Through the Veil

At the top of the hierarchy of organic existence, where many a man has thought he belongs, just like the oils and fats at the top of the modern food pyramid, which perhaps should have been discredited long ago as a “beneficial back rub” for the agricultural lobby; at the top where man, with his large brain and malevolent ego believes he belongs, there is a "something" that man does not achieve. For the majority it is not achieved, though that achievement is indeed possible, however difficult it may be.

And that something, which eludes the majority of mankind, we can allude to it with beautiful words, a thesaurus of verse and synonym which could fill the ears of wondrous, flowery Maria. We could delight her with visions and the smells of every rose and describe the sky and all its wonders, but that something would still remain intangible, unknowable, because it is not of words, not made or created or coaxed into being by the statements of finality that language attempts to keep locked in the metal boxes of the attic.

Jacques, that character of a man with white notebook and fountain pen, perhaps we could twist tales and seduce him with wise plants of the desert and old pipes exhaling smoke. We could try, many have certainly attempted to describe that ‘something,’ but it can never be fully held, either by Jaques or the others that stand beside him at the top of the pyramid drenched in oil and salt.

I myself, the writer of these words, supposedly at the top of this mountain made from As and Bs, I struggle with their placement, dance around the loops made for my capture. Words! You bastards! I purge you with these metaphors, I run though the gaps in your iron walls, looking, finessing, rubbing against that ‘something’ that stays hidden, beyond the grasp of your control. Maria, where are you hidden?

There is a veil, a division, between us and the next form of existence. Like the widow’s black curtain that obscures the ocean and sun, we live out earthly existence mired by our eventual demise. This fear is masked by a thousand other names, different configurations of the same basic structure. Sex, marriage, adventure and orgasm, children, vacation; the division is thick, winds like a serpents tail around the ankle of my infant, infected through mother’s milk and generations of spoken sound.

Words! This veil, the division, is called death. Death. Death, that takes our Maria, transforming that milky body into ashes. Take of her, but do not make her blind. Push though the veil Maria! Push through the widow’s gauze which I refuse to wear and search for that ‘something’ I could not explain to you in life. Jacques, pick up the stone, move further to the right. Yes. Now to the left around the open hell-mouth of finality. For this moment, let the gates of your chest open. The ego, the malevolent beast, sacrifice it to the veil, the black division which obscured death and the other forms which lay beyond its promise. Jacques, sacrifice the body and leave it for the scavengers of pride and word.

Listen to my voice. These words, which failed us in life, they may bring us to the bolts of energy that wait transfixed in space, climbing, climbing. Walk up and open your arms, for the world is one and now you can understand. Language, you words! They are ours, shapes of mushrooms in the darkened clouds, plants colored as the ocean’s smell.

Words! You bastards! Climb the steps, Jacques, open you arms, and for this moment, open the gates of your chest. There is no more you, but the ego, slay it so that we may enter. Slay it and leave it for the others to feast, the ghosts are hungry. Maria, you are there, flowers at your feet. Open your mouth, let the blue light of that something, let it drip in.

We are here. The divine dance of orbital light and chance, that something is here.

