The Climb

We eventually dug our way out of the tunnel. It was bound to happen sooner or later. If we worked hard enough, we were bound to be successful. We had talked about it long enough. We had dreamt about it for so many nights that were like days, and we had sung about quietly during the days that were dark.
One night we clawed through all the muddled dreams, through the bright geometric nightmares, through unspeakably complex puzzles all made of dirt and branches and dust. And we did it with our own hands and we did it with our own voices and with our newfound language which easily disturbed and broke apart the thick walls of our established identities that had turned into heavy pieces of rock.

I could feel the heavy force of gravity the entire time – pulling us down, down, down. I saw old symbols carved into the walls as we passed by and kept on moving and many times I slipped on the outstretched forms of a few equations and algorithms for which I had no understanding or explanation.

Something may have helped us along the way, something that sometimes pulled us up, something leading us along through barely visible silver threads. But it had no name and it had no voice so we would never speak of it and we couldn’t have said anything about it even if we wanted to speak. We would never acknowledge its presence even among ourselves.

Our improvised songs travelled out ahead of us like guides, then came back as echoes and told us of the future. We wouldn’t let any force stop us. Not fear, not hunger, not exhaustion. Nothing would pull us back, we wouldn’t let anything pull us back down. Sometimes when I looked ahead I saw the same nothing staring back at me, nothing behind, nothing ahead, nothing below us, nothing above. But I kept on digging, and I kept on singing and I kept on speaking.

I awoke on the other side, naked and red with blood and bruises, encircled by cold and darkness. Bubbles clung to my skin, and the past dissolved behind us in a black puddle.

We all walked away in different directions then and I never saw any of them again. I never even tried to search for them. When I think of them now, they have no faces and they have no names. I am not even sure that they ever existed at all.

Gallery

I find myself standing inside a modern gallery. Cool bright floors, bright white walls, light breeze streaming through big open windows. At this point I vaguely remember leaving my house, I vaguely remember an afternoon of surprises, unusual circumstances, the sound of laughter, the bright sunlight on the sidewalk, the startled look in the eyes of the guy who gave me the mushrooms, the kids playing baseball, the trees in the distance, the way the clouds looked like oil paintings, the sound of the birds.
"You will laugh so much..."
But now I am inside this gallery, looking at a painting of a mountain. I can't quite remember coming here. It makes sense that I am here, but I can't remember. It just makes sense on its own terms.
I look at the painting.

I see a rocky mountainside, covered halfway up in stones the size of human heads. All the boulders are dark gray and cold and slightly wet. The mountain is wide and tall, it connects to an even larger mountain range to the north. In the distance, the mountains are brown and barren and covered only in scattered patches of dry grass. The sun is hiding somewhere behind a thick haze of clouds.
The day seems new, but somehow drained of energy, as though something very intense has just vanished and what remains is slightly diminished.
It reminds me of the light of the afternoon. This afternoon, not that afternoon. It reminds me.

At the base of the mountain range is a receding sea. The water is dark blue and choppy with white caps. It flows out towards the horizon in a hurry, as though something was waiting for it beyond the thin line of sight. The wide mountain is mostly covered in heavy rocks, but as the mound moves closer to a tip, the rocks become smaller and smaller, until they are just small pebbles hidden between blades of dried grass.

I come to the realization that the painting implies a location for me. Within it, I am inside a small cabin, looking out the window. I can see the frame of the window at the edges of the painting itself. The mountain is outside the window, bright sunlight, blue sky. But inside the cabin it is dark, musty shadows. 
Answers born from questions and questions born from answers tumble awkwardly over one another like dark suited gymnasts. What is that light there, penetrating the apparent serenity of this dark space?
Eerie and blue, it calls to me and points towards a startling terror.
I am not alone here. I am not alone.

There is a movement not far off, something that can see me, just as I can now somehow barely see it. Somewhere beyond the edge of my vision, beyond the frame, within the painting, somewhere in the in between. The nether region beyond my direct sight. Something in there. Somewhere. Something.
The age old questions arise: can this thing hurt me? Should I hurt it first? Who will eat who?

I turn away from the painting. The guy who gave me the mushrooms is looking for a general manager. He is asking questions in rapid fire succession. His hands move up and down. I can't see who he is talking to. Someone else is here. Someone. Somewhere.
I have questions of my own. Where did I meet him? How long ago? Were we good friends at some point in the past? Did we spend many afternoons together, drinking, talking, asking questions, laughing? Did we laugh so much that we came to know each other through our laugher? Have I temporarily forgotten?
His girlfriend is with him. She must be with him. I can't see her. I just see him walking around, moving his hands up and down.
Was I his girlfriend before? Was I someone else? Did I know him at all? Have I ever met him?
There are no clear answers in the gallery. No clear answers here. He is too far away to ask. Too far away to focus. Too far away to listen. Too far away.
I turn back to the painting.

