Swine

I feel fed on by ravenous crows, a murder of them tearing at my spirit with hungry maws.
At home I make an appetizer plate of it and offer it to my children. Them I wish to feed, but they won't eat.
I return to the town square and they take and trample my gifts under a pretext of civility and general goodness. They tell me what a wonderful job I am doing and ask me for more and more. Then they take it and chew it and spit it out. 
I feel weakened to the marrow afterwards. I keep returning to the village for the benefit of my children, but who benefits from the con of life?
My children like to play with the other children but they don't do the work the townspeople give them. And I spill all of my life blood and effort on the cobblestones in the square, for the benefit of the community, but who is watching for the best interest of my own brood?
What sustenance will they gain if I waste all the nourishment I have to offer on swine and let my offspring be indoctrinated by swine?

Seasons

Some things begin and never end, waiting like an open door, wind pushing bits of broken leaves over the threshold. Time crosses and re-crosses itself and one time lives within another.
This idea of end is a desperate wish for the hurt to stop, for the satanic temple to rise and the world to burn and nothingness, still, cold, and silence, to reign.
But it is a silly idea. When nothingness reigns supreme then we will be that cold silent stillness, and that too will be painful. The end is only skin deep.

Winters come and winters go. Springs too are there and gone. Eternity lives beneath it all, a brilliant burning thing, a crystalline dragon whose scales are the temporal eruptions we think of as ourselves. 
A temporal eruption might be described as having been caused by a short circuit, by a block of some kind followed by an explosion or slow leak, a kink, a tension, that leads to an experience of human consciousness, a desperate attempt to flee from the discomfort of being forever.

Maybe there is a useful opportunity in such eruptions. Should they be avoided? Can they be?
If so should they be allowed? Should they be embraced and utilized?
If I find that I am experiencing such an existence I choose to explore what can be done with it. The knowing of purposes, explanations, justifications for methods and patterns of life is unnecessary, just another means of avoiding the pain of being.

Exploring is difficult active work. It involves channeling the energy of the sleeping serpent beneath the world into this temporal eruption and making creative choices.
There is no mother or father. There is no rule. There is only choice and consequence.
Consequence as in result, not punishment. There is no great punisher. Heaven and hell live here together, they are one state experienced  as either torment or bliss depending on the posture of the subject within the state.
The posture defines the subject. The subject defines the state.

Some things begin and never end, waiting like an open door, wind pushing bits of broken leaves over the threshold. Time crosses and re-crosses itself and one time lives within another.
We will not always be as we seem to be now. The subject changes. The state changes to reflect the subject.
But we will never end. New chamber, new wings, new levels will be forged in a labyrinthine game of pop goes the weasel.
The dragon coiled beneath the world suckles at its tail and burns on and on.
We will never end.

Secret Journeys

I found myself in the street, feet carrying me swiftly along as though with a will of their own, the scent of flowers wafted to my face and tantalized my olfactory senses. I thought at first that I was imagining it, or that somehow it was the quality of my mood. But it soon dawned upon me that the breeze was actually carrying the perfume of roses in bloom, and that I, miraculously, was able to perceive it.
The sky above was a patchwork of blue and thick low clouds being pushed along by the brisk current of air. The sun was warm on my skin and the breeze would brush that warmth away, leaving its own cold touch on my naked arms and face. 

I made my way beyond the street with its smell of fresh tar into the little field where the grass was yellow and short and the trees grew in various sizes. The earth yielded soft beneath my feet, moist pliant earth beneath dry brittle grass.
I spied a strange insect in the path of my footfall and changed course without loosing the rhythm of my step. This happened so quickly that I didn't have time to think of it. It was a reaction from deep within. In fact, I was watching the earth closely as I stepped, avoiding trampling small flowers and other tender live things that had made the effort to push up through the soil.

I came to the pine tree whose trunk split low and sent two arms running  parallel to the ground before they reached up. Another arm rose directly to the sky.
I sat for a moment on one of the low arms and a small insect similar to a bee hovered near my face. I wished it away and stood, but I could hear its buzzing for a while, even though I couldn't see it anymore.
I remained standing under the tree and noticed a small bird standing on the side of the erect pine branch as though defying gravity. I wondered at its tiny claws could grasp the crevices in the bark to hold it in place. Observing it until it flew up into the canopy, I became aware that the entire tree was aflutter with its little brethren plucking insects from under the bark, hopping and flitting from branch to branch and chattering merrily.

