Golden Sphere

The golden sphere rolls over the floor and the sound rattles all of us. A delighted laugh is heard but no one is smiling. Not that I can see. I look at each of the guests for a clue but nothing is revealed.

A woman with red hair is looking in through the window. The sky behind her is black and full of stars.

The golden sphere does not stop. It rolls between our feet, bumps against the walls, gaining speed with each collision.

My fingers tingle. I move them over my head and they leave colorful streaks through the air, traces of my thoughts, left unguarded; my suspicions laid bare for all to see.

There is a wet scent of earth and trees, the subtle sound of old men talking, a taste of herbal tea in my mouth. Nothing makes sense, nothing fits together. There is no pattern, no sense of purpose or cause.

I have forgotten nearly everything by the time the golden sphere hits my foot.

Now the time has come. I need nothing else. Just my breath, the sphere, the stars outside, and my thoughts, colorful translucent shapes slowly fading over my eyes.

Impulse

Mood is my body

manifesting itself

through subtle levels

too light to touch

too faint to hold.

The remains of my lost thoughts

fall without making a sound

without leaving a trace.

How do I speak

of harmony

of light

and the process of the rose?

I have come through

twisted from the labyrinth

emerging fully formed

from the tunnels of time.

It is all a colorful pattern

yet fearsome and dark,

a strange loop

where words are arranged

in spiraling currents

a sequence discarding logic

a structure without

a stable frame.

No need here

for a physical body

just a seed

containing the process

and the freedom

that brings it life.

I remain

an unknown mass

a life impulse

a lustful fountain

a fading thought.

From A Simple Place

As always, I start from a simple place.
Consciousness is a phenomenon of information.
I outline the basic properties
that a conscious kingdom must have.
Clouds, dark clouds, storm clouds
Black dark blue and gray
Above the restless ocean.

I forget all early life experiences.
This is the cleaning process involved in new myth formation.
Open space, nothing
Wide open, no color
No shape, clear light.

I have a basket, big, hand made.
So big that someone could sit inside of it
if there were anyone here.
It is made of thick material, like branches
Big and strong and brown color
Very simple shape, like a bowl
But higher on the sides.
The basket increases my capacity
to store new myths in the future.

It is dark now.
I attempt to reduce the persistence of previously learned fear.
Fear is like a house, an old house full of traps.
Myth is based on a circuit
extending into the unknown.
Out there it is dark
the windows are closed
and I am sad.

Consciousness must have two specific traits:
Black stars
and spirals galaxies.
I am moved by this vision
I am turning like a star
I am spiraling like a galaxy.
My heart is beating
I am alive.

I fly high above the ocean.
Just as there are many types of waters,
there are many types of consciousness,
all mingling below me
waves of a million colors
thoughts of a million lights.

I collect thought objects and put them in the basket:
Pearls, rocks, eggs, clouds
Stories, songs, tracks, touches
Colors, temperature, textures, layers
Sounds, words, magic artifacts.
Each object invokes a new question
about the nature of this liquid thought reality.
I reject the need for answers.

I want to take the basket with me.
Then it doesn’t matter where I am going.
It doesn't matter what I find.

I find that I am the basket.
The basket is a thought object
that describes the total energy of the kingdom.
I see now inside of my own skin.
I see new myths being integrated into the Library.
Within me there are worlds to discover.
There’s everything.
Everything is with me.
Its all there:
colors, blue, sounds, smells
scents, cinnamon
everything.
I can go there
Anytime.
All the stories
All the songs
All the newly formed myths of the Library
The future
The past
The present
It's all under my skin.
All this information
integrated in a unified whole
impossible to divide into independent parts.
I am the most basic substance
that perceives self awareness.
I am the Library.
I am the Kingdom

The old myths are now impossible to recall
but a new myth is before me:
A flower
It’s the mother of all flowers
It is coral
It is very large.
I must be able to store this myth and retrieve it efficiently.

As the kingdom
I must be able to store and process large amounts of information.
Star dreams, dusk and light
Darkness, more than large, more than huge.
And all connected.
This connection
allows for the performance
of conscious kingdoms
such as myself.

I have grown new myths
in the Library
throughout this life.
I am inside and outside
They are the same
And it doesn't matter
if I see it or not.
I know now
that I will soon forget
yet again.

In Order To Cry

In order to cry, think of the lover that left you without a home. A lover that came back from the far off beaches and mountains of Costa Rica, all the while sending notes filled with love and the promises of kisses in a soon to be future. In order to cry, remember when he looked at you with a distant eye and those kisses turned strange and full of salt and he didn’t seem like familiar skin, but something that only housed the shadow of old laughter. He came off the plane with dreams of walking through Mexico hand in hand, but in days, as leaves fell and marked the beginning of fall, he took the keys to the trailer and didn’t help carry your clothes and books to the sidewalk. He pulled out of the driveway, taking your home and smile, driving off into the mountains without a kiss or a soft glance backwards, driving as fast as he could to avoid the sound of your tears as they fell, crashing on the worn hardwood floor.

In order to cry, think of the night when you slept alone in an unfamiliar room, the only familiar tattooed flesh a few miles away behind metal bars and thick glass. The walls of the room were pale white, but covered in the blue dawn light of morning that came seeping in through the bedroom window. Remember looking around, feeling the floor below the thin mattress just a few inches thick, and then, oh yes, it all comes back, the horrible twists and turns of the night before. A convulsing 90 pound teenager, the sirens, the police handcuffs and a ride to the station. The interrogation and then walking free while some stayed behind in orange jumpers and the promise of long, noisy days and anxiety-filled nights and court-appointed lawyers in wrinkled suits. Think of your impotence, the jewelry you wore for good-luck as you watched the court proceedings with a pained heart and tears and a wet pussy, since your man still looked hot in the orange jumpsuit.