I feel this thing again. Something beside me. In the painting, outside the frame, not in the gallery, not on the surface. And yet right here. Right there. Next to me. Some thing.
This is too close.
It can't be a friend. A friend knocks at the door, a friend calls to you, announces their presence from some distance before coming so near. This can't be a game.
Or are there other ways to play? Ways that belong to creatures far beyond the fear of safety and borders of individuality? Does one thought in my mind announce itself to another before it takes over? Does it knock? Does it ask for permission? Or does it just come in when I'm not looking? When I'm looking elsewhere?

Fear is such an insistent mistress, always calling for my attention, always making bold claims.
Such as this announcement, this sudden claim that this is a matter of life and death. This, right now. 
How can it be? I am standing in a gallery, looking at a painting, sunlight outside, the sound of voices, a guy I may or may not know asking for a manager, cars passing by outside. Safety. The world.
Leap up and attack! Run! Act! Quickly!
Or tell yourself that it isn’t real. It's only your imagination, it's the mushrooms I ate, not too long ago.
It couldn't have been that long ago, it must have been today, earlier today, how long is today? How long does the sun stay up in the sky? What does it mean to ask how long when I can't feel time passing?
There is nothing there. Walk away.

I close my eyes. If I can’t see it, then it can’t see me…so goes the ostrich logic. Leave the hidden things to feast over my reposed form. What do they do while I hide behind closed lids? What do they want?

I turn to another painting. Right next to the first one.
I am now looking into a warehouse. I sense that they would want me to be the manager here. Who are they? How could I know what they want?
They need help keeping track of things, maybe someone is looking for me, just beyond the edge of the painting, looking for the manager, for someone that could be the manager, me. I'm the one they're looking for, I'm the one he's looking for. I can be the manager. I am the manager.   
There is grass on the floor of the warehouse. There are lots of people inside, some of them are watching TV.  A large screen TV in the middle of the room.
I think that it could be relaxing to sit in the middle of a crowd and watch the images flashing on the screen. But the air is stifling, it's too crowded, I need to breathe. I can't sit here the way I'm feeling right now. I can't sit among so many people, I can't.
I look into the TV screen, the one inside this second painting, inside the warehouse that is inside the second painting.
I see the dead horse. His dead eyes stare at me through the screen. Stare at me. Dead horse. Inside.

I am back in the cabin. I don't remember turning back. I must have blacked out, I must have closed my eyes, I vaguely remember closing my eyes before, maybe I've done it more than once, maybe I've been doing it over and over.
Has this happened before? Have I asked these questions already? How long have I been here? 
I'm simply back here. Back in the cabin. And someone, something, is still here with me.

This is that thing, so familiar, so incredibly strange. I know it. That thing that they told me didn’t exist. The thing that was not in my closet, not under the bed, not at my window. The thing that was not.
Sleep they told me, go to sleep. So I did.
But now I can feel it. I am startled by this presence, this “should not be here” that disturbs the peace like a spider falling from the ceiling onto your cheek, a hand where there should be empty space, a pair of eyes in the raw darkness of a garden. Flashing eyes, glowing eyes.
Just inside the cabin, inside the painting, outside the frame, not here where I am, there, not here.
Now I know that it has always been here. It was always in the closet, under the bed, and at my window, then just as now. Now. Here.

I turn away and walk out the back door. I see the mountain once again. Maybe if I leave the cabin behind, the darkness, maybe the thing can't follow.
I step outside, into the fresh air. I breathe deeply. So much better out here. Leave the cabin behind. Finally, I can breathe. This is what I needed. This is what I need.

There is one four foot trail that travels the length of earth from peak to ocean. There are other scattered trails that are much thinner, only wide enough for one person at a time. Close to the shore is a thicket of trees beside a clearing thirty feet wide. They are as tall and thin as eucalyptus, only they have darker and wider leaves and more full reaching boughs that create a wide canopy.

Something is still moving behind me. I would not usually be here, walking on this mountain path. Usually I wouldn't be here. Usually. 
I would not usually perceive that strange glow, should not. I would not hear the rustling, should not. I would not feel my pulse quicken and my eyes snap open.
Keep walking. Keep going. Don't look back.

The clearing is smooth and flat and free of all rocks. Because of the trees, it is covered in a nearly green-black shade. The earth here is damp and smells of wet bark.
To the left of the clearing and the trees is a grouping of dark wood condominiums. The singular structure is angular and modern. It would give off a very cold emotion if not for the wood used to construct it. The collection of two-story houses each have double pane windows and wide sliding glass doorways that face the seashore and the thicket of trees.

