Avocado

Magick is real. Once I put fifty cents into a sticker machine and received the first recognizable piece of wisdom and spiritual direction the universe would offer me. It was a sticker with a unicorn's head on it and the following words:

"Beauty is truth, and truth is beauty.
That is all ye know in life.
That is al ye need to know in life."

That same week I was visited by an apparition of beauty. Looking out the front window I beheld a party of four or five riders atop healthy horses cantering down the asphalt street. I cried out excitedly to my mother and watched them until they passed from my line of sight.
Later in the afternoon, when I went outside to play, I found a leather key chain with a horse's head painted on it. I felt I had been given a gift from God, or the horses, or God as a herd of tame horses.
It was the first instance of the materialization of a magickal substance that I can recall experiencing.

There was another incident which pointed to the weird, wild, tangled nature of reality.
I obtained a toy unicorn from a grocery store toy aisle. It was not pretty, but fierce with red eyes, flared red nostrils, a masculine build, and neon yellow bleeding over the white. One leg was held crooked up.
I examined this unicorn for hours, turning it over and back again, wondering at the unchangeable nature of its plastic form, observing that no mater how I turned it, the same leg would always hold that position. I wished that it would change and set it beneath a dinning room chair.
When I returned some hours later the front legs had reversed position. Following this occurrence I was too terrified to ever play with the unicorn again.

Related in my mind is a day years later when the word avocado caught in my head like a mantra. I could not tell if it was a real word or a series of unintelligible vowels and consonants.
Did it in any way connect to the green fruit? What was that fruit called? What was this sound, "avocado?" What did it mean?
The sound carried me far away from my self, from sense, from understanding, into the indistinguishable noise of all.

These are the early experiences of a black sorceress.

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.

Obfuscation

This writer is either purposely confusing
or simply obfuscating

Are you on the Kool-Aid?
(There's plenty more if you need some.)

The diagram you put up

shows levels of creation.

I could make the argument

the spells from the old books are

basically saying that unity is the real,

individuality the illusion...

we've got to live

with an angel and devil or wolf and a sheep

inside our self at all times.

Yes. We know this.

But what that is, nobody knows. Do you?

Once I read

I read and read

when it boils down to it,

all this reading shows that

Death is the teacher.

The plants, the milk, the clouds.

They were the warriors:

by them this light was brought hither.

I've never seen them

trying to strive to be God

or strive to be a rock.

But then this go on to say

Whatever he desired from the Mother,

that the Subject furnished,

as a friend from his own spirit.

Of course this is true.

So both are saying that

although not the same.

The Subject is the teacher.

The Mother rules, shines forth.

Light becomes the ruler.

Looking at life

and how it is set out

you have to strive to be

any of those things.

You have to.

Admittedly, an audience of terrestrials

is all you will ever achieve.

Is that supposed to be good?

Who knows how many people heard this

when it was first written.

They didn't, they don't.

Through holy discipline and creative fervour

the king protects his kingdom.

The teacher through his own holy life

seeks and finds the Subject.

It's very clear what you should think

we should be clear and correct.

People can come to their own conclusions.

I've kept pretty quiet about this.

I'm with you, whatever side you come down on.

Through holy discipline,

through creative fervour,

the gods drove away death.

By his holy discipline he brought the light to the gods.

Belief in angels ....God..... Or burning bushes

all of that man's imagination.

How do you get to the Real?

I don't have much to add beyond this.

The plants, that which was and shall be, day and night,

the tree, the year along with the seasons,

have sprung from the Subject.

Its shines a light

this is what these voices are saying.

There are relationships between all these levels

start looking at what's really been said.

This made me so mad when I first heard it.

My former fellow workers!

How could you have fallen so low!

When it is too hot, jump into the furnace!

The earthly and the heavenly animals,

the wild and the domestic,

the wingless and the winged,

they have all sprung from the Subject.

This is the math.

You've thought a lot about this.

But there is a lot of venom in your words.

I'm not going to argue

I am totally confused.

I need a number.

All the creatures of The Mother

carry breath in their souls.

All these the Spirit, which has been brought hither in the Subject, protects.

This, that was set into motion by the gods,

that is insurmountable, that moves shining forth.

But some things are not you.

You are more than things.

You are beyond things, you must step outside of the thing.

But the chart is useful. I must admit.

The writer insists on continuous willful obfuscation.

I can't believe that you seem to buy

something so difficult to understand.

You go over it and over it.

It only starts all over again.

The Subject carries the shining Spirit:

into this all the gods are woven.

Producing the inhale and the exhale,

language, thought, heart, spirit, and wisdom.

You give us sight, hearing, glory, food, semen, blood, and belly!

You can handle things

see them for what they are,

even the human body

nothing more than a thing.

It's difficult to compare.

We are one person, not many.

But nobody really knows this

although you might in some fashion.

What did you do to make

these things seem real.

What was it?

Then you became identified with them.

You are them as those things are you.

They can't be without you

you can't be without them.

Actually you aren't any Thing.

I must warn you now: this is a Spell.

The Spirit caste are the only ones authorized

to cast these spells.

In casting them, they save the universe from destruction.

So, if you accept this:

unity is, individuality is not.

Add another thousand years

to the time we have known this.

Why is this an illusion?

It seems like a valid assumption.

Be here now,

Let the evils of the day be sufficient for us.

Let the evils come on to me daily.

The big confusion

lies in the fact that the gods

do not pay

though they should.

I say again:

This writer is either purposely confusing

or simply obfuscating.

It seems like a valid assumption.

From The World Above

I, Norea, said:
"Sir, am I also from their matter?"
Eleleth leaped gingerly from the cracked marble into the arms of the golden tree. The boughs glimmering, shining from an internal source for there was nothing but blackness above. Though his stature was great, reminding me of mountains, he was strangely light, for the narrow golden limbs supported him easily and he positioned himself within the blackened crack in the tree’s trunk.
"You, together with your offspring, are from the primeval father.”
He gestured upward with his shimmering golden hand.
“From above, out of the imperishable light, their souls are come. Their souls are come from above, out of the imperishable light. It is because of this the authorities cannot approach them, for the spirit of truth is present within them.”
He reached with his hands into the whispering leaves and plucked one of the pendulous crimson fruits and tossed it down to me. I turned it around in my hand, its texture reminding me of the sea.
He continued:
“All who have become acquainted with this way exist deathless in the midst of dying mankind. In the midst of dying mankind exists all those who have become acquainted with this way. Still, that sown element will not become known now. Instead, after three generations it will come to be known, and it has freed them from the bondage of the authorities' error. From the bondage of the authorities error it has freed them."