I must have stood there for a very long time watching them. Their bodies were small and round, their beaks straight, their feathers a dark gray on top and their bellies a faded dust hue. Their movements were rapid and constant, their voices bright, expressed in short bursts full of conversational tones.
I was so enthralled and still that one eventually nearly landed on my head. Only at the last moment did I stir in surprise and it averted its course as easily as I had altered mine to spare the bug in the grass.
The bug I remembered had stirred, thus catching my eye, and I realized that just as I had seen the bird coming, so the bug had seen me. As my motion alerted the bird to my identity as “not tree”, so had the bug's movement alerted me to its nature as “not grass.”

I thought the birds seemed a bit quieter after that and I thought that perhaps my presence was now inhibiting them. So I bade them a silent farewell and resumed my walking.
My feet lead me back to the concrete sidewalk. As I followed its winding course uphill I spied a different cluster of birds in the shade of a low growing tree.
They were larger than the others and moved at a leisurely pace picking through the fallen leaves in search of grubs and bugs. They spoke to each other less frequently, taking long pauses between statements that were musical and unhurried.
As I drew nearer one or two announced my arrival with increased urgency and they flew up into the tree. A few remained on the earth watching me, one right on the edge of the sidewalk. He remained in place maintaining his air of calm though watching me attentively. As I approached I saw that his belly was a warm orange color and I crooned to him:

“You are so beautiful, what kind of bird are you? Are you a robin? You must be a Robin with a belly like that. You are so pretty.”

He watched me and listened to me.
Soon I was gone, feet returning me to the street. My mind surged forward to home and the walk was over. But the next day I left the house again taking a similar path.

On the street I noticed right away the moisture in everything. The smell of it was refreshing, it was the smell of rain that has yet to fall.
The sky was gray and the air cool but I had on my sweater and felt very comfortable. I breathed deeply that moisture infused air and walked on.
It wasn’t until I was on the sidewalk near the field that I knew I would enter the same way that I had on the previous day. I had intended to stay upon the path but as I neared the field my feet felt called and I stepped unhesitatingly onto the soft earth. I watched my step as I had before, but I felt that I was moving quicker, that my powers of observation were perhaps less keen than on the day before. Nothing that I could see stirred in the grass but I left green things undisturbed.

I made my way into the trees and was greeted by an unwholesome sight: white and beige feathers strewn in mangled heaps. I slowed and took in the signs of a violent struggle, but found no further remains.
There was no way for me to know, but I felt certain that they were owl feathers. It was as if the feathers could whisper to me the truth of their origin to me.
Head swiveling uneasily, I stumbled underneath a pine and realized that the canopy above my head was heavy with a litter of leaves and twigs. This I thought was the owl's nest. Hurriedly I got out from underneath it. There was an unclean feeling beneath those branches. I tried to look into the nest, but it was too high.

With no further interest in lingering in the area I left it behind and ventured to the tree I had visited on the previous day. It was utterly silent. Gone were the chipper little birds that had animated its canopy.
I paused for a moment letting the silence enter me. Then I continued on, taking a detour through some shrubs before re-emerging on the concrete path.
As I approached the hill I saw a man leaning against the rail further up, so I parted ways with the path once more. Tromping up the soft slope, my boot heels sank even deeper than they had in the field. The earth fell away beneath them to cascade downhill. It was necessary to take great strides to gain ground. As I passed  the area where I had seen them, I looked for the robins, but they too were absent.

At the top of the hill I swung my legs one at a time over the rail. I had successfully avoided crossing paths with the stranger and overtook the path several yards above him.
I was careful not to look back at him. His presence was irksome to me, an interference with the sublime solitude. He was to me an agent of the symbolic order, the eyes of the BIG OTHER prying into my secret life.
From the corner of my eye I could see his head turn towards me then away again. I wondered if my presence was to him as his was to me.
Home was in sight now. I let it come to me before I could come to it and the street melted away like spun sugar on the tongue.