These things are ephemeral.
Yes, I have now decided, it is more than one. It is multiplicity itself, it is always many and now more than ever.  Many and I am one. They continue their advance. They.
Why should they worry? I don’t believe that they exist. I have left the cabin, there can't be any thing here, no further thing, no further.
Reason should prevent me from rising to stop them. Why should I try to stop that which doesn't exist?

On the lower floor, beside a sliding glass door, is a dead white horse laying on the ground. Its legs are curled close to its body in the fetal position.

Sleep they told me, go to sleep. So I did. That has always been the way. Where there is nothing, sleep will brush it away. Gentle sleep, calming sleep.
Tell yourself that it isn’t real. It is only your imagination, there is nothing here. Mushroom, light, painting. Nothing there.
I am looking at a painting. This guy I know. He gave me some mushrooms. This is the mushrooms. This is what happens when you eat mushrooms. (Except mushrooms have never been quite like this. Except I can no longer see a gallery or a frame or a painting.)

The glass doors reveal the occupants of the houses. There are people inside. They are swollen and pale and laying on their backs on the damp linoleum of their kitchens. Their bodies are moist, as are the T-shirts and shorts which clothe their bloated bodies. They are not moving but I can see their chests moving up and down. Alive. Moist. Bloated. Inside.

These things are still behind me. I can't think of any other noun to describe them. Things. What do they want from me? What do they want?
Answers born from questions and questions born from answers tumble awkwardly over one another like dark suited gymnasts. I descend into the dark depth blotting them from my mind. Forget that light there disturbing the womb of darkness and retreat into slumber and the comforting illusion of solitude.

There is a rocky mountainside, covered halfway up in stones the size of human heads. All the boulders are dark gray and cold and slightly wet. The mountain is wide and tall, but it connects to an even larger mountain range to the north. In the distance, the mountains are brown and barren and covered only in scattered patches of dry grass. The sun is hiding somewhere behind a thick haze of clouds. The light is still very bright, the kind of light that requires squinting. The day seems new, but slightly drained of energy, as though something very intense has just vanished and what remains is slightly diminished.

I see a woman lying down. She's laying on the ground. Her legs are curled close to her body in the fetal position. Her face is towards me. She looks strangely like me.

There are no things. There is no gallery. There is no painting. There is no horse. Nobody. Nowhere. No.

Voyage

The breath is golden and light. Silence is the space between six hands. Stars are there, present, blinking out communication. 
Hold still and wait, the messages come through our skin, into our eyes. They bypass the mind and seep in like water on a meadow.  Patience. It comes. More slowly than you’d like, but sit still, you’ll feel it tingling, moving like excited bees over open flower faces. 
Yes, we are sweet, just let the city melt as it needs to. Those lights and bulbs and glass are not needed. Let them melt into pools of reflection.
The bees will find us open and pungent, sticky sweet and seeping with desire. 
Sit still, you will feel it. Silence is the space between six hands. The stars are there, blinking. Night waits for us, holds us in its quiet hours. 
Let your skin listen, the space behind you knees, the shadows radiating with intensity. Wide are our hands, chests, tubes and ventricles. Tired, our bodies.  Sit still, let the body listen. The muscles, aching. Screaming for rest. 
Oh, the Blanket.  Mother in her folds.  Infancy folded and clean, smelling of newness and fluff. The eyes, so bright, peeking from behind lids that weigh down; gravity will not be outsmarted, though we try.
Dream, oh, the dream.  Shifting in its red and black.  The orange moving like wispy clouds.
Ours is the road. A spiral of tar and gravel. Wide avenues that sometimes break into trenches and dirt paths.
None are the same, as the labyrinth walls can attest. Travel is motion, our steps clatter in the cracks of time, bouncing in the silence between our hands.