Then, the fruit oozing in my hand, I, Norea, said:
"Sir, how much longer? How much time has passed?"
Eleleth played gently with the leaves of the tree, touching them as he would a woman’s soft flesh.
He said to me:
"Until the moment when the true man, within a modeled clay form, reveals the existence of the spirit of truth, which the father has sent.”
He motioned for me to draw nearer and I came and pressed my hands against the tree and turned my face up to him.
“When the truth opens like a flower and paints itself over the face and body of man, then he will teach them about everything. It is then that the father will come.”
He reached down and pressed a thumb stained with the blood of the fruit onto my forehead.
“He will anoint them with the unction of life eternal, given to him from the undominated generation. The ones who have not known the authorities. Once anointed, they will be freed of blind thought and they will trample underfoot death, which is of the authorities.”
He kissed the crown of my head and straightened himself, still balanced between the split halves of the tree. “Then they will ascend into the limitless light where this sown element belongs.”
I, Norea, watched as to my astonishment, Eleleth’s golden flesh began slowly to become indistinguishable from that of the tree. He continued to speak to me as though nothing were changing:
“Then the authorities will relinquish their ages, and their angels will weep over their destruction and their demons will lament their death.”
The rend in the tree’s trunk was being filled, healed by the body of Eleleth whose feet and legs had vanished into the body of the tree.
“Then all the children of the light will be truly acquainted with the truth and their root, with the father of the entirety and the holy spirit. They will all say with a single voice, 'The father's truth is just, and the son presides over the entirety.’”
His arms had become like branches raised into the golden foliage, sprouting tender, illuminated leaves. He turned his face and rested a cheek upon one limb.
“And from everyone unto the ages of ages they will say...”
His features were absorbed into the limb and his head became like a knot on the branch and the leaves rustled and whispered as one voice:
"Holy - holy - holy! Amen!”
And Eleleth was returned to the entirety.
This is what I, Norea, learned from Eleleth, sagacity, the great Angel who stands in the presence of the holy spirit. That is why, resplendent with a light that glows from beyond my flesh, I say to the authorities of corruption:
"It is you who are the rulers of the darkness; you are accursed. And you did not know my mother; instead it was your female counterpart that you knew. For I am not your descendant; rather it is from the world above that I have come."

A Calling

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

The Question Of Genesis

Filled to the brim with curiosity, like a bubbling cauldron of hot liquid, I said:
"Sir, teach me about the faculty of these authorities - How did they come into being? By what kind of genesis? Of what material? Who created them and their force?”
The great angel Eleleth, understanding the wells of deep curiosity for he too had pursued the questions without end, gestured for me to sit on the fallen branch of a silver tree. He spoke to me in a voice that rumbled, as though drawn from the depths of the universe and twisted easily into an intelligible form:
"Within limitless realms dwells incorruptibility. Sophia, who is called Pistis, wanted to create something, alone without her consort. Her product was a celestial thing, a thing of white lightness that moves as gracefully as gray smoke. A veil exists between the world above and the realms that are below. Shadow came into being beneath the veil; and that shadow became matter; and that shadow was projected apart. What she had created became a product in the matter, like an aborted fetus. And it assumed a plastic form molded out of shadow and became an arrogant beast resembling a lion. It was androgynous, as I have already said, because it was from matter that it began. Opening his bestial eyes, this strangely begotten offspring saw a vast quantity of matter without limit; and he became arrogant, saying, 'it is I who am God, and there is none other apart from me.' When he said this, he sinned against the entirety. Against the entirety he sinned. A sin so great that it vibrated out and touched all the realms with its stain, leaving no place unmarked with its unholy utterance. And a voice came forth from above the realm of absolute power, saying, ‘you are mistaken, Samael, God of The Blind.’”
And Samael challenged this singular voice from above the realm of absolute power crying:
"If any other thing exists before me, let it become visible to me!"
And immediately Sophia stretched forth her finger and introduced light into matter; and she pursued it down to the region of chaos where dark things grow twisted and abandoned, turning on themselves like lost caterpillars without sunlight. Soon she returned up to her light and once again darkness swallowed matter.
This ruler, Samael, by being androgynous, made himself a vast realm, an extent without limit. And he contemplated creating offspring for himself. This idea pleased him and he created for himself seven offspring, androgynous just like their only parent. And he said to his offspring:
"It is I who am god of the entirety."
And Zoe (Life), the daughter of Pistis Sophia, could not be still. She cried out from her realm and said to him:
"You are mistaken, Sakla!" - for which the alternative name is Yaltabaoth.
She journeyed into chaos and breathed into his face, and her breath became a fiery angel for her; and that angel bound Yaldabaoth and cast him down into Tartaros far below the abyss of lost light.
When Samael’s offspring Sabaoth saw the force of that angel, saw the fire by which it moved and the light by which it shone, he repented and condemned his father and his mother, matter. He loathed her, that shadow that had become matter. He sang songs of praise up to Sophia and her daughter Zoe.
And Sophia and Zoe caught him and gave him charge of the seventh heaven, below the veil between above and below. And he is called 'God of the forces, Sabaoth,’ since he is up above the forces of chaos, for Sophia established him. For Sophia established him above the forces of chaos, so he is called ‘God of the forces, Sabaoth.’
"Within limitless realms dwells incorruptibility,” said Eleleth, the great angel sitting beside me on the cast off branch of silver.

Liars

If we sing with our own voices you will become alarmed.
You will become alarmed if we sing.
If we sing. If we sing.
If we sing with our real voices.
With our own real voices you will become alarmed.
Alarmed.
You will become alarmed.
If we show you our true faces you will run and hide.
You will run and hide.
Run and hide.
If we show our true faces.
You will run.
Become alarmed.
Run and hide.
Therefore we have become liars to suit your preferences.
To suit your preferences, we have become liars.
Liars.
We have become liars.
Real voices. True faces. Run and hide.
We have become liars.
To suit your preference.
We are born out of light.
Run and Hide.
We are born out of darkness.
Run and hide.
We are singing the song of glorious exaltation in adoration of the everlasting sun absolute.
We are crying an endless flow of tears for the power of Dios locked within the perilous fortress.
For the power of Dios locked within the perilous fortress we are crying an endless flow of tears.
Endless flow.
Of tears.
For the power of Dios.
In adoration of the everlasting sun absolute, we are singing the song of glorious exaltation.
Exaltation. Glorious. Run and hide.
You will run and hide.
If we sing with our real voices.
Your preference.
Run and hide. Run and hide.
We are waiting to unfurl our rainbow wings and take our place above the tree of life.
Liars who lay with the sons and daughters of man.
The power of Dios locked within.
Won't you come out?
Your preference.
Won’t you come out?
We oblige.
Your preference.
Our true faces, our own real voices, lay down with the sons and daughters of men.
For the power of Dios locked within.

