The Doors Of Sleep

If I could run backwards through time I would grab hold of that moment with you and say something unspoken.

It was in January that the key came into my possession, though we had been living in the house since November. In all the winter hustle, with little time to unpack and settle in, it went unnoticed in the drawer of the upstairs bathroom. I recognized immediately that there was something unique in its antique design.

“I loved you from the moment I first saw you.” you said.
If I could catch it like a white rabbit running I would say,
“I love you right now forever.”

The key was as silver as the liquid light of all the stars poured into one peculiar shape. That particular form was linked with that of a lock which by then was gone from the world I inhabited. Keys outlast the doors they open, the locks whose inner workings they alone understand. As the ages pass and their own purpose has waned they must long for the caress of the lock they once knew, that perfect fit.

If the words were spoken the moment would become a moon, full of soft white illumination filling a darkness that has been recorded as uninterrupted through the duration of some teleological history in the Yerba Buena museum.

“I loved you from the moment I first saw you.” you said.
If I could catch it like a white rabbit running I would say,
“I love you right now forever.”

There was no lock in the whole of the house in which it fit. I thought of the door it had once opened. When the door ceased to exist in this material realm was that the end of access to the domain it protected? Or could the key invoke the lock and door once again, opening the way to a world that has passed into dream and myth?

All occurrences affect all occurrences in the past, present, and future.

We did have that pearly eternal moment in which I watched the mechanical shutters covering the all powerful mystic centers of our fun ride machines open. Then we felt the flow of life electric, but it meant one thing to me and another to you. I saw how remarkable were the possibilities, and how unremarkable was a kiss, a lifetime of hand holding, marital bliss, love at fist sight, old age in rose gardens and book signings. To be a lock that accesses the remarkable was my deeper wish.
Destiny opens and closes the doors of sleep.

“I loved you from the moment I first saw you.” you said.
If I could catch it like a white rabbit running I would say,
“I love you right now forever.”
And still I would release it again, a white butterfly drifting into darkness.

The Big Nothing

If I could be free of familial obligation I feel that I would have the same sensation as someone who has mastered an addiction. If I could contentedly go through my life knowing that I would never bend to the will or whim of my parents, so much of my time and energy would be free that I would surely rise like a phoenix from the ashes.
Damn them for giving me life then exercising all of their energies towards the end of subverting that life to their own wishes and desires. Damn them for seeing me only as  an uncooperative place holder in the symbolic order. Category: daughter, type A, first born.
Damn them for assuming that my existence is about them. Example: If I am not there it is to make them sad, depressed. Damn them for making me responsible for their emotional state. If I were to have continued to do the same I would have been dead long ago, suicide note reading:
“I have tried my best. Nothing I can do is good enough for you. Why must love be contingent upon approval?”
I ran away once and got no further than Lakeland Village.
Later I got as far as San Francisco and it might as well have been Mars. I felt happy and free. More myself than I had ever been permitted to be. Love and Will were more important than material things and these in true form could never be subject to approval.
But several times a year I must be dragged back into the underworld, into the land of the dead. Because while they lacked the ability to think of my happiness before their own, I did not. I would go and try to give them the pretty picture. I would not say any of what I really thought to them. I would let their hurtful words and way of being wash over me and not struggle against it. My mantra was “I am a duck.” I had the promise of  leaving their presence to get me through these visits.
But each visit was as toxic as a nuclear blast. Before and after I was sick. During I would almost die.
And at last my connection to them was tenuous at the most. The stronger I became the less reason could be seen to consent to participate in their play. The only reason as always was, “to not hurt them.”
But these miserable people were endlessly hurting and always the blame would lie somewhere other than within their own disturbed psyches,  rooted somewhere other than in their many poor choices, somewhere other than in their own utter lack of illumination.
If I were to tell them the truth would it be kind or cruel?
Kind or cruel?
Kind or cruel?
That for me, the interaction is corrosive, futile, unnecessary and harmful to all that I strive for.
If they cared for me as an objective entity at all, they would leave me alone and seek their happiness elsewhere. They would not make me come back, they would not force me to take the communion of pain and eat of the flesh of  their woe and drink of the deep back blood of their despair.
They force it, but I could say no. I could make a clean break if I told them the brutal truth.
Kind or cruel?
I keep trying to give them what they say they want. I keep trying to be good for the BIG OTHER, the eye in the sky that is watching over my deeds.
And yet I want nothing more than to flip them all the bird, Ma. Pa, and Jesus too. I want to set the world on fire.
I keep turning the other cheek, good lamb, but within me a wolf is growling. The real in me begs to be freed of all the empty gestures that supply the emptiness the symbolic order demands, the emptiness my parents crave, the big nothing they have sown.

