. I saw a kind of mouth at the top of the mountain, a gaping mouth hinting at a deep hunger, a restless appetite for disintegration.

(I won’t become attracted to these visions, I won’t become weak or afraid. I will stay in the mood of a man witnessing his own body drifting down a river. I won’t try to grasp at anything. I won’t try to stop the flowing motion of the water.)

***

“A struggle developed between two opposing factions - one faction hated the very idea of the Temple; the other faction wanted to defend it.
The faction that hated the Temple wanted to destroy the very process that would lead to its construction. The Builder wanted to set the process moving again but he had made a mistake.
According to the Builder (this was narrated by him many years later, after all these events were almost forgotten history) one night a stranger appeared in his office and spoke to him as if he knew him, as if they were old friends that hadn’t seen each other in a very long time.
The stranger said: ‘You have been an idiot in the way you have dealt with these things.
I will guide you but you have to obey me.’
The Builder, realizing he had no choice, agreed to obey.”

***

(I have always talked to strangers who stop me on the street. Especially the ones that speak as if they know me. I am one of a million diverse forms, an infinite variety of color and shape. Among all those forms, these strangers seem to recognize something in me, something they think they know. The least I can do is listen to what they have to say.)

I see an old chariot left behind by the side of the road. Its sides are a bit rusty, the paint is fading and falling away. But it still retains some element of its former glory. I can almost see the outline of the powerful individual that once commanded it into battle; the supreme War commander who entered the field of battle and offered death while manifesting life.

***

“The Book says:
They should have died. Soldiers took them in the middle of the night. That night they should have died. It would not have been good or bad, it would have simply happened. That is all that death is. Something that happens. And it should have happened to them.
On the perimeter of the Temple there are only two orders of creatures: the perishables and the ever changing forms. They were perishables and they should be gone by now. Now they live beyond their death. Now they live by the side of the road, in the afterlife.”

***

He stands for a moment and points up at a sign above a gateway.
“The Temple is closed. It will remain closed from some time in the past to some time in the future. The secondary streets will also be closed during this window of time. Invisible guardians will remain on site. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.”

I see bright red arrows that curve and turn and point in all directions over a surface of gray and white; broken, cracked, dirty.

“Stay close to me. We can enjoy a kind of solitude as we stray away from the crowd. This is how you read the Book. This is how you seek the knowledge of the Temple while the gates remain closed. Of course you wish to enter. To seek anything else is ignorance. But you will forever remain outside. This is where you belong.”

***

June 5

“Following many years of construction, the Temple is almost ready to open.
A dirty homeless man outside the construction site loudly proclaims its imminent closure:
‘The pillars will shiver and crack, the beams will start to break. The Temple may open but its glory won’t last long! Once it closes, it will be closed indefinitely. Entire generations will come and go and the Temple will remain closed!’
The Builder continues to struggle but he has a growing sense that he has no chance of success. He continues to struggle anyway. The worse thing that can happen is for him to simply surrender. He would then be lost, like a ship in an endless ocean, and he would stay lost for a very long time.”

***

The Builder once claimed that he had seen a giant female creature made of black ink
bathed in rainbow blood. By that point nobody paid any attention to anything the Builder had to say. He was at best an obscure joke, at worse a pathetic figure erased by time. His head was bent low and he was getting ready to die. His face was a mask of deep regret and sorrow.
In a voice barely louder than a whisper, he said:
“Both of us were naked, together. She was being very playful and flirtatious. I didn’t understand why. Why would she come back to visit me after all this time? ‘Here’s what I can finally tell you. There is no God,’ she said to me, ‘no truth, no spirit, no moral order. Nothing. The basis of life is pleasure; what else could it be? Lust is the highest that life can offer.’
I refused to make love to her and eventually she got very quiet. Her expression was a mixture of sadness and anger. Then she made her way out of my room through a rip in the red fabric that formed the walls. Neither of us ever said goodbye.”

