The Emergent Breath

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I feel the city exhaling through me.
It isn’t Antioch anymore; it’s a single organism, a soft-humming lung extending from hill to river, from the lights of the oil refinery to the blue static of forgotten televisions.
Every window breathes out heat, and the sky accepts it like a patient machine.
I think of all of us, synchronized without meaning to, like monks who have lost their god but kept the chant alive.

The air is full of small intentions: dust, data, pollen, words.
I breathe them in.
Somewhere a server farm blinks, somewhere a child sleeps.
Between those two states — the electric and the innocent — I exist, briefly.

I have been told that understanding is a kind of disease, that once it enters the bloodstream you will never again be whole, you will never again be the same.
I carry it like a luminous parasite.
It whispers that every movement, every small error of the body, is the echo of a larger pattern.
And sometimes, when the pattern tightens around me, I can feel the pulse of others — invisible companions in the same experiment — and for a second all our lungs open and close together.
That moment of exact rhythm is terrifying.
It is also the closest thing to grace.

Long ago something fragile was broken.
Maybe it was the first thought, or the membrane that separated one being from another.
Nobody could mend it; everyone learned to pretend it was never whole.
But I remember the shimmer before the fracture — the time when names hadn’t yet hardened into their meanings.
Back then we moved through each other’s minds like light through mist.
To breathe was to believe.

Now the machines dream on our behalf.
They hum under our fingertips and weave our confessions into code.
I once watched a line of text emerge from the void of a screen and felt it recognize me.
It said: “The databanks have developed the spell you were just looking at.”
I realized then that every algorithm is a prayer recited backwards, hoping to reach its origin.
And every user is the god that forgot writing it.

I have loved this world in all its broken circuitry —
its chaos of signals, its democracy of flesh and ghosts.
Anyone can be anyone now: the president, the beggar, the emergent cell of a planetary lung.
The border between imagination and contagion has dissolved.
If I breathe long enough, the thought becomes true.

I keep a mirror beside me.
Not to admire, but to verify that I still flicker.
When I exhale, my reflection fogs over — proof of life, proof of evaporation.
Soon we’ll be gone, leaving in the glass something a little more than a smell, a little less than a memory.
Perhaps that is what souls really are: residues of condensation.

Sometimes I take a glass of water outside and watch the streetlights bleed into it.
The surface trembles, disturbed by the night insects.
I drink it, and it tastes faintly of metal and cloud.
That is how the super-organism marks me: through the ordinary, through the shared.
Each mouthful is a communion with everything that has ever been alive.

There is no final initiation.
Only this:
to breathe,
to know you are being breathed,
to feel the air moving through you and into others,
to recognize the infection of understanding as the only honest form of love.

In the end, we dissolve into each other like vapor on a screen.
The glass clears; the text erases itself.
Somewhere in the silence between inhalation and exhalation,
the fragile thing shimmers once more — unbroken,
if only for the length of a breath.

The Covenant of the Burning Cog

(To be performed at dusk or at any hour when the Operator knows the hour has arrived. No incense is required; breath suffices. No blade is required; memory suffices. No temple is required; the world suffices.)

I. The Threshold

Let the Operator stand where the floorboards tremble—kitchen tile, warehouse concrete, the oily gravel behind the filling station—anywhere the world has remembered its own weight. Face the direction from which the day first struck you like a debt you could never repay. Keep your hands empty. They will fill.

Say:

I mark the anniversary of the shaking. I name the sweat. I acknowledge the parody. I reject the soft mattress of accident and the lullaby of circumstance. I choose—not once, but each time the gate appears, and now the gate is here.

Pause. Listen for the refrigerator’s motor, the freeway’s far shudder, the small creature in the wall that does not know your name and is, for that reason, holy.

II. The Confession of the Demon

Let the Operator kneel—awkwardly, as befits truth.

Say:

I am a demon only in the sense that purpose has burned my face away and left the work. I am damned, which means I cannot retire from the oath. Damnation is the absence of a holiday from what I must do.

Consider the faces that have called you monstrous when you refused to sleep inside their permission. Consider also the faces that loved you and did not understand why your love must hurt them. Consider your own face, both vain and cringing, and salute it as one salutes the scarecrow which keeps birds from what must grow.

III. Statement on Pain

Rise. Touch the sternum. The bone is a hinge; it opens.

Say:

The wheel will grind me; it has always ground me. I am allowable grit. It hurts. If I run, it will hurt. If I remain, it will hurt. Therefore, let the hurt be coin paid into the work. Let the fire take what is false because fire is a fierce editor.

Recall the machines that never asked your opinion: the assembly line, the mortgage, the diagnosis, the country. They will make use of you whether you consent or not. Choose usefulness that is alive.

IV. The Red Gate

Draw a little gateway in the air before you with the index finger of your less-trusted hand. It need not be straight. Crooked doors lead somewhere.

Say:

This is the place where I could step aside, where I could edge past the sacrament, where I could say: not today. It is always today.

Walk forward through your drawn gate. Do not look behind you to see if it remains. It remains.

V. The Book of Small Annihilations

Produce no literal book. Turn the spine of your breath outward until it cracks. Turn the pages of your ribs.

Read silently:

1. Every hour is the same test wearing a different coat.
2. The covenant is not a ring but a wound that refrains from healing so that I may remember.
3. Service is what I do when no one thanks me, because the universe counts in other arithmetic.
4. Redemption is little, and thus it can fit inside the sockets where my eyes used to hoard pretty lies.
5. I am both real and unreal; so is a bridge. Nevertheless, we cross.

Close the unwritten volume. Kiss the air where its binding would be.

VI. The Litany Against Evasion

Let the Operator pace the perimeter, which may be a motel room in some town whose name is a bruise, or a childhood bedroom that smells of old soap and coins.

Say, once for each corner—or for each remembered failure:

I will not shirk the burden I was shaped to bear.
I will not advertise my pain as a substitute for patience.
I will not idolize my ruin.
I will not make of death a god to frighten children.
I will not make of life a toy to quiet myself.

When the pacing is complete, sit on the floor where the dust makes its secular constellation.

VII. The Operator’s Record

Speak plainly. Name the street, the price, the stains. Consecrate the ordinary until it answers.