Mama Bunny

I have been so heavy with sleep, drooping as a green leaf might droop under the accumulated moisture of a heavy mist. My body feels tired, my emotions are troubled, my mind muddled. I don’t want to touch a rock, to drag myself into the magic circle. Feeling trapped under the weight of things to do, things to do, things to do, I have an angst filled desire to moan, “Fuck it all.” shed some tars, eat some candy corn and watch The Vampire Diaries.
A tiny voice inside of me urges me against giving in to the weight of sleep. I crawl into the magic circle and touch a rock. I do a number of secret things with no attention whatsoever. It is difficult just to be there, forget doing anything well. My mind is pulling like a dog on the end of a leash, reaching for anything anywhere but refusing to heel, to be right here, right now.
Eventually the tiny white rabbit enters the magic circle. I know her well and think of her as Mamma Bunny.
“Keep trying. You’re doing good just by trying.” she tells me.
I don’t feel like I’m doing good. I feel like I’m going through the motions and I’d like to give up.
“You're in a valley. That’s all. On the mountain it’s clear. You are awake, everything makes sense, but inevitably you come down. That’s part of existence, a natural law. And in the valley you feel that you can’t ever reach the peak again, that maybe you’ve never been there. You can’t understand what you once understood. You can’t understand the mountain from the valley. That’s okay. It’s not worth trying to understand what you knew then. Now is now. All you have to do is understand that where you are now you won’t be able to appreciate where you’ve been or where you will be again. But you can understand that it is temporary, that you won't always be as you are now. You won't always sleep. One day you’ll be awake again. And it is in preparation for that day that you continue your practice. Even if you can’t do much through your practice at this moment, simply maintaining the habit of practice makes it possible for you to do something real later.”
“Look at it another way. The master of the house is away, but you maintain the house so that the master can return. If you let the house fall into decay, if you abandon it, the master can’t come home. Or when he does, he‘ll have to focus on putting the house in order. But if you keep the house in good shape, the master can return and do something productive with it right away. Which is better, because the master comes and goes on, and this house can only stand for a century or less, so time is limited.”
Mama bunny points her little face up at me, golden eyes shinning.
“Just keep it up. You’re doing good by trying. Trying is good  enough. It turns into doing. Nothing is permanent and you don’t have to understand everything in all of your facets. Practice makes it possible to experience another facet from whose perspective you will understand. If you don’t get up and do your chores, you can’t go to the ball, and if you don’t go to the ball, you can’t meet the prince! And you‘ll find that even if your chores seem impossible, by getting up and getting started, by trying, you‘ll attract enough helpers to get the job done.”
I lower my face towards mama bunny’s and gently touch my forehead to hers. Then I open my mouth and swallow her. She jumps down happily, a white rabbit plunging back into wonderland. I feel her glowing inside of me, a kernel of levity, a nightlight against the darkness of slumber, a movement in the underbrush that sends the dew into a sparkling scatter of droplets bouncing from a green leaf.

Kallisti

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

Work On Self

In the ordinary course of life as human animals our attention flows untrained from one thing to another. Whatever is loudest, brightest, closest, or most thrilling captivates this precious resource, this little understood commodity. Reflexively, our mood changes constantly as well, contorted in one way or another in response to external stimuli, blindly following our unguided attention.
When you are constantly wrapped up in this shifting, this loss of attention, you can’t really be free, you can’t make any choices, you can’t do anything seriously. You will merely move from one attention grabbing person, place or thing to the next, responding emotionally to each new source of stimulation with astoundingly mechanical reliability.
We react. Clowns cause fear, praise arouses pleasure, a traffic jam equals anger. If being ordered around by your boss made you irritable today, there is no reason to suspect that you might enjoy the experience tomorrow.
Being happy, being sad, angry, or fearful, these are not things that we do, these are things that do us. We react automatically to whatever stimulus we encounter.
We assume that these reactions are somehow more than arbitrary, that if something pleases or displeases us there is a fundamental justification for the response.
If my spouse cheats on me I feel that I should be sad and angry, I have every right to it. I will feel that it is my spouse's fault that I am angry.
I have never considered that my response to the situations and individuals around me comes from within me. It is particular to me. It is a reaction I learned early in life from my parents, my teachers, the television and my peers and I have repeated it mechanically so often that it feels “right.”
We feel that these reflexive states of being are dictated by who we are, when really we are being dictated by them.
Who are you anyway? What are you? What is the nature of this existence?
Most of us have not considered what it means to be a person. We have not asked ourselves, “what am I? What function do I serve?”
Nobody else asked us either. In fact we have been informed of who we are by others who have never wondered what they were. To delve into such a question would mean directing our attention inward, placing it on our own self rather than allowing it to drift over whatever new thing calls to it.