***

(One day I received a single written note from an old friend I had not seen in a very long time. The note had only a single word written on it: my friend’s name and an exclamation mark. I closed my eyes and pictured him floating on the surface of a tall blue wave or maybe sitting on a small fishing boat off the coast of El Salvador. I saw him putting on a black hat. Something I might have seen in a children's book. I sat in front of him, eager to finally talk to him again.
I tried to tell him something I had seen, something I had been wanting to say for many years but I had never been able to say it. It was hard to say it - not just hard, but impossible. So I mostly listened as he told me about his life off the coast of El Salvador and where and how he had found the black hat.
Later that night we played with a set of cards with pictures on them. We played for a hours and hours. We both kept arranging the cards in different sequences. One card had a bridge floating over green cubes. The cubes repeated endlessly in all directions. Another card had a few clouds on it. Another card had a few birds. Another card was just a picture of an empty sky.)

***

(When I think back, I imagine a small room. There’s one other person in the room with me. Their face keeps on changing subtly - sometimes it’s a man, sometimes it’s a woman - sometimes I recognize the face, sometimes it seems to be a complete stranger. The light keeps on changing.
I don’t know how long I’ve been in this room. But I know I’ve been talking and talking and talking for a very long time.)

***

“The Book says:
You will see a green arrow wrapped around a broken circle. The arrow will come from nowhere and it will point to nowhere. The inner circle will be broken but complete. Above it, in large block letters you will see the word: system.”

***

During an afternoon walk, I meet a man on Market Street. He stands behind a table covered in books and pamphlets. He asks me if I have read the Book of War and Understanding. I tell him I have read some pages.
“When I was young, my mother would read it to me. She was always into these kinds of things. But I have never read it in its entirety.”
He says: "You should read it. I will give it to you. But I will do more than that. I will guide you through it. All the stories and poems in the Book are written on the walls of the Sealed Temple. But they are hard to see and hard to comprehend without the codes hidden inside. You know, the Temple may never open again. But I will show you how to read the Book anyway. The young think that knowledge and action are different, but I will show you that they are the same. I will show you how to find the Book through action, and I will show you how to follow the shifting rhythm of its thoughts."

***

(I had thought of the Temple as a place to meet, a place for people to come together, to find each other and then leave. But maybe these meetings were too fleeting, too fast. I had thought of it as a kind of hive, a dome covered in curved yellow lines over a textured black background. Maybe at the boundary between yellow and black there was a secret entrance. But I didn’t have the power to open this secret passageway, even if I imagined that I knew of its existence.)

***

As we walk, I overhear a couple talking among themselves.
“In the end, the Builder is real.”
“Yes, based on the story he tells in this book, he could be the author himself.”
“No, but the thing is… that doesn’t prove anything.”
“No, nobody is talking about proving anything… we’re only talking about what we’ve seen, what we have felt through our intuition. Of course none of it is real. It ultimately makes no sense.”

I see paths that wrap around themselves like snakes, I see a multitude of cars driving upon gray surfaces. All the cars are red and the paths have no entrances or exits.

***

“The Book says:
You will find yourself underwater; your will paralyzed, your mind confused. There will be a red squid on your right and a blue fish to your left - the water will be clear but dense. You will feel a yearning to stay there, to close your eyes and slowly float downward.”

***

February 15

“The roof of the Temple will be covered by a hanging forest. It is our intention that this forest should become a kind of liminal space of transition for the many who come to visit. Similar to an airport or a train station but, we hope, with a deeper resonance. We wish to inspire a feeling of being suspended between the known and the unknown. Giant spaceships will land here and you will be able to stand next to these spaceships. ‘It will be a true miracle when it is complete’ said the Builder during a conference. ‘Anyone will be able to enter and leave the Temple at any time. They will be able to remain inside for periods of seconds, minutes, hours or years. We will be ready and equipped for all possibilities.’”

***

I was walking on Fremont street one afternoon when I found a kind of handwritten map that outlined the city in a very rough way. I noticed that certain blocks of Market street had been marked with a peculiar little symbol, a small black box. On the back of the map, in barely legible handwriting, were the words: "don't try to find me"
I walked into a supermarket and found something to drink. Then I very slowly made my way towards Market street.

***

The thought keeps on recurring within me. ‘He is here to help me.’ But I remain unsure, suspicious, afraid. So I still look away. Even as we continue to walk together in circles, large concentric circles.