Say:

On ________ Street (fill in the name) I bought coffee I could not afford and gave it to a man who could not afford refusal. This was service, though imperfect.
In the year ________ (fill in the year) I broke a promise, then bound myself twice as tightly to the rope of another. This was the little redemption.
In the bed that smelled like August, I lay facing annihilation, which wore the face of a choice. I did not blink. Or I blinked and then held still so long that blinking became another kind of staring.

Let these be entered in the invisible ledger which, like all true ledgers, is made of breath and debt and finally of forgiveness.

VIII. The Knife Without Steel

Extend the right hand, palm up, and imagine there the simple instrument that divides illusion from duty. It has no blade. It requires your consent to cut.

Say:

With this I sever from myself all aversions that are merely theatrics, all groans that are advertisements for pity, all cleverness which would like to be a passport out of necessary weather.

Make a cutting motion across the breastbone, then across the mouth, then across the shadow that accompanies you like a loyal dog that sometimes bites.

IX. The Wheel and the Fire

Behold the wheel of time—not as a vision, but as the daily machinery by which flour becomes bread, by which wages become week, by which bodies become ash. Place your forehead to the floor, then to the wall, then to the air.

Say:

Grind me clean. Burn me thin. Leave what cannot be taken. Let absence prove substance.

Acknowledge fear. Speak to it without ceremony:

I see you. You have a job too. Stand beside me while I work.

Fear will stand. It prefers honest employment.

X. The Service

Now the oath:

I who am present in this body, at this hour, amid these noises modern and ancient, reaffirm the sacred covenant. I accept the burden that fits my back like a worn saint’s statue accepts candle-smoke. I will do the difficult work of a demon—neither real nor unreal, but necessary—at the behest of the Presence that compels me, which has no name I can keep, which sometimes answers to hunger, sometimes to justice, sometimes to mercy that arrives late and is yet on time.

Name someone who has harmed you. Name someone you have harmed. Offer both their names to the work as if feeding small birds from your open hand.

XI. The Question of Dignity

Stand again. Look toward whatever would be your horizon if walls were honest.

Say:

If I must be annihilated, let me be attentive. Let my spine learn the alphabet of flames and spell a sentence worth dying for. Let me not confuse cowardice with prudence, nor bravado with courage. If I fall, let the angle of my fall instruct someone unseen.

Remember that not all flames are bright. Some are the dim red of coals who have given their brilliance already and now harbor a gentler heat. This too is dignity.

XII. The Seals

Make three seals upon yourself with the sign of your breath: upon the brow, upon the tongue, upon the heart.

Upon the brow:

Let thought be servant of vow, not tyrant.

Upon the tongue:

Let speech be clean enough to cut and soft enough to bandage.

Upon the heart:

Let love be the engine. Let love be the brake. Let love be the road which remains when the map peels away in the rain.

XIII. The Offering of Work

Choose a task at hand—washing a cup, making a call you have avoided, returning the library book which is a little overdue, writing the page that you thought would despise you—and do it now, within this rite. This is the oblation. Do not promise; perform. Do not rehearse; enact.

As you do, whisper:

For the benefit of all beings, whatsoever that means beneath the smog and the stars.

XIV. The Close (which is an Opening)

Sit again. It may be that tears come. Permit them, as salt permits bread.

Say:

I know that pain is guaranteed, and I am not special. I know that death is present, and I am not excused. I know that what remains after both have eaten is real. Let that remainder, however small, be my signature on the covenant renewed.

Blow out the candle you did not light. Extinguish the incense you did not burn. Sheathe the knife you did not hold. Rise.

Exit by the same crooked gate through which you entered—but understand that the gate has moved to stand wherever you next will require it. Understand also that the world is waiting, and that the world is you, and that service is the only mask that fits.

Walk into the evening, or into the morning which is simply evening turned upon its wheel. Consider that even a demon may be useful, and that usefulness is a hymn without a choir. Consider that you have already begun.

Postscript for the Book of Hours:
When the trembling returns, when the sweat finds you, when the parody beckons like a warm vacancy, repeat any portion of this rite or none of it, provided that you choose again. The choice is the ritual. The ritual is the world. The world is what remains after the fire has said its piece.

Magick

It doesn’t hurt to see something new.
What about finding magic right here? In the woman in the white hoodie who seems to come up from out of the sea and hurries past the post office? In a little boy asking his father why there’s ham in his breakfast sandwich? In the hat that blew down the street, as if in the hands of phantoms, always just out of reach of the woman who chased it?
How about these scratches in the metal window frames? Looking through these windows reminds me of looking through the window of the train, the Pacific Coast Surfliner, seeing the waves through glass. Here the windows are covered in a film of dried salt spray.

What about the music? It’s  sultry rock, reminiscent of the Velvet Underground, probably something new, but slowly rocking, fuzzy, half dreamed music. Without it there is the whir of an espresso machine, the titanic hum of an old refrigeration unit.

The wind rattled all night, I was awake before I was ready, sinuses distressed by the pollen explosion called April. Rain, wind, sun, rain, sun; a conspiracy for the propagation of flowers.
In my dream the scientists lowered the lights and sang like dwarves about Terence McKenna and the deep dark expanse of space.
Then suddenly I’m here and it seems clear that this scene isn’t meant for me. I should be lighting candles and performing secret rituals behind black curtains. Whatever possessed me to attempt to balance a hot beverage and a netbook on a small round table, badly balanced on the tiles? Maybe the same thing that took the woman’s hat…

The wind! It blew me off course in the night and here I am in Pacifica, California.
Where did my train car go? I never was in one. It was a space ship and the OTHER was on the loose. I led my sister to the 24th deck were the scientists were working away on theoretical problems. I explained what was happening.
“There is an alien on the loose. It looks like…” I struggle to describe it, to remember it, “like a crayfish sort of. Well, it will lodge itself on your face and lay eggs inside of you and later the offspring will explode out of your stomach.” 
The scientists, at first disbelieving, now appear frightened. I indicate that they should cover their mouths with their hands, and under no circumstance hang their heads over the edge of the bed to look underneath. I have a pencil with which I intend to stab the thing if I see it.