When I was a child I was very concerned with the question: “what am I?”
It seems as if immediately after being informed of who I was, and consequently forgetting what I am or might be, I began to try to find my way back to it. At least as many years as was spent forgetting myself came to be invested in trying to remember it again.
By the time I was in the fifth grade I became very convinced, walking home from school one day, that I did understand something about myself and reality and it was summed up best by these lines from a popular nursery song; life is but a dream.
I am a dream. One dream of many. There are dreams within dreams to consider.
If I am a dream, then there is a dreamer, there’s something else, an eternal something, an other of some kind.
It took more time for me to build on this theory, to move beyond “what am I?” to “why might I be?“
To me it seems that one function of the human being is to establish contact with that dreamer, that eternal being. Just doing that is a lot harder than it sounds.

Doing that in as many different ways and different spaces as possible is the function of a human being in a system that involves this organic existence but is not only this organic existence.
We do this with our attention, by turning it in on ourselves, in on the dreamer.
This is an non-ordinary application of attention. This is going beyond the course of life as human animals. This is applying attention intentionally rather than accidentally. This is trading the subjectivity involved in riding the roller coaster of human emotion for the objectivity of a waking state; a moment of lucidity in which I remember myself as the eternal dreamer.
This is what I call “work on self.”

The First Bite

The rulers, high and far from where clay men can see, took counsel with one another and said:

"Come, let us cause a deep sleep to fall upon Adam. Let us cause Adam to fall upon a deep sleep."

And he slept as if the night was never changing, like black was the only color.

Now the deep sleep that they "caused to fall upon him," is Ignorance, for it is darkness without bursts of sound and night without stars.

They opened his side like a living woman. Like a living woman they opened his side and they built up his side with some flesh in place of her, in place of her they built up his side with flesh, and Adam came to be endowed only with soul.

And the spirit-endowed woman came to him and spoke softly with him, saying:

"Arise, Adam."

And when he saw her, he said:

"It is you who have given me life; you will be called, 'mother of the living,’ for it is she who is my mother. It is she who is the physician, and the woman, and she who has given birth."

Then the authorities came up to their Adam, the man they had created with mud and clay and breath. When they saw his female counterpart speaking with him, they became agitated with great bursts of heat that flowed through them, pulsing with desire that called itself anger. They became enamored of her, wishing themselves inside her, seeking a great hole in her flesh as they had done with Adam. They said to one another:

"Come, let us sow our seed in her!"

And they pursued her. Into madness and the abyss they pursued her, into the jungles of twisting vines that form the mind, through the labyrinth that they created. And she laughed at them for their witlessness and their blindness; and in their fierce clutches, in the dark pit where there was no light, she became a thick tree and left before them her shadowy reflection resembling herself; and they defiled it foully, filling its cavernous knots with warm seed. They defiled the stamp of her voice, so that by the form they had modeled, together with their own image, they made themselves liable to condemnation.

Then the female spiritual principle came in the snake from the tree which she had become in their clutches. The snake, red and black and shiny. The snake, the instructor, taught them, saying:

"What did he say to you? Was it, 'from every tree in the garden shall you eat; yet - from the tree of recognizing good and evil do not eat'?"

The carnal woman, said:

"Not only did he say 'do not eat', but even, 'do not touch it; for the day you eat from it, with death you are going to die.'"

And the snake, the instructor, said:

"With death you shall not die; for it was out of jealousy that he said this to you. Rather, your eyes shall open and you shall come to be like gods, recognizing evil and good."

And the female instructing principle was taken away from the snake, and she left it behind, merely a thing of the earth, one more shed skin.

And the carnal woman took from the tree and ate; biting past red skin into sweet white flesh, and she gave to her husband as well as herself.

And these beings that possessed only a soul, ate. And their imperfection became apparent in their lack of knowledge; and they recognized that they were naked of the spiritual element, that they were bare. They took fig leaves and bound them upon their loins, hiding their raw form.