***

“The Book says:
I will give you two measurements. With them you will construct the black box. The measurements are two and four fifths and eight and a half. That will be all I will tell you.
You may have to work on this for a very long time. As long as the project remains unfinished you will be a ship lost at sea unable to find a port. If you renounce your wish to finish, there will be hope. The wish itself is an obstacle. As long as you continue to work, there will be hope.
Strangers will say they want to help you, and some of them will be thieves and some of them will be lost and hungry and some of them will be friends but only friends and nothing more and some of them may actually help. Those will be very few and far between.
Above all, do not despair, do not fall into sleep. If and when the box is finally finished, you will hold it close to your face, close to your ears and eyes. You will then see a golden circle slowly come to life around you. And large glowing flowers will glitter before your eyes. Large orange letters above your head will announce your arrival.”

***

The man stops walking and turns his head. I stop as well, just as he stops.
“Turn towards me. It’s time.” He says.
I turn hesitantly.
“What do you see?” he asks me.
I am unable to answer out loud. What I see are infinite mouths and arms, but only one man. I see infinite eyes but only one face. I see one body pregnant with all possible forms. I see him everywhere, without beginning, middle, or end. And yet he is here, now, under the sun. Finite, vulnerable, fragile. 
His eyes are shining with tears; his mouth is about to open but he has said enough. The Temple stands behind him glittering in an array of bright colors, its long spires touch the sky.
I look at him and my heart opens painfully. I have lost all sense of place or time.
“Do you remember me?”
“Yes, I do.” I finally answer. "I think of you most often when I'm in airports. When I’m getting ready to fly."

A Second Later

I find myself standing on a hill of light brown grass and scattered oak trees. It is a place that I vaguely recognize although I can’t quite remember when I was here or why I came. I may have seen it only briefly, maybe in a photo, maybe as I passed by on my way to somewhere else.
It is nighttime and the wind is very cold against my skin, making me shiver. I hold my left elbow with my right hand, hugging myself to find warmth in my own heat. The wind makes a sound like loud whistling as it rides along the tips of the overgrown dry grass. The brown leaves dance all around me, a troupe of manic dancers glad to find some kind of audience.
There is some kind of processing plant in front of me, at the very top of the hill. It is enormously tall and strangely old, marked in black and brown by the passage of time. It towers above me like a giant palace of gray concrete, heavy and ominous and silent, completely silent except for a low drone that seems to slide out from the depths of its underground bowels, a low drone that I can feel crawling up my legs and making its way to my heart.
I recognize this as well, this huge droning building in the middle of nowhere. I can remember the two tall red walls which stand apart from all the grayness, I can recognize the half open metal gates, open just wide enough to let me in. I recognize the twin chimneys pouring translucent white smoke into the dark sky, swallowing the moonlight and turning it gray and thick and poisonous.
I turn around briefly to examine the rest of my surroundings. A wide flat valley surrounds the hills in all directions. I can see vague lights in the distance, maybe a road full of cars, maybe a small town, but nothing is clear or defined. Just tiny lights in the far distance that could be anything, that could be nothing. Here there is only the grass and the night and the large building with its giant tubes vomiting thick clouds of shining smoke.

His words come back to me. I don’t even think of him or wonder what to do. His words are just there, suddenly, without any previous announcement. They echo in my head like a soft melody played against the ambient background of the wind and the drone.
“The way in which I see this… the way in which I perceive it. You had a window of opportunity, a small window just large enough to move through, a tiny moment in which you saw something clearly, in which that something was shining brightly before your wide open eyes. It was there, for that one moment, and then it went away.”

I look down at my feet. By the light of the full moon, I see that I am standing on a dirt path that makes its way up the hill to the place where the metal gates are half open, inviting me to enter. I could easily follow the path and make my way into the processing plant. I envision dark tunnels that smell like the smoke that pours out of the chimneys (smoke which is too far away for me to smell and yet its thick appearance somehow lets me know how it would smell if I were close enough to fill my lungs with its gray chemical body.) I envision narrow walkways, I envision steam and hot metal tubes, I envision large underground chambers full of rumbling noise and the scattered echoes of some dripping liquid in the distance.

