The garden opens up to my small hands. With just an infinitesimal gesture the clouds move aside and let the ever-present blue canvas unfold for our eyes, moving into the palette of our entwined dreams. The sun, still a bit weak, greets us with that soft, gentle kiss of warmth that moves up and down my arms in long, lustful strokes. I move the window aside and flow out like the air. My pink chiffon dress made of fragrant rose petals laps at my legs like a gentle ocean wave upon the shore; calm, so silky in its movements. I am lulled by its touch, aroused, as though the gentle glide of fabric where expert fingers come to explore the shape of my thighs. Indeed, in that moment it is alive- or it always was and now, moving like the cool breeze, I can finally see it as sentient. I catch the eye of a thick-breasted song bird. The tips of his feathers are white and seem to gleam like hot light against the seemingly monotonous brown fluff covering the rest of his body. He turns his head ever-so slightly to a wide-faced white flower, dividing his attention in two. I know he has not lost interest, but rather is pointing me down the path. I turn to the bloom, not alone on the bush, yet standing out and rising higher, more full towards the life-giving sun. The white rose is unfurled and its multitude of petals, layers and layers of scented softness like an expert costume from the Bolshevik ballet. I move towards it, my body beginning to vibrate as the air pushes me along, speeding my new discovery. Entering the hollow between the white walls I find a comfortable spot on the yellow cushion in its center. The pollen stains my exposed toes and the bottom hem of my pink dress and I sink deeper into the pollen, knowing its marks will come out in the next rain, or perhaps I can visit the tepid bird bath later when the sun has warmed the few inches of water in the ceramic bowl. I pull a few of the petals around me for this sacred chamber. I lay back. This is my bed, my powdery yellow sanctuary. Several large stamens sprout from the center. I reach out and pull one of the thicker ones towards me, it is split in two at the very top, both ends curling dramatically in on themselves. There is a little bit of privacy while the bees are over by the rosemary bush. I spread my thin legs and push the stamen inside. The sun comes through the petals, covering me with a warm fuzzy haze. Sinking on the yellow pillow, dust covering me completely now, adrift in a sea of fluff, I can see the blue sky between the cracks of the petals where they don’t quite meet. The bees create a continuous drone as they work, I fall into its lullaby as the stamen moves inside me, becoming an explorer of dark places.
Chasing the always distant sun, we will ever be.
Power strength number soul, we will ever be.
In silky sand tear drops falling,
there our song was written.
Falling sliding, walking shadows, black legend free.
Burning, soaring, chalice pouring,
there we will ever be.
Beyond savage Saturn's grin,
where memories and dreams are one.
"There, there now, poor beast," I say as the guardian rests its great horned head on my lap.
Nova and Burn are near, reading the maps, looking at the lights in the black distance.
I am Sage. They found me in the desert, all scorched and broken. Under the cooling shade of those wide leafed trees which have no name I was washed and mended.
I am returning slowly. When first I saw my reflection in the dark cool waters I couldn't even say who I was. I stared at a stranger who gazed back at me with fear in his pale blue eyes.
But now I am Sage and the guardian rests its heavy hard head upon my lap.
The garden is all around us. Dripping green, rose red, slithering white. Flowing tendrils of life to love me, to hurt me, to hold me. A symphony of unknown fury and rhythmic lust, surrounding me on all sides.
This too seems familiar. Something almost remembered gleams through the strangeness all around me. I was here before, I will be here again, or maybe I have never been away.
I remember the burning gate glowing in fury. The descent, hard and fast. Flesh ripping from bone, sinews snapping, memories like butterflies blown from my silent center. I can see it all through the thick green leaves that hang over us like flat fingers bursting with dark blood. I can see the desert rising from below, screaming as it receives me.
Small clouds moving fast over the faded blue horizon. Sand as white as bleached bones, the sand is out there beyond the leaves, unforgiving in its white fury. Crawling, I found a still green lake whose salty water burned my wounds and brought my insides out. Vast emptiness. A desert bleeding. No self. No other. Nothingness.
Communication. That is where it all resides, without it there is nothing.
The crash left us mangled, almost killed this unit, should have killed this unit. Instead, it left me glittering; broken bones and glass and silver, a shiny starburst in the sand.
Communications were damaged. The others were gone, the long twisting coiled cords that connected us were severed. Hope left me like water from hot sand, sizzling up into vapor. For a time, a time long enough to change me, long enough to inflict deep wounds upon my whirling psyche, I was alone.
Nova is our pilot. He will figure out a way to lift us back up or he will die trying. I trust him implicitly, I will do what he asks.
Sometimes he comes over and talks to me, runs a wet cloth over my forehead, whispers some words. I respond and he smiles. Then he leaves and I watch his tall shape sliding away from me under the dark canopy of trees, his green tail flicking the earth behind him.
Nova's body is big, but the guardian leaves us all in shadow. As big as the guardian is, he is gentle and kind. To us. He is what he is to others.
Burn, the silent one, gathered the pieces, her six long black legs quick and nimble. Wherever Nova directs her she goes, back into the desert, deep into the verdant tangles of the garden, beneath the surface of the boiling pools by the jagged mountain where she found the guardian wandering.
