Going To Irak

The sun rose just a few hours before, but I have already done my breathing and written my dreams and sang a few songs. It is early and the light streaming in through the airport’s wide windows is pale blue and I stand, feeling young and protected from the world by my black hood, making me look like a lost forest creature in modern clothing. I am standing in a line that moves geometrically through a wide tiled space that echoes with machinery and groggy voices. It is the boundary of the airport, the place that divides the travelers from the stagnant. Beyond the artificial boundary is the place of arrival and departure, the doors where we step into the sky and hope to return, intact and breathing. I say my mantra and grasp my heart, holding onto the thin contact that wavers like a long silvery telephone line in the morning wind.
Hello? Are you there?

The line is seventy people deep and we are corralled through the space by metal bars, leaving us like cows waiting for the truck, only we think we know what lays ahead. Around me, people are still weary with sleep. Business men in their gray and black suits. A foursome of Norwegians, two blond guys and two girls. I stare at the pointed nose of the shorter girl that ends in a singular dot, I have never seen a nose that looks more sketched. She laughs and touches the arm of her female friend and they both begin laughing while their men remain solemn, looking at the line and x-ray machines waiting dutifully fifty feet ahead. The line moves slowly, winding like an angular snake, bending at 90 degree angles every dozen feet.

Two men in matching navy blue pants and white collared t-shirts are at the front of the line. One on each side. The man on the right is Asian, just crossing the threshold into middle age. His black hair is streaked with white, his face is etched with lines. He looks weary and sad, it will be a day of names and numbers, impatient travelers and fussy old women inconvenienced by the bureaucracy of it all, remembering a time when it was different. On the left is a young Latin man. He is a few heads taller than his coworker, seemingly fresh and unfazed by the repetitive nature of his job. Each man holds a pen in his right hand and a small flashlight in the other. They are TSA men, looking to match correct names to their matching tickets, looking for the things that don’t match too, foreign sounding names and distant, obscure destinations.

The young man is tall and slender. His long silky black hair is bound in a small bun at the base of his neck, shining in the early morning light wafting through the skylights. He has two paper tickets in his left hand and two plastic ID cards, his right is beaming the focused light of the flashlight into them. He looks over the information. An older couple, fifty people ahead of me stand in front of him, waiting quietly for their ticket and ID cards back, both are much shorter than him, coming just to his chest.

The woman is portly and wide, having expanded with time. Her cropped hair is styled into a wavy helmet that hovers around her head like a halo. She is dressed as I have seen many Asian grandmothers, in dark polyester pants and a thinly quilted jacket. The man is facing another direction, though I notice his head of white hair.

The young TSA agent looks at their tickets, then back at the two of them.
“You’re going to Iraq?!” He pauses, taking a breath, “I guess you want to go there.”
Incredulously, he looks back at the tickets and their ID cards. His mind seems to be spinning, unable to process the destination or the possible reason for going to such a god-forsaken country.

Neither of them say anything in response. The older man is turned away slightly, his attention already focused on the next thing, the x-ray machines and scanners that lay just a few feet ahead. The woman, holding her purse strap with one hand, merely looks up at the young man, saying nothing, nodding almost imperceptibly with a polite smile on her face, as though she has learned how to deal with young men that think they already know the secrets of the world.

Looking at the information on their paper tickets, looking again at their ID cards with his slender flashlight and finding no irregularities, he looks up with a smile on his face. Handing the items back, he says:
“I guess you want to go there.”
The woman nods again and opens her mouth slightly, though no sounds comes out. She reaches out for her items and then steps away, looking at the next stage, the next hurdle to cross. The young man turns to the next person in line, reaching for a ticket and identification with his right hand.

Creatures

“What are they?” the men crooned in unison. Their syllables bounced off each of the four walls multiple times, jumped off the empty marble floor before fading into the darkness of the windowless chamber.

He heard their words and let the silence hold, thick as anything he had felt before. He knew what they wanted: answers- the same reason they had come to him years ago, seeking comfort and guidance in a world of gray. Seeking a warm wing in which to bury their doubts. He knew them, for he had done the same thing decades before. And though they held out their deepest fears for him to calm, he hesitated, he didn’t have the answer.

He looked down at them from his red velvet covered throne. Their brown eyes were open wide with glinting terror, their bald heads glimmered with sweat and the shadows of flickering candles. He knew they needed him, just as he had needed his elders, they had no idea how to think, how to solve problems and create solutions. They were minions, followers, sheep. They played an essential role, the church needed sheep. The trouble was that he, their leader, was also in the dark, grasping at answers, searching for comfort in a world of gray.