Umbrella

An ordered disorderliness; that’s what it makes me think of, that story. The umbrella, dark blue, an inexpensive model, curved plastic handle, had much history. I had left it once in a man’s car. Face white and soft like dough. Old, long silver braid, drowning in nostalgia for a time that almost was, his voice etching out from the perpetual grief of his people, transformed into a blade of flaccid hope. Correct. He trembled once before Alan Ginsberg. I left the umbrella in his car, leaping out against raindrops to tumble down my familiar rabbit hole. A train station, yes. He returned it on a rainy night a week later.
Degrees of separation? None. All of the characters are the same character. I am Alan Ginsberg. An ordered disorderliness.

It was not my umbrella. Like a cat, it lived a secret life before it came to me for comfort. If you feed them, umbrellas come back. They are practical, opportunistic, but not loyal. Yet, as mentioned, they sometimes come back. I was given a small maroon car. Clown car chugging up mountainous road, sea swelling to my right. Pop! Pop! Fizz, fizz. No, no relief, instead a sad play called “Death Of  A Clown Car.” But in her death throes I wrestled a delicate life from her womb, stick-like, melancholic in hue, but certainly the last and best she had to give the world.

What do they eat? Oh, tears, of course. Yours, or Gods, whoever breaks first.

The woman, a political refugee. Black hair, streaks of silver, crimson lips. Artist, professor, maimed architect, aristocrat, poet, latina, communista, intelligentsia, dilettante, withering well over her strange fruit. She held it in her gloved hand, hurrying through storms. From holy names to that car. That car.

What is it with you and doomed idealists? Don’t you like accountants? Postal workers? Security guards? No, no! Not you. You are a gourmand, feasting only on the finest tears! Who weeps more prettily, more passionately than idealists? Vampire, with your frail aluminum skeleton and delicate nylon wing stretched over my head, whispering of transience. Her name? Does it matter? She was friends with Pablo Neruda. Think of me as Pablo. It was her car I wrested the umbrella from, she left it there like an infant in a basket, or a sack of kittens destined for a river.

Why? Why did I do it? The responsibility was too much. It was a burden to carry that thing.

The truth? It crawled in there itself to find it’s way to me. Her tears had become… flat. Mellowed by age, reasonable comfort, and lack of expectation. She never married again, she maintained a healthy social life. Thus prospects for misery were poor. It was time for more tantalizing fare.

Foolishness. All people harbor secret woe twisted round their hearts like razor wire forcing them to wince thus, walk so, and flick their wrists laughing, “I never did mind the little things.” Clowns weep with the most intensity after the lights are dimmed and the grease paint is melting.
You have so much to say about the others. What about you? Stop, pushing on me that way! I’ll open up when I’m good and ready!
(Spoken by the author or the umbrella? Wait, is the author the umbrella?)
There, gently. As you said, inexpensive model, yet look how I’ve weathered (pun intended?) the years. Do you want to know why I like you so much?

No, I’d rather not. This is what makes rainy days gloomy.

Why did you get in that man’s car?

Because it was raining. But look at you now, dancing in the rain. You like it as much as I do.

Had you considered that I meant it metaphorically? It was raining inside of me.

Go on.

What more is there to say? I was, as the song says, crying inside and nobody knew it but me. Nobody could see. Nobody cared.

Just like when you were young.

Yes.

Tell me about that.

It rained a lot then, outside too. I walked home from school alone each day wearing my grandfather's long green coat. He had been in the airforce. I never knew him. The jacket made me feel a little safer. I could imagine that he was somebody who would have cared, that the jacket at least wanted to keep me warm and dry, wanted to protect me. Strangers hurt me every day and there was no one who noticed, no one who would help me.

How old were you?

12. It rained a lot that year. Record precipitation. I walked everyday. No one was home when I got there. There was never a hot dinner. Peanut butter and jelly or swiss cheese with mustard on bread that was mostly air. When they came home they vented their frustrations on me. We had lost our house, this one was a rental in a strange new neighborhood. It had maroon carpeting.

Well, is that all?

Isn’t that enough for now?

I don’t know. Is it? You brought all of this up.

It was Ginsberg, actually.

That’s a creative cop out. Lets be honest. You have projected all of this on to me. You began this dialog and you have disguised it as art, but you are using me (not the other way around as you would have the reader believe.) You are using me to get to the root of your own self.

Self is a transient thing, that is my point. There may be pain in this one life, the trick is not to mind it, not to identify with it, and to do something with it, to literally transform it.