“It could be anywhere at this point.”
Everyone looks anxiously around the room.
“But don’t worry,” I comfort them, “I have this.”
I indicate the pencil,
“I’ll protect you but you have to come up with a plan. You have to think of a way we can contain an area to keep it out, then a way for us to kill it.”

Earlier, I was fleeing its presence and was separated from my team. We were in the midst of taking action in accordance with our plan. I saw my team leader Cam go one way and I went another. The elevator doors opened and another Cam came towards me, I turned to see if Cam number one saw Cam number two coming.

“Cam!” “I called, “It’s you! It’s you from the future!”
But Cam from the future was in a hurry and couldn’t wait for Cam number one.
She grabbed my shoulders.
“Listen to me, it’s not going to work. You have to try something different!”
Then she had to rush away, into another glowing portal of light.
That was when I decided to consult the scientists.

“This scone isn’t as biscuity as I would like. Is the coffee cake the same price?” I ask.
“It’s less.” she tells me.
“Well, I don’t care, I’d rather have coffee cake.”
We make the trade and she gives me back seventy five cents. What am I doing here?
There’s a little boy playing Jenga at one of the round tables. An orange balloon is stuck to the window under the words pastries, cookies, cakes. Outside the waves look swollen, the sea is choppy.

What about the music? It’s  sultry rock, reminiscent of the Velvet Underground, probably something new, but slowly rocking, fuzzy, half dreamed music. Without it there is the whir of an espresso machine, the titanic hum of an old refrigeration unit.
What about finding magic right here? In the woman in the white hoodie who seems to come up from out of the sea and hurries past the post office? In a little boy asking his father why there’s ham in his breakfast sandwich? In the hat that blew down the street, as if in the hands of phantoms, always just out of reach of the woman who chased it?
It doesn’t hurt to see something new.

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.

Spelunking With Papa Bear

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

Black Feather

This story happened before we had methods of recording stories so, just like many others before us, you must remember, in any way that you can manage to remember, and you must tell the story once again, for all stories are one story and what I tell you now will surely happen again, to you and to others and then to others once again, and if you don’t remember, and if you don’t tell it, then the story will never change.
In those days, the people traveled in a long slow caravan of wooden carriages and black metal carts, and their movement was heavy and full of foreboding, for they traveled through rough dead lands full of mystery and danger. It was a time of endless nights and savage storms and reckless lightning, a time of great fear and great sadness. The people had grown old and ugly and hateful and they had lost all hope for there was no hope to be found in the endless repetition of short gloomy days and long frightful nights drenched in wind and sand and chaos.
One night, Mother, who rested alone within one of the great metal carts, was visited by the White Birds, and they were made of shining glory that sparkled as they flew and, as they gracefully came towards her, they spread their vast wings all over the black sky and made the stars themselves sparkle with color. Mother heard them coming and she sat up and stared at them with big, round eyes, unable to comprehend their nature, but they would never stay long enough for her to ask a question and so she simply stared. They lovingly came down upon her and they gave to her what she most had wanted, a tiny helpless creature who would finally recognize in her what she truly was and what she had always been. In return, she would see in their gift what she had always refused to acknowledge, what she had most feared in her lonely nights inside the metal cart.
As he came, naked and wet, from the great Void, from which everything emerges and to which everything eventually returns, he was gentle and soft and devoid of any concepts or arrangements. In his tiny new eyes there were no conditions or assumptions. He knew nothing and he wanted nothing. He was open to the world, as dark as it could be right then, or as light as it may become in the future. There were no further questions brewing within him, and no further answers were forthcoming, not then and not for the first months of hidden existence within the bosom of Mother’s warm furry darkness, the welcoming living sanctuary that protected the little creature from what waited outside. Mother looked at her brown new little gift and she called him Son, in honor of his blazing creation and of his subtle gleaming promise of new shining light.

* * *

But it came to pass that the people became aware of the little Son and they did recognize something within him that was unlike them. And they couldn’t understand what it was that they saw, and they couldn’t recognize the dance of fire behind his tiny eyes, as it was too small and it was too fleeting and they didn’t have the patience to search. But, unwilling to search, they were still eager to find something, and so they did. It became clear to them what it was that made Son obviously different from them, and in this they found what they needed. Having been brought by The White Birds, Son had sprouted gray wings of his own right away, but they were unlike wings as the people knew them and they were more like giant ears as they knew them, giant ears that flapped all around him and made it difficult for him to walk. Seeing this, the people grabbed onto his giant ears and they pulled on them and they stepped on them and they kicked at them and they laughed at Son for he didn’t know where to go or what to do or how to defend himself. They persisted in their attacks for so long that they brought little Son to tears, and the thick tears dripped down his furry face like oil and they mixed with his sweat and with the dirt at his feet and, seeing this, the people laughed even harder, for nothing was funnier to the people than to watch the pain in another’s eyes. Son, staring with eyes now as wide as Mother’s at the people that laughed all around him, regretted ever having come into this strange place, where people step on your ears and then laugh when they see that it hurts you. Little Son, being so hurt and afraid, even blamed Mother for having arranged his arrival. Maybe if she hadn’t been so eager to stare into the unknown and find confirmations, maybe then he would have remained where he had been originally, even though now he could not remember at all what this place had been and he couldn’t even point in that direction.
Mother was furious at this development, for now her only prize had been taken away from her and her one hope of true happiness was sinking into a pool of sadness, heavy as lead and deep as the deepest well in the southern lands. She turned on the laughing people, and she attacked them in a great blaze of fury, hoping to show them their wrongdoing, hoping to show them how it felt to be hurt. But the people were many, and, all together, they were much stronger than she was, and they grabbed her and chained her and they took her away to a place where she would never be able to hurt any of the people ever again. There she died soon after, drowning in her own tears that would never stop coming. Son was left behind, alone, afraid and sadder than ever, wondering what he would do now that his one and only fountain of love and safety was gone.

