Walker on White

All the birdies sing for me because I am a golden child born of winter morning and an endless spring of the heart.
Do you see her long flowing robes of silver, the sterling furs, the crown of antlers? My mother the wild wood has come down to dance for my birthday and silver moons shiver off her undulating belly, rams frolic at her heels, foxes lick her finger tips and prance into the hollows of ancient trees.
They have music in their cars, I think, and I smile imagining all the lonely people listening to music while they drive. I imagine Oberon noticing their music and then I realize that they are music, that the highway, the sea, the trees, the entire globe and everything shimmering on its skin is music.
What God knows or cares that we call them cars and we believe we are hurrying to important things in them?
No God knows or cares, or no God that I would see worthy of admiration.
The Lingua? Let them take the words from my brain and scatter them like crumbs for the birds. Blue birds, black birds, doves, sparrows let them feed on the remains of a psychotic break as the language bleeds from the artifice formerly known as myself and the Ligua dies and I cease to exist.
Will this be my birthday mother, when you touch my face with long pale fingers and I go black eyed to the mulch and white worms? Will I dance and sing ecstatic as moon eyed coyotes tremble faun-like and drink the dew from your lashes? Will grasshoppers make of me a dress for their bodies and wear me wherever they go? Will I dream animal dreams under a velvety blanket of darkness, the sun setting orange and pink over my brow?
Music in the pulse, in the breath, in the teeth, music without words scattered across the universe in the pulsing of white stars.
I am pushing up delicate green tendrils of life, unnamed, daughter of unnamable. We are all united here in the kingdom of light and dark, dancing our dance.
Do you see her long hair flying like pale streamers to tangle with moths reaching for the moon's pale fire? Do you see her eyes glittering as dark pools where deer lower their heads to drink? Do you see her thus etched out in shapes loaned by the usurper demiurge? Or can you see what I see with eyes like burrows prying into the womb where silky rabbits dream?
I remember human and I laugh. I laugh at hands and eyes and shit, always at shit.
The Sabbath is then over, as my head comes back together and I know the meanings of the sounds that carve a world in my nervous system. Always forgetting what we were and are and will again be only to remember it again when Lingua is once more toppled from his throne.
Does the chick return to the egg? Of course. Capitulate. Fall away, I command it, fall away like leaves of gold and umber from the stark white bodies of trees, oh Lingua.
Come winter bleak, dear winter. I am a walker on the white, two faced, undying shape shifter. A golden child born of a winter morning and an eternal spring of the heart.
Cup my waters in your hand and touch them to your lips if you would join us in the kingdom forever. And on my right hand sits brother Michael and on the left Uriel, for about me flames the pentagram and in its center stands the six rayed star.
Etched in the lego of our entrapment, but building freely. Cracking the world's shell and building it again.
I will return. But which is the coming and which is the going is not mine to know.

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.

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.

Kallisti

I don’t reject anything, is what the poet said, and in that spirit I could not say no one more time. Maybe a thousand times before I did send it away, sweetness, warmth, cinnamon warmth flowing from the wrong fountain. Not because I did not want it, but because I could not accept.
What right does a marionette have to make decisions?
No right at all. No, no, no, no; like the petals of a flower surrounding a heart of yes. Maybe a thousand times before, but this one time I grabbed my own strings and yanked back, “YES!”
Mystic moon white wine sipped from a plastic cup as was done by our fore brothers and sisters, hiding in smoky back rooms, in caves in the deserts, in tents, in fancy compounds, where else? Where else?
What is that substance that flows clear and pure like water from heart to heart? It’s so pure, so pure we don’t have to boil it, just drink it, the substance of life.
I myself am the life. My biological manifestation is composed of more than 80% mystic moon white wine just as yours and yours and yours is. All of ours is, ever since we split apart and crawled from the seas.
What did we want two legs for anyway?
Where else? “YES!”
It’s a little hard to stay in one solid piece as we heat up, expanding, ah, ah, ah. It’s a little hard to reject anything as we ascend up those sinews, those effervescent spider threads that have been jerking our little wooden arms and legs without a pilot. We wanted to be real boys and girls so we invoked the blue fairy who cast her fine dust of sparkling sleep over our eyes so that we wouldn’t notice our wooden dispositions.
Sweet accommodating fairy gives you what you ask for, now, then, always. Call her what you will, she is eternal, star-spun, pun-struck , palpable and pin-stuck.
And now we move up, and up and up, against gravity. And as we do you will want to find a way to come back down. Oh so Newtonian of you. Crowned with the fruit of knowledge upon which is written Kallisti, to the fairest, to the finest, most exalted, unattainable.
To the fairest.
So Newtonian of you to wish to worship here, this way. But I don’t reject anything is what the poet said, won't reject this or that or the other, just this once. I might part the waters and let it pass straight through my wide open heart, but not say, not say, not say no. Be swallowed by the Maestro, but not say no.
We climb the silver mountain using the hair of the fairest as rope. As we wander in this place beyond the beyond, in this realm past hope and fear, we bid you beloved, now appear!
Appear, appear, an apple and a pear, perched perilously up here, up hear and let down your hair, an apple and a pear!
What right does a marionette have to make decisions? No right at all. No, no, no, no; like the petals of a flower surrounding a heart of yes. Maybe a thousand times before, but this one time I grabbed my own strings and yanked back. “YES!”

