Howl

Wolf, she swallows a small chunk of blackened meat left in the fire’s ashes.  There are small embers aglow beneath a blanket of gray and black and a tiny mountain of white flecks light as snow. 
She looks up as the first of the pack begins to howl. It begins with an itch on the consciousness of one and then instinctively they are called to join, a reflex that snaps with the first yip.  She turns her head up to the sky and lets out a long, high-pitched call.
The night above is dark blue with an undertone of brightness that seems to hold promise in its colored grasp.  The sky is alive, not yet awakened by stars, but aware and vibrant and glowing with a richness that washes over the landscape like a heavy rain, bringing a softness with it that echoes the cacophony of the pack. 
Her mouth is open and her eyes are closed. All her concentration, the very breath moving through her, the essential quality of her nature comes out in that long extended howl. 
The pack of twelve send their signal to the moon, which is not yet present above the thick line of pine trees.  They call to others like them divided by swaths of jagged mountains and forests so dense and moist that sunlight has given up its desire to penetrate the lush darkness. The pack sings out in a momentary unison of collective song.
Perhaps the wind will take their unbridled spirits and push it up and over to the other side of the living mountains, across the sea and mermaid bones, over to the deserts and ranges unfamiliar to wolves, where the people there have never heard the call or seen the craned necks and mouths reaching to the twilight sky.
This is when the circles begin, the moon has risen and its white glowing light resonates in their throats.  The wind becomes rain. Water and fire turn to earth. Stone warms its face against the fallen sun and the howling continues. 
Their eyes are squinted shut, their heads upturned to the deep blue approaching night.  The first of the stars has begun to sparkle low in the sky.
Their sound creates the anvil of construction. Used to create and forge, to fuse light and melt forever with the burning flames high up above.

The Man From The Trees

It was such an ordinary street, or at least, it had been an ordinary street with tall wooden telephone poles and sidewalk cracks and several forgotten soda cans. It had been all that before the man had showed up. And to the average person who squinted down the long street with only a momentary glance, it still was an ordinary street. Every few minutes the tri-color signals would change, indicating who should come, those who should stop and the others that needed to slow down. When the red would change to a circle of bright glazing green, cars would rush in a singular, eager line towards the next signal.
It was a city street, not totally busy, but far from desolate. The day was clear, and a muted winter sun hung in the sky, as strong as it could be. Black and white pigeons ate debris from the gutter and several individualistic seagulls roamed the sky in search of food.
The man arrived a little before noon, wandering in from the park that stood at the city’s edge, materializing from the shadows between the pine trees. He had a clean face and pale olive skin. His hair was cropped short, but greasily clung together in thin chunks. There were gray hairs close to his temples, lingering like an omen of impending death. His eyes were mostly green, and had small slivers of bright brown embedded in their layers, but no one ever came close enough to see that, so no one ever noticed.
The man appeared on the street, close to noon. He sat on the dirty cement corner of Folsom and Howard, sitting cross-legged against the yellow stucco building that had been on the corner for almost forty years. The man sat. He looked around the small space around him and gathered some of the discarded refuse close to his shoes. He brought it close, building a sort of nest by his legs and shoes. He added a few rocks to the pile, a few crumpled leaves from the ginko tree close by, a tiny piece of paper that came from a torn-out newspaper advertisement.
When he had gathered all the little bits around him, he sat there and watched the clouds move across the sky. From time to time, he turned his attention to the items around him, looking one by one at the gray rock, the weathered leaf, the pebble of gravel, the sticky soda can. He would wash them all with his gaze and in turn, they all began to vibrate under his stare. When each item had turned to a new frequency, he placed them around his legs in a more careful small circle. With a slow, steady hand, he placed each thing around him in intervals. Again he took his time, looking at the clouds and beyond to the blue sky, then back at all the shining things surrounding him.
When the sun had moved so that it was no longer overhead, he began to blur his eyes slightly. The shapes not only bounced with new life, but they lost the colors and forms of their previous identities. What had once been a leaf was now a jagged bit of pale brown. What had been the advertisement in a newspaper lost all intellectual meaning and the letters turned into pure lines without concept.
He looked at the items, each one simultaneously, then held out his hand and held it several inches over each item, letting it linger, letting it vibrate and feeling the silver thread that connected hand to form.
When the time was right, he moved on to the next shape, connecting himself irrevocably with its life.
“What had once been, what now is.”
He began to say the words in his head, over and over, then he began to whisper them, then on his lips, the syllables grew louder and louder until they were a low chant. The back of his throat rumbled and his eyes wobbled slightly in their sockets and then rolled back to his brain.
The man didn’t take any notice of the coffee shop across the street. He smelled the roasting beans, but never looked into the plate glass window, never seeing the young woman with a red rose nestled above her left ear. She had been there for hours, sipping slowly on her tea, and then when her cup was dry, she just sat there still, watching the man on the corner.
When the sun was hovering low in the sky, the chant slowly ceased, once again filling only his mind, then stopping altogether. With one quick brush of his hand, he scattered the items onto the sidewalk. The pale brown circle once again became a rock, the ephemeral message became a newspaper clipping and the man walked back into the shadows between the city trees.