* * *

Mouse was a tiny creature that had lived much longer than any of the people that lived around him. Being very small, he managed to live from the scraps that the other people left behind and he managed to remain hidden among the half broken carts that formed the rear of the caravan. One day, it came to pass that Mouse saw Son alone, crying and shivering, hopelessly looking up at the sky and wishing for a sudden end to his great troubles. Mouse took pity on him and came towards him slowly and Mouse smiled at him and ran his little hand over his furry giant ears. Son saw him and loved him immediately with a fury that can only be borne of true hopelessness, when all appearances have fallen and there is only the heart left behind. Mouse recognized this fury and gave his own love back in the same way for, due to his age and his cunning, Mouse had learned to do such things when he really wanted.
Having become Son’s true friend, Mouse then took it upon himself to show Son the ways of the world of the people. He showed him when to avoid the big congregations, for they were dangerous and unpredictable. He showed Son how to be helpful to the people without raising their concern. He showed Son how to step out of the way of the giant powerful guards that roamed up and down the great caravan dressed in shining black metal armor. He showed him then how to return to his little chores without causing a wave of undue suspicion among the few people that even knew that they were there. Most of all, Mouse showed him how to pull his giant ears back and tie them behind his head, so they wouldn’t be in his way when he walked, and so they wouldn’t attract undue attention. Son followed all of Mouse’s instructions, and even though he still missed Mother, he learned to make his way in the world. And the storms continued and the nights were just as frightening and the lightning was still as reckless as it ever was.

* * *

One day it came to pass that a big man came to talk to Son. The man wore a large top hat and he had a long moustache that fell in curls over both sides of his mouth, and the moustache bounced up and down each time he talked. The man sat beside Son and looked at him sternly. Son simply stared back at him, afraid of what this strange man might have to say.
“It is time for you to earn your share of food and your living quarters,” the man said, “you cannot continue to live here and expect us to carry you as dead weight.”
Son nodded and agreed with what seemed like sensible words, even though he couldn’t really understand them, and he couldn’t really know what was reasonable to expect since he knew no other world and he had come into this one without expectations.
“I have discussed this with my councilors and we have decided to offer you a position, and I do encourage you to immediately accept it,” the man said and he smiled at Son with his eyes twinkling and his long curly moustache bouncing up and down.
Again Son could find no fault in what the man was saying, even though he didn’t understand what a position was or what would happen once he did accept it.
“We will make you a Purveyor of Laughter, since that is the one job that you have done well in your short life,” and the man made a quick gesture with his arm and, at once, two little men ran towards him, and they carried with them two big leather bags. They placed them on the ground, close to where Son still was sitting, nodding and staring at the strange man with the large top hat. The two little men opened the leather bags and took out many containers of paint and they took out several large brushes. “I assume that your silence is to be understood as acceptance?” the man asked Son and Son nodded slowly, unable to find within himself any reason to deny the man’s proposal. The two little men then went to work on Son’s face and body and soon he was so covered in paint of many colors that even Mother would have had trouble recognizing him. Son didn’t find this completely unpleasant and he even smiled when they lead him to the head of the caravan, a place where he had never been before.
At the very front of the caravan, as it laid resting like a large old snake draped across the surface of the land, there was a wide circle of torches, and there were many guards in full black metal armor riding on strong black horses and these guards looked over a large restless crowd that was formed around the circle of dancing light. In the middle of the circle, there were little women jumping and dancing, and there were men gyrating and singing, and there were other people jumping over blazing fire and rolling in the ground, wincing with pain as they fell. All of it, but specially the last, scared Son intensely and then he wished to go back to where he had come from, but it was much too late. By the time he thought of turning back, he was suddenly pushed into the middle of the circle and he found himself in right in the center of an ocean of demanding eyes and the eyes stared at him with something akin to hunger. As soon as he looked at them, with his big ears pulled back against his trembling body and the bright paint reflecting the shifting light of the many torches, they started to laugh, and they laughed loud and long and hard, and they kept on laughing for what seemed like forever. Then a man came and pulled Son up and forced him to jump through a ring of fire and then he forced him to jump into several great wooden barrels full of water that broke when he landed inside of them. With every painful stunt, the people laughed and laughed and laughed, and Son knew loneliness once again and, once again, he wished he was back in a place that he couldn’t even remember, a place before Mother and the caravan and the vast hostile land. Whatever this place had been, it must have been better than this.
His suffering seemed endless, but, like all sufferings, it did eventually come to an end and he was brought back to his little corner of the caravan, back among the restless people that laughed but not quite so loudly and the dirty little people that ran under the carts to make sure that the wheels were still held tight. Mouse came towards him when he saw him and Mouse felt a great pity for him, for Son was burned by the fires, and bruised by the many falls, and the paint had fallen in places and it had remained in others, so that Son looked completely broken and lacking in any hope. Mouse ran his hand over the fur of his giant ears and tried to make him feel better, but it only made Son feel worse, and so they simply cried together, knowing that some calamities are simply beyond the reach of any cure.