He had watched the things for several days, crawling up the sides of the temple wall. He had watched, at first afraid, then only aware of them as flickering shadows, like the candle light he was so used to. He wished he could give them a name. They were black and almost two dimensional, but they moved. They clung to the area surrounding the doorway that led to the courtyard beyond. They were long, with skinny black limbs at least twice the length of his own. A few had appendages that looked like heads and four limbs, others were headless and merely twisted along the walls like ribbons, gripping, feeling with their long antenna-like arms.

He wondered what they were, why they had come, what they were seeking. Upon first sight, he imagined they needed to be let out, that they were the manifested spirits of his many prayers searching for the courtyard. It seemed like a reasonable explanation, only, he had opened the door, and like he had imagined, one escaped into the courtyard, but the rest stayed, and then they multiplied. The day he opened the door he had counted three distinct shapes, but the day after, he had counted six. Then there were eight.. And now, others were noticing them too. It was not just his eyes, but the eyes of his followers. They were scared. It would not be long until the whole community vibrated with rumors. The people needed answers, something in which to believe. Right or wrong, they needed an explanation.

“They are creatures sent by the Lord, they are here to help.”

The men nodded, satisfied with the answer. It was what they wanted, and it was what he told them. As for him, he sat with the full weight of the problem heavy on his aging shoulders. There were creatures on the wall, and he did not know why.

Toni And The Police

I awoke in a haze of sleep, my dreams evaporating instantly. The room was still dark, nearly pitch black to my half closed eyes. I pulled the thick covers away mechanically and stepped onto the carpet. Holding my hands in front like a blind man, I sought the hard realness of the desk against the wall and the glass doorknob I would find to the left of it. Holding the knob, I slipped my feet into the slippers I had thoughtfully left by the door. There was a sea of cold tiles that stretched from my bedroom to the bathroom, and I tried to avoid the frigid shock. I pulled the French-style door open, and a cool air hit my face. Without central heating- a cold darkness lay just beyond the bedroom walls.
It took me a second to realize it, while my brain computed and bumped along, but there was an unmistakable flashing red light coming from the garage. My door was open just a crack, and I pulled on the knob. The garage pulsed with flashing red and blue lights, like an empty nightclub. I urged my feet forward, carefully stepping over the guitar and microphone cords that criss-crossed the floor. The light source came from outside, just beyond the wood panels and high frosted glass windows that made our garage door. I stood on my toes and looked through the diamond shaped window, an architectural necessity for any house constructed in the 50s.
Two police cars were double parked in the street, one just in front of our house, the other in front of the first car, almost out of sight. Both had their lights on- blinking red and blue that seemed to scream silently in the night. There were the cars and the houses on the other side of the street, illuminated in the blazing lights. I immediately thought of our next door neighbors, the ones who had just moved in and brought with them loud voices and almost a dozen children. I listened hard for voices, but heard none. No sobbing women, no shrieking children. I pulled a green and cracked vinyl chair towards me and quietly stepped up, looking through the diamond window once again.
Partially shadowed by the night, then brightened by the lights, was Toni, our neighbor, with her hands behind her back, surrounded by four large police officers. Three of the men were white and large, one of them wearing a black beanie on his seemingly bald head. The fourth officer was a stocky Asian man. Toni looked so small and thin next to them, her chocolate skin illuminated and somehow looking pale.
“They don’t take care of my mom, I do!” she shouted. The men mumbled their responses.
They walked together towards the car closest to our house. One cop in front with the black beanie leading, one next to Toni, the two others following. The man in front was shaking his head, and from where I stood, he seemed to be looking right at me. I wondered if he was. Was it a warning? I felt myself grow cautious, wondering if they could see my curious white face through the small window. I felt a fear creep inside. The men felt dangerous. Men armed and willing, ready to take a life. They closed the backseat door behind Toni, then huddled by the trunk, looking at something the one with the beanie held. Toni shouted from inside the car, but her words were muffled, just the anger escaped through the closed metal door.
“Shut UP!” yelled the man wearing the hat. He turned instantly to the Asian man on his left, smiling. His smile filled me with fear. Bullies from high school, men with a license to shout and abuse, kill if need be. He thought it was funny. He did not have the insight to see that his actions altered the course of lives. What was a job, a routine night perhaps, something he would write a report about and then forget as he put the pen down, it was different on the other end, between the metal cuffs, waiting in the backseat of a car. A river flowing one way was instantly diverted with his presence. Arrest wasn’t a minor thing, though he might have gotten used to being the figure with power. And when he laughed, like he didn’t care, like she was just another piece of trash he had to deal with before his next coffee break, it etched a dread in me I had not felt in a long time.
The men conferred behind the car, looking at something. The Asian man broke away and walked to the police car. He opened the driver’s door and spoke through the metal grate to Toni.
“What’s your name?” he said quietly, but distinctly. I thought I heard her say Jessica, but I probably misheard.
I thought of Toni confessing months ago that she used to do crack, that her grown children were still mad at her for how she had been when she was raising them. What had she done tonight? I imagined her in a yellow lit house, wandering from room to room. Which one of her family members had called the police? Who would take care of her mother with dementia? I thought of the old woman who sat in the easy chair in front of the window, what would happen to her? What would they do with Toni? I imagined her heart shattered, crumbling in on itself as she thought about the helpless mother she was being dragged away from. What had she done?
I left the window and walked back quietly through the garage, careful to step over all the cords. I used the bathroom, never turning on a single light. I stood by the doorway to the garage, wondering if I should go back to bed. But then I heard my friend’s voice, asking me questions. I thought about Toni and thought someone should keep witness. Moving gently to the window again, I stood on my tiptoes. I looked into the windows of the other houses across the street, looking for other faces. If they were there, they were hidden. And if it was just me, watching as Toni was taken by the four men. Then I should watch it through to the end, whatever would be the end at this hour.
As I stood, the word boredom crossed my mind, and I felt guilty that the events had lost my interest. The scene was a bit more quiet, Toni had stopped cursing. Two cops now stood by the hood of the police car closest to me. The steps leading to Toni’s front door was illuminated by the porch light. I could see the purple exterior paint and the metal gate at the landing that was slightly ajar. I watched the quiet scene for a little while, then the light above her garage door came on. I wondered if it was a motion sensor, maybe a cat had walked by. Maybe someone had turned it on. A few minutes passed, then the sound of jingling, perhaps keys, though it sounded more like glass.
One cop came down the front steps, taking each step quickly, with a sort of bounce. His large black Maglight was beaming and down-turned. At the sidewalk by the steps, he began to search the driveway, carefully looking around the red car that was parked there. Toni started cursing again and another cop turned on his flashlight, joining the search. They didn’t find anything and within a few minutes two cops walked towards the car parked just beyond our house. I heard the ignition start.
The cop with the black beanie walked to the other car and took his place behind the wheel, his partner sat beside him. He turned on the engine and then turned his face to the left, in my direction. The shadow of the car’s roof hid his eyes, but I felt like he was watching me, perhaps daring me to do something. A deeper sense of fear moved through me, the man was dangerous, more ugly than many I had met. He stayed like that for several seconds and neither of us moved. Then he looked straight ahead and drove away.
I stood in the garage for several minutes, the space now black again without the police car lights. I moved back towards my room, but lingered in the doorway to the garage, wondering if I should lock my door. The space seemed less safe, not because of whatever Toni had done, but because of those men. The police and what they stood for.
Men without any hero’s code of honor, but simply men that had passed a few tests, a few obstacle courses…men that had been given a gun and the power to enforce laws, the power to hurt, the power to change destinies. They were nothing special, but they were backed by cells and judges and an entire system of repression that would bite down on the prettiest of flowers without a thought.
I was cold. I got under the blankets again and stared at the blackness of my wall until the sky turned blue.