In order to cry, think of your missing dog, the one you walked on warm summer nights through the gentle fog of misty marijuana and fading orgasms. The dog that was your link to human connection, for people dared look at you and smile while you held a leash. Remember the soft brown eyes you still dream of, fur clinging to the lint of the sliding glass door is the only remaining physical manifestation of the thick fur covered body. In order to cry, think of the restaurant, sitting with your parents and sister when the truth finally came over appetizers and ice water sitting in wine glasses, when their lies finally spiraled in on themselves and you realized with one quick tear that Blackstar didn’t die, she was killed. And you know that she was old and could hardly walk and you knew every time you walked out the front door of your parent’s house that it might be the last time you saw that graying black fur, but still, they lied, letting your sister come home for Thanksgiving, looking around the house, opening every door, calling, ‘Blackstar!”

In order to cry, think of your young sister, growing older, growing more jaded and contorted by the day. Her smooth pink skin turning into wrinkles of worry, her mouth producing only complaints and concerns. Think of her all alone after you left for college, that poor skinny body starved and stressed while your mom’s concerns about weight seeped in, finding a home in the fabric of her muscles, taking the place of any fat; and now, when she eats, she talks about calories every time she moves in with a spoon on a mound of whipped cream. Your sister, who wants to give facials and mud masks, but your parents ‘spent too much money on college for her to be a beautician,’ so she stays in the suspended Bardo, caught by invisible strings that pull on each one of her fingers. She wears all black and helps rich women pick out sunglasses that could pay your rent.

In order to cry, remember all the things that you have lost, that pink and white batik shirt that disappeared in the wash. That 500 year old piece of turquoise that was stolen right out of your own jewelry box in the yellow-lit bathroom. Your vinyl records taken by the same mouth you had fed spaghetti two weeks before. The friends you left standing at the altar without a girl in green to clap and cheer. The friends you just stopped calling. The people you wonder about, but you cannot call now because it’s too late and too much time has passed. The family that you can barely visit and talk with, the potted plants left in the care of others.

In order to cry, think of yourself. Turn your attention inward, as has been advised in the manual. Focus on your skin, your breasts or penis, whichever may be the case. Think of the ache of your skin, the unfulfilled desires that call your name.

In order to cry, stand in the corner of the room with your face to the wall. Stand there till the feeling of isolation grows, until you begin to chant the phrase, ‘I am alone.’
Look at your missteps, your sidesteps, the sadness that just needs an open door, the failure of the sun to grant every wish and orgasm.

In order to cry, think of your tears, ready at the waiting, waiting to roll down your cheeks, eager to take the ride they were always promised.

Unknown Event

Something passes overhead, underneath, a shadow jumping from the darkness to take shape before my eyes. Once I was like you, I saw as others saw, but that was before the unknown event, before the thing that happened that so changed my thinking that I can no longer say what it was. I went in one end of the carnival tunnel called time at 1:00 am and came out the other at 1:15 am, three days later, unsure of what had happened.
Oh indeed my mind made many suggestions about how the sky changed color and the clouds gathered in a swirling mass over my head before the lights overtook me. Someone, some thing ran around the perimeter of the field, something small and quick, always just concealed from my direct sight, making the tall wild grasses ripple. I felt an even measure of awe and fear. The realization that nothing like that should be here is what made it terrible. Perhaps if I had forgotten the other world entirely, the world where you are walking down the side walk with a scarf wound tight around your throat clutching a steaming paper cup in your hand, if I had lost all memory of that world that we have shared, then perhaps I would not have thought,
“These things should not be here.”
And if I had not thought that, then I might not have been frightened. But reality, you must understand, was being torn slowly, painfully torn up like a dirty worn carpet. Is there anything worse than seeing your living room floor without the familiar carpet? Seeing the concrete or wood that lies underneath, hard and cold and comfortless? So imagine this terrible thing happening to the fabric of reality, the world where you are hurrying away from an argument with me, waiting for the traffic on the corner and frowning without noticing that you are frowning, the fabric of that existence being jerked out from under me, the me that I was at 12:59.
Realize that by 1:00am I was already becoming a new person. I was frightened, but curious. I needed to see that those shadows were nothing, or that they were something, so I ran after them, hearing the grasses whip around ahead of me, following that sound until we came to the bridge that crosses the river, to the place where the trees rise up and crowd around, tall and skinny and white.
I stood on the bridge and the wind whirled around me, making my clothing flap like flags around my skin. They were among the trees now, and I shivered with the impression that they were like something I had glimpsed before. What had I heard about such things as these? Terrible frightening things.
But then I thought, wait, I have yet to see them directly. I should not confuse these things with old stories. I wanted to run away, now more than ever, but I felt the importance of remaining calm. I was already being transformed by this occurrence, I knew already that the me of 12:59 was gone forever, and I understood that what I did now would define the me that was in the making.
What does steel do when it is being forged into a blade? It holds still, in fire, under the hammer, and in water, it holds still and lets the smith shape it.
I stood on the bridge and the light from overhead grew brighter and brighter and I thought,
“This is the fire! Be still or you will melt into nothingness!”
At least this is what I now tell myself that I told myself as the brightness engulfed me and held me for an agonizing second.
Then I was standing on the bridge alone. The sky was dark and the air was still. Shadows were behaving once again as shadows should in this world that I have shared with you. I looked at my watch and it said 1:15am. I felt as if I had been dreaming and couldn’t remember precisely what had happened. My mind had been altered, stretched during the course of the unknown event, and now that it had shrunk back to scale the unknown event could not be recalled as it had happened. I arranged this story when I returned to our little apartment and you screamed ,
“Where have you been? God damn you! Where have you been for the last three days?”
I told us both something we could understand, even if only vaguely, even if you called it an alien abduction. I cannot call it that.
Once I was like you, I saw as others saw, but that was before the event, before the thing that happened that so changed my thinking that I can no longer say unwaveringly what it was. I went in one end of the carnival tunnel called time at 1:00 am and came out the other at 1:15 am, three days later, and I could not say what had happened in the tunnel, only that something had transpired there, something that is only known to the me that I was between 1:00am and 1:15am for those three days that I was gone. To this other me, the one that now talks to you, that something is and will remain unknown.