Doorways

I walked for a couple of blocks in the night thick with fog. Everything appeared white and moist and, although I tried to pull myself away from the recurring thoughts, it also appeared sinister. I walked like a ghost in a sleeping city. There were no cars speeding through the deserted streets, no women in rags promising good times and used condoms. There was no one around me at all.
I walked alone on the gray sidewalks and darkened neon signs until I came to a short alley that appeared familiar in its disarray. It path was covered with trash and the remains of dead dreams: old newspapers with forgotten headlines, empty ripped cardboard boxes, old coats now spotted with blood, broken bottles that somehow managed to twinkle green and brown despite the foggy sky, half of a magazine cover and a couple of soda cans that had been dented and used as pipes. It extended for half a block and ended with a black metal garage door and a little wooden stairway to its right.
I stepped through the strewn madness, finding small, safe pockets to step on. Walking though the ancient graffiti markings on either side of me, names scrawled in red and white paint, I made my way through the chaos easily. Beside the stairs, shadowed by the building, I saw the gatekeeper, a dwarf waiting for me in the darkness.
He held out his wrinkled hand.
"A dollar is all I ask... you still can't go through the main portal but you can go up the stairway. Be careful with your choice this time."
I thought I heard a sound, a chuckle, a stifled laugh.
I gave him what he asked for and walked up the stairway to a gray door, assuming he had confused me with someone else and curious to discover what was on the other side of the decaying metal door. I knocked and the door opened into darkness.
I smelled something familiar, a mixture of freshly rained upon soil and used cooking grease. I walked into the space further, down a long hallway. I could see shapes, but there were no colors. I was barely able to glimpse a feminine hand holding the doorknob behind me. A disembodied appendage, it appeared smooth and delicate with its long white fingers and tapered nails. It had been the hand that responded to my knock, allowing me entrance into the chamber.
I stood then in darkness and silence, waiting for something to happen. I became aware of the soft breathing of a woman. It was close to me at first, but I heard it move away slowly, moving down the hall until it disappeared altogether. I waited for what seemed painfully long, I waited and waited, but there was no further movement around me.
Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the darkness. I was then able to see the details of a long narrow hallway stretching into darkness before me. The flooring was made of old and worn wooden planks, a floor walked so many times that it had lost all its original luster. There was a long sequence of doors on either side of the hallway and each door had a little cutout window at eye level.
I started walking slowly down the hallway, afraid to disturb anyone that might be present, yet unable to stay where I was. As I walked past the first door I noticed a soft yellow light coming from inside. Checking around me to make sure nobody was watching, I moved my eyes close to the small window.
Inside I saw two men playing poker on a low wooden coffee table. One was short and stocky, the other tall and skinny. They both shared the same light coffee-colored skin, their faces were both shaved and like the wooden flooring of the hallway, worn by time. They moved their cards carefully, with the grace of experienced players whose bodies had memorized the gestures, the timing. It was all done fluidly and without thought.
I could see two walls clearly through the little window in the door. On them were photographs of the two men, sometimes by themselves, sometimes with others. Some of the photos were large and protected in frames of thin metal and glass, others were tacked to the wall in what appeared to me a haphazard style.
I was particularly mystified by a little photo that showed the stocky man when he was young. I was aware of the intense difference, how slender he had been then, his muscles firm and flat. His smile was less forced, as though it came from a place that did not need protection, that had not known pain or disappointment. In the photograph he held a yellow flower in his hand.
The man smiling now at his card game was very different, he was a cunning man who appeared to know the tricks of life and had a method for avoiding them. I turned from the chamber and continued walking down the hall.
I walked carefully, putting attention on each step to avoid creaking the old floorboards. I felt like I had to be quiet, to breath more slowly, to move more softly than I ever had. I passed a couple of dark doors without light and then turned to one where the inner light was bright, like the white light from a naked bulb.
I peeked inside, a little more brave now, somehow realizing that there was nobody around to be afraid of. These were benevolent ghosts and I had been permitted to walk amongst them.
This time there was nobody in the room, just a carefully made bed that could fit two people easily, a little night lamp with a bright bulb (the source of the room’s illumination) and several rows of bookshelves against the back walls. I opened the door, unable to control my eagerness to examine the rows of paperbacks and the thick bound hardcover books more closely.
I had placed one foot inside the door when I heard laughter coming from another room. With that lighthearted laugh coming from someplace close by, my attention and curiosity dissolved and I quickly closed the door and walked further down the hallway, reasoning with myself that I would come back later.
I looked for the source of the laughter and found it easily. She had long black hair and shining dark eyes which fell upon me as soon as I peeked through the small window of a blood-red door. She was there, in the center of the room, standing barefoot on a thin, worn maroon carpet. She, and the entire room, were bathed in the glow of bright red light. She was naked, her skin appeared red in the light, the shade made by her breasts and hips and ample contours was dark, like a simple charcoal drawing.
She looked at me directly through the window, gesturing with her right hand, asking me to come in. I began to turn the creaky knob and suddenly felt the sensation of warmth on my back. With this feeling I hesitated and turned around.
Again my attention dissipated. My curiosity for the woman fluttered away as I saw another stairway leading up, ending in a brightly illuminated open door. The staircase was longer, more worn, more fragile than the one outside. I thought it might break apart as soon as I set foot on it.
Feeling torn between the adventure of the stairway, the eyes of the woman and the mystery of the books, I decided to walk a little further down the hallway in case there were even more choices. There were many more doors, with other lights and other scenes.
But I could never decide, I could never make a final decision, turn the knob, enter the space and let the door shut behind me. There was always the promise of another choice, another door, something even better.
I kept walking down the hall until the light got darker and then I realized there were no more doors, no little windows, no options. I heard a voice that whispered to my left:
"Thanks for coming. Before you now there is only Death. Do come back."
Then, in front of me, a door opened. I heard the loud creaking of ancient rusted metal. A bright blinding light hit me and I found myself on a busy street, with cars honking, children crying and adults complaining about the price of gasoline.
My eyes took a while to adjust to the blinding light. Then I looked around and recognized the familiar street. I felt the pull of hunger and started to walk home.

