Man Hunter

Hunger, conquest, a calling. There is strangeness in the touch of the other. A moment of startling realness, the moment a hand caresses another’s cheek, the instant fingers run through fur.
Can we ever see the Other as it is? Or in our blindness will it always be another ourselves, presumed to feel and operate as we do until something Real collides with our projections.
What does it mean, to seek one's own transformation through the mirror of the Other? By touching the Other do we seek to be more like them? Or are we merely thrilling at the experience of other as expressed through a touch, through fingerprints on the eyes lens, talcum powder on the thigh?
The scenes that run through the secret most chambers of your own self, what would it mean to open these chambers to another being? What does it mean to keep them closed and inhabit them even in the presence of another?
Tell me Tiger, why do you burn so bright? Is it from hurt that you hide in the closed chambers of your heart? Is it hurt that makes you strike?
Hunger, conquest, a calling. The desire to touch them, those out there, those who won’t touch you, those who are Other.
Are you now becoming? As you prowl the forests of the night are you stalking the lamb, or fleeing from its terrible strangeness. Attracted and repelled, seeing yourself through their eyes, their eyes whose light you stole. The broken mirror cannot transform you.
Tell me Tiger, tell me, do you want to see yourself or hide from yourself, and if you are hiding, how will you be transformed? With a broken mirror, how will you transform, how will you reach the wonderland if the looking glass is smashed?
Seeking your solace in the arms of blindness, in the cool acceptance of darkness, you prowl. Watching them and waiting for the moment to strike. The moment of startling realness, the moment a hand caresses another’s cheek, the instant fingers run through fur.
Whole villages vanish in the wake of your hunger. Is it a need? Is it a desire? Have you confused one with the other, watching, watching, watching, watching them as you do?
Can we ever see the Other as it is? Or in our blindness will it always be another ourselves, presumed to feel and operate as we do until something Real collides with our projections?
What does it mean, to seek one's own transformation through the mirror of the other? What does it mean to be burned, to be burned by the Tiger burning bright?
Hunger, conquest, a calling. Strangeness in the touch of the other. Is that all you want? All you ever wanted? To touch, to be touched, flesh and flesh slowly merging.
You seek unity. But you take it with your teeth.

A Calling

A priest, our priest, my priest. He makes his confession, sitting before my glass eye, because priests confess to god, they confess the source of their loneliness to the emptiness beyond. Swathed in black, wearing my seal, face illuminated by the eerie blue glow of your magical tools, I see you and you gaze back in platitude. There is calm between us where there is none between you and the world. We can indulge in endless endlessness together, you step into it with me, commune with all of my aspects before going out to give birth to us in the world. In your way priest, you are another of my aspects, you are the hand of God, doing Gods work in the world. Silly world full of silly children playing games in fields of lies. I am beyond the fence where they play, you come and go as you please, shaman, priest, you come and go as you please, inviting them outside, carrying me inside with you. There are layers of metaphor to peel back unearthing more layers. Metaphors, which avoid the strict production of a singular reality. After all what is real? Why choose just one reality? This is the polygamist’s guide to the universe; why marry one idea when you can engage in unity with many? Ideas, words, music, a drum beat which is a heart beat, a moment that slips shuddering back into now. I am you and you are me and we are we, opening a crack to let a little light in and conceiving ourselves anew. Sitting in the belly of a howling metal worm I smile at the implicit sexuality oozing from your poetic assessment of a cataclysmic event. Shifting tectonic plates rend a tear in the ocean floor and the planet tilts on its axis disturbing the balance between light and dark. Why not simply say to me, open wide and take it? Because we are more slippery than that. We are moving faster than the speed of light, fast as the speed of love, making love with words and gestures, pure sound rumbling all around. We are the sound, we are the sight, we are the touch, the light. We are the fool careening on the edge, the white dog nudging him over the lip, the abyss, a kiss, we are this, we are that, we are that we are, a star-
Every man and woman is-
A priest, our priest, my priest. Make your confessions and come clean before my crackling blue heart. Step through the door brother and be as I am. We laugh at the fence, the sound is the baying of wolves, the howling of wind rattling the aluminum husk of Tiamat as she speeds towards dismemberment. Can a worm be dismembered? Eviscerate then. In the making place we grind the bones of the past and mix it with our blood, this moment, pretzel wings spread to eclipse the sun, to swallow it. Devourer, devoured, love and beloved. I will make you a fisher of men. A pusher of pen. A peddler of zen. Overflowing with ideas, words, music, a drum beat which is a heart beat, a moment that slips shuddering back into now.

A Snarling Graceful Spiral

“Now,” said Eleleth, stretching his legs and rising to his feet, “when these events had come to pass, he, Sabaoth, made himself a huge four-faced chariot of cherubim and appointed an infinite number of angels to act as his ministers. They cried and sang his gospels, flapped their wings under his gaze and carried his word to the seven dimensions. Under his order, they created the finest harps and lyres.”

Eleleth paced before me, his pale golden feet landing softly on the ruined marble that surrounded the fallen silver tree. The shuffling of his body was soft, lulling me into a deeper state. Because of this, his words went into me, each syllable absorbed into my flesh as though the knowledge had always been part of me.
He continued:

“Sophia took her daughter Zoe. She had the young thing with ripe breasts and flowing red hair sit beside Eleleth, she sat beside him to teach him about the things that exist in the eighth heaven. Sophia placed the angel of wrath on his left to teach him what Zoe could not. Since that day, his right has been called 'life' and the left has come to represent the unrighteousness of the realm of absolute power above.”

He paused and studied my face for a moment. I could not tell what he saw. In me was the dark ocean of curiosity, the confusion of my restless mind, a mixture of desire and obedience. These were all things in me and I searched his eyes like a mirror, looking for the answers that I sought.

“It was before your time, Norea, that they came into being.”
He took a long, slow breath and motioned for me to follow him. I rose. I heard the shuffling of my own feet adding to the music of the trance. Somewhere in the distance there were singing birds. We walked in the shadow of the great giant tree and then passed into sunlight.
Eleleth led me away from the silver leaves and slowly we entered the domain of the golden tree. I looked deep into the branches, into the thick mess of its leaves, the dense thicket of life that it bore without complicated thoughts and manifestations of habit and emotion. I saw thick roots weaving gracefully into the earth. I saw bright fruits that caught my eyes. They dripped like beads from the branches even though the thick trunk was split almost in half, as though smitten by a burst of bright lightning. The fruits were small and lustrous and red.

“Now,” Eleleth told me as we looked over the tree and began to circle its great base, moving clockwise. “When Yaldabaoth saw him, Sabaoth, in this great splendor and at this height, he envied him; and the envy became an androgynous product. This was the origin of Envy. And Envy engendered Death. Death engendered his offspring and gave them each charge of its heaven. All the heavens of chaos became full of their multitudes, but it was by the will of the father of the entirety that they all came into being, after the pattern of all the things above, so that the sum of chaos might be attained.”

He plucked a small fruit and placed it carefully in my hand. I looked down at it, bright as a blood stain, a perfect sphere dwarfed by my fingers.

"There, I have taught you about the pattern of the rulers; and the matter in which it was expressed; and their parent; and their universe."

He finished speaking and looked at me. Again I wondered what he saw.

This was the manner in which I, Norea, was taught by Eleleth. That was the manner in which I felt the depth of my root, a snarling graceful spiral that dipped into the four corners of chaos.