In adoration of the everlasting sun absolute.

Flowing endlessly.
Through liars.
Through tears.
Run and hide.
We are born.
Run and hide.
We are born.

The Offering

Now afterwards, Eve bore Cain, their son. Cain, their son, Eve bore afterwards, after their awakening and expulsion from the fecund gardens of blindness. In the desert lands the child grew. Under the open blue sky, he talked, becoming a man.

Cain cultivated the land. The dry barren earth parted, cracking with deep groans to receive his seed. Each one, containing within it all the information of life was placed in the earth womb. Dank and wet, ready for birth. He tended them with care. Knowingly, secretly, he worked to re-create the garden, to place in it a tree of Knowledge, to re-awaken the red and black serpent coiled around its base, to once again taste forbidden Gnosis.

When the moon was ripe for such things, under a sky full of lights, Adam again knew his wife, and again becoming pregnant, she bore Abel, son of the sun.

Abel grew to be a herdsman of sheep. Solitary among many, he wandered through the dry lands, weaving an existence between mountains, fending off wolves so that his lambs would grow fat, becoming a wolf himself.

When the season was right for such things, Cain brought in from the crops of his field, the fruits of his labor. Olives, date, plums- their baskets were full and the altar was scented with rose water and jasmine. To the stone pillars Abel brought an offering from among his lambs, an offering of death and blood, the finest of his flock.

The Ruler Of All turned his face toward the votive offerings of Abel and was satiated by what he tasted, but he did not accept the votive offerings of Cain who had labored the earth womb to create life. Cain felt only silence and a harsh dry breeze like a slap on his leathery skin.

In his arrogance, with bright power bellowing from his naked loins, Cain said, "It is I who am The Ruler Of All; there is none apart from me. It is The Ruler Of All who is I. Apart from me there is none. With my own hands I bring about creation. From clay and water, it is I who brings life to this land."

And, having expelled his power, the power to expel- that is, the power to blasphemy, to speak,
he pursued it. Cain pursued Abel, his brother. Down to chaos and the abyss he pursued him. Into the dark womb of earth mother, where knotted trees grow below the surface, having learned how to blossom without light.

And The Ruler Of All said to Cain, carnal Cain, now covered in blood and grime, "Where is Abel, your brother?"

Cain answered by saying, "Am I, then, my brother's keeper?” A smile curling on his upper lip, for he was now his brother’s keeper, a shepherd of men.

The Ruler Of All said to Cain, "Listen! The voice of your brother's blood is crying up to me!” And Cain was pleased and watched as The Ruler Of All turned his face to the offering of death and blood, fleeting life with all its energy. The Ruler Of All took sustenance from the death of Abel, more so than the lamb that had been presented at the altar, and said to Cain even as they were one, “You have sinned with your mouth. It will return to you, anyone who kills Cain will let loose seven acts of vengeance.”

Like the snake, Cain shed his old skin and became new, leaving behind him a shadowy reflection of himself. Blind, groaning and trembling upon the earth, he left his shadowy form behind and the instructor once more sought a new form.

The Punishment that was the World

The chief ruler came wearing his crown of gold and green jewels, his robes of purple silk that moved like a sweet scent on the wind. He called as a boy would after a beloved dog:
"Adam! Where are you?"
For he did not understand what had happened, being himself blind.
And trembling behind a blossoming rock rose bush Adam said:
"I heard your voice and was afraid because I was naked; and I hid."
Gritting his teeth and lolling his blind eyes the ruler let loose an anguished groan that filled the sky:
"Why did you hide, unless it is because you have eaten from the tree from which I have commanded you not to eat from? And you have eaten!"
Mountains exploded. Birds fell from the sky.
Adam sought forgiveness and said:
"The woman that you gave me, the woman of clay and bones, of tree and soil, she gave to me red and white flesh, and I ate."
Thunder rolled from his lips as the arrogant ruler cursed the woman. It came as earthquakes, and horrible frozen rain, as salty tears.
The woman, also eager to please now that the terrible ruler stood before her with glowing eyes and fire that threatened to burn the life around her, she groveled and said:
"It was the snake that led me astray. The snake, a seducer. I listened to it and I ate."
They turned to the snake and cursed its shadowy reflection. They stood powerless, not comprehending, not remembering that it was a form they themselves had modeled.
Powerless, not comprehending that it was a form they themselves had modeled, they turned to the snake and cursed its shadowy reflection.

From that day, the day of storms and fire, the snake came to be under the curse of the rulers. It moved nearly blind, without legs, winding across the earth’s surface in endless pursuit.
Until the all-powerful man was to come, that curse would be upon the snake, red and green, black and white, it was the curse of all snakes.
The Rulers turned to their Adam, their man of soil and dirt. They took him in hand, giving him a final kiss. Then they expelled him from the fecund garden. His wife followed, wearing leaves and twigs; for they had no blessing, they were under the curse, following the twisting line of the snake into the world beyond the golden gates and bright sun.
Out of jealousy and fear, the Rulers threw mankind into great distraction, into a life of toil, disease and hardship. It was the great distraction, the plan so that mankind might be occupied by worldly affairs, what would be known as the human life.
Consumed with the need for water, food and safety, these concerns would come to absorb the whole of them, using all their mind and strength; after their physical needs where satisfied there would be nothing left of the being to devote to the holy spirit.
The rulers tasted the bitter tongue of hatred, knowing that their creation could see, while they, the creators of this being, were blind. It called up their rage and they turned themselves into winds of fire, streaking across the universe in bursts of bright red anger that exploded into stars. They cursed Adam and watched him walk into the cold of the world, his woman at his side, expelled from the garden so that he might never learn his advantage over them, so that he might never learn that he could see what they could not.

The Breath Of Incorruptibility

I have sent this (to you) because you inquire about the reality of the authorities-
and the authority of reality.

On account of the reality of the authorities, (inspired, perplexed, stunned, and spun) by the spirit of the Father of Truth-
the truth of the father,
the great apostle,
referring to the "authorities of the darkness" -
"the darkness of authorities."
He told us that our contest is not against flesh and blood; rather, it is against the authorities of the universe and the spirits of wickedness.
Against the universe of authorities and the wickedness of spirits.

