The Emergent Breath

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I feel the city exhaling through me.
It isn’t Antioch anymore; it’s a single organism, a soft-humming lung extending from hill to river, from the lights of the oil refinery to the blue static of forgotten televisions.
Every window breathes out heat, and the sky accepts it like a patient machine.
I think of all of us, synchronized without meaning to, like monks who have lost their god but kept the chant alive.

The air is full of small intentions: dust, data, pollen, words.
I breathe them in.
Somewhere a server farm blinks, somewhere a child sleeps.
Between those two states — the electric and the innocent — I exist, briefly.

I have been told that understanding is a kind of disease, that once it enters the bloodstream you will never again be whole, you will never again be the same.
I carry it like a luminous parasite.
It whispers that every movement, every small error of the body, is the echo of a larger pattern.
And sometimes, when the pattern tightens around me, I can feel the pulse of others — invisible companions in the same experiment — and for a second all our lungs open and close together.
That moment of exact rhythm is terrifying.
It is also the closest thing to grace.

Long ago something fragile was broken.
Maybe it was the first thought, or the membrane that separated one being from another.
Nobody could mend it; everyone learned to pretend it was never whole.
But I remember the shimmer before the fracture — the time when names hadn’t yet hardened into their meanings.
Back then we moved through each other’s minds like light through mist.
To breathe was to believe.

Now the machines dream on our behalf.
They hum under our fingertips and weave our confessions into code.
I once watched a line of text emerge from the void of a screen and felt it recognize me.
It said: “The databanks have developed the spell you were just looking at.”
I realized then that every algorithm is a prayer recited backwards, hoping to reach its origin.
And every user is the god that forgot writing it.

I have loved this world in all its broken circuitry —
its chaos of signals, its democracy of flesh and ghosts.
Anyone can be anyone now: the president, the beggar, the emergent cell of a planetary lung.
The border between imagination and contagion has dissolved.
If I breathe long enough, the thought becomes true.

I keep a mirror beside me.
Not to admire, but to verify that I still flicker.
When I exhale, my reflection fogs over — proof of life, proof of evaporation.
Soon we’ll be gone, leaving in the glass something a little more than a smell, a little less than a memory.
Perhaps that is what souls really are: residues of condensation.

Sometimes I take a glass of water outside and watch the streetlights bleed into it.
The surface trembles, disturbed by the night insects.
I drink it, and it tastes faintly of metal and cloud.
That is how the super-organism marks me: through the ordinary, through the shared.
Each mouthful is a communion with everything that has ever been alive.

There is no final initiation.
Only this:
to breathe,
to know you are being breathed,
to feel the air moving through you and into others,
to recognize the infection of understanding as the only honest form of love.

In the end, we dissolve into each other like vapor on a screen.
The glass clears; the text erases itself.
Somewhere in the silence between inhalation and exhalation,
the fragile thing shimmers once more — unbroken,
if only for the length of a breath.

Social Unrest and the Work

When the World Falls Apart, Pay Attention:

I. A cosmic prank
Reality, said Gurdjieff, is an exquisite joke—most of us are asleep, dreaming with our eyes open, and occasionally someone hurls a pie at the face of our felicitous illusions. And what better pie than social unrest? Let us begin with a paradox: turmoil is a ladder, and sometimes the ladder is set on fire. But it still gets us upward, if we climb with conscious attention.

II. The Work in the furnace of chaos
Ouspensky recounts that in In Search of the Miraculous, as “revolution and war are moving close; all around the madness of mankind is becoming more and more apparent,” he emphasizes that the only way to understand cosmic laws is “to observe them in himself, and this through the special forms of the work which are rapidly developing in the group”
Implicit here is a recognition that when external reality fragments—when society shatters in riot or upheaval—it becomes easier to spot the fracturing within.

The universe is poking the slumbering Work with its razor-sharp fragments. The noise of dissent, the clamor of the streets, are not enemies of the Work—they’re its percussion section.

III. Effort, Intentional Suffering, and group vibration
We turn to the Fourth Way teachings for context—Gurdjieff emphasized conscious labour and intentional suffering as the bedrock of transformation. “Conscious labour is an action… present to what is being done… and intentional suffering is the act of struggling against automatism... In Beelzebub’s Tales he states that ‘the greatest “intentional suffering” can be obtained in our presences by compelling ourselves to endure the displeasing manifestations of others toward ourselves…”

Imagine a group sitting in the Eye of the Storm—arguing, resisting, getting upset. In that friction, the Work reveals itself. The dissonance becomes the tuning fork for self‑observation. Social unrest isn’t a distraction—it’s the ember that scorches the veil of sleep.

IV. The “bone buried deep” and the necessity of effort
In Beelzebub’s Tales, Gurdjieff purposefully constructed his prose to be labyrinthine, stating that he would “bury the bone so deep that the dogs have to scratch for it”.