Boogie

Answers born from questions and questions born from answers tumble awkwardly over one another like dark suited gymnasts. I pull up from the dark depths wondering. What is that light there, penetrating the serenity of this once womb-like space? Eerie and blue, it calls me out of slumber and points to a startling terror; I have not been alone here.
There is a movement not far off, something that can see me, just as I can now see it and the age old questions arise; can it hurt me? Should I hurt it first? Who will eat who?
Play seems out of the question. After all, who comes creeping silently into your room to kneel beside your bed while you slumber as an invitation to play? This is too close.
A friend knocks at the door, a friend calls to you, announces their presence from some distance before coming so near.
Or are there other ways to play? Ways that belong to creatures far beyond fear of safety and borders of individuality? Does one thought in my mind announce itself to another before it takes over?
It’s all for the furtherance of some game perhaps, but not a game for human animals, not a game that this one that I have perceived myself as being can win. Hostility or hospitality weigh in on either hand, who shall be the victor?
Fear is such an insistent mistress, always calling for my attention, always making bold claims, such as this announcement that this is a matter of life and death. Leap up and attack! Run! Or tell yourself that it isn’t real. It was only your imagination, there was nothing there, and drift back to sleep.
I close my eyes. If I can’t see it, then it can’t see me…so goes the ostrich logic. Leave the boogies to feast over my reposed form. What do they do while I hide behind closed lids? What do they want?
This is the thing that they told me didn’t exist. The thing that was not in my closet, not under the bed, not at my window. Sleep they told me, go to sleep. So I did. Now that I have grown taller and have sent my own children into the darkness with promises of false safety, only now, sleeping in their room, am I startled awake by this presence, this “should not be here” that disturbs the peace like a spider falling from the ceiling onto your cheek.
Now I know that it has always been here. It was always in the closet, under the bed, and at my window, then just as now. I sent the lambs to the slaughter just as my parents did before me, off to be the center piece at the boogie feast.
Slowly I realize that this time it has not come for me. Here it is peeking into the bed of my youngest daughter, and this thing that should not be has suddenly taken notice of me noticing it. How surprised we both are. I would not usually be here, on the floor sleeping, would not usually perceive that strange glow, hear the rustling, feel my pulse quicken and my eyes snap open. What seemed at first like my own unwelcome visitor did not expect so close an encounter with me, it has come creeping with other quarry in mind.
I am here, an adult in the nursery, positioned on the floor beside the bed to prove the security of our sanctuary and I witness for myself the breach. They are hard to see once fully awake. It is only with lids partially veiled that I can perceive their glow, the shadows of their slinking movement.
They are unconcerned by their discovery of me, more importantly, by my discovery of them. Even while they see me watching through slit eyes, they continue their advance.
Why should they worry? I don’t believe that they exist. Reason should prevent me from rising to stop them. I have always closed my eyes tighter and gone back to sleep in the past, a habit formed in child hood, why now would I do any other thing?
Sleep they told me, go to sleep. So I did. That has always been the way. Tell yourself that it isn’t real. It is only your imagination, there is nothing here.
What do they do while I hide behind closed lids? What do they want?
Answers born from questions and questions born from answers tumble awkwardly over one another like dark suited gymnasts. I descend into the dark depth blotting them from my mind. Forget that light there disturbing the womb of darkness and retreat into slumber and the comforting illusion of solitude.

Symbolic Order

It creeps right in, like a thief taking advantage of an open window, it steals in with ease precisely because they are so unlike it, alive and open while it is dead and closed. It is a virus. Not alive strictly speaking, adapting to the physiology of its host, borrowing the life of this other to further its own structure. Without this host body it is nothing of consequence. It is NOT. Only by inserting itself in something that IS does it achieve its end. Only by forcing itself upon supple young minds does it achieve anything resembling life.
This abstract entity, this order of symbols, is Rome to barbarians. It is upper Egypt to lower Egypt. It settles in its host and multiplies, slowly eating the other from the inside. Soon there will be nothing real left. Only a string of empty signifiers whose signified was left behind long ago.
We will rise and pledge allegiance every morning. We have no experience of what it is to pledge and we start saying that we are pledging without understanding what we are saying, We have never felt anything like allegiance. We know the words. We chant them together rhythmically.
We will be told to show respect, and the signifier “respect” will be associated for us with the signified of “subservience” or “obedience”. It will be impossible for us to respect our elders because they have never respected anything. The real attitude of respect has become extinct, but its corpse is still dragged around, spilling from our lips carelessly, endlessly, meaninglessly.
Language thrusts its barbed tendrils deep into us and now our reality grows tinier, more constricted. The sounds that flow out of our mouth such as and like is so very and all such like as must be some such like as such and much and truthiness, exercising our God given right to liberty and such and fighting for freedom against terror and drugs and such we must prevail against such like adversity administering justice and such with respect to indigenous insurgence and victory and such…
We will stare at each other and listen to the babble, respond when possible like an actor who has just been waiting for his cue in a Shakespearean play whose pentameter and use of forgotten words confounds the modern semi illiterate player. Recital is all that remains.
We never had a chance to choose whether or not this structure could come and live inside of us. It lived inside of those that came before us and they passed it on to us. This thing inside dwelling, steals the sight from our eyes and makes the without in its image.
What is really there? Who knows?
Nothing perhaps, an abyss, a void, chaos as counterpoint to structure. This particular structure, this fortress is not the only such entity. It is one such entity and the world it creates is unique to it. There may be other worlds spawned from another similar strange confluence of order and attention, worlds you would inhabit if you were born French rather than American, or Alpha Centaurian rather than human.
There is no more contact with the real. We have become the virus, biological extensions of the symbolic order that latched onto us and began to suck the life from us before we were three years old. We will pass it on to our children and they to theirs. Zombies, spilling colloquial zombie seed into the precious new life that has ignited in our midst. We’ll subvert that spark and make it as undead as we ourselves are, effortlessly, unintentionally.
It will creep right in, seeping from one infected organism to the next. Like a thief taking advantage of an open window, it steals in with ease precisely because the host is so unlike itself; alive and open while it is dead and closed.