The Form Of The Other

I feel the pain, that particular pain that makes me retreat into myself, that makes me try to hide within my own body. I feel it often. So often now that I don’t run anymore, yet I do not smile, not yet. I’m not quite ready.
I hear them laughing and I cannot stop my heart from beating a little louder. Thump, THUMP. It hurts. I hear them walking down the wooden stairs and my chest begins to pound, each footfall is another kick in the gut. They are coming. They are coming.

It all points back to the early years when it seemed that there was no danger, when safety fell from the sky like rain and it formed puddles around my soft hands, letting me know that there would never be any kind of danger.
In my youth I was cheerful, kind , and, above all, an obedient little girl. The very sweetest and kindest are most susceptible to conviction. That’s what I’ve come to learn. When they suggested that I take them into my heart I did just that, rather than pretending, like everybody else did, rather than playing along, leaving my insides untouched.
I did not know the limits as a child. I was too slow to catch on to the ways of the world. When they bade me to accept them I opened my arms and flung wide the doors to my little heart and cried:
"Come in, come in! I am ready!"

I have to stop. There’s only so much I can explore before the pain becomes too strong. I feel a vortex of energy coming now, I feel a vacuum growing within me. I feel the pull of a star-less space, a microscopic black hole in the very center of my core reactor.
There is a tug on my toes. My attention is going elsewhere, like waves on a shore that only recede, it’s going to a place where little spindles fly in circles and dive into my joints. They join together, tight as a brick in my jaw and then I cannot talk. I cannot laugh or smile. I am stuck. It’s hard to move, it’s even harder to breath.
I go back. I lose myself in thoughts that may make me forget what I am feeling.