Wild Darkness

There is a wild darkness deep inside the crevices of my heart. It shines like obsidian when I turn and face the sun, though no one, not even I, can see its sheen. It is like a forgotten forest, left long ago when I was just a child wearing little pink dresses. I used to know this place, I could visit and sleep in the world of trees and fallen leaves, it was a place just as pretty as the land of rainbows and laughter. Both were equally inviting and I could walk towards them on well-marked paths, eager to discover the messages they offered.
When I ran there with pig-tails and bare feet, I saw pine boughs grow heavy with pale aged moss and green leaves that held in their color a thousand other hues I could not see. This place used to be another chamber in which to play, a place slightly darker than home, a little less bright, but full of dark open-ended mystery. There I could explore, I turned over heavy gray stones and looked into the holes of knotted trees, asking for their stories. But when I left this place in a slow fit that covered my body in bruises and fear, the path faded in seconds. Cobwebs clouded the canopy and blocked out the weak sun. I left this place and did not go back, abandoning all the crickets and wolves that still take up the call each night, beginning the chanting until the ghosts join in chorus.
The wild darkness can no longer be reached by foot. The paths have disappeared and are covered with poison mushrooms and miner’s lettuce. The map I once sketched and vowed to keep is buried so deep I cannot reach it. I glimpse it in dreams and forget about it upon waking. The darkness cannot be touched by my hands anymore, but I know it’s there. It is waiting for me, and the night animals sing to me when I breathe deeper. It is there, and I look to the left and the right, I look under the covers and behind closed closet doors for a way to enter. But when I sniff the dank air of rotting earth, when the thick strands of a cobweb catches my hand, I run and hide in the bath, submerging my head in the safety of warm water and a mother’s sheltering womb.
The darkness is buried inside, and while one side of me hides, another part searches. The wild darkness swirls with all of my rage and clouds of anger. It dwells there. It grows among the chaotic spider webs and fallen logs and the knotted trees that always resemble distorted human shapes with humps and missing faces. My exiled pain feeds off of the moist low-hanging clouds and the damp fallen needles.
I have banished all my demons to that dark land. Ghosts walk the forest floor, feasting on other new arrivals and the echoes of tears. I have pushed everything in there all of these years, all the things this body living in the sun cannot face.
I see my mother, my daughter, my husband, my lover. Parts of them walk through my darkness. Shadows of me walk there too, dancing with old memories and biting their fingers. Shadows of me flicker, some are missing limbs or just a hand. Some hobble, and some are bleeding from the chest. They are everything I cannot face and they hang suspended in this place, wandering the grounds, dodging trees and poisonous beasts and sucking on mushroom caps. It is a forest of hidden emptiness, though it fills itself with sorrow. I hear it going thump, thump, thump, thump.
The part of me that still looks under rocks, she looks for the place without a map, but she cannot find the door. She slams into walls and gets lost in the closet. She knows she must go back. She must visit the place that was always there, the land where everything exists at once, the past, present, and future. It is all hidden, yet repeating the same well-worn cycle. It is waiting for my return.
I can smell it now, dank and moldy, smelling of earth, tasting like rusty blood. I turn to the left, looking for a new path to carry me back.

Ok, bye

Hey Kim, this is Joe. I don’t know if these magenta colors would be here on their own or if it is the medication that I am on, but I think that I've been and I thought about that. Have you been? I mean, like the Jaguar, “I am here!”. I think I have been, and you once were, all though I can’t or shouldn’t really speak for you.
I started doing that as soon as I met you, assuming that what I thought was happening with you was real, not just a projection of my own inner world. There are some parts of our time together that I hope were a piece of some objective reality, that they were more than just what I alone thought at the time. But that would be a bending of the basic principle that has taken hold of my consciousness, this understanding that reality is always subjective.
I’m sure I should be going now. It’s been, what, 15 years? 15 years and I’ve never said goodbye, all though we’ve been apart all this time Kim. Okay, bye. Is that what must be said? Is that the word that makes the death final? The separation of one from itself. Is it me, or is it you Kim? Which one of us carries the torch of the real?
Neither. Isn’t that right? Consensus reality ceases to be when there ceases to be a consensus. No more me and you together. We are two worlds apart. Even now I wonder, were you? I was. I have been. Am I still?
It's okay, because I am on the scene. I still am. I only talk about medicines when the pain is too intense, when I want a reason for the chaos. I set it up so that there is some explanation, but I am a matter that flows beyond such stuff, sticky pills.
That is the “weather balloon” explanation for these experiences. I am beyond it, but as soon as I have the opportunity I will shrink down to size. Not because this happens. I am out of that.
There was someone there today, right at the threshold and they demanded to speak with you. With you Kim. It seems they thought you had been and maybe still were. Yeah, I hate to see them there, by the door, waiting for you.
If you get a minute, hold on to it. Fill it out. Like the good old days. Be there, like a letter that was written 15 years ago and is marked with extra postage so it'd be delivered neat either way, whether it was sent then or now.
I have a nice evening planned. This is the night when we’ll sit together counting fireflies until we’re dizzy. That’s the one I’ll go to, or the one I have been in before. Either way, the best thing would be for you check on the way.
If you are there, see if I am, or if it was already too late then. It’s a moment I’ve been hopeful about. It’s possible that it exists before the separation, the schism.
I love you.
That might be untrue. If I loved you then we’d be together wouldn’t we? Because love is what draws bodies together, the glue that makes life and the opposite of life is death, and separation is death and we are now separate.
I have eaten the fruit that grows here in limbo, so I shall never be fully restored. It can never be okay. I ate the weather balloon. The excuse. The part of me that ate the fruits of this land will always remain here, separate. Something lost. The part that bought the con.
Will you comb the beaches of Elysium in search of the fragments of my soul? My Isis? And now I don't have to go ahead, in this, I can stop. I can go back. Is this the game mom brought down for us to play after dinner? Am I still playing red square, blue square… on and on? I don't know.
I was then and I thought you were too. Now I don’t know. Shall I say it? Or leave it unsaid? Okay. Bye. I don't know. I don’t know, but I think that I've been and I thought about that. Good bye.