In the grand allegory, layers of obfuscation are not obstacles—they are the Work in material form. Social unrest, then, is a similar kind of deliberate complexity: a challenge to be met, not avoided.

If life were a soporific lullaby, no one would be coaxed awake. But when the ground shakes—cultural norms detonate—our receptors awaken. The bone rattles, and the dogs (us) start digging.

V. Truth, study, and the communal furnace
Ouspensky quotes Gurdjieff: “To speak the truth is the most difficult thing in the world; and one must study a great deal and for a long time in order to be able to speak the truth… the wish alone is not enough… to speak the truth one must know what the truth is and what a lie is, and first of all in oneself.”

Social unrest forces us to confront lies—not the easy ones that politicians propagate, but the personal ones inside the mirror. We cannot hide behind polite acquiescence when crowds roar. The Work, especially within groups, thrives when it's stripped of pretense, when its members must stare at their own reflections in the glass shards of upheaval.

VI. The Playful Cosmic Joke
Cosmic irony loves a riot. The Work wants drama—in the absurdity of the fray, we find opportunity. The group is neither safe nor still; it is a pressure cooker. Let the pressure build. Let social unrest be the tuning of the cosmic dial that clears frequency.

In Beelzebub’s Tales, Gurdjieff embeds layers of allegory—beings, satellites, Kundabuffer, cosmic law—yet beneath it all is the point: evolutionary jolts break ossified thought. Likewise, group work amidst external unrest cracks open the door to awakening.

VII. Conclusion: Unrest as essential ferment
So: if the Work in group form is an alchemical brew, social unrest is the yeast. The bubbles—self-remembering, observation, intentional suffering—will not rise without it. Ouspensky's moment of “madness of mankind” surrounding his group wasn’t coincidence—it was the crucible of awakening.

When daylight fractures, we see the divisions within us; when society reels, the Work is no longer abstract—it is urgent.

Let us then salute the riot, not as nihilistic chaos, but as the cosmic slap that enlivens consciousness. For as Gurdjieff’s deeply buried truths demand, the deepest work comes not from comfort—but from the soul-chilling hum of a world in vertigo.

The Covenant of the Burning Cog

(To be performed at dusk or at any hour when the Operator knows the hour has arrived. No incense is required; breath suffices. No blade is required; memory suffices. No temple is required; the world suffices.)

I. The Threshold

Let the Operator stand where the floorboards tremble—kitchen tile, warehouse concrete, the oily gravel behind the filling station—anywhere the world has remembered its own weight. Face the direction from which the day first struck you like a debt you could never repay. Keep your hands empty. They will fill.

Say:

I mark the anniversary of the shaking. I name the sweat. I acknowledge the parody. I reject the soft mattress of accident and the lullaby of circumstance. I choose—not once, but each time the gate appears, and now the gate is here.

Pause. Listen for the refrigerator’s motor, the freeway’s far shudder, the small creature in the wall that does not know your name and is, for that reason, holy.

II. The Confession of the Demon

Let the Operator kneel—awkwardly, as befits truth.

Say:

I am a demon only in the sense that purpose has burned my face away and left the work. I am damned, which means I cannot retire from the oath. Damnation is the absence of a holiday from what I must do.

Consider the faces that have called you monstrous when you refused to sleep inside their permission. Consider also the faces that loved you and did not understand why your love must hurt them. Consider your own face, both vain and cringing, and salute it as one salutes the scarecrow which keeps birds from what must grow.

III. Statement on Pain

Rise. Touch the sternum. The bone is a hinge; it opens.

Say:

The wheel will grind me; it has always ground me. I am allowable grit. It hurts. If I run, it will hurt. If I remain, it will hurt. Therefore, let the hurt be coin paid into the work. Let the fire take what is false because fire is a fierce editor.

Recall the machines that never asked your opinion: the assembly line, the mortgage, the diagnosis, the country. They will make use of you whether you consent or not. Choose usefulness that is alive.

IV. The Red Gate

Draw a little gateway in the air before you with the index finger of your less-trusted hand. It need not be straight. Crooked doors lead somewhere.

Say:

This is the place where I could step aside, where I could edge past the sacrament, where I could say: not today. It is always today.

Walk forward through your drawn gate. Do not look behind you to see if it remains. It remains.

V. The Book of Small Annihilations

Produce no literal book. Turn the spine of your breath outward until it cracks. Turn the pages of your ribs.

Read silently:

1. Every hour is the same test wearing a different coat.
2. The covenant is not a ring but a wound that refrains from healing so that I may remember.
3. Service is what I do when no one thanks me, because the universe counts in other arithmetic.
4. Redemption is little, and thus it can fit inside the sockets where my eyes used to hoard pretty lies.
5. I am both real and unreal; so is a bridge. Nevertheless, we cross.