That was how it all started. Very innocently, with the best of intentions. My crime, of course, was, is and ever shall be an indulgence in conviction. While immersed in a culture of images there can be no greater sin than sincerity.
They returned, stronger than I had ever known them and I opened the temple of my mammalian countenance and threw back my head to howl an invitation:
"Come in, come in! I am ready!"

My attention returns because they are coming. They are coming down the stairs. That’s what I tell myself. It is because of them that I feel these metal pincers squeezing at my damaged heart. Their voice, their laughter, their rules, their sucking in all the energy of the space, pulling me out and robbing me of my smiles and my air. Anxiety swirls around me like a conscious whirlwind, moving to the right, to the left, wherever I step like a fast-footed athlete. They are the reason, the source, the pain. That’s what I tell myself. That’s what I have to tell myself. Even if it doesn’t really help, even if the pain remains intact and I still can find no real sanctuary.

I asked them inside of me. There was never a more generous or hospitable offer to make, nor shall there ever be.
Now I hear from others that this is a very frightening and naughty thing to have done. I hear from human animals that this is a bad thing, what I did. But how could I have known?
There was no one to ask, no one to consult with, back when it was happening.
I am not ashamed to have looked into my own innermost quarters, into the depths of my being, into the secret crevices of my mind and discovered that there was darkness there, a true darkness that pulsed with forbidden life.
I am not ashamed to have discovered that I am but a mere mortal, an animal alike in my fears and desires to all other animals. I am not ashamed to have made a sacrifice of that animal on the altar that we call a lifetime.

I could now hurt and blame them and that would be my story, a story I would remember and tell myself, just like I tell myself all these other stories. The little explanations that last until the carousel breaks in a puff of smoke and all the plastic animals tumble out. It is so easy to place the cause outside of me. Just so easy.
Pain comes from the outside, from the Others.
Pain is caused by the Other.
The Other.

But there are only habits. A myriad of habits that multiply endlessly in all directions. The habits of politics and speech and body movement. The habits of the machine, transmitted and programmed since birth by parents and school and friends and church and society. The learned habits of an entire culture run amok through this body of flesh and bone and light.
Each bio-machine has a thousand habits. Each is convinced of their ultimate rightfulness.

Can I transcend these deep habits, so ingrained that I mistake them for the sky?
I say clearly and loudly:
“You may keep all of the rewards in store for the obedient animals, I will take all of the punishments reserved for the strays.”

Freedom is paid for with responsibility, accepting the consequence of my actions and inactions. I will try to be faithful to my purest impulses, to my open hearted wonderment and willingness. I will accept my worst nature, my cowardly yearnings, as they are mine too, and I will be the one to master them with open eyes and a gentle hand.

I hear them coming with the force of a train, my habits begin to creak. The pain begins. They bring their own habits, they exhibit them. Their hands move wildly. Their voices rattle the walls.
But it is the clash of my habits with theirs which hurts. It is the reaction of one bio-machine to another. The Other has a different set of habits. There is no fault. There is only learned mechanicality. The differences are what cause the pain. The clash between what I want and what they are. The clash between how I want things to be and what Is at the moment. It is the clash that causes the pain. Not the Other. The Other is just me in a different form.

My kingdom is in the invisible heavens and hells, embedded in every shadow and every reflection, in every grain of sand and every tear drop. I am all that have breathed and ever will breathe. May I live in small gestures that grow grander, may I flow through subtle shapes that refuse to take a final form, may I rest on gentle hues and whispered murmurs, may I flourish under this veil of mortality. May I then invite then into me with a true and open heart:
"Come in! Come in! I am ready!"