Literally transform it. That was good. I like that. However, I don’t see how any of that supports your opening statement that self is transient.

Well take this text for example. I am the creator, but I keep changing perspectives. As above so below.

Are you really going to go there?

Why not? I knew a man who knew a man who knew Aliester Crowley. I am The Great Beast 666. Occultist, mystic, ceremonial magician, poet, mountaineer-

You copied that from wikipedia. You are a lonely frightened child.

Most of us are. An ordered disorderliness. Always raining. I had always wanted a car to get into, someone to protect me from the rain. A clown? Struggling, open, open, Ah! Here you are. My own blue nylon anathema pulled straight from a flaming blossom, exploding clown car. My heart. Prince charming? A thorn. A blue umbrella with abandonment issues. Degrees of separation? None. Who is practical, opportunistic, but not loyal? All of the characters are the same character. Skeptical? Because I am. In a world of sleepers, skeptical because I am, everyone is dreaming their own dream. Anonymous drops of precipitation. Participation? I am, a storm of organic lethargy, because skeptical. A vortex of desire.

Letters written, letters received, pleas for help, for love, acceptance, tossed from a wooden bridge into a rushing stream below. Young woman, head shaved, two black eyes, smoldering hole where a clown car should be, (Do you mean where a heart should beat?) her umbrella vibrating under the rain's incessant tap, tap, tap. Her journals too, poetry, there is no good in the world, “there let thy bleeding branch atone”, water under the bridge. Hairless, voiceless, always raining maiden. No one is coming to rescue her. Not ever. Not the painter, not the minstrel, not the poet, they will take their turns with her, cracking her bones and sucking the marrow in search of mother the abandoner. (All people harbor secret woe twisted round their hearts like razor wire. Smoldering hole, flaming clown car, vortex of desire.)
“I never did mind the little things.” But the umbrella? What color is it? And will it stay?
IT IS A BLUE UMBRELLA I SAY!
And it will stay, stay, stay.

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.

Kiss The Flowers

Blue bonnet baby nods in the breeze. Tulips for your two lips and pansies like lions lying in wait. This is the garden dear friend, filled with les iris burning in bright violet and yellow like suns, eye scorching suns of squiggling violet and yellow.
I found les iris dear friend, long after the curling poster was torn and crinkled and lost. You wouldn’t believe they were real if you were me and had never seen the real thing before. If you were me you’d think that you’d gone mad, completely, at last, that you were living in a poster, dreaming yourself inside of a painting. These things are real, it seems, or as real as anything else which might not be as real as we like to think.
Dear friend. Dear friend. Did you kiss the flowers? I did not kiss the flowers in the garden, only watched them nod. Much like life, how I only watched life but rarely held it hot and broiling in my bare hands.
Because I was too afraid. I was afraid of getting burned. I was afraid it was too real. Irrevocable.
That was the word I used, after Tomalyn died and I realized I could never take another voice lesson from her again. I had been practicing, preparing for another lesson. Then she died, like Michael died and I thought of them both and said, “Irrevocable.”
But it is life that is irrevocable, is it not? Life which can be played one way, but not all ways, unless you come to the garden, but inevitably you will be cast out and find yourself in just one life. One irrevocable choice. 

That is the trouble that I am having, leaves scattering, reeds rattling, stream babbling, gurgling under the bridge. The trouble that I am having, not knowing whether it is all the same or never the same.
Take you, my dear friend, are you really a “you” or another myself? A fragment of my imagination, colors bleeding, blue bonnet blue, emerald green, violet and yellow.
Did I mention red? Red, I am seeing red and did I mention that I was wearing red when that car hit us? I may have died then. Really, I would like to know, did I die then, or was it really Tomalyn a week later, cancer eating her up.
You said that big fish eat little fish and I was frightened because I had always considered you a slippery old fish. I did not want to be eaten by you. I would rather be the one doing all the eating. I would rather be the cancer it seems, seeing red and growing colder and colder, gorged and alone. Anything not to get burned.

