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.

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.

Spelunking With Papa Bear

"You’ve got to hi de hi, you’ve got to ho de ho, you’ve got to he de he de he, to get along with me!" The old man in the mountain, he wants one thing and the little lady she wants another, but the old man always gets his way because he’s bigger and his beard is longer. He just slaps his big feet around on the cave floor and asks: ”Whatcha gonna do now?" And in a lilting voice she wiggles her hips and says: "I’m gonna do the best I can."
So he chases her round and around through the twinning tunnels that twist through the mountains guts. They run over little bridges that hang over dark abysses, and down paths that grow narrower and narrower and sometimes disappear under pools where pale frogs croak and swim after glow-in-the-dark minnows. They run through hallways were fungi grow on the walls and turn their caps in their direction as they fly past. Just rubbing up against this fungal federation is enough to send the body into shock, it has so much to say in the language of light and so few people come down into the dark to rub it and lick it and listen to its incredible story.
The old man and the little woman squeeze their arms close to their bodies and rush by so that they won’t be drawn into a conversation that could take an eternity and change the course of evolution forever. Whoosh, they whiz through tunnels like hamsters scurrying through plastic tubes. She is always just a step or two ahead, barely defending her lead, and his big hand reaches out, groping the space between them, waiting for the moment to come when she will fall back into his hands.
On they go, deeper and deeper, down staircases that spiral into the earth’s core like a corkscrew. They swing over pits of molten lava and disappear down ramps of bright red adobe. Lucifer is pitching a shovel full of coal into the fire, his tail a-twitching. As they pass, he waves courteously, and grinning, he puts his back into it, heave ho, in goes coal and the flames dance up higher than ever, wiggling their indistinct hips and bosoms.
The heat is intense, and the old man is slowed down just a little bit more than the young woman, so she manages to put a few extra feet between them, but the sweat is running into her eyes and making her hair and dress cling to her body. Squish, with every step the perspiration that has pooled down in their socks is squeezed out under the pressure of a foot to leave little wet prints.
The heat slowly diminishes as they journey through a corridor that slopes steeply uphill. Neither can run at this point, both parties walk huffing and puffing, grabbing onto little roots that protrude from the dirt walls to prevent themselves from loosing their footing and tumbling backwards into the broiling flames behind them. Wheezing and hanging their heads between their legs, they catch their breath when the ground levels out and a colony of little brown rabbits hops by on its way to the surface, brushing up against their ankles as they go, strong bucks, plump does and downy soft little youngster all wrinkling their noses and twitching their ears.
The little woman doesn’t know it, but these rabbits work for the old man, so when she coos, "Oh how cute!”, and reaches down to pet them, they hold perfectly still and act as if they enjoy it, staring up with dewy little eyes that glisten in the darkness. Then, whoosh, the old man leaps forward and catches her by the hair. Still holding on tight, he uses his other hand to pull bunches of baby carrots from his bearskin smock and rewards the bunnies for a job well done. They giggle gleefully and hip hop away.
"Ooooh!" the little lady exclaims in an endearingly angry little voice, sweet on the surface, smoldering at the core. The old man drags her the rest of the way home, singing, "You’ve got to hi de hi, you’ve got to ho de ho, you’ve got to he de he de he, to get along with me!"

The Life Unknowable

What is going on here? What is going on here?
It’s among the biggest discernible patterns, a hostile interplay of forms. The battle to be the only "this", the only channel through which "that" can drink the cosmic nectar. AM vs. FM, Io vs. Juno.
One million died to make this sound. One million sacrificed to Xibalba, to the ghostly pools of the uncreated, so that one could be born to center stage. One most skilled at eliciting the attention of "that". "This" and "that" playing off one another, sending and receiving, creating a circuit in praise of the holy electric. But "this" has a shadow, it’s unborn twin, the dark side of the revered moon. And what if she were permitted to enter the circle? To disturb the holy union of "this" and "that"?
We call this a triangle children. One of the basic geometric shapes, a polygon with three vortices.
It holds more ppppppppppppower.
Please, do get your mind out of the gutter, not every triangle is merely two or three dimensional. Of course they are all related.
But you know, those anarchists, they will not stop at triangles, oh no, they have no scruples whatsoever. They would have "this" and "that" admitting every denied bit of nothing verging on something, creating indiscernible patterns pulsing with the wine of ages. This of course is the end of life as we know it. This is Chaos, Noise, The Life Unknowable.
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.
Jealous Gods will not want to open their neighborhood to the other schizophrenic whispers rustling by in the abyss. It is too much to face their nature, so long forgotten, exiled to spare one the agony of being a million.
Who will die for our sins? Who will die for our sins? Who will die for our sins?