Morgana

There is a cathedral on California St. in San Francisco, positioned in the district known as Nob Hill. Within that Cathedral there is a labyrinth wherein I met and became acquainted with the infamous Morgana Le Fay.
I had seen her first during the 6:15 yoga sessions held on Tuesday mornings each week, a dark haired woman with penetrating green eyes concentrating on her perfect contortions and slow steady breath. Her gear, a Gaiam mat and matching aluminum bottle, caught my attention because it was the same design I had admired online a week before. As my eye traveled up from the mat I took stock of her Shakti capris and vest tank top in the orange network pattern. It looked like a web of electric nerve endings spread across her back, striking and beautiful, making me overly self conscious of my own well worn T-shirt.
I admired her obvious strength and flexibility, her complexion and the minimal signs of age written in shallow lines at the creases of her eyes. It is disturbing to confess that after attending three classes with her and never finding a way to speak to her, I tried to follow her from the Cathedral. She crossed the street and vanished. Into thin air. Absolutely, undeniably dematerialized. She was absent from class ever after.

There is a cathedral on California St. in San Francisco positioned in the district known as Nob hill. Within that Cathedral there is a labyrinth wherein I met and became acquainted with the infamous Morgana Le Fay.
I had come to walk the labyrinth alone on a Wednesday morning, months after watching her disappear on the sidewalk before my eyes. Entering the quiet chamber, my footsteps echoing, I saw her standing in the center of the labyrinth and froze. I felt the urge to flee, to quietly leave the building, an overwhelming sense of embarrassment tugging at my gut.
Who was I to intrude upon the meditations of this enigmatic woman who possessed the ability to evaporate from the corner of California and Taylor? I could not even muster the courage to initiate a conversation with a presumably ordinary person. Nevertheless I took a deep breath and stepped into the labyrinth.
I walked it as I always did, concentrating on each footstep, pacing myself, remembering myself. At the flower-like center she was waiting for me, green eyes boring into my soul. I offered her my hand.
“My name’s Emma.” I told her. Her grip was firm, almost crushing.
“Morgana.” She released my hand and said, “Wait a moment and we’ll talk.”
I felt very dizzy and my vision was going blurry. It started so gradually that I didn’t take notice until I felt that my legs were about to fold under me. Then I blacked out.
It was only a moment it seemed, but when I opened my eyes I was laying on the ground, my cheek pressed against the cold stone floor. I could see a pair of feet moving through the outer rings of the labyrinth, feet clad in black combat boots, squeaking as they went.
Pushing myself off the ground and into a sitting position I watched groggily as the owner of the boots, a disheveled clown, worked his way to the center.
He wore cutoff pants and a black T-shirt with many white arrows radiating out from a common point of convergence painted over its surface. His hair was limp and curly and mostly neon green. The face paint was smeared grotesquely. As he entered the center he licked the corner of his mouth and twitched slightly.
“Hello Morgana.” He said in a nasal voice. Nodding towards me, he asked, “Fresh meat for the beast?”
I’m ashamed to say that I could only stare, mouth agape.
“Well,” Morgana said, “Now that we’re all here, what shall we discuss?”
“I have always been interested in the sociopolitical structure of insect colonies, that and the reading of animal entrails, including human, for the purposes of divination, or possibly even just as leisurely reading, during a long BART commute for example.”
His tongue darted lizard-like out the corner of his mouth once more. I noticed that beneath the distorting make up, his mouth was actually deformed. Apparently he noticed my staring, because he lunged for me. He grabbed me by the hair and pulled my face close to his own, crying mockingly,
“Give us a kiss darling?”
“Ow, ow, ow!” I whined, too preoccupied with the pain inflicted on my scalp, possibly too shocked to feel an appropriate measure of fear.
“No, no.” Morgana said coming to sit with us. “We always talk about your interests. Emma is new, let her pick a topic.”
The clown released my hair and cozied up to me, patting my thigh.
“Oh, excellent idea Morgana. Go ahead Emma, what would you like to talk about?” He encouraged in tones oozing with sugary sweetness.
They both stared at me and waited. The clowns eyes were blue. Silence echoed through the cathedral.
“Uh.” I said at last, “I haven’t seen you in Yoga lately.” They continued to stare so I added, “I also caught your vanishing act.”
“Hmm. That.” Morgana said, “Well, I am a sorceress. And I felt the class was getting too crowded.”
I nodded and another strained silence followed. The clown pulled a long knife from a sheath that had been tucked into his cutoffs, concealed under the T-shirt.
“You know how good it feels to let the warm water run over your hands on a cold day?” he asked, turning it so that the candlelight from the altar was reflected on its surface. “Well it’s like that with entrails. Very warm and pleasant, but they cool quickly, so you’ve got to get em’ while they’re hot.” He chuckled, licking at the corners of his mouth.
“Not today J.” Morgana said firmly, “Now Emma, you were just dying to talk to me. So let me repeat, I am a sorceress, Morgana Le Fay. I’ve been around since before King Arthur cut his baby teeth. While Merlin’s older, women are always wiser, so why don’t you think of something you’d like to know and ask me about it?”

