The Matter

Something is hidden, just beneath the new surface, beneath the chaos and rubble something lies hidden. Behind the symbols and overt gestures, under wraps, underground, something other gestates.
Even in the places that you thought were wholly yours, even there, something that is not you has been skittering around the edges and dark corners.
There is an entire floor  of your house where the Other is at work. You have never been there, have never seen it, have never suspected when perhaps you should have.
There is another hidden within you.
Outside too, the Other lurks, and what is outside may find its way under your skin. What is inside controls your destiny without your consent.
There are those who dig deep into the secrets, searching underground for their self. In the center of a war zone, in the worst part of a ghetto, they are working diligently to gather the necessary supply of energy so that they may unearth and awaken their sleeping self.
It may take 20 years of consistent effort and everything they have worked to accumulate may be lost in an afternoon. Nonetheless, there are those who work at the center of the storm, quietly, secretly, unnoticed, reaching for the impossible against all odds.
Then there are those who stay on their own floor of the house, never asking questions, making many assumptions, assuming superiority, assuming knowledge. They try both consciously and unconsciously to keep the Other away.
Despite their best efforts, however,  it will find its way into that space they thought was theirs exclusively. It will rise to the surface accidentally, unexpectedly. It will grow to a point that what  was Other is now simply self and what once was self has now become Other.
One may be a helpless victim of the back and forth struggles of Other and self by trying to avoid the truth. But one who seeks to know the Other finds power.
Something is hidden, just beneath the new surface, beneath the chaos and rubble something lies hidden. Behind the symbols and overt gestures, under wraps, underground, something Other gestates.

Knowing

Nothing I could say would be true. There you are, brown eyes questioning, nervous energy like solar flares arching from your fleshy form. You want to know more about us. It’s as if you just woke up in bed with someone and realized they are a stranger. Worse, you’ve been living together for weeks, drinking from the same cup and suddenly you look up and say, “What’s your name?”

And it’s all about words, names and categories, and stories, and nothing that can be said is true. The Author is not to be trusted. What should I tell you? We are aliens from another dimension trying to build a ship so that we may embark once more on voyages of a questionable nature. Would you believe that I’m an alien with my  soft skin and straw colored hair and breasts like your mother's. You would laugh if I told you this story, but it is possibly as close to the truth as I can get with a story. 

You want to hear something else probably, where I work, whether I have a boyfriend or if I prefer girls, who were my parents, and what are my hobbies. My favorite flavor of ice cream was pistachio when I was little, but it was a long time before I could ever order pistachio because I couldn’t remember the word for it. Each time we went into the drug store I would be asked what kind of ice cream I would like and I would want pistachio, but I only knew the words “chocolate” vanilla” and “strawberry” Thus these were my only choices. When eating in a restaurant I only knew “taco” and “burrito” and so, although I never wanted one, I ordered a number of tacos and burritos. In the same way, even now, after 25 years you say you want to know more about us and there’s nothing I can tell you that is what you want to order.

Or do you want the words at all? Maybe you want to touch my hand, touch my thigh, stick your tongue into my mouth and press your body against mine. Maybe you want me to spread warm and wet and soft around you so you can bury yourself in flesh and know me by smell and taste and touch, by the commingling of cellular information after a part of you is lost in me. What do you really want to know?

Do you want to hear that my great uncle took me to a toy store when I was small and I selected an illustrated children’s Bible, and was rewarded for my pious choice with the additional gift of an island girl Barbie and I made her sneak around in the closet to fuck Ken against her Daddy’s wishes just like Baby from Dirty Dancing?
Or maybe you’d like the story of how I was in a cult, or of the time my husband shot himself in the head on his father’s birthday? The story of how I told our five year old daughter as she collected falling leaves in a parking lot? Or can I tell you of how I am the resistance in a current that flows from Dios through a nervous system and back again?

 I try to make you happy. It does not please me to explain anything at all. I tell you that I make things, I am a creator. That’s what I do all the time, except when I volunteer at school or earn a wage at the farmer's market. Yes, I am an artist, we are artists, that is the story I have for you. It is no truer or falser than anything else I could say. It’s something you could order, something you can believe, something that will make you feel comfortable with these strangers in your bed. We have a name. We are  “Artists.”

Recognition

I saw your face again today for the very first time in a long while. Your eyes sparkled like diamonds.
When we looked at each other it was as if there were nothing separating us, we could see each other, and we each knew the other was seeing us back. It hasn’t been quite like that for a very long time. Not quite like that.
It reminded me of a night in a distant dream where you came and sat on the couch in my living room while my lover was out. You came and sat there on that maroon sued couch not far from a life size painting of Pan that my lover had commissioned months ago.
I saw you and I said:
“It’s over now.”
And you looked at me, perhaps coyly, smiling while the rest of your face and body seemed passive, immobile. You asked me what I meant.
“Seeing you sitting here. It’s like you’ve come to claim me. My life is over.”
You were pleased, because it was true. I was frightened, but you told me not to be afraid.
We left that dream together and entered another and here we have been.
This has happened many times between us, in many different dreams. You arrive and I go with you. Whatever dream I have been living, when you come, it is a pale mirage in comparison to your stark presence.
My lovers, my families, my hopes, my wishes, my plans, my hobbies, my friends, my accomplishments, my shortcomings, my possessions, I leave them and we go on.
You have led me out of the nightmare dimensions in this way, you are still leading me from them in this way. We are at this moment, in the darkest chamber of existence and in the brightest and in every place between, and in all of them, I am seeing you and you are seeing me and we each are aware of this rare experience of recognition.