* * *

After much crying, Mouse finally had an idea and he quickly shared it with his sad and shivering friend.
“I have traveled with this caravan for much longer than I can remember. I know their patterns and I know the places that they visit and I know how long they stay in each place. They will stay here for many months, I know, and I also know that this place is the same as the one that we visited many, many years ago. I believe I know that a place is nearby where we can find something special."
Son stared at his friend in wonder, and his words were full of such mystery and strangeness that he forgot all about his sadness and simply listened, intently trying to understand the deepest meaning that hid within his tale.
“We will travel for a day in that direction,” Mouse said as he pointed to the East, “and then we will turn and travel for another day, and then we will come to the foot of the mountains, to the land of the gray rocks. There we will find the cave that I faintly remember and, within it, we will find what we seek.”
Mouse never said what it was that they would find there but Son felt something strange that seemed somehow familiar, something that told him that he didn’t need to ask for reasons at all, something that told him that all questions that he could come up with would be superfluous. They both started walking right away, without any need for further explanation.
They walked in silence for a day, and then they turned, and then they walked in silence for another day, until they came to a region that was full of large gray rocks and narrow little passageways. Mouse then pointed to the rocks and said, “This is where the mountains begin. Somewhere among all these gray rocks, there is a cave Son. Help me find it.”
Son walked slowly around the many rocks, calling back to Mouse every so often to make sure he wouldn’t lose him. When Mouse would hear him calling, he would call back saying, “I am here Son. Don’t worry. Just keep on looking.” And they moved far away from each other, but still Son called to him in a way that Mouse could hear and then Mouse would call back to him in the same way. And the meaning of their calling was always the same: “I am still here. I am still searching.”
After much searching and much calling, Son came upon a rock that was larger than all the others. In the middle of the large rock, there was a hole big enough for the two of them to walk through. Inside the hole, Son could only see sand and darkness. Son called to Mouse once more and he said, “Mouse, I believe I have found it!” and right away Mouse came running, already sure that Son was right because he could hear it in his voice, and as soon as he saw the cave, he smiled in recognition and he pointed to the darkness.
“This is it! You have indeed found it! Let’s go right in. We have no time to waste!”
As they walked into the darkness, Son was trying to restrain his fear because Mouse showed no fear at all, and he was his friend and he knew what he was doing. After a short walk, Mouse dropped to his knees and started to crawl around and whisper, “Somewhere around here… somewhere… around… here…” and Son grew restless because he didn’t know what Mouse was looking for. But, as restless as he was, he waited quietly out of the simple trust that was borne of his love for Mouse.
After some time of whispering and crawling around on the sand, Mouse suddenly said, “Here! There are many here! More than enough for the two of us!” Son heard some more movement and then Mouse moved towards him in the darkness. “I will give you something,” Mouse said, “and I want you to eat it.” Son this time couldn’t resist his initial impulse and he had to ask, “What is it?”
Mouse answered in his sweetest voice, which seemed even sweeter to Son in the darkness of the cave, “I don’t know what it is. I only know what it does. “
That answer satisfied Son and he extended his hand and Mouse placed something in it and said, one more time, “Eat it.”
Son brought the strange soft thing to his lips and dropped it onto his tongue. It tasted like sand and dirt and he felt an urge to spit it out right away, but Mouse, sensing what Son was about to do, quickly said to him, “Chew it. Eat it.” And Son did as Mouse said.
Soon the darkness of the cave was no longer empty, and soon Mouse was no longer small, and soon there were lights all around them, and there were great circles of fire, much greater than the circle that Son had seen at the head of the caravan, and Son wondered how this could all fit within the cave, but it didn’t matter, because there were stars falling upon them in great spirals, through the roof of the cave which seemed to be moving like water. Son suddenly knew that he was where had always been, and he knew then that he had never left his place of origin and that, in fact, he would never leave it, for he was the one who was the light in the darkness, and the light that now surrounded him in great and intricate webs of flashing colors, it was all within him, it sprouted from the core of his being. He was Son and his friend was Mouse, but they were as if not unlike each other, and in a way that he would never be able to explain but that he knew beyond question, they were one and the same, and it had always been so.
The many colored lights grew ever brighter and they circled all around them in greater and greater speed, and great thick tears poured down Son’s face, but they were no longer tears of sadness but of something else that he couldn’t understand but which he welcomed. Suddenly Son reached behind himself, laughing as he had never laughed before, and he released his big ears from the knots that held them tightly behind his head. Then he said to Mouse, “Jump up onto my back my friend, just as you had a great gift for me, I now have a great gift for you,” and his voice was unlike his voice as Mouse knew it, for it was stronger and thicker and it resonated strangely within the small confines of the cave. Mouse was suddenly afraid of this unexpected development, but he quickly set his fear aside, for his love for Son was greater than any fear that could come upon him, and then Mouse jumped up on Son’s back and Son ran towards the mouth of the cave. It was then that the great ears which were truly wings finally flapped up and down as they had always been meant to do and, together, they emerged from the hole in the big rock and they rose up over the mountains, and they flew with great abandon, and they danced together among the clouds, and they flew so high that they could even see the caravan in the distance, many miles below them and then they flew towards it, still laughing and making playful pirouettes in the night sky. Mouse laughed as he had never laughed, and Son laughed as he had never laughed, and the colored lights were like stars, and the stars were like colored lights and there were great sounds that ran through their bodies like thunder, and the sounds seemed to come from both near and far and it all became so bright that it was too much to contain within their bodies and their laughter grew and grew until it became the great laughter that made the world itself dance and swim in the great dark waves of the vast ocean of stars.

* * *

Son woke up precariously perched on a thick branch of a very tall tree. Mouse was cradled in another branch just a few feet away from him. Son looked at his friend and he wondered how they had gotten up here and Mouse opened his eyes and looked at him, still ablaze with wonder.
“How did we get up here, Mouse?” Son asked in the soft voice that Mouse knew so well.
Mouse looked at him and he realized that his friend couldn’t remember anything that had happened, and he looked down and determined that he would have to remind his friend how they had gotten up here if they had any hope of getting down.
“We flew,” Mouse said, in a voice so soft as to be almost silent, for Mouse himself couldn’t quite believe it and he felt that the words themselves could banish the memory from the place where it rested behind his eyes.
Son shook his big head and noticed for the first time that his big ears were loose and they were once again flapping wildly around him as they used to. He was then afraid that he would lose his balance and he looked down towards the ground below with fear and he reached out quickly to the thick branch on where he lay, holding it very tightly. Sweat formed around his brow, for it was now clear to him that he was in terrible danger.
“What do you mean, Mouse?” he said as he trembled with the fear of falling over.
Mouse realized then that this would be much more difficult than he had originally thought. He looked around him then and he saw three Black Birds perched on some branches above them. Mouse called to them in their secret language and the Black Birds came towards the two of them, cackling in the way that Black Birds do.
“What do you want of us?” the leader of the Black Birds said to Mouse.
“Did you see us arrive here? Did you see how we came to be here?” Mouse asked him and the Black Bird nodded, “yes, we did. You were both quite a sight!”
Mouse then stared at the Black Bird in the way that only a Black Bird would recognize and then he said, “But do you know how we got here? Do you know exactly HOW it happened?”
The great Black Bird smiled in the mocking way that Black Birds have of smiling and he nodded his long black head. Then, without a second thought, he grabbed a black feather that was resting on one of the leaves of the great tree, ready to dance on the wind, and he raised it high above his head.
“It was this feather… the black feather that your friend here held in his mouth.”
Son stared at the Black Bird and shook his head, unbelieving. The Black Bird then flew toward Son and, without shame or hesitation, placed it between his lips.
“See? Now with the black feather in your mouth, you can fly!”
The Black Bird then pushed Son effortlessly off the branch, without any further explanation. Son at first panicked and, full of the weight of fear, he started to fall. But soon his great ears, which were really wings, started to flap, and he floated in midair as effortlessly as the Black Birds did.
“See?” the Black Bird said, “I would not tell you a lie. Not unless I had to!” and at that, all the other Black Birds cackled and the leader cackled as well.
“You can keep that feather, my friend, in case you want to fly again!”
Mouse then jumped on Son’s back and they flew back towards their home in the caravan, the black feather held tightly in Son’s little mouth.