There is a cathedral on California St. in San Francisco positioned in the district known as Nob Hill. Within that Cathedral there is a labyrinth wherein I met and became acquainted with the infamous Morgana Le Fay.

Whatever you have heard about her, I won’t deny it. I asked her about death while we sat together, she and I and the insane clown. This is what she said:
“Whatever you are doing now, that is what you will do with death. If you cannot now face the REAL you will not be able to then. Eternity is not a very long time. Eternity exists beyond time. We can access it in this moment if we choose to recognize it. You have already died a thousand small deaths, undergone a thousand tiny transformations through the course of this lifetime. You will undergo thousands more. You know perfectly well about death, you are simply in denial. You exist in denial of the eternal and that experience is what you call life. It takes no effort to awaken to eternity, you must simply stop making efforts to deny it.”
As she spoke the clown ran the flat surface of the knife over my cheek and under my chin, just barely avoiding pressing the cutting edge against my throat. When she fell silent he said,
“Do you understand?”
Wide eyed, I nodded.
“Good!” he exclaimed, tongue flicking, “Now we can do something I’ve been wanting to do!”
He drew a line in the air, just millimeters from my flesh with the tip of the knife, a line from my chin to my bellybutton, grinning savagely. Then, with the other hand he slid something from behind his back along the smooth floor making a scraping sound.
It was a gorgeous chocolate cake. Brutally he plunged the knife into its center and cut three slices, laughing hysterically all the while. Morgana produced plates and forks and napkins and bottles of cold seltzer water.
“For his stomach.” she explained as he served the cake, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes with the back of his hand. “He’s really quite sensitive, and the chocolate does him no good at all.”

That One Moment

It was only a moment. A blip in the life of a mechanical clock turning around on itself every 24 hours, a cycle without end. It was only a moment, and yet it hung suspended in time, holding in its wide hands vast amounts of matter and lifetimes, its presence so large that I just let it wash over me like a wave of light, taking my sense of self as I sat still in the moment of eternity that was not the blip of a clock- it was the only now that had ever been, has ever been, will ever be.

The highway climbed up the hill ahead of me into the rising sun, a white hot burst of burning life flowing into yellow and then bleeding bright blue into the receding purple of pre-dawn. I had not seen a sunrise of such intensity for a long time, perhaps ever, for these were new eyes in a new time that didn’t end. The colors sang for me- they dropped their cloaks and stood naked in the day that was forming. I took off the goggles, the layers, the thoughts and gauze, I let it fall as time waited for the soft gaze of truth to emerge.

Light unraveled in a slow, sensuous dance. The world stopped.

Between the highway and the Rio de San Juan was the old governor’s ranch. I watched as it became a fixture in eternity. I held onto its curves with my eyes, feeling the dark blue veil and misty grayish green floating over its ancient stucco walls.

The highway led up to forever. My destiny sat there in the east at the top of the hill, invisible in the blinding white light, yet seen as it hit the middle of my brow; seen from the core of my abdomen; seen as it washed over my head and down my spine. Seen by the part of me that has no eyes, seen as sight melted into every other sense, flowing up and down through me, in and out with my breath.

I floated up into the washing, waving light and looked down at the frail body sitting in the old station wagon beside the motel on the highway. There was a streak of weak light from the stop sign several feet away, the pale yellow and brown crust of a lingering harvest moon.