In The Bowels of the Gods

Keith blinked a few times before the glass came into focus under his nose. There was something golden and frothy bubbling in it like live amber. Beer? Hazily he tried to recall where he'd been, how he'd gotten here, and where "here" was.
After a moment he realized he was sitting on a high stool at one end of a long glossy bar. A handful of other humanoids were seated along the length of it, two of them, nursing drinks. The other three were clustered together near a machine that looked like an old fashioned cassette player, the sort he remembered seeing in a classroom in his youth, back in 1983.
That was his youth wasn't it? Presently it was difficult for him to identify who he was and sort through which memories probably belonged to this person.
He shook his head a little and focused again at the triad at the other end of the bar. It did look like an old fashioned cassette player, flat with broad white keys, but in the window where a cassette would have been there were touch screen controls, and instead of wearing headphones, all three were connected to the device with an output that jacked in behind an ear. They were all smiling dreamily, and occasionally one of them reached out and struck a series of keys which caused them all to shiver in apparent ecstasy and they would smile and nod to each other trough veiled eyelids. Then the next person would try their hand at manipulating the keys and the scenario would repeat.
This did not seem to Keith like a familiar activity. Instinctively he reached behind his ear and felt for the jack. Shock rippled through him and his jaw dropped a little when his fingertips encountered a small round opening there. Apparently, it should be familiar to him.
Vaguely he noted a curtained stage upon which a woman with black make up smudged all over her eyes was performing a rendition of Blue Velvet, singing in charmingly dusky tones while accompanying herself on a theremin. Her tangerine colored hair leapt up from her scalp ala bride of Frankenstein but curled so that it resembled a wave or a flame. A clingy white sequined evening gown, designed with gashes all down the torso through which her pale flesh peeped, was only slightly distinguishable in hue from her complexion. Individuals were scattered around a handful of tables spread through out the establishment. Most attended the tables closest to the stage, drinking or snoozing or examining liquid crystal tablets.
Suddenly, Keith was aware of the bar tender looming over him from the other side of the bar. The big bald man cleared his throat. Keith glanced sheepishly up at him.
"You asked for this." the bar tender said and pushed an LCD pad towards him, the muscles of his arms rippling under the tattoos. The words "Madam Blagva's Celestial Calculator" flashed over the screen accompanied by an entourage of sparkling shooting stars.
"Uh, thank you." Keith said and smiled. He couldn't believe that he had asked for this. He had no idea what it was or how it worked. He sat and gazed numbly at it. The bar tender was watching him. Keith squirmed.
"It's been a while since I've used one of these..." he ventured in an attempt at explanation. The bartender raised an eye brow.
"Just plug in your spider" he said.
Keith tried not to look too horrified or perplexed.
"I lost mine." he answered. Now the bartender raised both eyebrows to dubious heights.
"It's been a rough couple of years." Keith supplemented his original statement.
The bartender sighed and reached over and taped the pad with three fingers.
"Without direct interface you won't have any privacy, but it's your call."
A gritty electrified granny voice intoned mysteriously from the pad,
"Ask your question."
Keith stared at the pad. There were no alphanumeric keys. Timidly he cleared his throat and said,
"Uh…I've been going nowhere career wise and have felt stuck in a rut."
He paused and looked cautiously at the bar tender, hoping that he had done the right thing. He nearly sighed with relief when the gritty little voice encouraged him,
"Go on."
"Well, I discovered a book called 'Earth Sun Moon' put out by Wooden books and I drafted a 'celestescope' that charts the moon, sun, mercury, venus mars, jupiter, saturn... I found that saturn has been in retrograde in my sign since 2007 and is getting ready to leave, finally, as far as I can tell, sometime in July, and resume its usual motions through the rest of the signs, not to land in mine again for around another thirty years.”
“And?” the pad croaked. Keith swallowed hard.
“I guess I'm asking... is there light at the end of the tunnel? I guess I already am feeling free-er, less restricted..."
He trailed off and waited for an uncomfortable moment. The bartender, he was a tad chagrined to notice, was still watching and listening intently from the same location while polishing glasses with a white towel.
The gritty voice erupted from the pad once again.
"There is always light at the end of the tunnel; though sometimes it is a train.", it cackled crone-like while an image of a train sprang into motion on the screen and then cut away to another image of saturn and its rings which faded into lady justice dancing backwards away from him. The video collage continued while the hag voice narrated;
"Saturn did go into Libra, and has now retrograded back to Virgo. It will be back to Libra in late July. Getting Saturn off your Sun sign may well free up essential energy for you. Anything that feels better, freer for you, is worth exploring. Saturn can be a useful teacher. Putting aside the frustration, consider whether this time of inertia has left any lessons learned."
Keith sat pondering as the bar tender withdrew to refill a drink.
"The light is always everywhere."
Keith was startled by the voice. One of the triad who had been jacked into the device at the end of the bar had left her companions and was now standing at his right shoulder. She was short and lithe. One half of her head was shaved and white hair hung down to a length just past her chin on the other side. Her irises were bright crimson and her naked flesh was a sort of powder blue hue. She wore what looked like a white buckskin skirt and moccasins and nothing else. Her breast were very small and the nipples were bright, almost as crimson as her eyes.
"The tunnel is our own creation." she concluded and smiled at him.
The woman seated a couple of stools to his right snorted over her drink. Her hair hung in stringy mouse brown lengths about her face and shoulders. She resembled a glob of clay that had been carelessly slopped onto the stool and now threatened to spill out in every direction. Her back and shoulders were slightly hunched, perhaps being tugged mercilessly by the weight of her considerable breasts and belly, all of which was wrapped in what looked like a hot pink Snuggie that hung off of one shoulder exposing her freckled flesh.
"I had a ten year Pluto transit to my natal Saturn/Pluto/Sun-Mercury T-square." she said without looking up from her glass. He noticed that something like tiny live fish seemed to be swimming among the bubbles in the aquamarine tinted elixir. "The T-square is a big, impossible, nasty combo in my chart that will never stop giving me grief and the period of that Pluto transit nearly killed me, quite literally."
She made a sound that might have been limp laughter and took a swig of whatever it was she was drinking, swallowing several of the fish. Keith strained to get a better look at them and was aghast to discover that they resembled itsy bitsy mermaids more than fish. One pressed its all too human hands against the glass and seemed to look at him imploringly with its blinking hyper round eyes. He deduced from that look and the frantic way its fins twitched that it was cognizant of its situation.
"Oddly," the woman continued, "I married a man just prior to the onset of this transit whose Sun was conjunct his Pluto and Mercury at one point of my T-square and had a daughter who had her Sun/Pluto-Saturn/Mercury at the Saturn point, conjunct the transiting Pluto."
She paused and drained her glass. Keith felt sick, like he might scream or cry or vomit, or all of the above. She swiveled around on her stool and regarded him squarely.
"In other words, my own actions, perhaps influenced by the transit, worsened the astrological aspect -- or perhaps just embodied it. The marriage was a disaster - he was extremely psychologically abusive to both me and our daughter, and the daughter was, even apart from him, THE most difficult person I've ever had to deal with. It turns out she has Asperger's Syndrome." She turned back around and tapped her empty glass on the bar nodding to the bartender.
"Anyway," she said as he replaced her drink with another swarming with the little mer creatures, "my point is that these slower moving transits can cause tremendous trouble, depending on how they impact your natal planets. Saturn is one of those that, in my opinion, can cause some of the worst trouble. Not only is it restrictive, but it's known as the gatekeeper to Pluto -- to the Underworld."
She took a drink and coughed, Keith imagined, as a result of some of the little creatures struggling on their way down the hatch. She recovered after a moment and pointed a finger at him.
"By the way, almost to the day Pluto left the sign of that transit, Scorpio, I took a ten-day trip overseas without notice to anyone. I literally ran away -- and interestingly, Pluto had gone into Sag., the sign of travel, and the placement of my Moon in a Grand Trine with Pluto and Mars in my chart -- a very powerful and favorable combo for me."
Satisfied, she returned all of her attention back to her drink, dipping her finger in and stirring her terror stricken captives into activity before swallowing them alive.