In Flight

As a passenger, I get to sit back and enjoy the trip. At least that’s usually my intention when I first board the airplane. At least it has been. I can’t really say what my intention is anymore. Things have changed.
When on a plane like this, I can wallow in intentional ignorance. I don’t have to know what is happening in the cockpit, I don’t have to know what is happening in the communications tower. I am entirely unaware of the five other hunks of flying metal that are lifting off the ground in the same second that my own is rattling out of gravity’s finger tips. I have no idea that another plane has just been redirected so that it won’t collide with the one I find myself in.
I only know that the charming woman up ahead is going to bring me peanuts, and a fizzy beverage after the captain turns off the “fasten seatbelt” lights. My mouth is watering and I’m trying to decide whether I would like a Coke or a Clamata and I’m wondering if I might persuade her to part with two bags of peanuts on my behalf… all of it while death is soaring all around me, talons neatly spread, wondering if it can make off with two jet planes full of people, including myself.
But I don’t have to think about that, not about that, not unless I really want to. Sometimes I do want to. Maybe more often than not. Isn’t that known as morbidness? I like the sound of that word. I don’t mind it being applied to me.
While I fret over the discovery that this airline no longer serves the honey roasted peanuts I had so perfectly envisioned and instead has switched to serving pretzels, some prematurely balding man in a button up white shirt is determining my fate. Let him determine, it is only a clear manifestation of something that has been true all along. “Fate is in your hands” is only an old joke to tell kids on the day of their graduation after all. My hands are not large enough for fate, they can barely hold the bag of pretzels and a soda.

I turn to the man sitting next to me. He is a middle aged executive who can’t stop fumbling with his briefcase as soon as the fasten seat belts light goes away. I begin to speak to him, without the need of any prompting, without checking to see if my speech is welcomed or even tolerated. It probably isn’t. It usually isn’t. Who wants their fellow passengers to talk to them? Very few people do.
I have learned to set aside such considerations. I simply feel it is the time for me to speak and I feel that it is time for him to listen. I am sure I will soon find out if he disagrees. However he reacts, it won’t matter. Eventually I will do what I can do, and he will do what he is bound to do, and the result of the equation will be determined by time. No need to stop at the doorway of possibility when the numbers are always ready to be computed and served back in an easy to open container of rainbow light.

“Can I tell you how I came to be here? How I came to be here at this time and this place, this point of convergence between dimensions that I imagine or experience or dream, this moment that I may not understand at all? If I tell you, swear to me that you will accept every word I say as true and not press me on matters which seem questionable, for I fear that it will break my delicate grip with this reality if you prod it unnecessarily.”

My questions are of course rhetorical. I don’t intent to wait for an answer. The man turns to me and it is clear by the look in his eyes that he is starting to believe that I am insane. Who’s to say that he is wrong? I may be about to prove him right. I often have my doubts but I only have so many things I can worry about at one time.

“These things are like fine webs made of spun sugar mounted one upon one another to form pink cloudy softness, webs that once touched with sweaty hands or a curious tongue merely melt into sticky sweetness, no more constant or fixed than human promises. I will tell you because you seem sincere and because you are here, a captive ear for my untrained voice. So listen up, place all your attention on me, give me all of it just for a moment. I will tell you the story of the black man and the little bird.”

I have to admit I don’t really think he seems at all sincere in his attention, his eyes are glazed over, as if he already knows anything I could possibly have to say. He would rather not have to listen to a stranger, but he will probably like the story I have to tell, maybe it will make him just a bit more sympathetic to my speech. That’s what I tell myself. In the end, like I have said, it doesn’t really matter how he responds, whether he likes it or not. Or it hardly matters. Maybe just a bit.

All I would have to do is sit back, relax and enjoy the trip. There would be no need to be telling stories to strangers that probably would rather have the loud silence that comes with a large mechanical plane in full glorious metallic movement. I could simply relax and take in all that is happening and all that is not happening.
It just happens to be that that is not what I do. Maybe I will do that eventually, maybe I used to do that before things happened. Since then, I can’t resist the urge to talk.

“First I will tell you about the black man.”

I say it clearly and loudly and the man’s eyes are wide open even as he tries to look steadily ahead. Maybe he thinks I will go away if he consistently ignores me. Kids think that sometimes when they close their eyes to avoid being found during a game of hide and seek. It doesn’t really work. Not there, not here.