Past prayers and vague hopes reached through me and shot out into a fearful future and a humbling promise of what was to come. Threads of events flowed around me and filaments of light spread and receded, winding and weaving together in a vision of an arduous journey and precipitous rise. Sounds vibrated melodious and rhythmic in an exhortation to go forward, to be without trappings, to build faithfully. My being melted away and flowed into the vastness of light and shadow, movement and silence.

For that moment, I was no more. I saw the haunting past and the harrowing future, two roads converging into the me that was no longer there. I understood the course a life must take to have what is asked for. The choice had been made, there was no other path. For that moment, I was the colored light, the dry hands that had built the motel, the men on the line assembling the station wagon, that body down there, the trees in the distance, all those that had coasted down the highway and those that never would.

Then there was a blip, a tick of the mechanical clock springing forward. I returned to the confines of the body, feeling my arms and hands once again as my own. Slowly and statically I turned into the motel parking lot. I worked and ate and moved in silence for the rest of the day. I was detached, my movements unreal and mechanical. Fear and doubt grasped at my body at each turn and my mind kept repeating, "take care of what you ask for and have no pride in receiving it.”

Soon I would take that highway out of town, away from the place of childhood and into a world of mystery and misery. Yet that which I received at that one moment as the clock stopped and held time in its hands, that moment in which I traveled out of body and out of time, that has never left me. It strikes again in moments of listlessness when the sun begins to change and the road leads to forever.

Awakening

I awaken, opening my eyes to the bright light streaming through my window. I stay there, resting on my right side as my hands clutch an extra fluffy pillow. My eyes blink, adjusting to the world. I can’t remember any shapes, but I know there were dreams, thick and heavy with shapes I can no longer recall. I have awoken just seconds before the BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! of the alarm. The clock reads 7:59. Just seconds before it will call to me without emotion, like a drill sergeant unaffected by mood or chamber, blaring like a mechanism without compassion in a world of black and white.

But I lay, seconds before the heavy hand. I recognize the shapes- the old wooden chair by the wall, the tan carpet, but something is unfamiliar and I lay still, searching for something. I know this has happened before. I turn my head to the left, then slowly to the right, hoping to a get a sense of purpose…just what am I supposed to do next? On the left side of the bed is a varnished wood table. On its pale, shiny square surface is a vase of dried flowers, crowded with crinkly leaves and old red roses whose heads have drooped as though in shame. Beside the glass vase are two used white candles, their borders a wall of smooth melted white. Close beside is an empty picture frame, a circular silver incense holder surrounded by ash and a brass bell with an engraved handle. Closest to my bed is a soft cover book, its front red and worn. It is the American Book of the Dead.

I turn my body to the right. The bed is pressed beside a white stucco wall, its texture revealing faces and shapes amid its shadows. At eye level are two soul portraits. I look at the paintings, made of simple black lines and framed with a natural wooden border. Staring into the shapes of the soul, I become aware of the complete and utter silence of the room. No creaks, no dull roar of traffic. Absolutely nothing, not even the shrill buzz of silence. Darkness begins to fold in around me, soaking the chamber like spilled ink.

I open my eyes and try to crawl out of bed, though I find I don’t have the strength. My limbs feel like skin without bone, unresponsive to the will of my mind. I look down, the white gown I remember is soaked in bright red blood. It is fresh, still warm. I search within for pain, dig through the folds for fear, but it is missing.

An icy river begins to move though me. I feel it first in my navel, but it spreads like a gentle brook, moving towards my arms and legs at the same time. Ice cold pin pricks find my fingertips, then wrap around my chest, moving like a counterclockwise spiral. My body shakes violently. I hear the percussion of my teeth beating like a dance song.

Out of the darkness, close to the place I remember a window once stood, is a warm inviting white light tinged with yellow. As my eyes begin to focus fully on its waves, I see the shadowed faces of my companions. Dark eyes greet me with smiles.

We are sitting in a circle in a small room. I feel the warmth of the thick white candle in the center of our ring, it washes us in life, in the dance of heat. We close our eyes in unison, and as we do, a voice emerges. It is a single thread, made from our combined pitch and effort, a voice that clearly states in the tone of finality: "I am now dead."