“The only thing that matters, the only thing that is truly crucial, is that when you see that small window again, when it is right there before you… what matters is that you move towards it, that you jump through it. This has to happen right then, right when you see it. It can not be any later, not even a second later. Right when you see it is when you have to move, there is no other time, there is no other chance.”

I turn my back to the large plant (now I think of it as a large factory) and I look towards the bottom of the hill. There is a single car parked there. I recognize it immediately. It is my car. Not the car I own, not the car I usually drive, but it is my car nonetheless. I know it. I search for the keys in my pockets but I find nothing there, no wallet, no money, no keys.
I look up at the sky above the parked car and I make a loud sound with my mouth, my lips make the shape of an O and I sing a long howling open vocal that sounds loud and shocking in the droning silence of the dark hill. I make the sound three times and then I am quiet again.

“When I say that it can’t be a second later, I don’t mean that as an exaggeration. I mean exactly what I say. You have to move in that very instant when you see the window opening. To stop to think is to lose it, to weigh possibilities is to lose it, to seek advice is to lose it, to do anything but to jump through is to lose it. And once you lose it, it might be a while before it comes back… if it ever does.”

I suddenly know that I am not supposed to be here. I have meant to visit a processing plant, some kind of large building, something somewhat like the one that stands at the top of this hill. I have meant to come to a place like this, but not to this one, not to this particular one. I am standing by the wrong one. I am at the wrong place.
The clear and sudden knowledge comes upon me with a rush of physical sensations, a wave of shifting tiny dancing rainbows that makes its way down my body from the crown of my head to my chest and down to my genitals and my legs, shifting everything it touches, changing everything it dances with along the way.
Right then is when I see the crow. It is flying in small circles above the car, spiraling lower and lower each time it comes around.
Without thinking, I walk towards the circling crow, towards the parked car. I can barely see the dark bird in the shadows, but the keys that hang from his beak betray him. The light of the moon shines against them and they act like a beacon that lets me know where to go, a beacon that lets me know where to find them.

“I emphasize this because it is extremely important. It is in that singular moment that the door opens. It opens clearly and distinctly, but only right then, only in that single moment. If you don’t cross it without hesitation, the door is lost. You won’t even know where it was or how it appeared. It will simply be gone, lost beyond recovery.”

I am standing by the car looking up, maintaining my eyes glued to the shining keys, my ears glued to their light tinkling sound. Just as the crow makes its lowest and smallest circle yet, I reach up quickly and close my fingers around the keys that hang from his beak.
The crow does not surrender them easily. He tries to pull back and away from my grip. I close my fingers tightly and pull down as hard as I can. The bird flaps its dark wings furiously, hitting my arm, scratching at my flesh with fierce claw that move too quickly for me to avoid them. His attack is harsh and painful but not lethal. I shake my head to resist the pain and I pull even harder.
Suddenly the bird is circling away and the keys are in my hand. I run to the driver’s door and unlock it. I jump in and start the car. The motor rumbles and the wheels start to turn as I push on the familiar accelerator. Everything about the car is familiar even if I can’t remember ever having driven it.
Without knowing where it is that I am going, I move westward (somehow I seem to feel where the west is, as if the wind itself can tell me, as if the road has west painted all over it and I only have to follow its subtle signs.) I drive on an extension of the dirt road on which I was previously standing.
The tall dry grass dances on the edges of the road and shines almost bright yellow under the lights of the car. I hear the wind outside louder than ever. I keep my eyes forward, fixed on the road ahead of me, never turning around.

“You can see it as a kind of game, a game where you have to jump at a very precise moment. The quality of the jump is important, you have to jump well enough to make it. But if you make the perfect jump too early or too late, then it won’t matter, it won’t matter at all. If you jump too early, the door will not be there yet. If you jump too late, then the door will be gone and you will just be back where you started, wondering what happened, wondering what went wrong.”