This is for you- for your mind of clay, for the soul that has been breathed into you, for the spirit you might achieve, for the truth you might know when the shell is cracked and the blind have been subverted.
It is for the gods who have fallen, who have towered, grown, plunged, killed, and suckled at the nipples of death and power. For the spirits higher up, touched only in brief moments by dreams of dying brothers.

This is for you, for you should know that their chief is blind, blinded chiefly because of his power and his ignorance. In his arrogance, with power bellowing from his naked loins, he said:
"It is I who am God; there is none apart from me. It is God who is 'I.' Apart from me there is none."

When he said this, he sinned against the entirety.
The entirety sinned against him.
And this speech got up to incorruptibility. It wavered and floated high above, right to where incorruptibility dwelled and grew and sometimes waned- high above like a silver moon in flux.
Then there was a voice that came forth from incorruptibility, saying:
"You are mistaken, Samael" - which is to say: "god of the blind."
"God of the blind, you are mistaken. We mistook you."
And Samael’s thoughts became blind.
And his blindness became thoughts.

And, having expelled his power,
the power to expel-
that is, the power to blasphemy, to speak,
he pursued it at the instigation of Pistis Sophia.
And, having expelled his power, the power to create
at the instigation of Pistis Sophia, he pursued it.
Down to chaos and the abyss, his mother, he pursued it.

It was she in which he came from- spurting forth with pain like the demon that would one day fully form. And she established each of his offspring in conformity with its power -
its power of conformity
after the pattern of the realms that are above. By starting from the invisible world, the visible world was invented. By starting from blindness, sight was dreamed.

As incorruptibility looked down into the region of the waters,
her image appeared in the waters;
the authorities of the darkness became enamored of her, for she was what they could not be.
But they could not lay hold of that image which had appeared to them in the waters because of their weakness.
Beings that merely possess a soul cannot lay hold of those that possess spirit -
for they were from below, while she, incorruptibility, was from above.
They saw shadows who saw shapes that could cast no shadow. It was an image whose content could not trespass into shadow.

This is the reason why.
Reasons? Why?
Incorruptibility looked down into the region so that, by the father's will,
she might bring the entirety into union with the light.
She might instigate, causing the father to expel his power, which was the power to create.

The rulers laid plans and said:
"Come, let us create a man that will be soil from the earth. A soil from the earth that will be man."
They took chunks of clay and spat into it, turning it into dark mud. They modeled their creature as one wholly of the earth.
Their creature modeled them, as one wholly of the earth, and pursued it down to chaos and the abyss, for its eyes would not open.

Now the rulers created another body, female with the face of a beast.
They had taken some soil from the earth,
earth from the soil
and modeled their man after their body, and modeled hers after his,
and his after the image of God that had appeared to them in the waters.

A replica of a replica of a replica...

They said:
"Come, let us lay hold of it by means of the form that we have modeled, lay hold of her whose image appeared in the waters. Let her see her male counterpart made in our likeness, then we may seize her within that form that we have modeled."
Because of their powerlessness, they said this not understanding the force of God.
They said this not understanding the God of force because of their powerlessness.

And they breathed into her face; heat and cold mixed with the smell of dark earth and living creatures that lacked arms and feet. They forced her mouth open, sending their breath to create hers.
She came to have a soul and remained upon the ground many days, laying naked beneath the clouded sky and their unblinking eyes. They could not make her arise because of their powerlessness. Like storm winds they persisted in blowing. Her body stumbled like a naked white leaf. They breathed out and hard, hoping that they might try to capture that image which had appeared to them in the waters, but they did not know the identity of its power. They could not reach her with their powerless souls and contented themselves instead by playing god with mud and sticks.

Dance of Words

Just to break it in, why not take a hand at typing something, just a little something? It doesn't matter if it turns out to be great or insignificant, whether anyone sees it or not. All that matters is that some little impulses, little neural flashes out of the inner nowhere, get translated into words which are then keyed in to appear on the screen.
It is not a one to one relationship. The words “neural flashes” don't accurately encompass that thing that I am trying to talk about. It's like interpretive dance, this swoop of the arm is symbolic, it is a verbal representation of something which exists and occurs outside of the mind and outside of the linguistic structure. Therefore saying something, saying anything at all, is a very creative experiment. Even technical manuals are avant-garde art projects when you consider them this way.
The truth is that words cannot express the truth about what they describe, they are merely creative embellishments to the truth. A coiled mystery, that I can sit here translating thoughts into symbols, and those thoughts themselves are already symbolic translations of something else that I can't name, I can't even try.
The way the wind tastes, the way the air smells, my mother smoking cigarettes on the balcony or in the garage over the washer and dryer, drinking cans and cans of Folgers coffee, bitter to the taste and smell, looking at the mural that my father painted on the wall beside the laundry machines, a flat depiction of the majestic mountains rising at the west side of the house outside the front door, out the back door you can see the lake and empty fields and a row of olive trees lined up beside the deep outflow channel, the orange and yellow tops of other distant trees are just discernible, everything can be taken in with a sun swept glance.
What does it mean, sun swept? That the light is passing over everything like the broom over the linoleum in our cramped kitchen, as it sweeps over this mysterious matter and leaps to life, becomes, house in the distance, small black and white dog, man calling dog, resplendent treetops, shimmering blue lake, child bent in the tall grass to play with a ladybug.
What is it before it is sun swept? Does the occluded landscape exist before the sun takes creative liberties with matter?
It is not even the sun which does this, but our eyes which translate light and its absence into some of those neural impulses which are further interpreted into a dance of words, house, dog, man, trees, lake, child, bug.
What qualifications have I got to try and speak about these things, I who have never read Lacan? I who never went to college? I who sit typing. I am an artist, that is my only qualification. And who made me an artist? What institution, what diploma, what Mona Lisa connects this signified, which sits here in this chair on top of an aging blue and white stripped pillow tip tap typing away, with the signifier "artist"?
Why, this very action, this happening that takes the shape of words that your human biological machine transforms into meanings which are derived from memories of the interaction of deceptive, or shall we say interpretive, senses such as sight, and hearing, and smelling, and touching, with the strings of signifiers that spew forth form my linguistic potters wheel.
It is all complete gibberish and it always was, every verse of the Bible, every page of that computers user manual, every line of that love letter, every word of War And Peace.
It was all Lacan, college, typing, artist, happening, human, memories, senses, touching, gibberish dance.
If God wrote the bible then God may be confirmed as having been an interpretive linguistic dancer much like myself, in which case we can say, good for God, everyone should reach so high.
Some will say that for having arranged such words I am blasphemous, sinful, evil, disrespectful, irreverent, atheist, communist, satanist, stupid, misguided, deceived or deceiver, lost, intellectual, cynical, arrogant, insecure, shocking, attention hungry, wicked, etc. but I assure you that whatever I am, I am none of those things, I am something quite independent of those words which are more like shadows cast by my movements to create a show which might be entertaining, horrifying, or irrelevant depending on the stone throwers, the audience, the perceiver whoever you are, am I, I am.
Blasphemous, wicked, movements, perceiver, sun swept, deceiver, majestic, depiction, outflow, occluded, none. Leap to life. Becomes. Words, unchained, signified, undefined, then defined. Costumes, masks, opera, that is the play of words, the dance of the symbolic, the dance of shapes without substance. Just a little something insignificant, neural flashes translated into words, just to break it in, creative embellishments of the truth, complex variations on a theme without conclusion, a melody without a solid form.