A Moment In This Life

I’m here, in a sea of colors, sharp edges, landscapes and presence. I’m here and I’m away, drifting towards the glass. You’ll see me pressed there like yellow butterflies that, careless with the ecstasy of life, have met death on the highway. There are things rushing by, indifferent to my delicate constitution.
My small shape, growing like salt crystals under the light of a microscope. I never was a big thing. I am a big thing still. I feel trapped, like a bee in a bag, incapable of returning to the hive, confused, so confused by the clear plastic walls of my prison. Try to tell, tiny insignificant me, that my confinement has been orchestrated because I am capable of stinging the children of the dark gods. My punishment is death for the crime of causing some potential pain.
It melts like tiny hailstones between the fingers of a curious child. Tell me why the rain freezes up in the bellies of clouds. Is it because the clouds were cold mothers? Now their children fall to earth stinging the flesh of man beasts, perishing upon impact. One tiny bite as they pass, then they are transformed by this new encounter and become drops of water dribbling down between fingers.
Without knowing the beginning nor the end, I take flight, here, in a sea of colors, sharp edges, landscapes and presence, always here traveling across the universe, the one song, the only song I know yet. A folk musician likely wrote it, a girl with a guitar and a leather headband. Her mother must have looked the same.
Music fools my bag of bones into hypnosis. I’ll dance the dance of the swirling snow and the humming wasps, of the poor, poor butterflies fluttering from flower to flower. Is there something wrong with being alive?
There is something wrong… I feel trapped. There are chains of laziness that won’t let me take flight, thick cords of heavy sleep fastened in all the right places, strings that push me, pull me, make me move, spasmodically, towards the highway.
Death then is the final ringing of the bell. It is; when I count to three you will open your eyes and forget everything which we have just discussed…
If I had been hypnotized, how would I know? How would I ever know? As I take these steps, as the sounds lift my insides to a dance, I can never know. Why? What is happening? Was it because I had a cold mother? Why, why, why do I fall?
Waves of space engulf my senses. I am drowning. See how my mermaid hair reaches up toward a forgotten sun? The gates of reality come rushing to meet me. Without knowing the beginning nor the end, I have come to this place again. I pass beyond the threshold, just as I have before.
Whirling with the dizzy pleasure, I find myself on the highway. I’m here, in a sea of colors, sharp edges, landscapes and presence. I’m here and I’m away, drifting towards the glass. You’ll see me pressed there, growing like salt crystals under the light.
I never was a big thing. I am a big thing still. Trapped like a bee in a bag, incapable of returning to the hive. I am here. And I am away.

Inevitable

The night is dark and the window opens unto only more of the same, blackness. My eyes are open, so open that I can see beyond the room and beyond the green lawn outside the front door and further down the street and around the corner and many miles and many freeways ahead of me.
I see him, in his small chamber. Not a sacred space cultivated by love and attention and smelling of sage and musty sex. I can smell the burnt spoons and the burnt foil and the rotting garbage that is never attended to. I see his hunched form, so pathetically large and small at the same time. I hear the soft buzzing of the single light, how can such a small bulb emit so much energy? How come I can hear it worlds away, here in this small blackened room, my wife next to me sleeping, undisturbed by the vision of a crumbling man. A man alone. A man that weeps without tears.
The burden is mine alone. In the hours before light, while the moon creeps across the sky, I know that he is awake too. I feel his heart racing…racing so fast. Not from lovemaking or any other activity, he has sat on that bed for hours, days perhaps, pissing into jugs when he feels the need. He only moves his hands and arms. From his chest to the plastic bag to the glass tube to the lighter, then back down to his chest as the rush comes over him and takes him on a ride away from sadness and those unstoppable tears and that pain that never seems to quiet down. Those couple of seconds, that buzzing ride, is the only respite he will have until the need comes once again. And it will come. And he will answer.
“RRRIINNNgggggggg!!!!”
I am startled out of thoughts, my wife jumps, grabbing onto me from habit. I walk quickly to my cell phone on the other side of the room, picking it up off the desk. I do not recognize the number.
“Hello?”
I hear an automated voice.
“This is a collect call from a correctional facility. If you wish to accept the charges, please press 1, now.”
I press one. So he is there, he is finally in the place I hoped for him to always avoid. He is not in the filthy chamber I imagined, but in another made of glass and concrete and populated with the cruelest of eyes. Even more decrepit, lacking even more warmth. Truly windowless. This is it. He is there and I listen to his silence, see his brown eyes darting back and forth, looking for my shape and hearing only the buzzing and beeping of an institution and the automatons that inhabit it.
I feel sorrow, pity, and pain. I hear his breath in the phone, it is erratic. Neither of us speak.
Why do I spend so much time, so much energy and attention on my brother’s needs? On his wishes? It is the middle of the night, his dreams take the space of my own. His nightmares fill me. His unconscious shapes and struggles, they hold my eyes open in the darkness. Do I fear his death more than my own? How long have I tried to protect him? From himself…from my visions…from my daydreams…
He is cold and shivering, surrounded by brick walls and with far more enemies than friends. He is trembling, and I know that his trembling is the result of another frightening vision. He has seen the monster. It rushes towards him, and it is terrible and ugly and distorted, but it is his face. His body that has bulged on the top and shrunk at the bottom. He has seen himself, the terrible vision of a man never known. A man that demons calls their servant. I stand right next to him. I watch him and his friends as they are attacked by a group three times their size. I hear the sounds of bones turning to pulp. I hear the soft whistling that accompanies pain.
I feel his fear, his loneliness.
I fall down into a dark abyss. I let myself be consumed in an immense void that seems to open up from within the center of my being.
Death itself roams the rooms of my house, it tramples the green lawn outside, it takes the brother I once had. Fear is upon me. Total fear. My body is a sweaty cage.
He is alone, and he weeps.
I’m escaping…I’m escaping…
“Hello?” he says.
“Yeah, I’m here. I was just thinking about you.”