The blue girl, whose hand was on her hip now, bit the corner of her lip while starring at the other woman and said, "As the Cosmic Muffin used to say, 'It's a wise man who rules the stars and a fool who is ruled by them.'"
The woman didn't seem to hear.
"I was born September 16, but I'm no Virgo." a voice piped up behind Keith. He had to look over his shoulder beyond the blue girl to find the speaker. It was a man in a fedora and vest sitting at a table with an old Chinese man and someone that looked like the Egyptian god Anubis with six naked teats lined up in neat pairs. He had a fine stubble coming in all over his chin and his sleeves were rolled up above his elbows. His hands were busy with the business of shuffling a deck of cards and a cigarette hung from his lip.
"I'm not a Virgo because I don't believe that constellations, that by the way, are only crude dot to dot drawings, influence my life at all. Sure," he said shrugging and lifting his hands slightly, still holding the cards, "I could not be here if there weren't stars, but that specific ones influence my life is superstition born of desire." he began to deal the cards as he spoke. "The desire to find a cause, a reason, a measure of control for good and bad. It's hard to accept that good and bad things happen accidentally for no reason at all. We roll the dice every minute. Sometimes we win a cigar, sometimes we get burned by one. Chance is in charge.” He winked, “Bets to you Nita."
The Anubis headed bitch pushed some chips into the pot and the Chinese man with long white catfish whiskers responded in a similar manner. The man in the fedora raised.
"But take heart," he said grinning to the other players, "good and bad things happen to the same 'no one.'"
Keith felt himself reddening a little. So what if he wanted to consult the stars? He knew it wasn't a science, but somehow, he suspected, it had brought him here.
"Yes indeed," he heard himself say before he could master his indignation, "but there is this old maxim 'as above, so below, as within, so without' that has made itself known to me."
The blue girl put her hand on his shoulder and started rubbing it.
"Correct." one of her companions from the end of the bar said abruptly. The young topless Asian man had a long mane of raven colored hair. He was unplugging the cable behind his ear. The thing that came out of the port had eight delicate legs and stood in his palm. The iridescent cable was a strand spun from this creature’s abdomen. It cut the unneeded connection and walked along the young man’s arm as he said,
" So whatever was within that was out-pictured is worth exploring."
The blue girl nodded emphatically and pressed herself closer to Keith’s back.
"I don't necessarily believe we are 'ruled' by them, but I certainly believe there are synchronicities, meaningful connections that exist between ourselves, microcosm, and the heaven’s macrocosm. Whether that is wise to believe remains to be seen and is subject to change, of course. I can be somewhat skeptical at times." Keith said, a little distracted by the blue girl’s attentions. She was leaning over his shoulder, listening intently and smiling sweetly at him, so close that he could smell her licorice scented breath.