Cronos ate his children didn’t he? Swallowed them all up, except Zeus gave him indigestion, didn’t he? Didn’t he? Dear friend, did your two lips touch the tulips?
I know you never touched the rose, not with your lips, or fingers or even with what you liked to call your poems. I know because I guarded the rose, guarded it fiercely, even hid it from the light so that it closed to sleep, tightly clasped, folded in upon itself, a sleeping beauty, a briar rose.
Did you know that thorns have roses? That thorns draw blood and tears just as roses draw poetry? This is the reason that chaste maidens should be avoided, as well as widows and spinsters, they see red. Like I do.
Do you see red too? Red irrevocable? Searing burning red?

Before I came here I learned the art of  smiling and crying at the same time. I could speak with a steady voice in neutral, almost cheerful tones, my lips curling up at the corners while a tear fled from one eye.
“Why are you crying?” you might ask and I would confess that it just slipped out, that it was accidental, that things were not properly sealed.
“Are you sad?” you might ask and I would shake my head, even say no, and it wouldn’t quite be lying because by then I knew I couldn’t be sad, I couldn’t be anything at all. Sorrow or happiness might pass through, but there would never be one permanent resident to fill the blank behind the words “I am…”
I was subject to a number of transient states. In addition to conflicting emotions vying for possession of the rose, a number of conflicting agendas might also be present, swirling about the sleeping princess, none master of the house.

Honeysuckle smells sweet whereas irises have no obvious scent. Not like jasmine. Not like roses, not like fish or even cancer.
I was afraid of being afraid. What if being so careful as to suspend all choice and defining action became THE DEFINING ACTION? Would that too not be irrevocable? As irrevocable to have not kissed as to have kissed the flowers, dear friend?
Cancer is a very discreet eater. You never notice her taking those dainty little bites, hiding the chewing behind a red napkin, until the meal is nearly done.
What a cold death, the eating to not be eaten, the hiding indoors to avoid the burning colors of the garden.
I found les iris dear friend, long after the curling poster was torn and crinkled and lost. You wouldn’t believe they were real if you were me and had never seen the real thing before.
If you were me you’d think that you’d gone mad, completely, at last.
These things are real, it seems, as real as anything else, which might not be as real as we like to think.  They are irrevocable. Blazing in bright violet and yellow like suns, eye scorching star bursts of color. Irrevocable.

Binary Man

Here we go loop de loo, here we go loop de lie. Around and around like the waters spinning down a toilet bowl, spin, spin, spin. We will be back where we started again. One step forward, two steps back. Oh you pudgy balding little binary man. My hero, Binary Man, coming to slash through reality with his machete made of ones and zeros. Give him a yes or a no. That is your only choice. This was my hero? I have to confess that I also like Rorschach. I side with the deviant losers. *Sigh* . We are all going to get our hearts broken over and over in this sticky bubble gum web. Why did I make my baby wait every day after school? Just a little baby waiting for her mamma who’s off crying and fighting and sometimes running down the street alone to rescue her baby when the bus is late, and arriving disheveled and puffy eyed. And baby asks, “How did you get here so early?” But I’m a half hour late. I don’t know why baby, I thought I had friends, but then I had none. How did this all get rolling? I was standing in line behind a pleasant black man at the DMV. He was getting his motorcycle license. I was sixteen. This was the last day before my driver’s permit would expire, my last chance to take the driving exam and get my license. Sink or swim time. In line for hours. The gentleman explained to me, “People are either for you or against you. Sometimes it’s people you love, people who love you who are against you. But you have look past it all and see that they are either for you or against you.” The first incarnation of binary man. I thought he was right. My parents for example were against me, although they’d swear they were for me. But they were really for themselves and for their version of me which was not the actual me, but a me that served them. So I’d need to break clean. But I couldn’t do it properly for a long time. Soon I was alone. There is nobody here that is for me. I am not even for me. Damn you Binary Man! I think you were my father whispering in one ear all of the time, extreme and righteous, bending me, bending me, bending me until I was tweaked. The data that comes in is always tweaked as I process it. They are all against me. There is a distinction, however, between everyone being for themselves and everybody being against you. They are not all automatically against you, they just aren’t for you. There is a subtle difference. It is not a one or a two yet, not a yes or a no. There is a big gray forest that we may abide in, a shadowy place from which many shapes and possibilities may be plucked, raised, lifted, conjured. Yes and No man is coming with his machete. His goal is deforestation. He wants us to join him or die, twisted and alone in the desert he makes for us. Fuck you Binary Man. You are no hero! You are a mediocre Villain. I’m not going to join you. And I’m not going to be alone. I’m gonna fill my pockets with seeds of ambiguity and Johnny Appleseed it across the globe. You can loop de loo all you please, but you won’t get me. I’m gonna run up, up, up the holy mountain planting these little seeds. Like Luke Skywalker, I can still see the good in you father, but you are mostly machine now. It you come any closer I’ll lop off your machete hand with this gardening spade and watch you twitch. You are not a magick man, you are just THE MAN, taking names and asking, “Are you with me?” *chalks an x on your skull and slowly guides the machete to the mark for practice* “Or not?”