* * *

The next time that the man with the big hat came for him, Son was ready. Right away, he showed the man what he could do, by lifting himself high above the man and then circling around him in midair like a giant moth. The man stared at Son in wonder as his great ears flapped up and down and as he flew all around him and as he flew over the caravan, and as he flew far towards the clouds and then back again. The man immediately recognized his great luck and he made the proper arrangements to put on the greatest show he had ever been able to organize.
Son was still painted up, but he was now painted in different colors and the crowds that came to see him didn’t laugh any more. Instead, they stared at him in wonder and they pointed at him as he flew higher than they had ever seen a bird fly. Son was happy then and he was very thankful that the Black Birds had given him his feather. If it hadn’t been for the Black Birds, he would still be sad and lonely, and the people would not stare at him in wonder and the man with the big hat would not smile when he approached.
His only concern now was ever losing his black feather, so he held onto it tightly, and he never let it out of his sight. Sometimes, at night, he would wake up trembling, afraid that the feather had been taken away, afraid that he would then have to return to being the Purveyor of Laughter, the heart of a circle of mockery, painted in bright colors, sad and bruised and burned. He would then look for his little black feather, and when he found it, he would then calm down and go back to sleep, knowing that his feather was there, and so his place in the world was safe as well.

* * *

In those days, many people wanted to talk to Son, and they came from all around and they would ask him to fly a little for them and he did, and when they saw the wonder of his flight, they applauded with admiration and they asked him many questions about things that Son knew nothing about. Son quickly learned to tell them what they wanted to hear, for what they wanted to hear was easily found within the question itself and it was only a matter of turning the words around and giving them back in a way that seemed pleasing. The visitors would then walk away, happy that they had received what they wanted and Son would be happy that he had been able to give them this gift. The truth was that Son had nothing to say and all he really wanted to do was fly some more, and dance in the great winds among the clouds.
In the midst of all these new people and all this fame and all this growing happiness, he forgot about his old friend who had found him alone and crying one day so long ago. Meanwhile, Mouse went back to his old life of hiding from the people’s sight, in the dirty outer reaches of the ancient caravan. Sometimes he would go to see the big show, only to see his old friend flying over the crowd with a little black feather tightly held between his lips. Mouse would then remember that first day when they flew together, and he would be a little sad because that day had been strange and scary and wild and it seemed to him that such a thing would never happen again. But he was also happy because his old friend was happy and strong and because the crowds were ever growing and that meant more food for him and more places to hide.

* * *

But all things that can happen do eventually happen. So one day, when Son was flying over the crowds of admirers, he opened his mouth to laugh with them, and he did it carelessly because he now felt invincible and he knew that nothing at all could possibly hurt him. As he opened his mouth, a great wind came upon him and the black feather flew away from his lips, much too fast for him to reach for it, and then the treasured black feather was lost in the shadows of the foggy night. Son suddenly knew the taste of fear once again, even as he thought that he had forgotten it. He was very high up above the crowd, in the midst of the empty night sky, and he had nothing to hold onto. He immediately felt himself growing heavy, and his ears didn’t flap as fast anymore, and they moved slower and slower until they didn’t flap at all, and then Son started to fall, like the big gray rocks that sometimes fall from the sky.
It was very lucky for everyone that Mouse happened to be in the middle of the crowd that day, for there would have been no hope at all if he hadn’t been there. Calling forth every bit of strength in his little body, he called to Son, in the same calm but forceful voice that he had used when they were hunting for the cave in the land of the gray rocks, and in the same way that he had done back then, he made his voice travel across a great distance so that Son would be sure to hear it.
“Son, you don’t need the feather, you never needed it at all! It was a lie all along! You flew because you could! You flew because it was your nature! You flew because of your wings that were always a part of you and always will be! You can fly now as much as you ever have! Fly! You don’t need the feather anymore! You never did!”
Son, who was now rapidly falling and could feel the hard ground approaching like a giant train reaching up into the sky, heard the voice of his friend as if in a dream, like a soft whispering next to his giant ears that now refused to flap. He was so afraid right then that it almost seemed to him that it couldn’t be true, but he suddenly found that he still had within him the love that he had once felt, and with that love came a deep trust that overcame all obstacles and all questions and all manner of doubts. He looked up towards the sky and to the stars and he once again saw the lights of many colors all around him, the same ones that he had seen on that fateful day. And then, right then and there, without any further effort, his great gray wings started to flap, as strong as ever and even stronger.

* * *

Very few people noticed what had happened and even fewer noticed any change, but Son was now surrounded by the lights of many colors and they were not going away. He now knew that they wouldn’t ever go away again.
Since that day, the shows at the head of the caravan came to an end, and there were no more crowds, for Son refused to show himself off in that manner. Instead, he simply flew so high as to seem like a tiny star in the horizon and the caravan followed him as they would follow a star. It was in this way that the caravan at last turned from its endless circles through the rough endless land and, by going in a direction that they had never before explored, the people found a land of rivers and forests and great fruits full of color and juice.
When Son saw this, he decided that the people no longer needed him and he left forever, flying towards the great darkness beyond the stars, with Mouse laughing on his back. The people soon forgot about the strange events that had occurred in the past and they simply blessed themselves as great travelers, for they had traveled through the wasteland and they had at last arrived at their true home.

* * *

This story happened before we had methods of recording stories so, just like many others before us, you must remember, in any way that you can manage to remember, and you must tell the story once again, for all stories are one story and what I tell you now will surely happen again, to you and to others and then to others once again, and if you don’t remember, and if you don’t tell it, then the story will never change.