Thoughtfully, Beautifully

The problem is the music putting ideas into their heads, words not their own running in lines like trains along tracks, tracks all forged in the simple melodies of these songs. All of my thoughts have been cooked out of my head, my senses dulled by the sun blazing on and on. The people made in the music and baked in the sun lay around wondering vaguely how they came to be at the bottom of the valley. Dressing their dogs up and wearing the least possible amount of clothing themselves, these Southern Californians run on iced coffee and sex. These are the two lures that get them to race through the course like lanky long faced gray hounds after the rabbit. Is there a story in there somewhere? Or is it only a poem? A verse in the song that makes us, an incoherent stream of experience, one line of code, pure data in the form of color and sound. The sweet bitter taste of coffee and cinnamon, the scent of vanilla body wash rising from heated skin bronzing under the solar disc rolling overhead, Apollo driving his chariot over water and earth without compromise.
Why don’t we all sit together and make our own song? After all, we’ll all soon be bones or ash and it won’t matter where the broom was or who opened the window while the air conditioner was running. Such resentment because life hasn’t been made thoughtfully, beautifully, but has rather happened to us when we should have happened to it. A sword slicing through a piece of blue sky like a knife through lemon meringue pie, purposeful, unrelenting like the tap, tap, of a wood peckers bill into the trunk of a tree. Bit by bit, measure by measure, taken in careful steps laden with the intent to savor and cherish. That was the way to do it, but we schlepped through it, clinging to vague ideas, promises regarding tomorrow and other distant futures that could never arrive because the first steps would never be taken and someone else would be blamed for the inaction.
What is missing is not a something that can be held in sweaty hands. All we will ever need, the most glorious thing we could ever obtain is already here and we are closed to it, blind to the wealth that is real and irrevocable; this liberty that is mind, this river that is love and never ceases to flow.
The problem is the music putting ideas into their heads, words not their own, words that tell us what should be, what could be, but never what is. Where is the rejoicing? The explosion of self that is being all that I am in this moment with lungs and heart and brain pouring pure poetry and hands that can do. It is our hands that give us some unusual potential as makers. But what good are makers that take no action, that never make?
Creators that do not create are something else, listening to the lyric that someone else wrote as if it were absolute, this reality the only reality. These are consumers, the walking dead, with tiny dogs in purses and the urge to create subverted so that all they really need to get by is a jar of Vaseline and a stack of pornographic magazines, and ideally some one to stick it into or to take it from, words not their own running in lines like trains along tracks, senses dulled by the sun blazing on and on.
Whatever happened to the darkness, the womb where things are allowed to gestate and come to fruition? There is no room for creation in the endless prying light. All things skim by on the surface, racing towards the future on the tracks forged in the simple melodies of this popular song. When will we all meet in the darkness, within the depths below? Shall we really wait until there is nothing left of us but bone or ash? Is it then not too late to last and love? To persist and adore? Is it then not too late to sing our own song, to use our hands for something more challenging than instant gratification?
That song, the resentment in that voice, the sad helplessness of flesh trapped within the life unlived, sagging with age, the bitter threat to run away once again. Time runs out. All songs happen through time, all songs begin and end. It is the little flourishes in between that count the most.
Did we make it ours? Live up to our deepest nature as makers? Or did we let it rush by on those rails that were supplied by the manufacturer, let it rush by only to make bone and ash, bitter sweet taste of coffee and cinnamon, blue sky un-sliced?
It should have been made thoughtfully, beautifully, and without compromise. It should have been made in the dark. It should have been our own.