Live and Burn

If you lack courage you always loose. If you never strip yourself bare and roar at the wind as it lashes at your puckering flesh, then you go out like a candle snuffed swiftly by mitten swathed finger tips, having never had a chance to get knocked over onto your side so that all of the wax comes pouring out, hot and translucent and your little flaming tongue flickers out hungrily and meets with some kindling, a synthetic fibered rug or the gossamer drapes employed to veil the houses big unblinking eyes.

Goddamn it! You will never bring the house down if you don’t burn a little yourself. It is painful and terrible, and then you get used to it, bit by bit. The heat becomes a thing which you can bear for small and every increasing increments of time, but by golly, that will never happen if you don’t stay in the kitchen, or even go into the kitchen to begin with.

We can see only later how things might have been different if we had been undeterred by the threat of pain. When we are distanced from the experience of discomfort we think that we will be brave warriors, proud champions, and yet whenever we have the chance to get into the ring we shy away, like spoiled little girls that run off to hug their grandmothers legs and suck their thumbs rather than clean their rooms. So the toys lay all over the etheric floors of our mind, our play things, our fantasies slowly transforming into nightmares as they mingle together unrealized, seasoned with guilt and doubt and sloth. The meek of heart will wither and vanish without a lasting trace, leaving only a transcendental curl of grayish smoke which will dissolve into the atmosphere moments after they are snuffed out.

You loose everything when you do not take risks. As the saying goes; “Use it or loose it.” It is as true of life as anything else, even truer perhaps. Death is a real concern, especially for those who don’t make the effort to live before its inevitable dawning. Standing on the sidelines, playing with all the playthings in our minds, never coming out to slay the real dragons or fuck the real princesses, growing weaker and pastier at each missed opportunity, we let the entire cosmos down. When, because you fear some trick, you fail to accept that beautiful girl´s invitation to sit beside her on the bus, or stand with her in line at the movies, you not only let yourself and the princess down, but all the heroes and all the gods in the heavens.

Everything in creation is depending on you to rescue it with a measure of foolish and heartfelt passion. Do not be the last unicorn that sees that the unicorns have all disappeared and so takes up work as a mare in some dirty stable, waiting to pull the plow or be penned up with some intolerable stallion for the furtherance of horsekind because it is unfashionable, embarrassing, or silly to be a unicorn. Be the last brave heart, busted open and bleeding bright crimson all over the blue and gray world.

There is no shame in being the last or the only one of your kind, doing the painful work of seeking out the other shinning immortals, their hair full of stars, their hearts and bodies fringed with cerulean and titian flames, blazing through the cosmos, wailing in the wind that feeds the flames melting away their breasts. There is only shame in hiding in your room, in your placid life, in your filthy stall, watching the glimmering of passions go dim behind a cage of bone and softly fluttering pink lungs, like butterflies witnessing their precious one day of life descend into the awaiting twilight.