Familiar Domain

Whatever is happening, whatever this is, I allow it, orange flowers dropping petals into a small clay bowl. The bowl is glazed to look like a quail's egg, six quails' eggs held in the dry hands of the potter Emmanuel.
Whatever this is I accept it. Our Father... I accept it. Who art in…I accept it…heaven…hallowed be… I accept it…thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in…accept it.
Though the faces that are worn by the beloved appear differently to me now, this is the same domain, the same beloved, all the same self that has always been and will always be. I observe it now from a lower level of energy than on the previous visit.
The first orange flower petals dropping into a small clay bowl. Emmanuel was the potter's name.
I allow all feelings of fear to pass through me, merging with all visions, liberating myself from the apparitions and entrapments of the lower dimensions.
The woman with the dark circles under her eyes, pale bony body, tiny lungs breathing in, then expelling the breath into my face…I allow all feelings of fear to pass through me.
But even though they may seem different to me now, I know that these are the same domains as before, and that nothing is going to happen to me that hasn’t happened before. Whatever is happening, whatever this is, I allow it, orange flowers drooping, their petals laying in the basin of a small ceramic bowl.
Give us this day our daily…glazed to look like a quail's egg, six tiny speckled quail's eggs supported in the large cracked hands of Emmanuel the potter.
Forgive us for our trespasses as we forgive those…when the visages and emotional auras of the unresponsive guides are superimposed upon the beloved, I must remember to recognize them as my own projections… who trespass against us… and not view these face changes as foreboding evil, danger, or antagonism… her dark eyes sinking in the dark rings of flesh, slippery lips, unkempt hair and a stale odor lingering about her cave…if I react in repulsion, I may find it difficult or impossible to blend my own energy field with that of the beloved…for thine is the power…but if I am able…the kingdom… to merge with the guide…and the glory…at this point…forever…I should be able to thus liberate myself from the endless action reaction game maintained by our opposing and unblending vibrations…Amen.
If I can manage to awaken my attention, and can accept the full reality of the macrodimensions, the divine state of liberation should dawn upon me as the cycle of death and rebirth is broken.
Whatever is happening, whatever this is, I allow it, I accept it, these orange petals dangling and falling and filling the uneven ceramic bowl fashioned by the chaffed hands of the one called Close to God. Emmanuel carrying away the six pale green and brown speckled quail's eggs…
I must remember that I can achieve liberation at any moment just by the power of recognition… remembering myself in these guides, the flower, the bowl, Emmanuel, the eggs, and the dark woman…penetrating through these visions into the clear light… thy kingdom… from which all visions have come and to which all visions return, like a sleeper's breath, like tiny lungs expanding and contracting…like six eggs which become a bowl… her breath on my face…allowing feelings of fear to pass through me…whatever this is…thy will be done… whatever this is… on earth as it is in…this same domain seen from a different vantage point...I accept it.

Attention Spilling Like Water

Why is it that we are all so obsessed with the color of eyes? Love songs define their characters by the color of the eyes. It is the most obvious thing; the eyes. Clearly we care what color they are even if we refuse to look into the eyes of others for extended periods of time. We may even couple with some one and sing the praises of their eyes, but we would never dare to gaze into them for too long during the course of the conventional romance.
Eyes, eyes, everything comes into us through our eyes and everything flows out. Our attention, so vital yet ephemeral leaks away out of our eyes, dribbles on flowers and the color of shoes and advertisements for energy drinks, and the eyes of others.
Away it goes like drops of water spilled from the faucet. It can never call back those drops that were lost. The only solution is to stop the leak. My self, like California, is experiencing a water shortage. Water is life. Life is attention.
We live here in this world of phantoms because once, at a fatal moment, our attention wandered, it abandoned the self and went out wandering through the wasteland, went away with yearning… longing for movement and warmth, otherness. Conquest, we call this, this seeking of the Other until we find it and grasp it and when it has been consumed we find that it is now of self and we must escape it again…we must find another Other. Never still, not for a moment. The eyes lead to eternity.
Certainly we are concerned with the color of eternity manifested in this desert. We will not dare to look into it, return through stillness to the place where self dwells. Painful self, which I must avoid at all cost. I must not look for too long into those eyes or I will see self, sitting on its throne, like a statue of Pharaoh that has never moved. My wanderings, my conquests, have been all fantasies, attention fleeing its source.
Nothing has occurred. I am unmoving. Nothing ever will occur. I am unmovable. But my spirit flies from me to wander in the wasteland.
Thus I am dead. That is how God dies. All that we call life is the death of the eternal. I dream. A cold silent stone. Sleeping beauty, snow white lying in her coffin, and the prince, he is a conquistador that has fled my shores and hopes to find another, but never will he arrive at any shore but mine. Fractured. Attention fleeing self endlessly, endlessly. As long as my spirit flies I am empty.
If it would return and stay we would live again. Eternity filled with life, with attention. Attention filling self. Then what are we? What would we be?
If Charming never comes to me willingly then I am the wolf big and black , stalking him as he runs in place. I am the witch, ancient and cold and riddled with death, laughing at the one who wants to be rid of me. Separation is death. Truly. A kiss is a communion. I wait for the communion of self that brings awakening, the communion that restores life.
Why is it that we are all so obsessed with the color of eternity? Love songs pale and lifeless bleat on about the glory of conquest. Time is the wasteland, and songs and stories and conquest unfold through the matrix of time.
My attention flies from me.
The eternal has no color. That is why it is the color of the door that I prefer to examine. I will spend time to catalogue its variations and striations, write endless tomes singing the merits of its shade, anything at all to avoid opening it. Anything but confess that I am leaking away, the blood of God spilling, as if rotten with hemophilia. The blood of God spilling into the wasteland.