"Everything influences everything." the clay woman sputtered, coming back to life and rejoining the conversation. "No human being lives in a vacuum separate from the rest of the world or the universe and the forces that govern things do so across space and time." she said stretching her hand out in a sweeping gesture. "There does not have to be a human reason for something happening, but the universe works in the way it does, which is its own reason. And we are part of all that, though we feel separate. No scientist believes it all happens by chance. As Einstein said: ‘God doesn't play dice with the universe.’ "
The man in the fedora laughed harshly.
"A cute phrase, but false." he said. "Einstein didn't want to believe in quantum mechanics, but has been proven wrong. God, well, nature, plays dice after all, they’re called quarks." He grinned at his comrades. The Chinese man yawned.
"I frequently provide my liver cells with evidence that I don't care a fig for their individual lives." said Nita, the Anubis bitch, in a silky voice. "But then, I'm not THE God. I am just A god. And I have pressures on me that they will never comprehend. Actually, I only understand them a little better than they understand me. I am capable of recognizing and interacting with them, individually; but I have little call to do so." Thus saying she raised her glass as if giving a toast and then lapped at the drink until her dog-like muzzle could no longer be adequately accommodated by the glass’s shape.
Lumpy was twisting around on her barstool to face the man in the fedora. It looked as though she might slip right off.
"I don't see quantum mechanics as "dice" or chance. Quarks aren't random either. They choose what to do, but we don't yet know completely why.” She was gesticulating wildly as she spoke, teetering and tottering on her seat, “The universe has a purpose, I think, but not our purpose. We are so arrogant to think that something zillions of times bigger and more complex that us should do things our way. But if we can ally ourselves with those forces that are greater than us, it is not chance we encounter, but deep purposefulness of a nature not so much indifferent to humans as equally inclusive of all things, as well as us - meaning we are no more important than anything else. To me,” she sniffed, “ this is far more wonderful than human-guided purposes. Well, let's say human-led purposes are NOT wonderful at all UNLESS they can tap into the greater, wider universe."
Here she stretched both of her arms as wide as she could and nearly toppled over. She barely managed to catch herself by grabbing onto the bar and twisting back around.
The man in the fedora and Nita laughed and turned all of their attention back to their game.
The blue girl was working on both of Keith’s shoulders now.
"How did you loose your spider?" She whispered, "You don't mean that it died do you? I couldn't bear it if that happened to mine. We have a spare if you want to join us."
"Thanks." Keith said, "I think I better finish my drink though."
He tried to focus on the drink sitting in front of him. How did he get here? Was this because of the stars? Or was it because of the book about the stars? Maybe the stars were innocent. Maybe they had nothing to do with his present reality tunnel crisis. This experience may have been induced by a tornado picking up his house… What was the last thing he remembered doing?
Oddly the only thing he could think of was the little mer person pressed against the inside of the lumpy woman’s glass. It was as if it had happened to him, as if their roles had been reversed. He had been swallowed alive and this was what it was like in the bowels of something a zillion times bigger and more complicated than himself.
Desperately he downed the glass of beer. The bar tender brought him another one. Little girl blue was getting really serious about massaging his shoulders and back. He had a feeling she might like to blow his horn. If she was what he was "out picturing" then maybe what was within was worth exploring...
Then he spied her companions at the end of the bar manipulating the “cassette player” and shivering and realized that what she really wanted was to put spiders in his head…
The woman on the stage started a new song, picking delicately at the empty air over the black box of her theremin.
“Moon river, wider than a mile, I'm crossing you in style some day…”

The Wish

It was a perfect dandelion, set under a crisp plain of bright blue sky. It was straight and tall, a white puff of individual seeds that almost begged the wind to scatter it, each one holding on with the most gentle touch of strength. The dandelion was ripe and ready, finding itself alone in a wide open green field of grass, where bare-boughed oaks stayed in the distance, on the soft sloping hillsides that rimmed the field like the jewels on a crown. A gentle wind began to blow, rattling the long stem in its place. Bending from side to side, but not a seed ventured out. The time had not come, the world was not yet ready. They could all wait, holding onto the stem just a little longer.