Beng's Bargain

Beware round which forbidden corner you turn, little worm. You’ve been warned that the devil waits behind the black door, and with old Beng the eternal fire burns, and suffering is assured. You have been shown that there are two paths to choose from at this fork; the path of the righteous- a straight and narrow course, and the path of the wicked- as crooked as an old man’s back. Choose the path of the righteous and your fate is painted over the door of the butcher’s shop and spelled out for you over his block. For see, the straight and narrow is like a conveyor belt carrying you most assuredly through the great factory farm to the bright white light of the slaughter house, and once you’ve settled on that course you’ve no more choices to make. You will be processed and packaged and fed back into the hungry mouth of the organic mass and the heavenly peace of eternal sleep shall be yours. Choose door number two and your foot is in a different shoe altogether, for once you go past the black door marked "yes", you will be assaulted by all the color denied the inhabitants of the two toned world. Here you will be faced with multiple choice, a never ending network of diverging branches, a veritable tree of life through which you must learn to flow like quickened sap. It is a gauntlet through which you will run with no hope of respite. Your lot is not the comfort of an undisturbed slumber, yours is an eternity of wakeful motion, of building beyond binary choices. To live well beyond the black door you must become a god. Hell is everywhere, inescapable but deniable. You were in hell before you chose black over white, you were in hell even after you chose one or the other, but behind the white door you submit to it, sleep through it to deny it, escape the difficulty involved in being responsible for it by ignoring it. Behind the black door you reign in hell, it belongs to you, every torturing moment of existence, all of the tiny and infinite details. You are a small god with the potential to grow, for whatever you can take responsibility for is yours, whatever you can hold suspended with your attention in the great cosmic juggling act becomes you, expands you, or rather you expand into it.
Honestly, worm, looking back, choosing the straight and narrow is like making no choice at all. You will be carried through that door without having made any effort at all. It happens naturally. You are asking me why I insist on calling you worm. You are looking over your shoulder to see if I am addressing some other. No, it is you, exactly you and no other to whom I speak. You are the creepy crawly larvae that must break out of the cocoon. You must crack the worlds shell if you want to fly with the dragons. Staying wrapped in the comfortable blindness of your cocoon is not life at all. You will be offered two choices to begin with. If you sacrifice knowledge, freedom, the power to create and move, you may have comfort and stability. You will be handled by qualified forces. If you sacrifice your personal comfort and stability you may know, move, and build freely. You may become a force at work in the mechanics of creation. We offer no refunds, nor guarantees on either choice. You are offered this moment, as is. You must ask yourself what it means to be alive, and whether it is possible that there is some yet undiscovered value and purpose in living, a possibility not available in the dimension of the binary. It is possible that the value and purposefulness of life can only be reckoned by those who are indeed living. And worm, I can assure you that you haven’t lived until you’ve passed beyond the black door.

Another Day, Another Worm

I am speaking to you from above the clouds within which I recently had a run in with a marble faced archangel in a business suit.
"Going up or down?", He asked me.
I said that I hadn’t made up my mind yet.
"Listen", he said, "I have just the thing for you." and from out his briefcase he drew this spectacular golden feather.
"Here, tuck that behind your ear." he suggested. "I happen to know that this works wonders."
"How’s that?" I asked him.
"I have an intern that’s an elephant, it keeps him flying right."
I contemplated that a bit, looking over the feather. It was rather long and billowy.
"Now, of course," he said, "The feather doesn’t really cause him to be able to fly, but it is symbolic of his wish to fly. The first thing that you have to do is make up your mind. If you wish to go up, tuck the feather behind your ear. If you wish to go down, drop it and see which falls faster, you or it."
I was hesitating still when the heretofore amicable archangel’s countenance changed dramatically. His eyes were filled with storm clouds as he bellowed fiercely,
"Now! Choose now!" Whilst I trembled he drew a flaming sword, "I’m going to make this easy for you, choose now!" he cried and swung his sword ferociously. I tucked the feather behind my ear and ascended hastily.

No matter how tough you think you are on yourself, there’s always someone waiting to be tougher, because you're bound to slip up. We walk a razors edge, the slightest slip of attention and you're off the path. When you forget how dire the matter is you get a little sloppy, just a little. Those that don’t walk this line can weave and bend all to hell. But we can’t afford to blink.