She is small but strong. Not heat or cold, neither dry or wet, disturb her. She is one part of what was our engineer. Nova tells me the other part, the part that spoke and knew is gone. This makes things more difficult, but it will be all right. As she is, Burn can still put things back together with Nova's instruction. We must repair communications.
I remember falling beyond savage Saturn's grin. I remember the colored lights, the intense bursts of wild sound in the distance, the echoes of lightning, the violent screeching of our ship.
I shudder and the guardian shifts his head in my lap with a sigh. I remember the desert. I remember when Nova lifted me from the sand and I was frightened. Strangely familiar. Startlingly new.
What we now need is fuel. Flaming white hot. Vibrant life from the darkness, from the clouds, from the hidden entrails of mud, from blood, from flesh.
Nova and Burn read the maps and look at the lights in the far away black distance. We chase the always distant sun, our hands wide and open towards the morning star.
The guardian is weak, he seems weaker every day. This is no place for him. I stroke his heavy head in my lap. I will give him strength, I will give him my fuel. For as long as I can.
"There, there now, poor beast."
Chalice pouring, mouth wide, sacred savage eyes.
For now, the Garden. I remember. I remember the garden. And the burning gate. And the falling. Each unique, all as one.
For now I can remember. Someday my memories will become dreams. And someday my dreams will become memories. I will forget and remember and remember and forget. Each time this happens I will be startled by the newness of our quest. Each time I will wonder at the familiarity.
It may take a long time. But we will find it: the always distant sun. We will fix communications and awaken to life once more. Then we will soar.
A scream pierces through the night. Was it from out there in the world...or in here, under the covers of this full bed? I see a lonely woman in the night, hiding under a thick blue sleeping bag, winking away mosquitoes and night time animals and dreams that come with sweat, panting like they have only heavy love to spread. Did it come from me, that full octave resonance with bells of fear and pain and the things that have fallen through therapy cracks and tender kisses. From me? This sleepy body alone in a square room, the moon coming through barred windows while little girls sleep upstairs.
I hear it again, a long extended piercing note, high and shrill, a raven’s bell topping it off.. My eyes are open in the dark, seeing the shapes that wait silently for the sun to rise. For do they exist without sight? I walk towards them, yes, pulling the blankets back and all the barriers of many fabrics and weights. These are the walls, made of skin and plaster.I hold tight to the edges of the desk. It exists without sight, for I touch its smooth edges. A caress so euphoric that I feel the shelves start to shake. This surface that I touch, it is the night in its shapes. Long and dark. Thick and flat. Cylinders that wait for a hand. It is the light of the moon that streams in through the window. It is the world, shaped and compressed, formatted for use.
It is all so sharp, so perfectly clear, carrying with it all the world and all its people. I strip, letting the white panties I wear drop to the carpet. There is nothing between me and it...you...all that is there. Opening the door to my bedroom, I step onto the icy cold tile floor of the kitchen. To the right is the doorway to the garden and its impotent gold lock. I move slowly though the kitchen of obstacles. Boots left and forgotten, tripods and old computer parts. I move slowly though the minefield, my body tense with the expectation of pain.
The potted house plant senses the movement, somewhat irregular in the night. It calls to me, asking my plans. “Don’t worry,” I think to it, “I’m moving towards the moon, it has a secret to share.” The naked animal moves, a siren has gone off in the world of foliage and earth and they talk so loudly between themselves I think I might have broken some firm rule, but I keep moving, letting their chatter cover me like silken blankets from another world.
The door opens, almost without a touch. I have arrived. The moon begins to shine brighter, pulsing to a beat the flowers begin to hear. A gentle swaying begins. Grass, the hydrandrea bush, the deep purple succulents that open like a woman to the night’s light, the growing catnip shrub, still an infant. They all bop up and down, grooving to the ecstatic bass of the moon, the light at the center, the DJ for the garden, grown from the stars and the waves miles in the distance. I move by impulse, my head moving up and down, my chest pumping up, down, up, down, up down... to the rhythm my ears cannot hear. The sounds bypass my ears, going deeper in like a straight line, going through organs and bones, finding other spaces and doorways, moving for miles, beyond measurement into the world of the time-less where sound is just another kiss from the clouds, where rain come in like ecstatic bursts of strawberry flavor and piercing screams.
“Wait!” something seems to say. I stop, listening for the threat of an explosion. “Wait!” I look around, searching for a mouth and body, looking for something. Is it me? My voice? Another part of me that runs always behind, desperately running down the street in flip-flops and a tattered robe, waving my arms and reaching for the endless rope of tug-of-war.
I remember this night. This game, no, not really a game, but something like it resembling life. I remember now, doing this once before, dancing and swaying, bopping until I heard the call, and then I stepped away. I walked back into through the door, finding the kitchen tiles cold as ice, finding the abandoned panties and the luke-warm bed waiting for something to snuggle.
I remember, it was the sound of an explosion. A scream at the center that awoke me. The moon at the center. Those little pink dancing flowers that call for a partner. I had arrived in the garden, an active participant at the party, the orgy lacking tangible kisses, but reeking of sex fragrant earth. It was all skin and matter, so much so that I thought I might cry, but the thoughts absorbed into me and became new blood. The new rivers burned so bright and long, so sharp in their stinging life that I just had to swing my arms through the blackened night. Those fingers, stuck to this naked white body leaped as much as they could, screaming, so euphoric in their cries that I just had to let out a scream.