“It does not matter which of these things I tell you about first as the events surrounding these two nouns; man and bird, occurred simultaneously, if they occurred at all. That is to say that sequence has everything to do with language in that the word is like a narrow doorway through which only one topic may pass at a time, like little drops of dewy spittle from my lip to your ear, a tiny packet of data about things which have been occurring in a world too vast to squeeze into a dew drops or words or feathers that have been made into writing quills instead of the wings of flying birds. One comes before the other only because that is all that the doorway permits, all that the ungracious lord, THE WORD, will allow, one at a time to visit the well of communion between souls.”

I stop briefly to make sure that he is still listening. I decide that he is in fact listening reluctantly, or at least as much as he ever was, as much as I can ever expect him to listen to this strange creature who won’t stop talking in a space where silence would be ideal. This strange creature who appears to be me at the moment. Eventually I won’t even care if they listen. I am not there yet. Soon, pretty soon.

“So first the black man. Let me tell you this about him.. he is the cohort of countless witches condemned to burn as well as those that fly round secret fires in a whirlwind of ecstasy before they are discovered by the mob and punished for their incomprehensible crimes. The black man, he is not what you expect. He, as I have known him anyway, is always mild mannered, self composed and unassuming. He that knows so much will ask you what he well knows as though he never knew it, not to play a game with you, but just that the two of you shall partake of knowledge together in the renewed asking of a question, in the fresh discovery of an answer. His hair flecked with gray, his posture stooped, he keeps trees that bear fruit, unusual trees, and he will peel back the leathery skins of those fruits to reveal the strange delights held within and offer it to you as water to a parched man.”

Maybe he turns slightly towards me, maybe it is just an attempt to make himself more comfortable, but what real comfort can there be when I won’t stop talking. And I truly mean it: I can’t stop talking. I simply can’t. It is an unfortunate side effect of the things that happened. Maybe not so unfortunate, maybe not so much on the side, maybe not an effect at all. As for him, maybe he really is about to start listening. Good. Just in time.

“He would withhold nothing, least of all that which grows from seed to meat. Should you wish to partake, he shares without reserve. What is his is yours while you are with him and again later if you choose. He is also a fisherman who draws great shy beasts from the deep with lures unlike any used by ordinary men. He will draw up the arcatuthus for you and then you will see your greed for the catch dissolve into sympathy for the beast and you will see its children born and hope that it survives captivity and may return to the deep, but if not, then there are still the offspring in whom to invest this new found tenderness. He is a stranger, a lover, a father all in one, your oldest friend, a friend that you have forgotten. Never did he forget you. Never did he hold it against you that you would forget or swear that you are unacquainted with him. He has all the tenderness of an old grandfather, the wisdom of a priest of one of those true orders of mystic stewardship. That is the black man. That is as much as a I can now say about him.”

When the plane changes course to avoid a lightning storm, I am oblivious to the maneuver, we both are. I say “we”, for now we have formed a we, even if unstable and tentative, even if easily untangled. I turn away briefly to ogle the flight attendant as she comes around again for the passenger’s garbage. I am not past such pleasures, I hope I never will be. I enjoy the view of her rear as she works her way up the aisle past my seat. There is something in its implied roundness that makes me sit a bit straighter, and it makes me want to talk. But of course, I have never stopped talking, not even while I looked away.

“And then there is the bird. I met the bird in a parking lot looking for a crumb to nab. I was putting groceries into the back of the truck and I heard him say that he was hungry, so I broke off some bread and tossed it gently his way as I had been taught by the black man. The bird turned his head slightly to look me in the eye and thanked me very much for taking notice of him. I told him that it was my pleasure and I hoped he would enjoy the fare and, as he went heartily to it, I got into the truck and drove away.”

Now I have to say he definitely has turned towards me. There is no doubt now that he has turned. Something in my story has interested him. Good. I knew that this wasn’t a complete mistake. They are never mistakes, these strange impulses I have, even if I sometimes worry that they might be. It’s the mention of the bird which has got to him, that is what usually does it. It certainly did it for me when I first saw it.

“How did he look? Well he was small and sort of grayish brown, a sort of sparrow maybe. It is his little voice which was clearest to me both then and now. I heard his voice again this morning while I walked to the airport. He was singing gaily. You will tell me that sparrows don’t sing, but I must tell you that by today he was no longer a sparrow. His voice was very clear and bright and I listened to it as I walked, touched by its merriment.”

A hint of a smile, something he wishes to hide but he can’t hide it from me. I have turned completely towards him and it would now be very obvious if he turned away. So he stays in place, frozen, with just that hint of a smile, that hint that tells me everything.

“I noticed that he sang the song that cars sing when they are rubbed the wrong way by someone who cannot turn off the alarm. Diabolus in Musica and so forth, at least that’s where it starts. You know what I mean? It was the song of that alarm which goes off in low class neighborhoods and runs through a series of different obnoxious tones and rhythms so that the offending car robber will be dismayed by the shrill and clownish noises and depart in all due haste. Now my friend the bird repeated this same song in his lovely trill.”

I try to sing and imitate the bird song I remember. I do a fairly decent imitation, at least based on the second hand echoes I hear inside my own head. The hint that I noticed earlier has now turned into a broad smile and I smile at him as well. He has found his place in silently listening and I have found my place in talking, as I must continue to talk, for my story is not over. Not that it ever is truly over. But, as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself. I sing and I talk, then I sing and I talk some more.

“I stopped beneath the tree laden with pink blossoms and listened to his heart bursting with joy through his rendering of this popular new song. The outward form mattered not at all. The lyric to the song, the tones, the rhythms, all were quite unimportant. What mattered so was the heart. That is what he administered liberally to that tired old alarm call. He made it into a masterpiece.”