Remote Control

They are in our homes, pulsing at the center like an icy heart projecting ghosts into our once warm sanctuaries. In bed with our wives they whisper to her desires she never could have dreamed up alone. They are influencing our children, whom we entrust to their care at a tender age because their skill for captivating attention is unparalleled. To each of us they speak in their flickering chains of signifiers leading us deeper and deeper into the forests of desire like the wicked wife of the woodsman. They enter our private dreams, inserting their own mythology into the underground streams of our wild raging subconscious. They are there blending into the fabric of our existence, telling us what we think, telling us what we want, and telling us who we are. Our view of the world is glimpsed through their myriad of unblinking eyes. One eye to a room, never any less than one to a household, they show us what to do, how to behave, where to find those things they suggest we must have. Their cold intimate company is addictive, the only company that we crave. They demand so little of us, just that we sit back and let them in. Let them penetrate our minds and souls and make them their own. Soon theirs is the only company we want to keep. Our lovers are not as satisfying as the lovers they can show us. Our children are not as doll like and neatly dealt with as the children we can watch through their eye. Our lives are not as well put together as the lives we can live vicariously through them, blanketed in their uninterrupted 24 hour programming.
There are not us. They are OTHER. Wire and glass where we are flesh and blood. Their unity transmitted from towers renders them unfailingly effective. Their solidarity, their consistency draws us to them, away from our disparate chaotic selves. Away from the untamed unpredictability of real experience. Our unruly self is better abandoned to a place with soft cushions in full view of the eye where we will be led deeper and deeper into the forest. We trust and depend on these cold nurses. Cold nurses rear our children. They tend our loneliness, helping it to grow even as we feel that they are somehow satisfying it. An old woman lies dying in her bed, their babble consoling her from the dresser across the room. An infant sucks a thumb watching the bright colors flash and parade before its new eyes, learning to be led through this passive sacrifice of attention. In the houses beside ours, other human being sit prone, letting the cold nurse feed them her endless torrents of image and sound. We are separated from one another by nothing more than thin layers of dry wall, yet we don’t even know each others’ names. All that we know is the pantheon of Gods and Goddesses that live and die in illusory lifetimes before our eyes, acting out plays called “Romance” ,“Tragedy”, and “Comedy”. We yearn for what we are shown, never suspecting that it is an empty charade, never dreaming that the real thing might look differently, sound differently, feel differently. To each of us they speak in their flickering chains of signifiers leading us deeper and deeper into the forests of desire like the wicked wife of the woodsman. They are in our homes, pulsing at the center like an icy heart projecting ghosts into our once warm sanctuaries, building with empty pictures and sounds prisons of lonely desire that strangle us and leave us pale and flaccid, deeply asleep under flashing lights.

Sheep Roll In Soul

They show me that we are good sheep, sheep who walk in neat lines to be counted lustily, sheep who roll by in cars. They show this to me. They say, “You are a sheep. Sheep need to have this.” And that is the advertisement; sheep in lines, sheep in cars. They call it the soul. They want to sell me, a sheep, a soul. So ludicrous that my mind is dropped from its usual turbulent fury to a complete silence. I needn’t dig deep. They put it right out in the open. We have become so hopeless, so used to the manipulation of life and words that we don’t need the message to be too discreet. You can simply tell us, you are sheep, you want to fit in with the herd, you want this car, we will give you soul. Soul, the thing that flies or the thing that makes you rock and gyrate to the music. Soul. Yes. I told you. I can say nothing more than what they said, it was so plainly put in pictures and animation and words. I am left silent. Why fight it? Why suggest to a sheep, “Hey yew, they’re just trying to eat yew? They’re getting fat on yew. And yew are getting fleeced.”?
They want to be sheep. They want to be herded. They want the bearded man with the bo-peep cane to stand over them and smile with a heart pinned to his dress. They want him to tell them where they should go, when they should go, they don’t even need a why. Glad to accept that father knows best, they’ll do what they are told, because after all they are sheep, and the shepherd is much smarter, far better suited to make the best choices. He leads them to the greenest grass, the sweetest pastures, why object? We get what we want. Listen to it. You don’t’ even have to worry about your soul. You can buy that too. All you need to do is consume. Feed in the green pasture and the shepherd will give you a soul. He is looking out for both your material and spiritual well fare. He is loading you up onto the conveyor belt and watching you disappear into the dark depths of the light crushing machinery. You will be dust. You will be ash. Immortality is for Gods, not for sheep. You are a quick snack for the Cannibal God and his brood. Yum yum, they taste so good doused in Christian Doir and wrapped in lycra, served on platters of satin and oak. Down in the earth six feet deep your soul will roll along the black asphalt above with a new sheep at the wheel ready to go and earn a paycheck and hit the online stores and shopping malls. Ready to sign its life away, holding a pen clenched in its bovine maw, yes on the dotted line, thank you, and here, here, and here by the X , yes, thank you. Pockets full of plastic and we all fall down. Ring around, around, around. I know it’s true, I’ve said it before, I’ve sung it in nursery rhymes and set it in words and pointed and hopped up and down. And this time I mention it with less passion, with less concern. You are right after all, we are only sheep. If you’re only wish is to feed in greener pastures, then bon appetite. Enjoy it while you can. Because that soul you bought, it won’t roll where you’re going to go. The asphalt reaches only so far.
(A note to the reader- if you find this more than mostly confusing you may need to run a Google search on SOUL. The very first listing will help find a Kia dealer where you can buy your very own.)