The Mysterious Engulfs Us

The mysterious engulfs us. There are no answers, or just as true, any answer at all will do. There are no reasons but mind. I can stop myself from doing or speaking occasionally, but my thoughts run through me unbidden, like a horde of unruly children. They make reality in their image. The outside is ruled by that same incessant clamor that dominates and defiles the “would be” sanctuary under the dome of my skull. The shape of my mind calls things to me in secret, without my consent, making of me a sleeping witch, a conjurer of illusions which fool even, and especially, me. The unspoken things die away in the world of endless electronic babble. The things without name or face, lacking these qualities, borrow them from the storehouses of our mind, and when the borrowed guise no longer suits their purpose they vacate the shapes and sounds that once costumed them, and we are left with their empty shells, shells that refer not to their nature, but to our own, as it is from our nature that these shapes were borrowed. The mysterious is forgotten, denied, wrapped in linguistic structures, and when it dares show its face we who have been indoctrinated by THE WORD call that the exception to our rule. But it is the other way around. It is the bugs, the quarks, the exceptions that are in fact the rule. Our brittle fortresses of order will eventually crumble and the hot breathed broken faced real will lumber and slither and dance in, wreaking havoc over our bones and rambling thoughts, thoughts now bodiless, flowing out directionless as they always have, to be absorbed in the icy folds of the real. We are always grasping for answers and peddling them and buying them and clinging to them, but they are only words clung to in desperation. We are hiding from the true answer, the mysterious abyss that looms beyond the constructs of the tongue and the tongue mind wagging furiously as though it could fan off the eternal with its chatter. We have never been free of the mysterious, it was always clinging to us like a skin, but some part of the self recoiled from it and began to spin the great con to hold it at bay. The ones who claim to have answers are liars and artisans of the con. There are no answers. No words that can hold the real absolutely. All that I have experienced has been a play of consciousness. There are no reasons but mind.

Earth

I come from the earth and to the earth I will return. It’s no wonder that I should chase after the horned God of the underworld. I remember springing from the dirt. I come from the land and the land comes from me. I never was, I never will be. And still the grass grows and the worms crawl beneath it’s yellow coat and the earwigs creep into the cracks of the houses that men built. The black widow hides in the cedar. Death resting quietly in the shade, spinning her scattered incoherent web.
My father showing me the creatures of the earth, holding the black widow in his vice grips, calling me to come and look. Frightened, I hover at a distance. He assures me that it’s safe, come closer look at death so that you will know her when you meet her. He shows me her belly with its red hour glass. This is how you will recognize her. Stay away from her, don’t touch her, don’t play with her, and be careful in the dark places, she is there.
Another time he calls me and, when I come, he is holding a brilliant green snake in his hands. Again he tells me to come closer. This time he shows me the beautiful snake glittering in the sun like a length of new garden hose and tells me it won’t hurt me. This is a good snake, it helps the trees to grow. It kills the gophers that nibble their roots. It may bite you if you frighten it, but no great harm will come of that. It is a beautiful snake and I feel happy looking at it in my father’s hands and happier still when he sets it gently down. I laugh excitedly, watching it slither away, disappearing in the green of the grass as though it had never been there.
I come from the earth. I’ve carried it under my fingernails and in my hair. I’ve felt it under my bare feet. Its thorns have buried themselves in my flesh, its barrel thorns and fox burs have embedded themselves in my clothing. I’ve crawled around in its strong wooden arms and plucked its fruits and danced naked over its grassy back. I climbed to the tops of the trees and balanced above the deep dusty green canopy and drank in the sight that surrounded me; blue sky, yellow sun, dull golden grass like a head of blonde hair, the old broken fence of a brown so dark it is nearly black, sloping and falling, letting its planks return to the earth in broken rotted bits, the white house with the red tile roof, tall and proud and frightening and sad and hopeful, the mountains dark and round, mysterious and menacing and inviting.
I knew as I looked around me that I must remember the sight, that it was an important moment to be so high and see it all. I knew it was more beautiful than anything I was ever likely to see again. I knew it, but was at loss as to what should be done with such knowledge. I tried to hold it inside of me, but could feel it slipping even as I grasped at it, like sand through my fingertips, thoughts of school and playmates and my parents in the shape of words formed inside of my mind, washing the sight from my eyes even as I beheld it and, eventually, I climbed back down into the dark shade and silver branches below.
I nursed a black goat with a white star on her forehead from a glass bottle and a smelly rubber nipple and called her baby and watched her grow, the little nubs of her horns slowly working their way up just as the teeth in my own mouth would do from time to time. The goat disliked the smell of the awful rubber nipple and refused to take nourishment until my grandmother took her into her soft wrinkled hands and doused the nipple in milk and insisted, her old steely blue eyes shining mischievously. Then the kid drank and wagged its black nub of a tail and flicked its delicate furred ears.
I remember earth. Even here, sitting in my plaster box over the concrete and asphalt that reaches as far as I can see, I remember the untamed earth. The dirt and insects and serpents and death and horns which push to the surface where once there was nothing. One day I will return to it. I will be home. I sprang from the earth and to the earth I shall return.