To Live

To live.
What does it mean?
How do I know that I am alive right now, sitting in my valure sweat pants and patterned cotton shirt, encapsulated within shrinking plaster walls that are closing in to strangle the life out of me?
Is that it? Is it having something to lose which signifies that you may be alive?
Or is it the opposite?
Is knowing that there is nothing to lose a sign that you are for one moment pulsing on the edge like a bird of prey about to disappear into the heights beyond the sun’s glare?
Longing and fear. These are the two symptoms which seem to outline my condition.
So which is it?
Am I alive, or dead, or somewhere between the two; caught in the center of a seesaw: at one end sits chaos struggling to tip the scales against order, but order keeps on fighting back.
Which, if either, is the state where I will be alive?
Or is it here, poised between the two so that I squirm like a worm on the end of a hook that represents the state of living?
What to do then?
I am all the questions.
One leads to another to another to another. The answers themselves are questions and the questions branch into two more contradictory answers.
Everything depends on the logic from which the question sprang.
For example, “Will I go to heaven?” assumes that there is such a place. It also assumes that I can go somewhere other than where I am. It assumes that there is an “I” that can go somewhere and that it stays in some form of manifestation as it travels.
All questions are like this. So often what is true is equally untrue depending on where one is coming from and where one is going to.
Is there something you were supposed to do here? I doubt it.
Better to ask:
“Is there anything that I can do here?”
“Is there anything that I can do here?”
“Is there anything that I can do here?”
“Is there anything that I can do here?”
“Is there…anything… I… can do… here?”
Say it aloud to yourself as many times as you can, not so fast that you become tongue tied, just let it flow in a continuous stream until the words are meaningless as words, they are just a noise like the bubbling of a stream. A sound to be heard if you have ears for hearing.
All of the questions and all of the words are meaningless. I can throw open the front door and find the abyss hanging there, feel the wind blowing in from nowhere and everywhere. If I will just look closely at the squiggly black faces squirming in the deepest recess of my consciousness without fear and without longing, then wouldn’t I be able to tear off my human face and leave it writhing with the rest as I fly away in my truest form, as a nightmare without end, a nightmare that doesn’t see itself as a nightmare?
Only the tiny villagers scrambling below, afraid that I will set their fields ablaze, only they will be able to think and say things such as “Nightmare” while longing for clear blue skies to come out of the future and deliver them from my presence. If that is how they feel, wont I have to devour them to put an end to all their fear and longing and, as they are pushed through the dark and endless passageways of my guts, then maybe they will see through the con that strung them along throughout that experience they called life?
I may be slouched somewhere in an abandoned warehouse, broken needle laying at my side, finding my way through the labyrinthine twists and turns within a dragon’s digestive track, making my way through, as liquid fire devoid of thoughts and moved only by purpose, tracing out the pattern that is a nightmare’s innards.
On the other side of the looking glass, when they see me flying overhead, they rejoice. I bring good fortune, I am wanted, I am loved, I am shining, I am light.
Sitting here, basically comfortable, I am clinically alive. My blood pressure is perfect. There is a necessity to get closer to the edge, to brush finger tips up against those of Death in order to know what life is.
If I am this then you are that, and if I am that then you are this.
It all seems so void of purpose, so ambiguous as to possible meaning.
What is it to be alive and what could I do if I were alive?
Questions born of a particular breed of logic from which more questions will sprout, prong-like into infinity like the branches of an elm or the infinite binary tree.
To live and know that you live.
Such a challenge.