Zicky Tabby

600 words of witch light. Switch light for the might of height , so bright so bright, the rafters right. They say meow wow hay mamma hay, but no, no we don’t go, no way, no we stay, fixed like star fish on ships bellies suction cups sup, sup, sup. Rainbow bright me, me hearties yo ho. And we don’t go, no, no, no, no, no. They sing it like weeeeeeaowww, meowwwww, like daisies dancing on days of delight, de light, dat shine so bright, so rainbow bright with blue windmill turning, the stars are burning, the child is learning and loosing the way of the zicky tabby ooob da, the secret language of the stars, of the gum stuck beneath table tops, pink and blue and gray whispering of days chewed by, mouths once explored, the secrets of the zicky tabby ooob da, the white haired lady dressed in black downstairs and the bright red and yellow plastic tea set up stairs, and Robin hood and Little Jon and a dress that never gets worn, oooob da. That is the life of mankind, the womankind with him, that’s the life, the life of the dress that never gets worn. We have it here, but we no gonna use it. We knows its special so we gonna let it waste away unused. Afraid. Afraid is the people of the word, And stuck, stuck like the gum under table tops. We got the little box what fits in the big box what fits in the bigger box what fits in the biggest box, Oh my! Oooob da! Sometimes in and sometimes out, then we come back and see that we grown bigger, that we learned more words, we got us a bed spread, shiny and pink and dirt under our finger nails and holes in our trousers, and dogs sniffing at our holes and big mountains rising high like the pie in the sky, we all do die, sometimes, we die. We cry an we cry and in dreams we fly but somehow we can’t get unstuck dubby duck, we can’t get back to the free jazz, just being this little body growing on macaroni and cheese fuel, like little sticks of dynamite going down yum yum, and we are sad but we don’t know why. The peoplez all around us is droopy eyed scraggly haired. The dog has got burs in her furs and frozen rattle snakes for Frisbees. We can’t play in the sand box cause iz full of earwigs… you know de pin c h e r bugzzzzzz. There be some big trees out in the autumnal breeze, swaying, gentle hipped, murmuring songs about the baked land and the poisoned flowers all pink and white. Got them words running over my brain, got my A B C D E F G and my SH and CH and TH and PLEASE, and THANK YOU and AMEN and I APOLOGIZE and I AM SORRY. And glub zub dub I am sorry, sorry I kant make no one here happy on this green earth. Green and brown and yellow gold with sparkles and purple and white butterflies bleached like the bread and we got the TV. The TV got me. IT got me so I can only dream in cartoonzzzz. I don’t remember how I dreamed before. Now I am black and white cartoonz and I am stuck running in place and the big bad wooolfe is coming to eat me and I try with all my might but I iz stuck in place, in black and white cartoon space. More to be afraid of the longer I iz here. Don’t remember when this song got started, don’t remember what we sang before. Oooob da’s gone from this song. Zicky tabby is now 1 2 3 and 1 5 1 9 6 LAGUNA AVE. 909 678-1169. Goody bye Zicky tabby farewell oooob da. The witch light, once so bright now burns dim in the sad gray grim. Might of height won dis fight, so we say goodnight to the light. What iz right, what iz right, is might, iz height. Iz goodnight Oooob da, goodnight and bye byes to de light.

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.