She gathered what they needed for a picnic, looking with discerning eyes through her small pantry. There was already a thin pink tablecloth in her black canvas backpack, two ham and cheese sandwiches she had made in the morning while her heart raced with bursts of excitement. There were a couple room temperature bottles of water and a handful of paper napkins. She grabbed a handful of chocolate kisses from a half-full plastic bag and dropped them into the side pocket. She zipped up the backpack and headed out the door, warm golden sunlight greeting her. It was time to play.
The day outside was so fresh. It had rained for several weeks, nearly non-stop, and now it was time to reap the rewards of endurance. In every garden were daffodils and the buds of Icelandic poppies just about to burst. Something about the air was so different, it almost had a sweetness, like the rain had washed away every sad thought and tear. There was something so clean, she couldn’t quite place what it reminded her of, but she felt like she had lived it before.
She drank in the air, the day, enjoying every lick of the cool breeze that slid past her round red cheeks. She walked five block to the park, passing single story houses with large front yards and no gates. Everyone seemed to be gone. No cars in the driveway, no human sounds. It was just her and the quiet dance of leaves, the sun and its returning loyalty, the color of soft petals. The park was more of an open green field, not a place new mothers would bring their children to. There were no play structures or a basketball court. Just a large stretch of grass and oaks along the edges. She liked it, it was a place she came to often, perhaps the last wild, undeveloped place in the city. A breath of fresh, green air.

She saw him in the distance and her heart both jumped out of and fell into her stomach. He was a small shape amid green covered earth and blue sky. Knowing he was there, she walked slightly faster, her heart beating, her palms beginning to sweat. His broad shoulders looked wide in the uncompromising light. He stood now, watching her approach, and with each step closer, she felt ever more shy in his steady gaze. She could not stop smiling. Wind whipped across her teeth, drying them completely. Another step across soft earth, then another. Where he stood was home, within his body was everything she dreamed of. The space between them grew smaller and smaller, until there was no space, their bodies pressing tightly.

“Hi,” he said, taking a small step back. “right here, this is the perfect spot, look,” he pointed to the ground, “I thought you might want to make a wish.”

She followed the invisible trail from his finger to the grass, and there, was a dandelion. Ripe with seed and wishes, ready for her hopes, for all she wanted to tell the sky. She looked up, smiling at him, giving him a kiss on his wide lips. She looked at him for a moment, then bent over, plucking the dandelion gently from its base. She stood up straight again, looked at him once and then closed her eyes. She made a wish...and blew, sending her dreams towards the moon.

The Symbols

She saw a numeral, a 3.

An upside-down triangle.

Beside it, a triangle with the point towards heaven.

There were more symbols, she could feel them talking with soft words, in a language she could not understand, but the shapes had obscured themselves, blending into each other like colored oils.

She had awoken in her warm bed of feathers and fine silks to the bright white light of day. She had dreamed of a closed door and two men with white horns, but as her eyes fluttered open, she was surprised to find herself alone, covered in day. She lay still for several minutes, tuning into the metronome of her heart, listening to the sounds of the room and the music just beyond the stone walls. There were animals and merchants and men, all moving slowly, all with their own particular calls. Some with brass bells and hammers, other’s shouting their wares and demands. It was a typical morning, a known rhythm. She could picture it all. The smell of worn leather and grease, smoke and incense, the scent of hay.

And though the sounds seemed familiar, there was another that lay the foundation to all she heard. She lay still, focusing on the steady beat of the clock, such a faithful object of normality, always ticking. It was the sound of the moving brass hands that lulled her to sleep and it was the repetition that somehow called her from the dreams.

And then, as though controlled by a puppet master, she brought her warm pink hand to her face, slower than she would have moved her arm, so much slower than her tendency. The hand came towards her as though it needed attention, as though it had just been birthed from the warm folds of silk and was now taking its first breath in a new waterless world. Here was bright light. Here was something that could see. Eyes and a face, a mind to comprehend.

The dainty white hand hovered a few inches above her face, just close enough for minute ripples of alarm to spread as she saw the series of numbers and shapes on her index finger. It had not been there when she went to bed. She had gotten into the curious habit of studying her body in the mirror before bed, looking for such strange signs. It had turned into a compulsion. She didn’t know what she was searching for and she smiled shyly at herself in the mirror and candlelight flickered, a bit embarrassed by the nightly ritual, but she did it again and again, looking for something. There had only been pale skin and freckles. But in the night something had happened. She searched her dreams for a clue. A door, white horns. She looked deeper, allowing her body to relax and drift, to begin the journey once again.

Horses,
a field with a book,
a man’s face she could not see.

She pulled herself out of the waves and looked at the symbols once again. She closed her eyes slowly, feeling her heart. It was calm, there was no fear. The ripples had faded.

She had grown to expect strange things, to hope for them perhaps, though part of her mind held onto modesty and stable things like stones and wax. But as she learned always, repeatedly, all things were possible in Diappinee. Puppets and humans alike played, devising ways to come through the tunnels left wide open in dreams.