If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that for a moment he wanted to sing himself, he wanted to break out in song, in the song that he imagined the bird singing. He wanted to sing with me. Maybe it was just a twitch of the lips. Maybe it’s just something that passes, like a fluttering of the eyes or a bird that flies by a window as you drive out of an old town.

“ ‘You should try it.’ The black man said to me, tasting a succulent gem from one of his trees. ‘That’s what we do. We take what they made and we remake it, we remake it with ourselves in it. We put ourselves into that which is not ours, that which is not us. It doesn’t matter at all what they meant for it to be in the first place. We make it alive, we make it live once again. Life is its own meaning. All other meaning is superfluous.’ He said this with a little fluttering hand gesture that reminded me of the bird. I can’t even say for sure if he was actually speaking. I can only report what I remember. I hope you don’t mind. His beard was short and sparse then, composed of short curled salt and pepper bristles. His skin looked like milk chocolate, soft and weathered with age. He was perfect in his own imperfect way.“

The man nods slowly. I can see it clearly now. Something has resonated deep within the folds of his pulsing flesh and he just nods, there’s no need for any further comment. I stop briefly because I am overcome by the pain of memory. Is there something in memory other than pain? Maybe pain itself is the basic building block of all visions of the past, of living time that has coagulated into frozen images. Maybe it is only when we forget that pain goes away. But as I talk there is no memory, there is only the story, and that is not the same.

“I say, sing on little bird, sing on and I will listen to you and to the black man too. I will listen and I will try to sing as well, when I can. That’s what I said as I walked here this morning, as I walked into the airport, right before boarding this plane, right before coming here to sit with you.”

And I whistle briefly, softly enough that only he will hear me, for he is my one and only audience. All other passengers have become the noise that surrounds us, a vibrant sphere of activity that only serves as a frame for our one sided interaction. Now he could react in some way if he wanted to, there is space for him to do so. But his reaction doesn’t matter, it never really did.

“What about you friend? Are you listening to me now, telling you this story with gaps wide enough for us both to fall through? If you haven’t heard, then no matter and never mind, so long as you spare me your criticisms. I don’t need them and they won’t change anything. I tell it to you the best way I can with this clumsy stuff, trying to wedge a leviathan through a hole made for a mouse. That’s what I do now. And so my story ends here, with me sitting with you, talking to you as I am doing.“

I turn on the seat completely, bending my left leg up and twisting my right leg sideways, pushing my foot under the seat in front. I stare right into him. He is too caught up now, he can’t avoid my eyes, and, of course, I have my way of forcing my own gaze upon him. It is rude and it feels so good to do it.

“I could have just told you the story of Iron Hans, painting the forest in greens so deep they were almost black like the rotted underside of forgotten chard. I could have told you any story at all, an old, old story, one that you have heard a dozen times before, and, if I had, I would have done as much if not more than I did here. It just so happens that I told you this story and that you are now a character within it.”

He nods again, his eyes wide open, looking straight at me. I can see the clouds passing behind him through the small oval window of the plane. We are flying together, in more ways than one.

“It is not what I told you really that will profit you at all, but what I poured into every senseless syllable. It comes from the fount at the heart swelling over after the rains of winter, ready to feed all the spring grasses and from them, little lambs, and from them, hungry lions.”

He smiles broadly and I smile broadly back at him. People are moving around us, returning to their seats. Soon it will be time for our time together to be over. So things come to an end, so cleanly, so abruptly. All unions end this way, with a flashing sign. Sometimes the sign is not so obvious.

“That is the story of how I came to be here, how we crossed here like roads running unknown courses, my voice and your ear, joined for a moment and now soon to part, for now I take my leave of you. I will never mind if you forget me. I will never mind if you claim that we never met.”

Soon the plane is engaged in a whole new ballet of high speed hunks of metal guided by fallible human directors who may or may not be distracted just now because this high stress job has taken a toll on their sex life and their significant other stormed out this morning with packed bags. Death perks up again, hopeful, but we land safely (we have definitely turned into a we now, even if the we will soon go away and we will once again be I and you, or him and me, or them and nothing.) I get to see the fasten seat belts light turn off and I lean back on the seat, closing my eyes. Quiet at last. Not for long.

As a passenger, all you have to do is sit back, enjoy the trip, and say thank you when it is over. Sometimes other things happen as well. Sometimes things change and they never return to their original position.