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.

Circle

The man slowly stood up from the wrinkled bed. It was already past noon and he had just opened his eyes fully for the first time. He had halfway opened them a few times as the morning progressed, but each time the light would hit his pupils like acid sliding across sandy paper, and he decided it was still too early. That kept on happening until the morning was gone. Now he was finally getting up and the light still hurt his eyes as it fell through the window in a mass of yellow transparent harshness and the wooden floor felt cold on his naked feet but he was hot and sweaty all over because it was noon and it should have been morning and then it would have been cool, but the morning was gone by now, and nothing he could do would bring it back. He walked into the bathroom and the white tiles of the floor were even colder than the wooden floor in his room. He shook all over for a moment and then he let out a loud burp and smiled at himself in the mirror. He reached down and felt his hard penis, which was so hard it that it rubbed up against his lower belly and that gave him a slight taste of pleasure. It made him think of the Vietnamese girl he had seen a few days before in the park, the one with the long black hair and brown, tanned skin, the one who danced for a moment on the bright green grass while he played the drums. He knew that she wasn’t just dancing for him right then, or for anybody for that matter, but it felt as if she was. Just the thought of her slender body moving to the deep sound of the drums made him even harder. He walked over to the toilet and realized that he couldn’t pee as long as he was this hard. So he masturbated quickly, quick rapid wrist movements and closed eyes, and, as he climaxed, he exhaled loudly, he opened his eyes wide, and he looked up at the dirty yellow ceiling of the bathroom. He just barely heard the small splash of sperm as it fell inside the water of the toilet bowl. He breathed slowly for a moment and then he peed, looking down to see his penis shriveling back down to its normal size. He exhaled once again, finished peeing, flushed the toilet and walked over to the sink. Again he smiled at his own image as he washed his face quickly and then he walked back out into his room. That was as good as having a morning. Now he was ready for the day.
He surveyed the expanse of his kingdom and he found it to be very small, specially now with all that light streaming through the window. He thought that soon he should get a curtain. If it was dark enough maybe he could sleep even longer. Now it just looked like a little room, about four hundred square feet, with a single door, a little closet, a bathroom and a window, a window that he wished wasn’t so bright. He sat on the bed and looked up at the little frame that held his three medals. In a flash, he was back where there was rain and tall green trees and pain and arms that would come off of their sockets and wide open eyes and friends that asked for help when you didn’t have any help to give them and it was all too much to think about right now, and that had been true all along but it became true once again with every day, specially in the daylight.
Now the morning was gone and he leaned over towards the bedside table and took out a few marijuana joints that he had thoughtfully rolled up a few days before. He lit one up and sucked in the smelly smoke, and then, once again, the dark trees and the screams of pain and the friend asking for help, it all faded away as it usually did. He walked over to the window and the light wasn’t so bright anymore, in fact it was becoming very beautiful. He looked outside and he could see the green lawns of the park from his window and he remembered that that was why he picked this little room over all the others. He got dressed quickly, still taking quick tokes from the joint, and he began to smile. It was always good when he began to smile, that meant the day had truly begun and the light that was so harsh just a moment ago was about to hit him like a shower of little kisses as he walked out the door.
He arrived at the heart of the long lawn, not even a half hour after taking the first hit. The glimmering colors were already multiplying. What had been golden and warm and simply delicious, now became a rainbow of ecstasy, in the shape of a girl in tight blue pants and a light top, swirling and dancing in front of him, and smiling, smiling so beautifully that right then he could see the whole love of the world in her eyes. He looked around himself and there was an old man looking up at the sky, with his eyes wide open in a gesture of pure wonder and amazement, and there was the love of the world once again. He walked towards the circle, where the loud sound of the drumming was coming from. He stepped right into the center and everyone knew him and everyone smiled and tacitly welcomed him even as the drumming continued and he placed his own conga drum in between two others who shifted aside to make room for him. He began to beat the drum with abandon right away, falling smoothly into the driving pulse that the others had established. There was an old Latino man swinging the maracas and there was an old black man banging on a djembe and there was an old hippie banging on the bongos and here he was drumming with them, whoever they were. For as much as they were strangers, they were the circle, and the circle changed every day, but the circle always stayed the same. He was now at the center and he was no longer in pain. The help that he couldn’t give so long ago would now be openly forthcoming, and the drums were loud all around him, and some girls were dancing, and some men were juggling, and a few couples were kissing and rolling around up on the hill behind him and the pain had disappeared as easily as a puff of smoke disappears on a breezy sunlit day.