I hear the crow flapping his wings over the noise of the car. Somehow it is still following me, somehow it is close enough that I can hear its loud squawks. It must be flying low over the roof of the car, keeping pace with my movements. I can’t see it. I can’t see anything other than the road and the dancing grass and my own hands grabbing tightly onto the wheel.
I then hear a sound very close to me, only a few feet away. It is coming from inside the car. I hear it again and I realize that it is the sound of breathing. Someone is sitting next to me on the passenger’s side. I don’t turn around or try to speak. I simply breath in time with their breathing. We sit there quietly, breathing together, neither of us saying a word, neither of us turning around.
Maybe they jumped like I did, maybe they come with the car, maybe they were with me all along and I never noticed. I don’t turn around. We both continue to breathe slowly, in a soft rhythm that somehow matches the rumbling sound of the motor and the shaking of the old doors.
The dirt road turns into a highway and we move much faster now but I still don’t around. Not until the time comes, not until I am ready to meet the other’s eyes.

Details and Simplicity

I had returned from the Land of Many Wonders, a distant place which had been difficult to get to and to which I might never return. Suffering Girl was with me. She was sitting up on her rumpled bed, wearing only a thin white T-shirt and very thin white panties that distinctly outlined the shape of her crotch. I found the vision delightful and immensely desirable.
We were sitting by the tall half open windows of her room. A yellow light streamed through the glass and the thin brown curtains, turning everything in the room into a twilight shade of sepia. I could feel the soft cushion of her futon underneath me. My right hand was on her naked thigh, my left hand was pressing down against the white sheets that were crushed underneath my own weight.
I was looking into her eyes and she was doing her best to maintain her eyes on mine. Every so often she would look away, as if forced to do so by a force greater than her own will. She would then look towards the windows, towards the bookshelves where all her school books were waiting, to the notebooks that were still lying open in the middle of the room.
Her black hair was uncombed and a few strands were draped over her forehead and her eyes, in a way that made her even more desirable. When she spoke, her voice was soft and cautious, as if she was also aware of the delicacy of the moment, as if she knew how easy it would be to make it all go away.
“I really do need to understand it… I want you to listen to me and take what I say as seriously as you can… because I really do need to understand…men are like a strange mystery to me… for all the years that I have been around them, I can’t bring myself to a place where I feel safe in knowing what they really want…what are the thoughts that go on behind their eyes… I feel like I can never know their true hidden intentions…”
I looked at her eyes which were shifting again. For a moment her attention was lost outside as a car drove by, covering the tall windows in bright white light. The light splashed over us, and for a moment we seemed to be frozen white statues, captured for eternity in this second of tentative contact.
“The first time I ever felt like I could grasp the masculine point of view… it was when my friend told me about a friend of hers… an older man… I may have met him once… he wore overalls and drove a large pickup truck… maybe it was someone else…she said that he had slowly progressed from being just a man… a sometimes happy man… a regular man… he had progressed from being what I had known… what I had maybe known… he had gone from that to a state of total impotence and insecurity…a state where he couldn’t do anything, where he didn’t have any strength or power of his own…and it had all happened because of his relationships with women… women had done this to him…that was the first time I understood that just like men can destroy women, so can women destroy men…”
Her black eyes opened up wide and she tried to explore my thoughts without asking, silently begging me to say something, to make a comment, to agree with or contradict what she was saying. I let my eyes remain on hers and I waited for her to continue.
“I need you to tell me the details of what happens… I need to know what it’s like from your perspective… I need to know how things truly work behind your eyes… do you understand?… I need to go deep beneath the surface to find out what it is that you are hiding… what it is that you are all hiding. “
She took a deep breath and her small breasts rose up towards me. Her dark thick nipples poked against the fabric. My hand moved up her thigh and came to rest on her hip. I pushed my fingers under the elastic band of her panties and felt the softness of her soft flesh against my hand. She shifted on the bed slightly and the weight of her right leg came to rest on my knee.