Mind

I wake up with multiple strings pulling at my thoughts. Some are golden threads yanking lightly, others are thick hemp rope that tug and tug, pulling with the strength of a thousand sailors. A single mind, a single point is stretched, I imagine my head like the dot on a map, a red city with a web of highways emanating from the center. This day has begun under a layer of clouds and I have awoken rested, yet with sore muscles that pinch my neck and upper back. I feel a tug. My dreams stirred me like a cauldron and floating on the top is the memory of a childhood crush. The boy who was beaten by his stepfather, the boy who drew gruesome fish and decapitated bodies. The boy I always wanted but could never look in the eye. What did he do with his past? Has he turned his lashings and fear into a graphic story that lines the shelves of bookstores? Does he smoke away his days in an effort to still his mind? What has he done with his past? The dream lingers, “I’ve always held out a hope that we would be together,” I told a childhood friend. I’ve written it all down and I sit here, my mind moving in a thousand directions, my breath moving in and out, my attention coming back in bursts of self remembering. “yes, it’s time to focus…”
But here I go….down the highway of thought. What have I done wrong? Oh yes… sleep has not erased the contact I muddled. A new day and still, my eyes are a little worn, my body lacks the ability to hold itself straight, so I sit like I always do, like a little old woman who has spent the last seventy years bearing the burden of her family. How many generations do I pile on my back? With whose mouth do I speak? What dreams do I carry with me like a coat of arms? Only, we didn’t have coats of arms, we carried ourselves in secret, only our noses gave us away, that, and the eyes.
Eyes that can be found in any country where our women wander. I remember the long lost photo, the seductive stare of a young woman in Egypt who rests on a marble floor, her hand on the handle of a copper urn, staring up at the photographer with brown eyes that speak of lust, of pure heat that is transmitted through DNA. I carry them all in my cells, every sex crazed woman. Every complaining man. Their teachings, their fears that could topple me if I let them. Their lifetimes are piled on me, my sentence since birth.
Shall I give up the body and focus? Shall I give up the thoughts of children, the thoughts of a monogamous pairing? All the things I thought I never wanted. All the things I did. All the things I have seen while watching movies, while watching my parents, while watching the world go by me in a blur of pairs and extended bliss. I saw the video of the wedding, it was glorious and they pledged it would go on forever. They swore their love would never crumble, that their devotion would only grow, that nothing would change. And I cried while watching them, a set of strangers, a couple convinced of the lie that defies their own nature. The pretty girl in white smiles as though she has never known true happiness before. I was never promised happiness. I was promised work, continuous, never ending work. I was promised it would be hard and I took his hand with a blindfold over my eyes, I took his hand and stepped through the doorway.
I look down at my naked body, I have been pulled again, down the road of thought. Strings pull me in a thousand directions. If I pull back, that only makes them stronger. If I float calmly, then they may fall away.

Look, Explode, Hide

"LSD says look. Explode. Hide thought."
I look down at the crumpled yellow note held in my dry bony fingers. The penmanship is terrible, difficult to read. It looks more like the results of a seismograph than a message written in English. That is the language that I speak. My head is bald, wreathed by a thin crown of fine gray hair. My eyes are blue and sunken into my face, surrounded by dark hollow circles. Gaunt cheeks flank a pointed noise. My lips are thin and dry. I speak and read English. I live in North America, on a planet that in English we call Earth, but if you can read English, then you know we call it that. I live on the fifth floor of a narrow brick apartment building on a street called Kesling in the city of San Francisco. I am standing on the stairs between the fourth and the third floor listening to an old woman cough through the thin walls. In my hands I hold the nearly illegible note. Under the square panel emitting meek electric light above my bare skull it reads;
“LSD says look. Explode. Hide thought.”
I have already read it 376 times since I found it this morning on the doormat inside my door. The mat says “Welcome”. It always says that. No matter how many times I step on it. It was purchased at a store called Anna’s Linens and Things with a visa gift card which the phone company sent to thank me for signing up for their service. The visa gift card was orange. It had a value of $100.00. With it, I also purchased the pair of shoes that I am wearing now, the same shoes I use to step on the mat. They are brown suede loafers.
The note had been intentionally placed there. Slipped under the door? I don’t really know. I look at the palm of my right hand. There is a very faint charcoal colored speck on the ridge aligned with my pinky. It looks as if the tip of a graphite pencil were lodged in my hand. It appeared inexplicably one morning 5 years ago. I had not stabbed myself in the hand with a pencil. I suspect that I have been tagged by Aliens. I do not venture to imagine what type of aliens or for what reason they tagged me. I merely suspect that some alien being placed it there to track my comings and goings as a North American biologist might tag a bird, or a frog, or a whale.
I look again at the note and read its message. Is it from the Alien? I don’t know. I dismiss the idea.
What is LSD? I put the note in my polyester trouser pocket and descend the next flight of stairs. Then the next. Are they the initials of a person? Is it the drug? I have never taken LSD. When I was young I was acquainted with another young man who attended the university at Berkley. He took LSD and tried to jump from a moving roller coaster. He had long blonde hair. His name was Herb. Herbert Mason, a biologist. I no longer have his telephone number, or I might call him to see what he thinks about the note.
No, on second thought, I would not. Hide thought, it says. So maybe I should also hide knowledge of the message which provokes the thought. Between the second and first floor I stop again and take out the note. The paper is soft and wrinkled as though it had been crumpled and un-crumpled again a thousand times by some nervous hand. It was in this condition when I found it. I am adding to the wear. I am still holding it when I reach the first floor. The sound of the old electric elevator whirring upward makes me cringe. The gold faces of the mail boxes stare at me with cyclopean keyhole eyes. I take the key out with my free hand. I open my box, the one with the number 513 embossed on its surface. I look. The box is empty.
Explode?
I close and lock the mailbox and face the black wrought iron gate at the other end of the courtyard. Beyond it, cars drive on the street. A man walks by in short red shorts and a blue polo shirt. He is wearing a white terry cloth headband. The fountain in the center of the courtyard trickles softly from fount to basin. Its tiles are blue and white. At the gate, I look once more at the note.
“LSD says look. Explode. Hide thought.”
Then I put it back into my pocket and push open the squeaking gate, stepping out into the whirlwind of color and noise that is the world outside.