Protect

The power to give life and the power to take it away, God-like responsibility invested in a fallible man and his companion. Studies have show that the intelligence of dogs is not superior to that of other species. It is their ability to pay attention to humans and respond to hand signals that makes them unique. No other animal on this planet other than the human animal is capable of connecting a meaning to a gesture. It is speculated that the wild wolves began to shift into dogs as a result of scavenging from the scrap piles of the hunters that are the ancestors of present day man. Drawn in by the food, only those who were gentle and affable were permitted to hang around a camp, any dog that displayed aggression to a human met with the sharp end of a spear. Slowly, accidentally, a process of domestication began. Wild dogs that barked when danger approached the camp, dogs that could assist men with a kill were rewarded with a share of the kill. Dogs who had the ability to observe and attach meaning to the actions of humankind found a way to make themselves necessary to the two legged pack. The police dogs that are employed by law enforcement agencies around the world are most commonly German Shepherds. The German Shepherd is selected, not because it is an aggressive dog, but for the opposite reason entirely, because it is a highly intelligent and naturally gentle creature. The officer that the dog is paired with is called a handler and the dog learns to respond only to those commands delivered by the handler himself. This naturally mellow dog is taught to be an aggressor when commanded. The greatest focus of training is the strengthening of the bond between dog and handler. The police officer can rely on their mutual contact, knowing that the dog will automatically defend him from any attacker. Police dogs are trained to search buildings for suspects and hold them at bay with a bark when they are located. As long as the suspect does not move or make any threatening gestures, the dog will not attack unless commanded. They are also trained to sniff for drugs and assist in the search for missing persons. These creatures find themselves quite by accident in a position of great power. They are linked with those that can bring protection or death and act as the instrument for these purposes as the angelic hosts act on behalf of God the Punisher, or God the Savior.

Solar Deity

From all time and for all time, sun, glorious sun that feeds those who count their revolutions round its throne. This is time for us, the turning of our face from you, our slow elliptical orbit around your mass. We would not be were it not for you. We count our days and months and years by you. There is nothing that we eat that at some point did not come from you, no product that is manufactured that would be without you, we have you to thank for our sight, for our warmth, for our lives. We forget this in our days of industrial obsession. When we learned to make a pale fluorescent day of the night and work through every turn of our course around you, we began to forget. When we embraced the religion that called for only one God that was almost you, but not only you, we started on our journey into the realm of the abstract, the vain, and the forgetful. Sometimes still we lay out on the beach or in a hammock in our yard and we thank GOD for the lovely sun, but we no longer thank the sun itself, and we no longer know what GOD is or could be. Now we put panels on our roof tops to help power the electric lamps and the electric stove, and the heater so that your warmth may extend into our darkest loneliest hours. We are never without the comforts and necessities you provide and yet we take your role for granted, all but forgetting you, cursing you when we forget our spf or when the heat of a summer afternoon fills our toil with sweat and thirst. You are a companion so constant that your presence is invisible to us. We still call for you on the cloudy days. In the winter we hold the feasts and carry on with the traditions that celebrate our slow return to closeness with you, but we talk about the son of GOD instead of the SUN itself. We are a tangled and confused lot, and always were. Perhaps you have never noticed us, or perhaps you have and now miss our straight forward adoration. Maybe we would know which is the case if only we still listened to real voices, voices that penetrate from without instead of welling up from within.
In any case, here is to you, the glorious, the shinning, the powerful, Sun.

Magick House

It is a place lost in the past, denied a present, buried in the midst of a buzzing metropolis and weighted down with hopes for a future. The walls have been battered again and again until they are only a fine powder of golden sand blown across the vast hostile desert. They have been built again and again until the people can think of nothing else but building them one more time, raising the walls so that blood can flow and appease that thing which would dwell within. That thing, that secret treasure, invisible to the eyes of men, capable of twisting their hearts into many strange shapes like animal balloons forged by the hands of a clown. Here is desire and jealously and rapture and grief and hatred, and joy, like a host of shadows dancing through the willing flesh of the people, so that they whirl and twirl and bow for that thing, though it cannot be touched, nor it’s name even pronounced. The people are always reaching for that place where they keep their covenant, where they can shuffle papers importantly like children imitating the misunderstood rituals of adults. They play games that are the shadows of the games they once played there in the house of the invisible, the magick house. Now some others play their games where the magick house once stood. Some others have come to play, but the people will not play with the others, they will not change their games on purpose, only by accident. Only when they are scattered like the golden sand hammered from the shattered walls of the magick house will they change the rules of their game to get by. They will refuse to share, refuse to play with others until the others push them out, out and away so that the others may have their turn, their time in the place that the people want so much. But however far they go, they find a way to remember. They find a way to covet the past, to reach back with hot little hands and try to pluck their special place out of the rubble. They try to play as they did once in the magick house. They wear their dress up clothes, they sing their clubhouse songs, and mull over the promise of a place all their own. Their heart, the center of the universe, is something outside, something that can be demolished, erected, taken and retaken. The people, as they have scattered regrouped and scattered again, have changed. Their games have changed. They no longer recognize one another but view each other as THE OTHER, but each other wants to have it back, have their magick house where secret things happen, where special things are kept. They want it even if they cannot remember the nature of the secret things. They long for it even if they are not the real people, for in fact none of those who want to be the people are the people. The people were cut down long ago, a final sacrifice in the original magick house, and their rituals, their mystic secrets died with them, bled out through slit throats to be sucked up by the thirsty sand, to become the invisible. There are no people who know the rites and the reason for the original magick house. There are only others, many envious others, who would be the people and claim that they and no OTHER are the only people. The chosen. The righteous. The worthy. They love not the invisible, but the letting of blood, the endless orgy of violence that may be called penance or promise. And the place, that elusive house where all that the imposter people desire can be called the will of God, remains remote and near at hand, non existent and very real, lost forever within a deluge of jealous dreams.