Her eyes looked back at the window for a moment. A car drove by again, but this one was further away so the light didn’t hit us like before. We could only hear the sound of the motor as it approached and then faded away.
“I need you to tell me the details… you have to talk to me in a very clear and direct language… it is only through details and through simplicity that one can arrive at a complete and full comprehension of the spiritual state of another being.”
Her last sentence echoed through the room like a big brass bell. Her voice had changed as she said it, it had become thicker and stronger and much more precise. I took a deep breath myself, sensing that something else had entered the room and that it was now my turn to speak at last.
“I believe that the way in which you are now speaking contradicts what you are apparently saying.”
As soon as I said it, she got very flustered. Her head shook and her eyes darted from one corner of the room to another. Her mouth opened and her white teeth pushed out between her thin lips, in a kind of nervous smile that begged for a kind of underlying sympathy. I stayed still and watched her. I couldn’t say why my words had the effect they were having but it was clear that something had been stirred within her.
“What was wrong with the last sentence I spoke? What was wrong with it?”
Her whole face was now a mask of fear and insecurity. It slipped through her black eyes like cold water pouring softly onto the bed where we sat.
“It was not just the last sentence… it was the last several sentences that you spoke…”
I looked down at her naked thighs and my fingers traced a curved shape around her hips, trailing slowly towards her buttocks. Her brown nipples were distinctly outlined under her white T-shirt and I felt a strong urge to pull it over her head to reveal them in their complete nakedness, to make them vulnerable to my hungry mouth.
“Please explain what you just said… please explain it to me… I need to understand it…it is very important for me that I understand…”
I shook my head slowly, with a sense of finality that she immediately recognized.
“I would rather kiss you,” I said and, before I was finished saying it, my face was moving slowly towards hers, as my right hand fingers closed around the soft flesh of her upper thigh.
She nodded just as slowly, lowering her eyes, as if resigned to the invisible cage of our mutual desire.
“Ok, then kiss me…”
I pressed my lips against her mouth and my tongue sneaked out to meet hers in a no-man’s land of shared saliva and burning lust. But then I felt a certain taste that I didn’t recognize, it was on her lips, on her tongue, on her teeth.
I pulled away and looked at her. Here, in this quiet space of flowing words and effortless movement, the taste had been a warning, a clear message from places I couldn’t yet reach.
My thoughts suddenly turned back to the Land Of Many Wonders. I traveled back to the one moment when, staring at a barren cliff made of broken silver stone, I had decided to return to this place, to this city where I now found myself.
I knew then that, notwithstanding any other reasons I may have said to myself in that one moment of cold monumental darkness, the real reason I had returned was here before me, it was sitting across from me on her rumpled bed, wearing only two small pieces of clothing that she was eager for me to remove, looking at me with wide black eyes and wondering why I had stopped kissing her.
I had wanted to return. I had left behind all the many possibilities of that far away land to which I might never return. I had done it all for her, for the dream that was her, for the unresolved story that was her, for the flesh and the bones and the generous open wounds that were her. I had wanted to return so I could hold her and kiss her and penetrate her and dissolve myself in her, for as long as I could imagine doing so.
Now I was doing what I wanted. She was here, she was mine, she was ready to give herself to me in any way I decided. And I suddenly knew that I had made a terrible mistake.
I reached towards her again. I kissed her neck and her cheeks and her collarbone. I told myself that here she was, what I had wanted then, what I had wanted before, what I had always wanted. Here she was. Here it was. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.
But the sudden understanding would not go away. It had come to settle upon me like a big black bird that opens his wings in a clear majestic gesture before coming to rest on the peak of a mountain. It was here within me and it was here to stay.
I eventually kissed her again, and her tongue ran over mine and my own ran deep into her open mouth, licking at her cheeks from the inside, at her teeth, at her thin pale lips. The choice had been made, and the Land Of Many Wonders had vanished behind a veil made of soft white flesh and moist pink desire. It was too late to turn back. It was too soon to move forward. For now I could only love her. For now I could only enjoy all that would soon go away.