Memory

Black oil dripping like sticky medicine from the tapered glass cylinder of a bottle dropper. It is soap? Is it blood? No, it is memory bubbling forth from the deep recess pushing up from underneath and cracking the brittle earth at the surface. I thought I had buried you where none would find you, but alas, I find you because you are buried within me. In the fresh green fragrance pressed from the leaves of a tender plant by searching fingers, I draw the smoky outline that is a recollection, and one leads to another under the gentle caress of late winter sun until an entire scene unfolds and rises like the pages of a pop up story book. My heart hurts as if it has been stapled together by a child, my paper heart splitting at the center because it has been over stuffed with cloudy cotton from a stained pillow, and on it is written,
"Here is a heart since you obviously don’t have one."
It spills out onto the dark umber of moist earth amid a scattering of small brittle leaves and the tiny delicate remains of baby snails who by some twist of fate could no longer use that creamy colored spiral shell which never gained it’s mature color. The quiet is like the sound of nothingness one hears when they press their ear to the mouth of a blue glass bottle; a hollow "shhhh". It drops from the tree tops adorned with adobe bells that hang still and silent. The long slender branches of the tree are thrown up like white arms reaching for the birds that didn’t come this morning, its leaves splotched and puckered with disease.
"Shhh"
I can hear the beat of my heart in this quiet; the small insignificant sound of paper tearing, s l o w l y. The characters rise from the depths. Blue eyes, red hair, that I want to touch, to either caress or strangle. Brown eyes, tangled black hair that I want to watch or get as far away from as possible, like a woman teetering on a table top to escape a greasy glowering eyed sewer rat. A beard and a shouting voice which makes every semblance of control shut down as if someone turned the web shaped spicket so tight that not a drop of reason, civility or water can come through, and some one let the bear out of her cage and she’s looking to eat the trainer, no matter how hard he whips, the harder the better to make her bite. Ooooh the things that we drag out the back door on a moonless light to heave into a shallow grave dug with a simple black spade. How they creep back out later, sneaking through the cracks under doors and crawling along in dark hallways that don’t appear in the floor plan.
Poor bear, poor brother, poor sister, poor father. All in unmarked mounds, moaning to be released. And I finger my paper heart, and wonder who gave it to me, what mean child made it so poorly that I will have to make another from these things. I wait like a bounty hunter for each of those apparitions that come to feed on my raw attention. I pounce when they arrive and with silver dagger stay their appetite and take from them my trophy so that I may fashion for myself a new heart of the rendered parts of each and fill it with black medicine and pump it by hand. I cross over the ashy pit where I let my old heart burn, plucked from my breast and set aflame with an empty lighter that looked like hard green candy.
The silent unmoving oxygen fed the frenzy and the fire licked my old paper heart like a hungry little demon sucking at the bloody chambers of a pomegranate until only feathery white and gray ash remained. Then I crossed it, and hoped to die, and sprinkled a handful of seeds here, there and everywhere and call the birds to come. Come bring your song to fill up my new monster’s heart fashioned from the cadavers of ghosts. See how stretchy it is, made of ghost flesh. See how empty of fluff.
Bring your noise and let the flapping of your wings bring the wind. Let the wind ring the little adobe bells as you come down upon pale uplifted arms. Bring the crow, the sparrow, and the lark and let us make a joyful noise to release the spirits of my slain brethren. Black oil dripping like sticky medicine from the tapered glass cylinder of a bottle dropper. It is soap? Is it blood? No, it is the music I make, boiling away the remnants of a life left behind into glossy midnight hued bubbles in the black cauldron of a lonesome self.

The All Seeing Boy

The age of your son clouds my imagination. Why does a boy shorter than most doorknobs have gray hair? Under what stress have you put his body under? What has he seen between the cracks of doors? Is his reality colored by cartoon books and stuffed animals with squashed faces and missing eyes? Does he live in an imagined world of sorcerers and captains with missing teeth? Or does he fret about his missing breakfast cereal, long gone and another never coming. Does he worry about his cold hands that have cracked in the grooves where his fingers meet? Has he thought about soldiers dying in the field, their bloody mouths calling for Maria, the mother of all? Have you told him that lie too?
Take your head out from the foggy London streets. There are no virgins here. The signs are everywhere. It comes with every fifth thought. On the ground is a stick shaped like an aroused man. There, in the tree trunk, is a raised knot shaped like a pleading ass hole, forever teasing, forever waiting for a branch to plunge inside. This isn’t just the directing of a foul mind, it’s nature, screaming for death and finding renewal. Crying for release and creating another.
The Christian band cannot play another song. I refuse.
I have cut their plastic strings in my silver teeth and made men from their cocks. The cords are severed, their mics lay as dust beneath my bare feet. The verses from scripture have turned blond-headed flocks into pudding-headed dolls that deny the laws of matter. Logic lays lifeless in their hands. Science, beheaded long ago. Come to me dressed in purple satin and perhaps you may find the real mother of all. Her thighs are wet, her mouth smells of faint fish and sweat. Her torn garments hang from her neck like ribbons from a maypole, rainbow colored and spotted with red. Her loins are torn…and open.
Virgin!
Our need for death comes before our first word. There is no virgin. Purity is for those who shut their minds to our defiled nature. It comes as naturally as birth, and yet you hide it in underground caves. We can see it leaking! Your purity is black and red, coloring the clouds for miles with your subverted lust. I am a seed of their lust, a creation of two robots fucking for death.
And they did, yet…continued to breathe.
And I, before my first steps, sought for death as well. And though I have imagined better, though I have sometimes worked to elevate my knowledge beyond the first few words of the dictionary; I am still remedial, lacking vocabulary, lacking intention. My thoughts fade as another wave of music drowns my crumbling skull. And then, drifting…I remember.
Have you ever understood that the nights in London where nothing but a nightmare drenched in colorful glass and sequined lingerie that fell for the first customer? They poured a fifth of their liquor into the piss-stained streets and still, you were able to walk down the marble steps without losing your teeth. Without losing the rest of your heart. I saw you directing rats in the sewers. They came to us from underground tunnels coated in grease. They came from villages and attics clogged in dust and broken Christmas lights, from the baker down the street and the dream that still clings to my consciousness.
The band lies broken and used while rats feast on the remaining lyrics. Dressed in ancient clothes that smell of mildew and lavender, your boy sings a sad song, seeing it all, despite the window you have shut.