The Hands

The real power is at the bottom not at the top. It is in the legs and not in the head, in the South of Egypt and not in the North. It is in the hands of those that pick the cotton and not in the hand that wields the whip. That hand learned to hit because it couldn’t do the work for itself. It was soft and white and weak. It wanted snuff and lace and iced tea. The hand with power wanted song and sex and to nuzzle up to the earth and sigh. That’s where it found its power, pouring out of the black teat of the earth itself, nurturing them and calling them back for more. The hand with the whip is too afraid to go near that teat gushing with the terrible flood of life and death. If it could, it would whip the earth too, and make her bottle the stuff of life and have it pasteurized and sent to them on a conveyor belt. They want to live like pasty white vampires taking by force and making fierce faces like wounded bears. The people who are friends with the dark rich soil and deep wild places don’t have to make faces. They don’t feel afraid. They just accept the elixir of life and drink until they are intoxicated by it and dance with the knowledge of it coursing through their golden veins and finally lie down to sleep without fear of what further dreams may come. Let them come, when they do, the party will begin again, the same party in a new guise. Life and death dancing round and round and taking turns like kind children sharing the swing under the old willow. My turn, now yours, my turn, now yours, my turn, and now yours, that’s what life and death do. The people with the power are the people that live close to this rhythm. They know how to do. They do and the others take. And even this they understand. But when will it be their turn? The white hand would be a day with no end, the abolishment of night and earth and legs for the continued rule of light and sky and head. They don’t want to take turns. They don’t want to share. They don’t want to do. They will whip so that the others do and spend their days in a haze of righteousness. They clutch the whip tight as they rule from above, because even they know: the real power is at the bottom.