The Emperor And The Moon

Sara bent over the bucket of foaming suds and dipped the over sized sponge into the warm wetness. As she did so, the daisy dukes tightened and strained around her apple shaped ass. Her father, who had just come outside, blushed at the site of his 15 year old daughter’s figure poised so accidentally alluring. Immediately, a wall of words was raised between his forward consciousness, the “I” that he presented to the world, and the desire that had surged in the darkness of his heart and loins.
“Sara, telephone.” He called gruffly from behind his black beard and she started at the sound of his voice, then smiled and dropped the sponge into the bucket and hurried up the driveway. Her youthful breasts bobbed under the thin tank top as she lopped over to him, sandals click clacking on the concrete. He noticed that the white straps of her cotton bra were exposed over her bare shoulders.
“Who is it?” she asked breathily, chest heaving gently from the mild exertion.
“Somebody named AJ.” He told her, his voice still bear-like. Something in the tone made her feel guilty, although there was no spoken rule that had been broken. She reached for the phone, but he withheld it and said,
“You need to get inside and put something on. Those shorts are way too short.” The tone was accusing.
“All of my shorts are like these.” She protested in bewilderment.
“Well,” he said wagging his head, “You need to get in here and figure something out, because those are totally inappropriate.” And then he relinquished the phone and turning his back on her, he stomped back inside.
Sara clutched the phone in her hand and fought back hot tears. Guilt and rage and sorrow welled up in her chest and constricted her throat. Her mind howled with questions that danced around a central point: regret for having earned his disapproval. The intelligence in her struggled with the emotional storm of self loathing, reasoning that she had not done anything wrong, she was not trying to be “inappropriate”, which she knew really meant “sexual”, that others were defiling her with their inappropriate response to the sight of, what? Her bare legs? The parts of her body left exposed for comfort in the summer heat while she washed her father’s car?
The great excitement that had fluttered briefly through her belly upon hearing that a boy was calling for her had transformed entirely into a lead weight. This boy calling her also confirmed for her father her “inapropriatness”. Her overactive mind wrestling with her turbulent emotions churned out a suspicion that now that she had become the subject of this “inappropriate” attention. Her father no longer loved her and this in turn became a rage directed at herself, at her own body. At last she sniffed a constricted,
“Hello?” into the receiver.

Exceptions

We have confused
The exception
For the rule
And the rule
For the exception.
What we think
We rarely are
Is what we are usually.
What we think
We usually are
Is what we are but rarely.
To look into ourselves
Too deeply
Is to risk
The lethal cold touch of despair.
To never look
Is to be already
Drowning in it.
What we are is here,
In this moment.
Not the exception
But the rule.
Not a moment away
But a moment
Deep within it.

She looked up at me, from her sanctuary by my heart, and she once again said the words I had already heard so often:
“This is not me. This is not who I am. You have met me at a very particular moment, a very unique moment… so please don’t think that this is what I am because it’s not…”
I felt her soft body against me, her naked legs pressed against my own and her stomach pressed against my side, and her sweat mingled with mine and it formed tiny rivers that slid towards the white ocean of the rumpled sheets. I leaned over and kissed her smooth white forehead and she shook her head. I kissed her again as she started to speak.
“I really want you to know… I wouldn’t want you to think… I wouldn’t want you to imagine that… you know?… this is simply not me… you understand? This is not me. Maybe it was once before… but I have left that behind me…even if it has happened now… it’s just a fluke… it’s simple not me…”
I nodded and wondered if she was referring to the compulsive smoking by the garden door, which left behind a trail of cigarettes over the decomposing moist surface of the walls, or maybe she was referring to her constant calling, to her angry jealousy, to her bouts of drinking, to the night when I sat by her in a little bar on Judah while she drank one beer after another and I just watched her eyes slowly drooping and I heard her words getting more and more difficult to comprehend while the old drunks sitting at the bar eyed us with shameless curiosity. Or maybe she simply referred to being here in my arms, to her naked and willing presence where it shouldn’t be. This was certainly not me, and not by choice. And maybe it wasn’t her either, maybe she was right. And in that case, we were two non existent beings borrowing the bodies of others to meet in a non existent place, an imaginary realm of twilight where improbable things could happen.
“I used to act like this… you understand?… but it’s just not me… I have grown beyond all that… you see?… you have to know that this is not me… otherwise you will get the wrong impression… you will believe the wrong things… and you will be wrong about me… how can you truly know me if you are wrong about me? You have to know the real me… this is not it!”
Maybe it was the fact that she had stayed with me for so many nights, so many that now I couldn’t even remember when she hadn’t been here, so many that it now seemed natural to have her small naked white body next to mine each time I half awoke in the middle of the night, touching her big brown nipples with my fingers and feeling them getting hard in the darkness, so many that I no longer flinched when she was upset about a movie or a dinner or a phone conversation, so many that I no longer felt disbelief each time I felt her body from within, each time she groaned into my ear and told me she couldn’t hold it any longer. Or maybe it was all the journeys into strange nether worlds that we had taken together, all the reckless jumping into the vacuum without fear of repercussions or consequences, all the spiraling colors and the deep drones that came from nowhere and took us to a place where her worries disappeared and my rationalizations vanished and we were simply together, floating in the middle of nothingness.
“I don’t want you to get the impression that this is me… are you even listening to me?… this is important!… I don’t want you to remember me some day and think that you knew me… because this is what you know… this is all that you know… and this isn’t me…”
Maybe she was right. Maybe this was all an exception. And it seemed to me that I had been living through a maze of exceptions and this was only the latest one and soon another exception would come calling, taking me further away from the norm, so far away that I would not be able to place it on a map and all the maps I had just then were written over naked white skin covered in tiny invisible hairs and little brown birthmarks.
“I am listening… I understand… this is not you…this is not me… it’s very clear now…”
And it was clear then, in a way, as it is now clear, but in a different way, and maybe later, years from now, I would think about it, and remember her words and the sound of her voice against my ear, and it would be all new again, and once again, I would understand. It had all been an exception. And beyond a certain place, beyond a certain barrier, it was all made of exceptions. Exceptions, exceptions and more exceptions, nothiing but exceptions all the way down.