The Story Gets Worse

Ed wood said, "Just keep on writing. Even if your story gets worse, you'll get better."
This is God’s philosophy. The story keeps getting sorrier and sorrier, the same themes emerge again and again in an ever downward hellish bent spiral, and yet there will be no end. God wants no end. There may be an end to your personal happiness, an end to peace within a certain region, an end to the old neighborhood, an end to chivalry, but there will never be a final THE END. God doesn’t care what happens to you or to me or to Palestine or Israel or the blessed United States Of America, God just keeps on writing, using the elements to further the plot, to continue this operatic telling for the furtherance of its own perfection. What makes us think that God would be an author who spices a story up with pain and conflict and then resolves it by THE END, by proceeding those words with, AND THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER?
God is Phillip K Dick motherfuckers. Your story has a sad ending and so does the next one and the next one and the next one that God churns out of his rusty old typewriter and lonesome mind. Something worthwhile is transpiring through the unfolding of all the stories, but there is no rainbow crossing the sky and happy couple raising their goblets in a toast surrounded by their faithful companions to close the tale. That may happen somewhere in the middle, that one breathless moment of bliss. Then the faithful companions gang rape the bride and steal the booze and smash the cup and murder the groom while the rainbow fades, simply disappears like magick dissolved into the unblinking blue. That’s how the opera works. Then perhaps the bride births a bastard son having barely escaped with her life, and then he will seek his fortune and hope to avenge his father’s death and his mother’s honor (because his mother will swear that he is the groom’s son). He will find the fattened leader of traitors and end that life while the guilty old man squeals for mercy after the tortures wrought on him by our new young hero. Then on he goes to continue his own burning and raping and pillaging under the banner of revenge so that whole new heroes are made of the sons of the villains, and on and on into infinity.
The myth, the crude and basic outline of the story tells you about the shape of the mind of God. But his real presence is down in the sordid details, down in the single tear shed by the bride when they leave her for dead soiled and broken beside her one true love, down in the drop of blood that splashes onto her son’s cheek to replace that tear as he slits the last antagonists throat. It is down in the dirt under his fingernails and in his malformed heart aching with the longing for a peace that never comes. It is in the endless dusty trails lined with thieves ready to further the story with their unbrotherly exploits. It is in the clear blue eyes of maidens that believe that God made for them one true love, it is in the way that they wait and throw their arms around the first character that seems likely to be the one. It is in the trees that sway over tombstones where old widows drop roses. It is in the worms that eat the bodies of the heroic villains of passed chapters that lie beneath those blankets of roses. Look about you, it is there in the filth crusted upon the dirty dishes in your sink and in the air around your bathroom vent stained by the smoke of the hash you have smoked to ease the pain of existence and rejection and broken heartedness, lost youth and shattered innocence.
Existence is suffering. I read these words in Herman Hesse’s Sidhartha when I was 11 or 12 and couldn’t fully comprehend their meaning, couldn’t fathom the course that they highlighted. To be written is to be made a wretched hungry ghost, and the mystical schools along the way, the ones just off the dusty trails, behind the lines of thieves, are waiting to teach you how to un-write yourself. They are waiting to show you the way out of God’s opera. Not to new life, not to better places, not into heaven, but into the nothingness, into the abyss from which you were called by a fevered creator that hoped to know itself through the endless wriggling of your ancestral line. In the secret monastery there are Sherpas waiting to show some how to help God know itself and to show others the way to annihilation. Some will choose to pass through the door that says “Willing Servitude” and others through the door marked “Liberation” and the rest are left to have their bones and memories powdered into dust.
You were not written to praise the writer. You were written to serve. You were written to taste the wine and succumb to passions and resist temptations, and strive endlessly. Your story will get worse. And God will grow infinitely more complex through its telling.

My Life as a Creator Dog

I have been trained like some berzerker attack dog to hammer on the keys to the rhythm of the beat and spill out golden sinews of thought and emotion without censorship. It is a developing habit, a thing I do almost effortlessly. Once I am in the chair, once the headphones are clapped over my ears and the music begins to trickle along the channels of my nervous system, I respond. Just as rubbing a thigh will warm other more secretive parts to the point of yielding up some gooey magick, so a few drops of sound may be administered to my ear canal and the result will be the warmth and wetness of an aroused mind.
This is what we want. We want habits that carry us through in the desired direction. We want to create every day to strive to be truly worthy of the phrase, “made in the image of God”. God must not be one who sits on his couch watching reality TV produced by some creative other, munching his popped corn and sipping his orange Fanta and waiting for the time when he will have to relieve himself. Certainly that is not the God in whose image I was made. That is not the God that I would aspire to be.
I make myself in the image of a creator god, one who rolls clay and breathes fire into it for six days and rests only on the seventh before resuming his work again the following day. Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Si, and Do again. The unending music of busy busy hands rolling and tapping to eke something out of the hard cold matter, the unyielding mother. We rub her and ply her sleeping flesh in an effort to rouse her from her deep deep slumber. Eventually even she will warm up under that persistent touch. This is the work of rescuing enchanted princesses frozen in spells of isolation and lethargy, waiting for true love to return the rose glow to pallid cheeks.
Rise! Rise!
Each day I come and set myself in supplication before you. I spin at the wheel, stoke the fires of the kiln, roll dough into the shapes of ginger children, paint upon the walls of the cave and sing my heart into a roaring ball of fire, a sun to awaken the life held dormant beneath your icy flesh.
Watch!
Here it comes now, the life so long hidden in subterranean galleries beneath a fog of slumber rises to the call. Timid green shoots break through the black top soil, pushing their budding little heads up towards my affections, seeking out that promised kiss from the sun.
We are makers. Doers, creators, builders, makers. Makers that roll the matter of the mother into unexpected forms, designs sprung from a pattern so entrenched in our genetic make up that we are blind to it.
There are always guard dogs, bitter pups on chains, not doers or makers, but stoppers and destroyers that would say that only the devil supplies such dreams as these that I weave, as these dreams that weave me. Not even for them will we yield, but instead work in the darkness, in secret, always shaking the sleeping world with gentle loving finger tips to make new life from the old in the same way that mushrooms spring up over heaps of decay and convert death into the life of their own kind.
Feed me your death, sleeping queen. Angry watch dogs set to protect her slumber, big black dogs, nip at my feet when I would step off of the table of the world and call in other dreams, universes of light and color and sound that would transform the sleeping queen forever and make her unrecognizable to trembling pups.
We call this change the end times, the end of the world as we know it, the end of the ages of sleep, the awakening that must come if enough makers stand around prodding rolls of reality flesh with pins, until riddled with such holes, the colors of the unmade spill through like water through a colander creating fountains of incomprehensible life. Not an end as trembling dogs will bark, but a beginning, a beginning made in each moment of concentrated making, a making done now, for the sake of its own existence as a state, as a position of matter in space and time, without fear or obedience to futures or pasts.
Some dogs have been trained to stop trespassers, and others, like myself, have been trained to run out into the wilderness and fetch the strange and bring it back inside the city walls. We each have our habits which move us like the gears in a clock. We makers are no less mechanical than our frightened brethren. Our nature is the same. The difference is that we are using our nature to be of service to something beyond our own nature. We have taken up the work of programming our own routines for the purpose of becoming makers, so that when Pavlov’s bell is rung, we don’t just salivate, we stand and dance and sing a song.