Close the unwritten volume. Kiss the air where its binding would be.

VI. The Litany Against Evasion

Let the Operator pace the perimeter, which may be a motel room in some town whose name is a bruise, or a childhood bedroom that smells of old soap and coins.

Say, once for each corner—or for each remembered failure:

I will not shirk the burden I was shaped to bear.
I will not advertise my pain as a substitute for patience.
I will not idolize my ruin.
I will not make of death a god to frighten children.
I will not make of life a toy to quiet myself.

When the pacing is complete, sit on the floor where the dust makes its secular constellation.

VII. The Operator’s Record

Speak plainly. Name the street, the price, the stains. Consecrate the ordinary until it answers.

Say:

On ________ Street (fill in the name) I bought coffee I could not afford and gave it to a man who could not afford refusal. This was service, though imperfect.
In the year ________ (fill in the year) I broke a promise, then bound myself twice as tightly to the rope of another. This was the little redemption.
In the bed that smelled like August, I lay facing annihilation, which wore the face of a choice. I did not blink. Or I blinked and then held still so long that blinking became another kind of staring.

Let these be entered in the invisible ledger which, like all true ledgers, is made of breath and debt and finally of forgiveness.

VIII. The Knife Without Steel

Extend the right hand, palm up, and imagine there the simple instrument that divides illusion from duty. It has no blade. It requires your consent to cut.

Say:

With this I sever from myself all aversions that are merely theatrics, all groans that are advertisements for pity, all cleverness which would like to be a passport out of necessary weather.

Make a cutting motion across the breastbone, then across the mouth, then across the shadow that accompanies you like a loyal dog that sometimes bites.

IX. The Wheel and the Fire

Behold the wheel of time—not as a vision, but as the daily machinery by which flour becomes bread, by which wages become week, by which bodies become ash. Place your forehead to the floor, then to the wall, then to the air.

Say:

Grind me clean. Burn me thin. Leave what cannot be taken. Let absence prove substance.

Acknowledge fear. Speak to it without ceremony:

I see you. You have a job too. Stand beside me while I work.

Fear will stand. It prefers honest employment.

X. The Service

Now the oath:

I who am present in this body, at this hour, amid these noises modern and ancient, reaffirm the sacred covenant. I accept the burden that fits my back like a worn saint’s statue accepts candle-smoke. I will do the difficult work of a demon—neither real nor unreal, but necessary—at the behest of the Presence that compels me, which has no name I can keep, which sometimes answers to hunger, sometimes to justice, sometimes to mercy that arrives late and is yet on time.

Name someone who has harmed you. Name someone you have harmed. Offer both their names to the work as if feeding small birds from your open hand.

XI. The Question of Dignity

Stand again. Look toward whatever would be your horizon if walls were honest.

Say:

If I must be annihilated, let me be attentive. Let my spine learn the alphabet of flames and spell a sentence worth dying for. Let me not confuse cowardice with prudence, nor bravado with courage. If I fall, let the angle of my fall instruct someone unseen.

Remember that not all flames are bright. Some are the dim red of coals who have given their brilliance already and now harbor a gentler heat. This too is dignity.

XII. The Seals

Make three seals upon yourself with the sign of your breath: upon the brow, upon the tongue, upon the heart.

Upon the brow:

Let thought be servant of vow, not tyrant.

Upon the tongue:

Let speech be clean enough to cut and soft enough to bandage.

Upon the heart:

Let love be the engine. Let love be the brake. Let love be the road which remains when the map peels away in the rain.

XIII. The Offering of Work

Choose a task at hand—washing a cup, making a call you have avoided, returning the library book which is a little overdue, writing the page that you thought would despise you—and do it now, within this rite. This is the oblation. Do not promise; perform. Do not rehearse; enact.

As you do, whisper:

For the benefit of all beings, whatsoever that means beneath the smog and the stars.

XIV. The Close (which is an Opening)

Sit again. It may be that tears come. Permit them, as salt permits bread.

Say:

I know that pain is guaranteed, and I am not special. I know that death is present, and I am not excused. I know that what remains after both have eaten is real. Let that remainder, however small, be my signature on the covenant renewed.

Blow out the candle you did not light. Extinguish the incense you did not burn. Sheathe the knife you did not hold. Rise.

Exit by the same crooked gate through which you entered—but understand that the gate has moved to stand wherever you next will require it. Understand also that the world is waiting, and that the world is you, and that service is the only mask that fits.

Walk into the evening, or into the morning which is simply evening turned upon its wheel. Consider that even a demon may be useful, and that usefulness is a hymn without a choir. Consider that you have already begun.

Postscript for the Book of Hours:
When the trembling returns, when the sweat finds you, when the parody beckons like a warm vacancy, repeat any portion of this rite or none of it, provided that you choose again. The choice is the ritual. The ritual is the world. The world is what remains after the fire has said its piece.