The Missing Key

The lights of the television set blink on and off, the blackness of it all plays a coy game with distorting the colors of simulated life, like electric candies left in the sun and then scorched with the fire of a dragon’s tail. The body below this head has melted, merging and forming dots and punctuative lines within the paisley pattern of the soft couch. The talking heads fill the room with chatter…flu, swine, death, couch, eat, sleep, crash, die, killer, prison, money, pirate, education, their words are littered in marketing code and the insinuation of the black unknown.
Blue masks litter the streets of this declining city, the dying leak their blood in hospitals designed to repackage the sick, shrink wrapped and ready for the ground. I watch in silent sadness, an observer outside the cycle. I watch through the blinking lens. The smell of ammonia reaches me, here, in this room miles away. The memory touches the edges of my mind, the corners of my disdain, yellowed eyes, labored breath, wrinkled hands. The plight of those ones, those lifeless forms of vanished memory and forgotten hopes. I see them coming with the buckets of bleach and old worn mops, but their labor does not erase the news.
He takes his last breath, I fill my lungs for the last time. Does he watch me? Do I watch him? Are we there together, hands grasped in cold defiance? Flickering lights try their best to disguise the pain, the talking heads try like titans to cleanse the story with lipstick and wide smiles and fast moving frames, and I watch, feeling sad and open and a little curious to taste the new beverage that holds the promise of a new breath.
And is it me or him that is on that bed? This couch does little to remind me and the paisley has wormed its way into the bloodstream of a young girl, showering her in psychedelic DNA and visions of a yellow field. And when the killer bees stop flying and drop like pieces of striped snow, when the falling pop star loses her mind and finally takes the plunge from the balcony six stories up, and when it is all silent and the tv flickers with a code from the great beyond that we have truly been together all along, then there will be no need for the discourse and the dramatic videos or the people who wait in the desert for their gods.
It will all end and we will know that there is no other. The other has been inside, waiting for us to remember. And just when I see, when the inscription on the gravestone rings with the light of clarity, and my eyes open with the awe of a baby seeing his first rainbow, then, the breath will rattle like the end of a song and I will stand at the entrance of a long tunnel that smells of earth and sky.
And the time here truly is short and my body feels that now, with the weight of a thousand lifetimes spun into the thread that I wear around my breasts. The music here is clear and white and then the notes disappear and an even fuller spectrum of sounds emerge that blend like a well orchestrated symphony of noise into a continuous drone that fills the sky. And my mind rings with vibrations and my body beats to the rhythm of a full, pure orgasm of sound.
And then there is nothing on the flickering screen, it dances in white and black and its message is still the same. Will I then rest? Will the breath bring with it the urge to cry? Coming like a deep sea goddess riding a mountainous green wave, riding from the place behind the flat screen. Will I dig through the sand of my mind, digging, combing, looking for anything to fill the void, for a grain to quiet the pounding drums. Have I left something back there? Back where the cities crumble and the dogs bark. Have I forgotten the detail, the way to unlock the door? Maybe he’s waiting behind the large wooden door. Waiting naked and alone.
He waits in suspended time, his body aglow from light that connects like a string to every planet and sun, light that is married to swimming mermaids in the sky and the wide-hipped fire dancers below. He is there, waiting for my last breath. The moment that he will take my hands and take my voice and in return, grant me travel down the tunnels of light and dark.
The screen flickers, is it my turn? My heart is leaping and my knees refuse to bend. Is this it? The last moment of matter, the fleeting cry of a bird streaks through me like a siren of energy. I am on a bed. I watch myself on the screen. My hair, it is all but gone, my cheeks are cored green apples. Behind me is the world of sunsets and lost cats. The tunnels await my entry. I watch myself from a corner in the living room, the channel cannot be changed. I see the future through the screen, the old me is waiting, waiting for the past to melt with future.
I watch my final breath. I watch my final thought drift like a bit of sound on an Irish jig. The screen blinks with its answers. I see it coming. But air still enters and I fall to the ground, digging for the key.