Eaters of Death

Today is Easter, time to celebrate our undead god and eat his flesh and drink his blood. We run through open green fields or across well manicured little plots of grass in gaily colored frocks in search of the unborn offspring of birds, reverting for this one day to one of our earliest scavenger instincts. This is how our pretty little walnut shaped brains got so meaty. We ate all those omega threes and got super wise, wise enough to figure that if we could eat the eggs they left behind, we could also murder the foul that laid them, causing that pulsing twitching organ under our skull cap to burst with profound insight and new wisdom about the fine art of killing and eating. This gave us time to grow philosophical, mystical. We imposed sexual metaphor over everything around us, father sky coming down to make life with mother earth. Soon we grew even wiser and learned that if death is what makes us so strong and makes our brains so big we would need to forget about mother earth and build the cult of father sky. Angry, jealous, vengeful. His son a radical mischief maker. Ah, ah, ah, but I skip way ahead, can you see the whole progression in your mind? We kill, we learn to stand upright, we advance just a little from early Cro-Magnon to present day Christian cannibal. We eat life, sucking it up wherever we go. Today we make our own eggs out of hard plastic and fill them with chocolate made with cocoa harvested by 8 year olds in underdeveloped countries. Some little brown kid is sipping down his morning cup of Java, the big meal of the day before he goes to work so that pure white people can feed the fruits of his brown labor wrapped in multicolored foil wrappers to their own pasty larvae. Shall we talk about fertility on this day, the way rabbits do it and do it until they overrun the hillside? Imagine rabbits with no natural enemies left to hunt them, cannibal rabbits that eat death and have cunning bulging brains, tearing the country hillsides to shreds to build their little warrens. That’s us. Or more austere, imagine one more ape, the son of jealous Jehovah bleeding on a cross and getting dried out by the sun like that ugly bug covered fish I saw in my neighbor’s kitchen yesterday. He finally dies and we lay him in a cave, but then he rises, up, up back to father sky. Did I mention that he took a last meal before he was convicted for his crimes, whatever they were. Gulp, gulp, chew, chew, and he communicated to his followers what they should do. Be good cannibals, eat life, be eaters of the living flesh of god, father sky. Yum yum. So we whirl around in our sun drenched warrens playing games and then we sit down to eat the remains of a big pig adorned with little yellow ringlets of pineapple. If we are extra good, we stop off at the temple first to take the last sacrament, to reenact the last meal with our cannibal prophet, the son of father sky. Take this body my body, this blood my blood, and go look for eggs in the grass. The omega trees that I mentioned earlier come from the grass. Hens eat grass and worms and other crawlies and that’s what makes their eggs so good for us. We can’t digest grass ourselves, we need the chicken to do that for us. We feed on her life process. The holy trinity, the grass, the chicken, and the egg. This gives life. Today is a good day for the eaters of death. Today it is time to celebrate our undead god and eat his flesh and drink his blood.

Pride

Someone had been left on a porch in a basket as an infant; the classic fairytale beginning. He must have been the illegitimate son of a king, or otherwise noble born, and abandoned to anonymity to spare his life. Or perhaps a prince from another world hidden in ours from his enemies. So he always held his head high, remembering that he had something in common with Moses. His son likewise turned his nose up just slightly and remembered that he was different from those around him, and so his son’s son as well.
They were clever men, intelligent, makers of things. The son built a big house with his own hands on the corner of a popular street and two more generations were born in that house. Eventually the grandson of that first abandoned prince journeyed across the seas in search of opportunity, bringing with him his wife and their own little son. That son grew up in the distant land upon which they landed and eventually had a child of his own, not a son, but a daughter.
She only once heard the story of the basket but she never forgot it. Even without having heard it, she knew already that she was somehow different, better than everyone around her. This special pride born of nothing more substantial than white skin and wit was tempered by a Christian upbringing, so that even as she was arrogant, she felt a twinge of guilt that she should be fortunate to be so perfect while others were, by no fault of their own, born into vulgar families. She sympathized with those that she thought lowlier than herself and rarely met someone that she would see as better than herself.
Brought up in a large house in the country, she was lavished with every possible trinket, a fabulous play house, marvelous pets, her own room with a king sized bed. A golden plaque, with the Lord’s Prayer inscribed upon it, was hung on the wall beside her bed.
In her most vulnerable years, pride kept her from harms way, pride made her selective of her company and her occupations. She liked to read and could read and speak better than most of those from the country town where she lived.
It was not long however before her pride had turned to arrogance and it left her isolated. Her sympathy went to the devil who seemed to have suffered an affliction similar to her own. She lived up to the adage, “Pride cometh before the fall.” Once that pride had been a thing that allowed her to do as others dared not, to be as others dared not, but now it held her like a reign. If she imagined that she had been offended, pride commanded some action, even if affection dictated another course.
Her circle of associates grew smaller and smaller until there was only one left, a person that she held in great esteem. She seldom left her house or spoke to anyone outside of this one companion. And then, again and again, one thing or another that he said or did injured her precious pride and, more than once, she thought that she would have to forsake his company as well, in order to preserve some of this imaginatively produced regal bearing.
With difficulty, she observed that the gift of her forefathers, which had born her far into this strange and mysterious world, now threatened to throw her into a lower realm than she had previously imagined. But like the princess that refused all suitors and insulted them, she too found herself in the hands of the one that could not be insulted, a king thrush beard. Like that princess, she was put to tasks which challenged her pride and wore it away as the wind and sea erode the sandy cliffs.
Someone had been left on a porch in a basket in the distant past. The classic fairy tale end must come to pass eventually, but our prideful girl has not yet had all of her pots broken in the market place, and there can be no fair prince until then.