Occasionally a wake up call in necessary. A little reminder that if you think things look bad now, they can get much, much worse. I seek that bottom of bottoms rather unintentionally. How little love this tortured contraption has for itself. It wants to prove that it is the most hideous and unloved mortal bit of rubbish. It wishes to go far past redemption to escape the pain of longing to belong.
They painted monster teeth on planes in world war two. My airplane is the same. I need to get in the cockpit and fly this thing, no matter what it thinks of itself. Monsters are built over tiny innocent kernels of the eternal, sweet and loving and easily bruised. The fiercer the monster the more sensitive it is. Grendel could not bear the shouts and laughter and music of the hall. It grated on him like sand paper over a babies soft skin. That is why Grendel bit off heads and split bodies in two. I have great sympathy for his plight. Yet the monster must be reigned in and trained not to buck against the pain and irritation. If the monster can be held in place under the heat of such extreme discomfort it will be transformed into a creature unimaginable, a new breed of monster, the kind that is king and devil both. The kind that soars over clouds breathing fire.
Welcome to the dragon making factory. We begin with worms, pasty bipedal mammals which wriggle and cry far past infancy in the most despicable way. Even the pretty ones, the clever ones, the kind ones, the successful ones, even they are a sort of undeveloped larvae. They need to be incubated. If they crawl away from the heat because it burns their tender flesh, burrow deeper into the dirt to escape the intensity, then they shall remain worms. If they can be made to endure the heat and friction of the central sun, a process of transformation will be initiated. Worms they will be no more.

Yes the worm dies, but the dragon is born. This is the secret of death and resurrection. What remains after the death of the worm is inconceivable and hideous to the worm. Yet that is the only real option that a worm has. It is quick hot death and transformation, or slow cold death and oblivion. Go up and fly, or down to rot in the clammy womb of the earth. Yes, worm, it is death or death. Die now or later. Pain now or later. But one death gives rise to something magickal and the other results in greener grass to be consumed by Lord Shiva's horse.

The Choice

At the root of our movement through time is the choice. Each choice. Every choice.
We start with a given set… a certain robot adorned with certain innate propensities, tendencies, weaknesses, factory defects. It may be more able to work in a physical realm, it may have deficiencies in its emotional center, it may have a propensity for sickness, it may be overdeveloped in the intellectual center. It doesn’t matter. You can Work with any robot. This is what’s given. This you can’t change.
Then the game begins. And the game consists of a sequence of choices. I will be friends with this one. I won’t associate with that one. I will play with these kind of toys. I will not be like my brother. I want to be like those kids. I will dress like that.
These choices give shape to a creature of 4 dimensions (the fourth one is time) that extends through space and time from the place and moment of our birth to the place and moment of our death. But these choices are, under the normal course of things, made in a state of mechanical sleep. They are caused by outside influences, by imitation, fear and desire.
A true choice cannot be made while in the sleeping state. While the robot is going through mechanical motions, it can follow the programmed mechanical habits: the imprinted choices that have been there from early childhood. The game can end right there. This process can continue until death and it does in most cases.
So the first objective, for a Being that wishes to Work, has to be to find a way to awaken the robot, to bring it to a state of wakefulness that will allow it to make choices, to create a new shape in the space-time continuum which we call the Labyrinth.
An instant of the waking state will permit the robot to have a glimpse of freedom, of Doing, of coming to a space of real choice. Choices, even small ones, made in this space, can reverberate through time (backwards and forwards) to alter the shape of the 4th dimensional machine. Such a choice is not preordained, and can’t be controlled or determined from the outside. It is free and created in the moment. It emerges, wild and untamed from the void. In an initial state of wakefulness, choices can be made that will ultimately hurt the robot. This is a real danger. This can be ameliorated by working with a more experienced traveller that can help the robot, protect it and guard it from the ravishing force of raw creation and will.
Eventually, a choice must extend and grow in time…not mechanically, through a chain of cause and effects, but through the force of repetition. The same free choice must be made over and over again. Each time determined. Each time free. The paradox of this statement is a key to real Work. The same choice, each day. The same choice, each month. The same choice, each year. Each time done freely. Each time with the knowledge of other possibilities. Each time returning to the same place. "Today, I, in full concert with myself, again make this choice."
The repetition creates a new shape in time and space, a shape that has now emerged from the void and expands outwards. As it repeats, it extends and grows stronger. It may thus extend beyond the robot, in both time and space.
You breathe out, you find yourself in a space of raw freedom.
You breathe in, you use that freedom to make the choice, the one choice, what we call the Work.
You breath out.
This repeats as long as you can hold it.
If it falls, you find it again. You find your place in the labyrinth, regain your rhythm, your constant discipline… and start again.
Your mind may wonder: "What is the nature of this choice?"
In the sleeping state, there is no hope of understanding the answer.
In the waking state, you can begin to understand the nature of making a choice at all.
As you grow more familiar with the actual taste of free choice, the question will come up again. And the answer will be clear.