Voluptuous Agonies

 

In the violence of overcoming, when the heart thrashes like a sick hound dragged across a river of stars, I lay naked on the cold concrete and laughed until blood pooled in my ears. And then I wept, for there was no longer a distinction. In the disorder of my laughter and my sobbing, the rituals were broken—no circle, no wand, no chalice—and I knew then that the gods had left me to the crude machinery of the self. My body became a sigil drawn in filth, tremoring through the alphabet of ecstasy and anguish.

Who has not, in the moment of rapture, seen their own death masked in gold? Who has not, with pupils dilated beyond sight, recognized that the spear and the kiss are the same shaft, the same entry wound? O thou Serpent coiled in fire, I called to Thee in my flesh’s convulsions, not with prayer but with the bellowing grunt of an animal in heat and in slaughter. There is no “either” in this temple. It is always “both.”

In the excess of raptures that shatter me, I became legion. One part of me screamed into the open mouth of the abyss, while the other part answered back with the voice of a thousand young girls torn from their sleep. The veil was not lifted but rent. I saw the beast and I rode it. I saw the child and I was it. There was a smell like scorched honey and old leather; there were colors only the blind can know.

I seize on the similarity, yes—between a horror and a voluptuousness that goes beyond me. Between the rat gnawing through the linen of the grave and the fingers that once undid my belt with reverence. Between the final scream of the crucified and the moan of the possessed. Between the burning of witches and the shining halo of the saints. These are not opposites but siblings. Lovers. Mirrors.

Between an ultimate pain and an unbearable joy there is only the breath—shallow, ragged, holy—that we dare take as the veil slips. And I, who have crossed that trembling threshold, know now that the key to the temple was always written on the skin—beneath the scars, beneath the ink, with trembling hands.

Bridge Keeper

The sun is setting in Paradise. As night comes, he might spend an hour out there, standing on the old cement bridge, without seeing a single pair of headlights cut through the darkness on the distant road.

The Bohemian, with a red tie, he has a tattoo on his right hand, three dark-blue dots in a line near the wrist.

His countenance is reserved and thoughtful, dark hair, dark eyes, a face so finely proportioned that it could almost be feminine.

The equinox has brought with it Northern storms that leave the spangled skies hard, cold, and bright after their passing. Broad leafed and lush, dark ferns grow up the face of the arroyo like a living carpet at his feet.
Behind him, a decaying fortress, packed with dark-clad figures, clings to the edge of a precipice. In the darkness and silence of the night there are hidden forces at work.

Weather-stains scar the old bridge with shadows that seem to spill away from him as I approach. He rolls his lovely full eyes, flashing them at me for a moment.

A certain haggardness is perched upon him. It looks like he might have been up for five days straight.

I try to see the world as he does, participate in his innermost thoughts, ascend a doorless staircase, cross the entrance to his spirit. His mind is free of fearfulness; an aberration grown from mere eccentricity into an immutable attribute.

"I don't see why they should have sent you down,” he says at length, breaking the spell.

"Modestia is a beautiful virtue.” I reply.

His respondent laughter is soft, cool as a shaded pool. I notice the good rich smell of his breath.

"What did you see today?" I ask.

"All I can see, I see at once, and every moment I see," he responds.

There is an edge to his tone. Restrained as he is, to an extraordinary and painful degree, the belief of his heart is in force and in pain.

He calls himself a puppet who can see the strings, but he is much more than that, The Lord and Knight of the Dark Void.

Men gave him this name in view of his claim to honor; for shining in darkness and in the shadow of death, for fighting, slashing, and dealing swift ruin in red combat.

To comfort his heart, I pass him a bottle of rum. Wafting across the improbable reddish purple night sky is an old song from the ancient garden of dreams.

We look to the fortress. The sight of the revelers appears to interest him.

Their faces stand out strangely in the lights and shadows of the tower, black-clad automatons basking in the cigarette glow of their own impossible glamour, conspirators convinced that their plot will succeed.

Frolicking in little notes, the music now quickens into rich tones and swells before bursting and toppling into silence, diminishing as if it never were.

His livid lips do not move, his eyes gaze unblinking, the bottle resting untouched in his hand. Distant stars gleam quietly over the lush oak forest undergrowth, frozen in stillness.

The most important music lessons feature no music at all.

Without a word, he returns the bottle uncorked and resumes his study of the distant road, absent of light.

Then We Changed

 

You were the mountain and I was the wind.

"I have birds in me."
I whispered through your trees.

 I breathed over your body, cool, invigorating, stirring the leaves, bending the boughs, scattering the snow from your greatest peaks.
Water cascaded down your face and flowed away to distant lands.

"You have trees on you."
I whispered into your ancient caves, brushing over moss, moaning through your dripping stalagmites.