Union

Tell me, little electric pulses that take the shape of white letters on a liquid crystal screen, tell me what I do not know about myself, about you, about us. I have gone around turning up stones since I was a little girl, turning up stones not just to see what lies and lives beneath them, but to reach down with lightening quick fingers to catch what has been unearthed and press it to my lip, lick it with my tongue, and drop it into that cavern that is my mouth so that I can eat it up, letting it wriggle down my throat with all its crawly legs. This is how I have forged a relationship with that which is beyond the surface of my skin; I welcome it in. Answers bear no weight with me. Questions are only useful if they draw me into a real encounter with something that I am not. Something that I am not until it has found its way inside of me, then I am. I am without sorrow or regret my own worst nightmares, those things that I found brooding in the darkest depths of my psyche. I opened me up and looked in on what was there, then beckoned with a welcoming finger,
"Come here you strange obscene things. Come here and let me eat you. You will like it, I promise, it feels so good to be digested rather than shoved off the plate. Let me try you, you will see, it feels so good when you are me."
One night death came in and sat on my roommates couch in a black denim jacket. I sat cross legged on the floor, criss cross apple sauce Indian style with a nervous smile. Looking upon its pale grinning visage I said:
"It’s all over now that you are here. I understand that." And I spread my legs wide and said,
"Come in. Your welcome."
Because, you see, with me the unknown is always welcome, the fierce, the frightening, the unknowable, it’s all quite edible once you’ve acquired a taste for it. Like black licorice, its flavor is distinct and stains your tongue so that others will suspect what you’ve been up to. Yes, yes, it’s an acquired taste, like eating worms or drinking urine and others will be able to smell something on you that isn’t quite right, but most will be willing to ignore the signs which point to your unwholesome appetite. Most will be happy to ignore you completely, in fact, because they wouldn’t care to share or spare a bit of attention, seeing as they have so precious little to begin with and they plan to blow it all on shopping or watching sports.
So you can smell like dog shit and have worms crawling out of your head, and then they will not want to be friends with you, but bless them, they won’t interfere with you. No, they will gladly perfect the art of neglect and let you wander from garbage can to dank dark garbage can where you can extend your hand into the darkness and let your fingers close around something without quite knowing what it is, and then you can pull it up into the light and find that it’s a paper box from a nearby fast food chain, and opening the lid you will discover a half eaten crispy chicken sandwich which you will not hesitate to bite into yourself, right there, on the spot, achieving union with deep fried foul, minus feathers, plus secret sauce and limp yellow lettuce.
You can count on such measures of freedom it you live in a city big enough, if you live in a hot bed of civilization and if you are willing to sleep alone on a cold hard sidewalk beneath a sheet of newspapers. You can find what you don’t know and embrace it if you aren’t afraid of being infected by it, if you have no reserves about becoming something other than what you were just before such a fateful encounter. Those who have such hesitations do not turn up rocks or open mysterious boxes or admit to themselves that they have had dreams about fucking dogs.
Those who want to remain as they imagine they are, with a nickel’s worth of attention left to burn on their favorite diversion, so that they may easily forget those queer dreams and ignore those unusual packages, and dismiss the strange apparitions sitting on their roommate’s sofa, will be just fine. They are free not to explore. I am allowed, even encouraged not to notice the creepy crawly things that live in my head, the heads of others or under stones.
However, I choose to embrace self knowledge without conditions, which means that I will change shapes. Oh yes I will. And you may look at these little symbols blazing on a liquid crystal screen, and eat the forbidden knowledge I have pressed to your lips without ever suspecting that you are in fact eating me. (Unless of course I mention it…) If what I have just said about myself, about you, and about us, manages to wriggle down your throat like a slimy green alligator’s tongue, you may find that it will change you too. That is the magick of union, my love. That is what I offer you now.