Carnival

In Lake Elsinore, where I grew up, there was a bald hill hidden up behind the old downtown. This spot, which connected to the town via Franklin St., was known as the Rodeo grounds. From 1974 to 1992 a serial killer spent his time nabbing streetwalkers from the little community of 15,000 residents, and it was here among the pepper trees and low growing shrubs below the hills dusty crest that a number of bodies were discovered. This particular killer was so busy that many of his victims were never recovered and it is more than a little possible that their bones are buried under the layers of sun baked dirt upon which the carnival annually erected its tents. I knew nothing about the murders, of course. I was only a child, a dirty faced little darling with tangled blonde hair. I knew that lady bugs crawled on top of each other sometimes and that the cat, Tommy, killed gophers and left their bodies on the astro turf carpeting the front porch, and this was all that I knew about sex and death. I could not know that I stood with jellied sandaled feet over the mummifying corpse of a whore while my mother purchased a pink puff of cotton candy for my sister and I to share.

We attended the rodeo when I was very young and it upset me greatly, so much in fact, that I have buried all detailed recollections of it somewhere deep within the hills along the Franklin street of my own mind. I recall the metal bleachers and an overwhelming sense of horror, not for the cowboys, but for the animals being roped and dragged and dominated for sport. I have been sensitive to the point of madness since childhood. I remember seeing them chase and rope a frightened calf, pulling it right off of its feet with the rope around its neck. Watching this spectacle I felt suffocated and strangled, as though I were the one in the center of the ring of bleachers being handled by rough men for a crowd of uncaring spectators. People hollered and hooted and clapped. The disparity between the emotions they were expressing and the pain I was feeling confused me deeply. I think I asked my mother if we could leave. I can’t remember if we did. She might have made me stay because we had paid to be there and she didn’t like to waste her money. In truth, the child that went in never came out, something of me was mutilated then, something delicate and invisible from the exterior.

The Carnival I remember better. I remember it because I was a little bit older.

A little older.
A little older.

Driving along Junipero Serra Blvd. in a far away land veiled in mists, I pass the parking lot of the local Bowling Alley and catch sight of folded carnival equipment under blue tarps. I suddenly turn the radio down and blurt out that the Carnival is coming to town, that maybe we should go. My two daughters are buckled in the back seats and listen to me tell them of the Carnival that came every year to the Rodeo grounds in Lake Elsinore, where I grew up. I tell them that the place where the Carnival was held was the place where the bodies of murdered prostitutes had been found.

The Carnival I remember better. I remember it because I was a little bit older.

It is also possible that I profess a clearer memory of the Carnival than of the Rodeo because we attended it more than once, and every visit has been pooled together in my mind to form a single memory. A memory of a place that exists separate from the world of stability, a conglomeration of rusty machinery and red and white striped tents that spring up over night in the eerie hills like the toadstools of a fairy ring. To my child’s eye these were unabashed delights; brightly colored helium filled balloons, sweet treats, big eyed plush animals stuffed with Styrofoam beads that hissed softly when the toys were moved, and live gold fish that could be won with the toss of a coin. But I saw more than what was being presented. I just couldn’t say what I saw.