Tunnel

Dirt cakes my fingernails. The tunnel is small, just slightly wider than the width of my body. I burrow my way through like a tiny animal searching in the darkness. I keep going, though I have no tools. No night vision, no sense of smell, there is nothing but the long tunnel ahead. I cannot go back. There is no place to turn around and the dirt walls hold me without remorse, without love or affection, they simply hold me, propelling me forward through necessity. Long ago I saw a flickering candle within the tunnel. It was that night when I stepped into the small hole full of orange poppies. I wondered how they blossomed in the hole without light, how they had managed to find a way to survive only in the moon glow. They smiled in the warmth of the flickering candle and showed themselves cautiously to the moon. I stepped into the hole with a sliver of light and with a tickling that covered the inside of my chest. I took off the clothes that had covered me like a second dirty skin. The mud soaked shirt and torn panties, I left them on the grass beside the hole and stepped into a place I had never been. I moved without thoughts, doing only what felt right. My feet took me in three circles to the right, I held up my hand towards the moon and opened the palm. Silvery light came through the soft flesh of my hand and tunneled through the length of my arm, crawling into my chest and them meandering into the circular cavern of my uterus. A sense of fullness brought me to my knees and I dug through the soil with my hands until I found the small opening. I moved as if I had done it so many times before, as though I fulfilled the destiny of the stars with each movement. I wiggled into the tunnel on my stomach, using the strength of my elbows and forearms to push me into total darkness. There was no “front,” just endless black that opened before me. Never a wall, never a fork, just endless open territory. I kept moving until sleep overpowered me. I lay like the dead, allowing the drifting forms of flames to enter my mind while my body lay motionless in the tunnel. I awoke frightened, unsure of what I had done, terrified to find myself surrounded on all sides by the thick walls of earth. Moving backwards is impossible, so I continue on. Moving towards the place I might have been but do not remember. I keep going. There was a flame, a moon and solid perception. I had once felt something, I had known something beyond words, now I travel through the swamp of fear and dirt, moving towards a place that has no name.

Doing The Rounds

They slid through the long curved streets, like silver balls over a pinball table, or rather as a single silver ball composed of two men on two separate bicycles, slim artifacts that swiftly carried them from one corner to another, from one edge to another, from one gateway to the next. The men were long and thin and white, and they were covered in tight colorful clothes that were now drenched in their sweat. Their heads were protected by small hard black helmets, their eyes were fixed on the road ahead, and their lips sometimes broke into little smiles of easy contentment. At busy intersections, where they had to wait for a few minutes for the light to change, then, and only then, would they turn to each other and make a comment, usually on the speed at which they were travelling, on the current working of the bikes and any repairs or upgrades that would soon be required, on the traffic and the weather and all other things that were beyond their control. Their long arms would then hold on tightly to the handles, while their heads were turned, always ready and waiting for the rapid movement to begin again so that their silent circular journey could continue.
They swiftly rode up and down the paved slender paths that criss-crossed the park like the patchwork web of a metallic spider, some strange monster perhaps hidden under the great parking lot that lay on the west side, by the ocean, or maybe under the busy little streets to the east. They looked around only briefly and then only to acknowledge the visions that rose around them, or to avoid an obstacle or an unsuspecting pedestrian who failed to hear them coming and didn’t step aside. The paths for them were like private channels and all the people that they might encounter here, even other cyclists, were ultimately seen as intruders in their own secluded realm. They only crossed roads when they were forced to by geography, and then they ran back into the paved paths as soon as it was possible, losing themselves in the web once again. There they could imagine the cars fading into non-existence and the noise boiling into a single soup of white and pink snow.
They rode around the lake, where the couples pedaled on their little plastic boats while looking around themselves and at each other, trying to reconcile their mutual private love with a world of cold strangers and coming up with no clear answers or even any distinct questions that could be voiced aloud. They rode to the edge of the white arboretum where the windows were dripping with the sweat of the hot life that lived inside and people walked out smiling, unsure of what they had seen. They rode to the edge of the ocean where the cars were lined up diagonally and people sat on a cement wall, staring at the endless repeating spectacle of waves, sand and horizon, trying to find hidden meaning in a short glimpse at the surface of the world. They rode under large thick trees that held the promise of longevity in their sprawling roots and branches, in the weight of their profound knowledge buried in their deep green silence. They rode up to the heights of the waterfall where a single thick cement cross stood proud, protected by wire fence that had been cut open in several places, surrounded by bottles and graffiti and paper bags and newspapers that danced calmly in the light breeze. They rode through the abandoned park buildings to the north east, where old men in sweaty layers of thick clothing sat and stared at the burning cement surface, surrounded by bushes and flowers and the singing of birds. They rode to the great open lawn in the southeast, where the young ravers and the old hippies danced to the beat of a circle of drummers, all eyes half closed in the distinctive manifestation of chemical ecstasy. They rode under tunnels drenched in urine to emerge into playgrounds drenched in laughter and screams of childish surprise. They rode past signs that said “no entrance” and “road closed” and they found that they could enter and that all paths eventually lead somewhere, even if it wasn’t where they originally meant to go. And finally they rode back into the street, past a bus stop and a no parking sign, on their way back home, when the sunlight was starting to wane and the air had begun to turn chilly.
There would then come a week of papers and bright screens and phone calls and pressure and calm grace. They would be away from each other and away from the concrete paths that formed the outline of a world of flowers and trees and grass. By the time the week was over, it would be time to do the rounds once again.