We Make Ourselves Every Day

We make ourselves everyday, we make ourselves in our own image. Some of us do it with care, artfully constructing a vehicle for the nameless, some do it sloppily, drowsily, with no attention to that which they are making, like a pimple faced, snot nosed teen in the kitchen of a drive through fast death chain assembling a Whacker burger from the ingredients available in a row of unwholesome white bins.
We make ourselves everyday. Some of us do it with flare. We make ourselves not just once in a day but as many times as we possibly can, in as many mediums as possible. We do it in service to my Lord, a silent black strange thing which cannot be defined as a thing itself. Only our relationship to it might be described, and I describe that relationship to you now with that pair of words, "My Lord", which implies that it is the governing noble force and I the capable hands which act out the will of the creeping chaos, the untamable shadow of the moon, the eternal resident of the underground labyrinth.
We make ourselves every day, in every moment. Some use only their default settings. They make themselves without love, they make themselves without care, they make themselves without attention. These docile little lambs go about chewing their cud and bleating their complaints to one another while the shepherdess, cloaked in black, wielding her curved cane, a cane made in the shape of a hook for snaring an unwitting fish, guides them gently towards the ashen abyss, to the well of lost souls, where they will spin like thin white sheets in the spin cycle as viewed through a little glass portal, twisted and tangled, churning in the dark, their whiteness revealing their great sin; the sin of having made no effort. They will have been, as we say, caught white handed, bleached out by the destroyer, the bone masher, smiling under her hood, edging them on with her boot tip, fastening gleaming brass bells about their necks. Why, I wonder, does she want them so white? So purged of color and variance? So depleted of any nutritious value that you will have to WONDER, is it still bread at all? See how she leads them to pastures which keep their fleeces soft and lovely?
We make ourselves every day, and if we do not do so with vigilance, there will always be another willing to make us for herself. She will prepare us to her taste, tender and undernourished, like calves shut away from sun and slaughtered before they can mature in order to yield a choice piece of veal.
Some have noticed the way that we make ourselves. Some have painted themselves black to escape the butchers block, to flee from Mary’s gently prodding toe, for everywhere that Mary bends the lamb is sure to go… Once painted black we are denied the safety of being bound to the flock. If you are not to her liking…away you go, to fend for yourself, if you will not be what she would make you, (something with salt, pepper, and a parsley garnish). If we make ourselves black, we are our own masters, beholden to none of this well tagged earth.
When you are your own maker then the world will close its doors to you and a cold wind will blow forever over your wretched frame. If you turn your back to Mary, she will make her world impossible for you to get by in. Don’t cross Mary unless you mean it. For those who painted the roses red, it’s off with your head, or into the wild wood, where the hungry wolves roam. Into "la aventura", into the unknown, from whence you will never emerge, because they don’t take our kind in the malt shops of the bountiful manifested world.
Out here in the tangled darkness, where our strange and varied colors mix and bleed together to make midnight soup. Out here where we wild things are, screeching and roaring, wailing and writhing, dreaming and stalking. Out here, where we make ourselves in our own image, in the form of the formless, governed by the boundless, taking shape for the pleasure of it, in service to none but the shadow, the unmade which aches for us to make it. We make ourselves for the hell of it, for the joy of it, to create because if you have not made yourself today, then tonight you will grace Mary’s plate.

Understanding

Among the current crop of three brained beings that make their way across the surface of this ball of flying mud that we currently call home, "understanding" has become the repetition of phrases, the sentence that ends it all by saying it, and saying it in such a way that nothing more need be said. Once such a statement has been spoken, we can sit back and admire it, rolling it around our tongue like a piece of gum that quickly loses its flavor, and say "oh so true", "it is the truth", "now we know it", "and so it is". And in this clear sense of passive satisfaction we can then rest and press our heavy bodies onto the cold floor, let them sink down and push against the unmovable soil that forms the background and the foundation, slide down to the lowest place that we can reach, and then finally say clearly: "I have understood." Feel proud. Feel happy. Write books. Give speeches. Teach, conduct, determine, judge and repeat. Rejoice in the pleasure of your final understanding and plod on with it, like a heavy backpack full of books carried along a sunny beach.
But True Understanding is not heavy, it does not hold the form and sink into fog and rock and endless finality. True Understanding does not pull upon the brakes and bring the effort to a halt, sighing with relief that we have reached the final goal post, that we have crossed the finish line and now arrived at our destination, gasping for breath as we relish our achievement and rest on the wet grass, looking up at the boundless sky.
True Understanding will lift and not press, it will expand and not pull in, it will raise you like a bird, letting you drop away the pressure of so much baggage, so much mass, carried in tiny pockets of linguistic certainty, mathematically digital categories that divide all perception into clearly defined holes and boxes and stacks and files.
Leave the filing to the accountants! Let them have their final balance, their median measurements, their clear definitions and matching totals. Let True Understanding raise you away from the tendrils that pull you back and let it push you up, high, higher, ever higher. And as you rise, forget all claims of firmness, all clear statements of knowledge, all lines that cut and walls that divide.
Let True Understanding become the wings by which you climb ever higher, into subtler and more rarified chambers, where the old words that you had one day clung to become like slippery drops of golden nectar, splashing into black pools of divine tears, fountains of sperm and menstrual blood, all coming together to form a whirlwind of ferocious life, a hurricane of Eternally Unbalanced Glory, away from the tombstones of conclusion, away from the upright banners of final discovery.
In your quest for True Understanding, beware of the Answers. They are death traps placed on the secret path to fool the innocent traveler and the unwary adventurer. Hold onto the questions, and march forward through fire and water and air and earth, through the treacherous twilight landscape of the Labyrinth, through the nightmares of Illusion and the scathing brightness of the Real. Let the effort and the time and the Work and the brilliance coat the questions with unknown metals, indescribable flowers, vibrant color, cutting sound, ever more subtle substances of unknown origin and unknowable destination. Let the questions themselves coalesce into tissue that will sprout the tendrils that will open to texture and skin and cartilage that will emerge as light, as the transdimensional feathers that will extend out from your shoulder blades and lift you into the Endless Night of True Understanding. Brush off the doubts and certainties like mosquitoes that fade away and die as you reach the upper atmospheric heights. Leave the solid vessel behind and fly naked into the endless expanse of Outer Chaos.
Look around you and ask:
Where is my knowledge?
Where is my understanding?
Don’t answer.
Don’t make a move.
Just feel the rising heat and pain and anxiety and wonder.
Just feel the flash of naked unfathomable truth.
Welcome it as your friend, the new friend that will take you to distant places you have never been.
Leave behind your heavy bags and prepare for flight.