(Humans and dogs are the only two animals on earth sensitive to misdirection. If you take two cups and turn them over and show a small child a cookie and then place the cookie under one cup and point to the opposite cup, the child will not believe its own eyes. It will turn over the cup to which you point. The same would occur if you repeated the experiment with a dog.)

There was a high curving yellow slide, higher than any slide that ever graced a school yard or common park. It captivated my attention. I wanted very badly to try it, so my younger sister and I waited in a long line, mounting one step at a time until we reached the top. Here there was a man setting the children down on empty potato sacks and launching them down the curvy slope.
Him, I will never forget, him reaching towards me with his hands. I will always remember his hands.
He had no fingers at all, just palms with stumps. I can hardly picture his face. It’s his hands that burn vividly in my mind, emblazoned within the word CARNIVAL. His flesh was glossy and marbled with red. I looked for his fingers and I became transparent. I felt myself as him, just as much as I had empathized with the calf of the rodeo. My little curious eyes scorched him. He felt horrible, dirty under my prying glance. It made him angry, in a subdued, directionless way. I stared at him and I felt him seeing me stare at him. Then he picked me up with those hands and set me on the sack and he pushed me so that I slid down, back into the bed of that garden of earthly delights stretched over its transient skeleton of rickety rides and mournful Carnies.

After school my daughter presents a black and white flier stapled to a pile of corrected papers. I look at it and I think of the blood and sweat soaked hills off of Franklin, of the empty dirt lot that screams with desolate quiet under sun and moon. I think of a nameless whore gestating in reverse within the belly of the parched lands of my youth. The ritual torture of animals tumbles forth from a forgotten corner of my psyche. It is all there in the flier that my daughter has provided, nestled within the words that are written in bold letters beneath a photograph of a Ferris wheel. I hold the dog eared photo copy in my hands and read:

CARNIVAL
Where Memories Are Made.

Handwriting

I wrote down my dreams this morning. I reached for the pad of lined paper and the pen laying beside it before my eyes were really open, my fingers clutched the plastic tube while the body tried to catch up with the brain. As I wrote a long sentence about houses and car garages and loading plastic bags of groceries and my sister refusing to stop clipping her nails, I kept leaving out important letters in simple words and everything was slurred and jumbled, looking like the penmanship of a lunatic. The thing that stuck out, the one letter that seemed more defined than all the other ones was the letter “m.”
Meg is my mother’s name. “M” is the letter I tried over and over to perfect as a teenager, when I had access to a car all week and my parents were at work and the day was much too sunny and blue and full of promise to sit in a classroom and pretend to listen to those that had let their passion fall like the crispy leaves of fall. And in the haze of dreams, where little songbirds flew in and out and stood on the ledge of a circular hole in the house for sale, I watched my hand move across the page. I watched with the eyes of a silent observer while I made the exact “m” my mother uses to sign all her checks, the name that I tried so hard to forge and now, through time and accumulated habits, have seemed to have spontaneously imitated and absorbed.

When I was 13 and looking through a bookstore in Laguna Beach, I found a book with a hot pink cover: “How to Find the Right Mate, Lover or Friend Through Handwriting.” I bought it and studied the copied writing samples of John Lennon and Adolph Hitler. What always remains with me is the anecdote the author uses to justify the importance of handwriting to understand what’s happening in the brain. According to the author, there was a small study that observed Vietnam vets that had learned to write with their feet after losing their hands in war. The study found that their writing samples (written with their feet) were nearly identical to their old handwriting when they still had hands. The author argued that the hands are merely a tool, a vehicle that expresses what’s in the mind and emotions. The devil’s advocate in me wondered how come the veterans, who had clearly been through a traumatic event, would be unchanged enough to keep writing in the same style, but today I know that habits can go that deep. It could take more than bombs and missing fingers to release recurrent patterns.

My mother is deep inside me. Her sorrows are mine. Her insecurities, her strangeness. Whatever part of her brain that expresses itself with those curved “m’s” is also deep within me. What wasn’t quite perfect as a teenager has solidified recently. And each time my hand grabs a pen and I write “movement” or “motion” or “mayonnaise,” I see the evidence.

How much of her is in me? Does the killer sleep in my bed, just as Joseph Raymond thought? How much do I wish to destroy? It scares me to think of myself this way and I can see my dad laughing… “you’re going to be just like her,” he would always say, and I would take it as a curse. A grim prophecy of the not too distant future. The dough is ready, all I need to do is sit back and wait for the years to pass through like water. I could become her, fill her shoes, assume her role in this world without much thought or struggle, I could become her reflection. And yet, even though her “m’s” look like mine, three years ago I began the half-conscious/half-unconscious habit of writing “5’s” in a new way. I would watch my hand as it moved in a new way, creating a new shape. I watched as my “b’s” and “n’s” transformed in another form of imitation.
This machine can absorb and release. I can watch the evidence in a dream tale materializing on a blank page.