Tender Strangers

Sitting on the BART, a delicate film of sweat collected over my cheeks and collar bone, I rock and sway with the other anonymous strangers. The young man across the aisle from me sips from a disposable coffee cup. His sneakers are white, he wears a black fedora and leather jacket over his tee shirt paired with skinny blue jeans.
The metallic caterpillar rocks to a stop at the platform overlooking John Daly Blvd. and more passengers stream in as an indistinct mass and then separate, congealing into distinct forms as they find a place to sit or stand. One wears a black and white stripped shirt and looks like Ross from friends. This street means everything to me. It was the first and only street I knew of when I first arrived here in this strange cold land. Everywhere that I went I found my way by connecting it to this central artery and for years I followed these same desperate routes carved out in this cold wet and misty wilderness of concrete, afraid of becoming lost, tangled in streets whose purposes might elude me, ending at a chain link fence or curving around to swallow their own tails like the ouroboros. My path, which always sprang from and returned to this blvd., was ultimately always the least direct route. There were streets nearer at hand which connected to my destinations and traversing these would have taken half as much time as I spent tracing my way along the spinal column of road that stretched from the seas to the cemeteries and beyond into lands unknown, but I was oblivious to these paths.
And now that I understand the lay of these other smaller veins that reach through the city and they no longer represent a dark forest in which I might be ensnared by a witch abiding in a gingerbread box house, I have no car to take advantage of this knowledge. Now I sit on buses which also trace their way along their own main arteries, always watching the more direct route to my home flash by the smoky tinted window and then I am forced to walk the difference home. Cats now nest in my broken down Chevy Celebrity station wagon laid to rest in the garage like the hull of a sunken pirate ship nestled down in the sea bed. Swathed in the eerie and sparse illumination of a halogen bulb and coated with a fine white layer of dust as French toast is with confectioners sugar, it accumulates many little feline paw prints and a rank filthy odor. The power windows could no longer be rolled up after last summer and so whatever wants to come in can do so. In my car, spiders dance with newborn kittens on the juice stained cushions and they scale the mountains of debris that have accumulated to form a range reaching from the front seat to the back hatch. They can play with discarded little ponies and Barbie’s heads and dress up in the costumes that once belonged to my littlest daughter, dress as princesses or mermaids or disco queens. Or they can establish a school for young alley cats and the spiders can write out the lessons on the chalkboard that my eldest daughter used to use as a painting easel. But in none of these activities am I involved, so they do not concern me overly much.
I am a passenger on a little turbo train like the one that my father built into a train set for me as a child, coasting along on a rail high above the heads of ordinary commuters. A new influx of passengers board and I am joined by a new stranger that sits intimately near to me. He holds a bagel that smells of onion and a bottle of milk and pretends not to notice me writing and I pretend not to notice him eating, but we know that each person is aware of the others actions, and somehow it makes it even more intimate, our mutual respect, our ability to be alone together. We have suddenly become like a loving elderly couple that sits in easy chairs by the front window, one reading and the other knitting, only we rock along on the BART together for 7 minutes rather than fifty years. Then I hear “Powell Street” and I look big eyed into his face, seeing for the first time the blue eyes and sparse strawberry blonde beard of my tender stranger. Without words (for we are that sympathetic to each others needs by now) he knows I must get off at this stop, and he rises quickly, allowing me to slide out into the aisle and that first look at his face is the last as I bustle off of the train.