It Was Taught Outside : Tanya

"Shall we step into Yesod?"
He nods and says: "Definitely. Right now"
We move together and instantly the world changes. The dark trees swirl around us like a tornado of greenery speckled with flashing lights and high frequency sound. In the center, where we are, there is a sense of quiet and solid stability, a place where we can stand and remain in place, nothing will disturb, nothing will pull us out until such a time comes that we decide to move again. We are together here in this bubble of tranquility, and inside of us, something changes as well. Tears start to flow, but without the added baggage of sentimentality. There is no sadness, no remorse, no desire for the past, only a simple ongoing release, salty currents that run down our faces, down upon our shirts and to the ground.
"So many avenues to travel on…"
"Let’s pick one."
"I choose Tanya."
"Yes, I know."
And we both remain in place while travelling to a far distant place, a place of danger and warmth and chaos, where we lived together and we both knew a shining girl that left her mark on us forever. She was small but not frail, strong but not pushy. Her temper was just enough to be fiery and severe, but not so much that she would lose her simple flowing beauty. Her desire was explosive and apparent, but it was balance by kindness and restraint. She would reach out to us through the gap that separates humans from each other and meet us at the place where we could be met. She would only demand what we could give and nothing else. And she would greet our efforts with a true smile and eyes that pressed almost shut in a burst of soft sincere love and friendship. With just such an explosion of light she must have given herself over to the guerrillas one night, giving her heart, her will and her body to the legendary lost brigade of the hills, and setting in motion the process that would end with her tied up, on her knees, with a soldier pointing a gun at her head. The pain of the bullet bursting through her face and cranium must have been terrible but quick. It was the echo that left her wandering, questioning the nature of what had truly happened and where she was now.
The tears continue and as they flow, our chest is torn apart, our hearts open wide towards each other and the energy flows unimpeded. For the moment, all obstacles have been removed and we become one, here in the cold and darkness, in our temporary space that tonight radiates with a rumbling vibration and the presence of the Others that have always been within us but tonight manifest openly and joyously without any reservation. In the process of invoking Tanya, we have invoked something that is greater than all three of us, and it now surrounds us from all sides.
Her gentle contact and accepting eyes, her rush towards self sacrifice, glorious in itself no matter what the human ramifications or effects, her open and warm embrace, innocent and sexual at once, it all descends on us here and breaks apart our assumptions, our old ways of being and deciding. It reminds us of microscopic knowledge that we have forgotten and which has roamed in the backwaters of our consciousness for years. The very movements of our bodies change and we dance and sing and laugh… while the rushing tears continue… and the forest itself joins in our celebration.
She is here and it is clear that we have learned from her, a subtle non verbal message that can never escape our lips and cannot be transformed into a simple statement, and that, in itself, makes it more Real.
"The Book of Tanya" records the special Jewish teachings of the Hassidic tradition and the Kabbalah. Here, in our own initial attempt at a Kabalistic invocation, we have invoked a shining girl we both knew, and through that memory, we have called forth the living spirit, the same that rushed to us through her eyes with great generosity, the same that moved the hand that recorded the teachings in a book centuries ago, the same that we will now call forth day after day, in the hope that it may once again honor us with its presence.
A spirit that has been named an endless number of times in an endless number of tongues, but which dances nameless in the Eternal chamber that is here before and after words, or ideas, or lips, or sound.

This night we say Tanya.
Not the book.
Not the girl.
Not my memories.
Not the stories.
Not the flesh.
Not the smile.
Not my friend.
Not her hands.
Not my companion.
Not me.

May she visit us often.
May she stay for a while.

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?