Vacation

Our bus slipped through the intersection and we entered the park. We had already driven through the heart of the city (all busy and noisy and exhilarating), past the tall long pyramid (a strange sight in the middle of so many rectangles), past the main plaza (where I envied all the women with their shopping bags in hand), past the cable cars (which were as cute as I had pictured), past the many homeless people (horrid and pitiful at once), past the adult video shops (which did made me curious even though I tried not to look), past the little parks (with their mix of vagrants and executives and bike messengers), past the big houses in the marina (which made me wonder if I would ever have one of those and, from there, it was only a little jump to wondering who would live there with me), and now I was feeling tired, in more ways than one. There’s only so many thing I could see in one day and I would rather see them at my own pace. The voice through the loudspeaker was getting annoying and I felt like going to the bathroom. I was a bit too hot and the sun was a bit too bright. Just now I would have wanted to leave the bus, to leave it all by myself, and leave my sister and her boyfriend all to themselves as well. After all, they should have come by themselves in the first place, there never was a need for me to be here, they could then kiss all they want to and not try to hide little pecks while I’m looking over the metals bars of the bus, like they just did, right then, just as I was thinking of it. I could have been at home, maybe going out, maybe staying around the house for days on end, I really just wanted to rest, but she insisted, my sister, like she always did, like she did back when we were little and I didn’t want to go to summer camp and then she cried and cried and cried, and she said “We have to go! We HAVE to go!” and she wouldn’t stop until finally my parents decided that we did indeed have to go, and it was up to me to be with her because she couldn’t be alone, and so it was again, this was like summer camp and once again she had the boyfriend, all muscles and strong arms and little smiles and bright blonde hair, and I was looking out the side of a bus, mostly just so I wouldn’t look at them, and I didn’t even know or care anymore what I was looking at, more men on bikes, more people walking hand in hand, more cars driving around the bus, looking at us as if we were the strange sight ourselves, as if we were the curious attraction. Right then I really did just want to walk out of the bus, and maybe I could just stand up, and make my way to the front, and at the next stop sign, I could jump over the side and then I would be free, and I could say to my sister (or at least think it really loud), “go ahead, kiss each other all you want, you don’t need me, you never did, you could have done fine in summer camp without me, you could be having a great vacation here without me!” I wouldn’t have to be hearing the droning voice over the loudspeaker or feeling strange every time her boyfriend and me stayed together, and he smiled at me and somehow I knew that he knew, he knew that I liked him, I liked him so much that it hurt to look at him too long, and maybe he liked me too, but I would never know and I could never even try to find out. I would rather look somewhere else, like right now they could be whispering, but there was no need to whisper. I could simply be gone, running up that green hill that was just coming over the corner, right past the girl in loose red shorts jogging down the street, right past the man pushing the big shopping cart full of garbage bags and cans, I could be sitting in the shade and forgetting all about my sister or her boyfriend or about that voice through the loudspeakers that just wouldn’t stop and what was the point of it anyway, since I couldn’t quite hear what it was saying, not with the loud motor of the bus, and the cars honking… and here came another turn, and there were another two girls running, both bobbing their heads up and down to the silent music being pumped into their ears. Maybe if it was only my sister and me, maybe then we could talk and point at things, maybe we could say what we liked and what we didn’t, maybe we could shop together and try on things, maybe we could even talk about things we had never talked about before. But how could I do that when the boyfriend was there, right up in my face, too close to forget about him, too far away to reach out and hold his strong solid hands. Now here came the museum, and then the bus was about to stop. I wished right then that I could just slide away, maybe they wouldn’t even notice I was gone, maybe they would just look up at the sky and wonder if something had just happened and maybe it was just some little bird that flew past them and maybe they wouldn’t even say anything at all, completely forgetting that I had ever been there, and they would walk into the museum without me and then they could kiss all they wanted and I would simply disappear and never show up again. (I wondered where would I go? I wondered if things would work out better somewhere out there and then maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t have to worry about so many things anymore.)
Instead I walked down with them, and I smiled when I was supposed to smile, and I paid for my ticket and I walked into the imposing new museum in the middle of the park. I saw the bus parked by the sidewalk, all empty and alone and I thought then that I was very much like the bus that carried me here, a receptacle for other people’s holidays and then a thing to be left alone and forgotten when something more interesting came along. But then it was cool inside, and there was air conditioning, and maybe now everything would be alright, if they could only stop whispering, and if it wasn’t so crowded, and if there wasn’t so much noise, maybe I could just run out, when nobody was looking, when everybody was distracted, maybe if I ran out and truly disappeared, then I would finally be free, as free as I had never been before. I walked next to them into the first exhibit hall, where the echoes of so many conversations surrounded me like invisible insects, intent on not letting me think or decide. Soon my time would come. Soon I would finally change everything. Soon. Very soon.