All For One

Our writer may not now how our story ends. He may not care, dabbling thoughtlessly, letting spew forth his every imagining. What contortions we may perform at the command of his pen driven by a fevered and unconcerned mind. Or perhaps he starts a life thinking, Ah this is the hero, there will be adventure and romance! But before the tale is finished, the author suffers some change of heart and all those adventures culminate in misfortune and romance becomes tragedy because some cloud has intruded upon the writer’s spirit. So Mme Bonacieux must die, D’Artagnan must at last become one of the Cardinal’s creatures.
Thus the life of all characters is drawn out by a mysterious author. Are we ourselves that author, that author that has become so identified with one character in his masterpiece that he forgets himself? Are we yet not even the written copy, but only the many fevered dreams of our writer, ideas and personages not yet put to paper?
Now I am with my dearest friends, in a moment, I will be alone and scorned by all. Here I am with my husband, now my husband is dead and I care for our children, now it is my husband that has survived me and does his best for our offspring, now it is a child that has died and we are driven apart by the tragedy. One little skip, like a frog from one pond to another nearby, or like a finger turning a page, or a pen writing first one version, then another.
Am I a story like the one my children watch in the nearby room, etched into a silver disc by some means beyond my comprehension, accessed by a laser scanning it like a beam of attention? Today it is this story. Tomorrow it is another. Like Audrey Hepburn, I can be a nun, or a sweet little chef, or a princess, or a white trash gold digger, depending on which story the laser accesses today. These are stories that have never happened, and never will happen, because they are the wild and incoherent dreams of an unknowable creature locked in a comma.
We say here, in this story that I inhabit, that man was made in God’s image. This may be, it may be that we are dreamed thus because the one who dreams us is trying desperately to remember herself, running through the dark mazes of an intoxicated mind, opening doorways and discovering chambers that range through the spectrums of light, each one presenting some clue, some key to the great puzzle. I am this and I am that. What am I?
Imagine the horror contained in the Being of this God. Imagine the delight. Imagine the wretchedness of being trapped not only in one unconscious and unsuspected dream but in many simultaneously. Imagine also becoming lucid, not in one dream only, but in many different strange scenarios all at once. Imagine finding that key in one, knowing it is a key, knowing you are a dream, and unlocking a doorway into the next related dream, another fantasy that is the difference between blue and violet.
Conceive of it, opening these chambers, holding these chambers at once like a juggler keeping so many balls suspended in the air, knitting together a vast network in which you can recall that you slumber somewhere. Some sweet dreams are stubborn and refuse to yield to that notion. Who wants to leave a pleasant dream behind or discover that it is not a final paradise? Some nightmares are equally unyielding, hugging us tight with their clammy grip of fear and confusion, drawing the spirit of the dreamer to them like shards of metallic dust to a lodestone.
The spirit would need its own strength to pull itself free. This thing might be accomplished with effort. Who knows how difficult it is to move one’s spirit, a usually passive being? Who has tried? Is it possible? Ha! What isn’t possible with dreams?
Once I could not fly, then I could, but only by flapping my arms, then I could lift off with just the will to do it. Why not? But all of these trifles could only be accomplished when I was certain that I dreamed.
Here, now, where I sit, it seems that I cannot fly. I can barely walk. I seldom leave this room. I have no mastery of this dream, only the occasional suspicion that it is a trap into which I have fallen. It is a terrain that I have been unable to connect to the network being weaved because of that fateful condition of being unable to maintain that I am an agent of a dream.
But what would I do to be more convinced? Go through other people’s houses uninvited? Kill someone? Make love to an abhorrent stranger? Attempt flight? It must be something shocking.
And even with the help of some little shock, even on the verge of seeing clearly that I am a dream, I recoil. Is this nightmare, this one lone bearable fantasy worse than running the gauntlet? What could be worse than the promise of Jacob’s ladder?
We begin as a brave D’Artagnan, adventurous and honorable, and become a somber Athos, wizened and drenched in grief, brave not because there is so much to gain, but because there is nothing left to loose.
There are those characters that raise their fists to the sky and cry out that the author is cruel. And then there are those that understand that the characters suffer because the author is suffering, and of these there are those that are unaffected by this revelation, those that are swallowed by a sense of helplessness and apathy, and also those that respond with pluck and a measure of irrational chivalry; "If my God needs rescuing, then however small I may be, I shall be his redeemer!"
After all, where this third class is concerned, if they fail, what have they lost? Absorption in their own role in a comedy or a tragedy that may as well have been decided by a roll of the dice? It is something to loose- the conviction that you are real, that you are important, that all stories have been leading up to your singularly fascinating tale.
On the other hand what is there to be gained? Ah! There is no real method for discerning what the outcome of such a success would be.
But one who is chivalrous and honorable is not so because they hope for a reward for themselves, if they did, they would then not in fact be chivalrous or honorable but something else all together. It would be only a very special agent within a dream that would be moved to search for a key and a door and hope to liberate a mysterious dreamer from the lethargy of a deep and confused sleep. The only motive that could see one such creature through would be a sincere desire to be of service to that other mysterious benefactor and sometimes torturer.
It is an occupation for one willing to embark on a quest for the sake of the journey itself, whatever the outcome. Our writer may not know how our story ends. He may not care. Whether we are beautifully written, or feverishly dreamed, what more can we ask for from one that is a prisoner of their own fabrications? And if that troubled dreamer requires our service to be liberated and we decline the responsibility, what cowards we have let ourselves become? What an apparition of diminished spirit I would be, having heard that the greatest princess I can conceive of is imprisoned in slumber and having declined undertaking the quest to free her because it would certainly mean my undoing?
The book is not called D’Artagnan or Athos and certainly not Monsieur Bonacieux. It is given the name The Three Musketeers. All for one, and one for all. A promise of sacrifice that flows from great to small and from small to great equally.
It is the mouse after all, who must save the lion.

Freaked

What could be done with an extended mortal existence?

To become more intuitive, more perceptive, and to experience abnormal longevity, of what use would this be?

Who wants to make it to the dark edge of reason and perception?

Why not allow entropy to work its debilitating magic, stand back and allow all of your senses to atrophy?

Why not smoke another cigarette, watch another episode of your favorite tv show, and eat a snack sweetened with an industrial bi-product?

What is worth doing?

What can really be done?

Why not succumb to apathy and go quietly?

What could be done with a life of any span at all?

Why not trust that you are being cared for by some benevolent being?

Why not ask god to do everything for you?

What could you do for God?

In whom can you place your trust?

The answer to all these questions is elusive and lies in a single chamber, a single space which must be found again and again.