Argument and Counter Argument

A middle aged woman walked through a great green park on a sunny afternoon. Two teenage boys walked by her side. One of the boys was her son. The other was her son’s best friend. The woman had a warm face, already etched with the wrinkles and spots that signaled a quickly approaching seniority. She wore dark glasses to protect her eyes from the harsh sunlight. Her hair was curly and brown and the unruly curls reached down to her neck. She wore a wrinkled loose button up shirt over a red T-shirt and she had a black bag around her shoulders which hung from her left side. She was thick around the middle and her light brown pants hung loose around her legs.
The boy that was her son was only a little thicker than her and he was also taller. He had messy black hair that partially covered his forehead. He had strong dark eyes and a slim pointed nose. He wore a red T-shirt with a logo on it and light gray cargo pants. He walked decisively, with a sense of pointed determination. Although they all walked together, he seemed to always be just a fraction of a step ahead.
The best friend was skinnier than his two companions, his entire body seemed to be made out of a softer substance. He had long blonde hair that was parted in the middle and tied together in the back. He wore a loose long sleeved brown shirt over a white T-shirt and black jeans. His left hand was always in his pants pocket, as if looking for a solid foundation in the darkness of his jeans.
They walked together by a small playground where many children were playing, screaming and laughing as they ran into each other and climbed up, and jumped over, the complex and colorful structures that stood over a small circle of rubber mulch. Several women, the mothers of the children, sat close by on green benches, looking at their children playing and turning to each other to find an ear or a temporary source of disposable entertainment. The middle aged woman looked towards them and remembered seating like that, in one of those very same benches, while her son ran through the little tunnels and slid down the metal ramps. She looked towards her son, trying to ascertain that this big strong boy was indeed the same little thing that had run up to her one day crying, suffering from a tiny cut on his knee. Her son at that moment was not looking towards the playground or towards her. His attention was on his best friend.
"The thing is… look, I understand that the levels are important, there’s no question about that…"
"Well, then what is the…?" the friend answered with a very subtle shrug of the shoulders.
"Wait, the thing is that the levels are important and all… but they are not the only thing that is important."
"I understand that but…"
"But wait… we agree that the levels are important but if you focus only on that then the game…"
"Well, I never said that I only focus on that. I don’t want to…"
"I’m not saying you did… it’s that…"
They walked together towards a dark tunnel. A bride and groom, in full wedding attire, were walking out of the darkness. The bride had an angry look on her face and there were small trails of mud on her wedding dress. A photographer followed behind them, carrying two large leather bags. The middle aged woman looked at them and remembered the days when she believed in marriage, when for a moment her lover was all that mattered and nothing could be more delicious or more desirable than to be in his presence, to be close to him and to touch his face, his body. It was all so brief and his son was all that was left of that short flirtation with romantic happiness. She wondered what this bride would think a year from now, a decade from now, maybe even a week from now. Would she still love her husband as she did on this sunny day? She shook her head and the trio entered the tunnel together. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could make out the form of a homeless man leaning against a wall.
"What I’m really saying…" the friend continued as he only barely noticed the tunnel around him, "is that we have to keep in mind the effect that each session has on…"
"That’s exactly what I mean… if you do that…" the son said in a loud voice that echoed through the tunnel. A little boy screamed from the direction of the playground. At this distance, it was impossible to tell if it was a scream of delight or of horror. "If you do that, then the game becomes about levels…"
"I don’t want it to become about levels, you know… but…"
"But that’s the thing, it does… look at the second table of powers and tell me that if you focus on that then you don’t…"
"No, I wouldn’t base it on the second table… it would be too limiting…"
"But then what would be left?"
They emerged from the tunnel and the sunlight seemed brighter than ever. The woman leaned her head back to feel the warmth spreading over her face and body. Above them was a light brown ledge of rough cement and beyond the ledge there was a large black sculpture. She couldn’t make out the details, but it was shining black in the sunlight and some people were gathered around it. A man stepped close to the ledge with a camera in his hands and took a picture. She briefly wondered what he had taken a picture of.
"There is plenty left… look that’s only the second table… what if you look at the fifth table? There’s a lot there that can be a guide…"
"You can’t base the whole game on the fifth table!"
"I’m not saying you should… I just mean that…"
The woman looked at her son again. His face was blushed with a rush of anger. His friend looked up at him, with the eyes of gentle shyness he had always had. He would never take the fight too far but he would never quite give in. She wondered if that was the nature of real friendship. Maybe she had never had a real friend on which to try it. Maybe she couldn’t do what her son’s friend did. Maybe friendship itself depended on that subtle skill and she never had it and so her son would never have it and he was just lucky to have found someone who did. She looked at them as they walked down the cement path that lead towards another tunnel and she felt grateful for her son and for his friend and for their discussion that she simply couldn’t understand. She felt the warmth of the sun again like a bucket of hot water pouring over her dry face and she realized that today she was satisfied. For all that was lost and for all that she never found, today, on this sunny gentle afternoon, all her real needs were fulfilled.