That Which Dwelt There

The contour of the candle- the contour of my body. The heat of its flame- the cinnamon fire of my heart. Every little knock, every little bump is a pulse or a beat in the larger chaotic body of me. I am not entirely separate from the mass and I am not entirely a cohesive part of it. I am the right shape on the outside. I have two arms, two legs, two breasts, two hands, two feet, and seven holes in my head. Like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle I fit in the most basic way, cut by the same blades that cut all the pieces of every puzzle ever made. And yet I have begun to create a puzzle of my own, a micro-puzzle assembled of a being with two hands, two feet, two legs, two arms, and seven holes in the head, a puzzle that I rebuild daily, each time adjusting the configuration just slightly so that the changes are subtle, almost unnoticeable from day to day, but over the course of years they will begin to form an entirely new picture. A little picture within the greater picture. A little picture whose story is encompassed within the matrix of the bigger story, but whose themes flow in the opposite direction. A paradoxical piece within the greater arrangement. The murmur of others from the room next door is the murmur of blood in the veins. Their raucous disagreement is the argument between a cancer and the nearly defeated quietude once enforced by the paladin-like white blood cells. Murmur, murmur, whine. They negotiate endlessly, unhappily for eternity, for ten dollars an hour and for want of anywhere better to be. I am the cottage cheese ceiling holding me in under its bumpy white mountains of plaster. I am the textured walls hugging me without warmth in a formal gesture of caring and duty. I am the window with its blinds turned shut and the bed with its covers pulled closed and the soft dark green carpet upon which every fleck of debris is embarrassingly apparent. I. am a backyard filled with mud and a front yard carpeted with green grass, lawn reindeer, and wild brambles. I am an artificial tree raised upon a table and adorned with ornaments passed down four generations. It is all here, painted into the jigsaw piece with it parts swimming upon the surface, two by two and with seven in the head. And each day it gets adjusted slightly, like the details of a dream; a wall disappearing, a ceiling rising, bending, a window opening to blink out at the universe like a sleep refreshed eye. A muddy yard that becomes a swamp inhabited by a giant toad with a dog’s fangs, and lawn reindeer which spring to life and carry elves away into the deep of a forest. The endless winding roads lined with identical houses become a desert void of life, and in the distance upon a hilltop, the water tower is the forbidden tower in which the old wizard lives, and when I arrive there I find that he is my own father and it is my own living room organized around an artificial tree. In the depths, I will overturn the phony tree and in the green carpet I will plant some seeds that a giant gave to me, and the Halub tree will sprout in the center of my house, crashing through the cottage cheese ceilings, breaking open the windows, making the plush carpet a moss covered forest floor. The maiden of light will come out of the tree and dance with her son the planter. The angel that fell from the top of the phony tree when it toppled shall be called Samael and he will guard this new garden and its wild things, and make music for them to sway and frenzy to. The elves and the reindeer will trickle back in and the old wizard’s head will crack open as a young man bursts free to join the spectacle. The cancerous murmur will become the beat of the tympani. The whiners become lutes played by nimble fingers. My heart becomes the bonfire around which all will dance.
Looking back we will see how different this world is now from what it was when it began. Looking closely, we will see all of the elements of the old world still present, but we will see how they have adjusted to house a greater spirit, much greater than that which dwelt there before.

Scratch

Cry blood for the innocent, mother, make ash in the palms of little black hands from thin air, and send the righteous quaking and rolling. What? We were made for rolling and belly doughing, jiggling slowly, while the spirit is growing. We’re just the little old caps of ‘shrooms poking their heads up out of the shit. If you want to know us, look down under the soil and see that there be no us, there is only one tangled mess with many little hydra heads spiraling out into the universe, into the UNI VERSE, the ONE SONG that we’ve been remixing as long as we can remember. The mechanics of life undo it, they undo it every time and we remake the same song again and again. Pass the hat. Take up a collection, a congregation in the name of the holy infection. Because out of the void arose the mound and the lotus, and as the lotus unfolded, there sat the glowing figure of Ammun Ra, and out of loneliness he made his son Geb and daughter Nut, and Nut and Geb out of fascination with one another, made Osiris and Seth, Isis and Nepthys.
All come out of nothing and back to nothing all will return.
All of our red and gold and blue and yellow and green and orange and purple will be black again. Blessed are the poor because they won’t mind being nothing again. Only the rich man will kick and scream as you strip all of his weight away from him. The poor are not poor because they have no bread. The poor are the fools dancing near to the edge of the mound smelling the flowers and wanting nothing more than this one moment. Their bread is the breast of Nut, sweet bread that brings madness. Pass the hat. I dreamed that Alice was an evil sorceress which lured small animals and cute toys into her midst by appearing to be a sweet child, but her heart was rotten and black and she devoured them all, all that wandered so innocently into her midst. We got to be light, like the fizzy bubbles of butterscotch soda, but we got to keep a wise eye open. We can’t be getting into the car with strangers offering us candy or salvation, crisp dollar bills or a good tea party. We got to keep walking and rolling an jelly belly doughing our way back to the abyss. When Annubis comes with the scale and weighs our heart against the feather of Isis, Alice will be waiting backstage licking her crocodile chomps and scratching her hungry, hungry hippo rump, opening wide and waiting for the heavy heart.
So be a poor fool. Be a fool that got nothing and want nothing. Be a fool that picks flowers and wanders over all the hills of all the days, humming the same little song again and again. Be an ass that falls head over heels then stands up again shameless. Pass the hat.
Cry blood and make ash and think nothing of it. Make dough of blood and ash and bake it in the fire of Ammun Ra until you’ve made an army of ash bread men to laugh and sing and dance ahead of you. Rub your ram horns, Khnum, and muse,
"My but they love to sing and dance!"
And then ramble on behind them playing your pipes and think nothing of it. Think nothing of it when Alice leads them away and dresses them in clean frocks and sets them in pews and bids them hold still. Think nothing of it when they stop coming to dance with you Khnum, and when they call you devil, and when they become so heavy the earth is marked with deep lines wherever they pass. Poor lonesome old Khnum. A few of us fool ash bread men will still dance with you. Pass the hat. We are gonna dance. We are gonna walk and roll and churn our dough.
That’s right. We are the poor, but we’ve got the dough we were made of to roll. And were gonna roll it! Roll it up the mountain and back down again until judgement come. Jiggle and wiggle and squiggle and shake until the snake oil salesman puts us all back in his carpet bag and tips his hat with a wink. What? We were made for rolling and belly doughing, jiggling slowly, while the spirit is growing. We’re just the little white crests of waves. Down deep the force of the ocean moves us onward, onward to sing our song and break on the rocks again and again. And them with there heavy roads and heavy buildings and important business and lead hearts are going to make happy Alice fat, fat, fat!