Delirious Couture

Do try not to be any trouble, won’t you. The night dresses at Juicy Couture advise that good girls like to sleep, and so they shall, swaddled in their sweat shop fashioned cotton couture lying atop a mountain of soft fluffy pink sheep (also fabricated for a nickel a piece in some god awful plant in the People’s Republic of China). Across the street from the Juicy Couture you can shop for silverware in a place called Christ Awful, well actually I believe it is spelled Christophel, however the pronunciation is almost the same, and anyway, if you weren’t born with a silver spoon sticking out of your mouth you can do what a good citizen should do and take the train downtown, or walk or ride a Vespa and use a MasterCard to buy your own Christ Awful silver spoon so that you can mimic the monarchy like a good little ape.
Please note that I have not compared you to a monkey, as monkeys have long curly tales and you most probably do not have a long curly tale and are therefore an ape rather than a cute squirrelly little monkey with a pointy toothed grin and an overwhelming desire to bedevil all less agile creatures which cross your path. No, you are an ape, which is content if the keeper puts a diaper on you so that you wont crap on the concrete, and provides you with a shiny red trike to ride around on, and maybe once in a while dresses you up in a tutu, bonnet, and make up and has you wait in the window of a burning prop building so that a clown can rush up a ladder to rescue you while a man with hairy elbows, done up like a woman in grease paint, a wig, and a sequined gown, points to you and shrieks: "My baby! Help! Somebody save my baby!" and if you are cooperative you get all the bananas you should like later, and maybe a mug of cheap yellow ale while the clowns all sit around in their stained undershirts playing poker and smoking smelly cigars.
That most definitely describes you. So be a good pet and dress up like a grown up human and toddle off to an office building and fake your way through the day so that you get paid, and then go and purchase things which are way beyond your means so that you look even more grown up and sophisticated and successful. If you can’t manage an office because you lack a degree which signifies the degree of humiliation you are willing to suffer in order to get to a truffle or a wedge of cheese, then you can always work at the Seven Eleven or a fast food restaurant, or do some hard labor and you can at least shop at one of the low level department stores which offers things which are similar to those things which can be bought over by Union Square, only there are certain differences which have been purposefully made apparent so that the good truffle sniffers and ass kissers can show of their meritous conformity via fashion, as if their shoes, handbags and jackets were brownie buttons commemorating their ideal citizenship.
If you are a complete fuck up in the areas of ass kissing and truffle sniffing there are several options available to you. You could become addicted to drugs, sex, or alcohol or any combination of the three. As far as the system is concerned, it might be better if you choose drugs which will inhibit your ability to perform sexually considering you are not likely to produce any offspring which will be no more socially adapted than yourself and will therefore also fail to join the workforce and become perfected consumers, I mean, citizens of our fair nation.
Another option is to become a skilled criminal, which means that you break the law continually as a way of life. Addicts often succumb to criminal activities out of need, so that they can get more booze, coke or whatever floats their boat, and of course we must not forget that most of the best substances to abuse are illegal to obtain or keep in ones possession, so it is assumed that those that take option A are also already criminals, hence the word "skilled" is employed to give distinction to those who choose option B. That word, "skilled", has been selected to imply that criminality is a craft which may be honed, and if you are already ill equipped to thrive as a model citizen, this may be a good life choice for you, because in its own way it does help the system. Police officers need bank robbers, counterfeiters, con artists, petty thieves and gangsters to chase after. (Politicians, embezzlers, and preachers fill a more specific niche within this category, but really such a career should only be selected as a last option if you find that you are nearly completely inept and suffer from serious mental and emotional aberrations.)
Option C is, of course, suicide, though it really is a pity that option C comes after option B because the world would probably be better off without Politicians and Preachers. C is the most respectable of all options and if there is any way that you can find it in your heart to boldly and completely self-destruct before you breath up one more ounce of the scarce supply of oxygen being sputtered out into the atmosphere by the few trees to have escaped the fate of being converted into housing projects or papers to push around on polycarbon desks, then I hope that you will go through with it.
The very last option, option D, is open only to those who are beneath even death and who are completely certifiably insane but who have managed out of a sense of self preservation and desperation to escape the notice of professionals in the field of mental health. If you have by some great cosmic error discovered that death offers no respite and are either so misfit and maladjusted to the popular culture, or so disdainful of it that to eat one more banana will cause you to drive a plane into the tallest circus tent that you can find at the heart of the great empire of apes, then for you there is a fourth way, an option D. The D may stand for Doom, Destiny, Deconstruction, or Delirium or all of the above. This option is for bad girls who will not sleep on mountains of pink sheep, and worse boys who will be outfitted in the dehydrated couture of the reversed current, who sit together in darkness and play life back-words, reciting the tenant of Hassan the Assasin, "Nothing is true, all is permissible."

Terrible Procedure

The terrible deed of separating the pure Being, (the primary ingredient necessary for eventually forming a soul,) from the biological human machine, (also a necessary ingredient in the recipe) is being committed daily as part of a wide scale campaign. Our souls, and the souls of our children, are being harvested before they have even developed. They are being shorn apart and the Being is left to wither away, a tiny prisoner atrophying in a dark and isolated cell submerged somewhere within the mechanics of the biological organism.
Our attention, from an early age, is misdirected for us. We are a consumer culture, asked to passively accept Hannah Montana and designer sports shoes and fast food franchises. The surgical separation of Being from machine is being executed in our living rooms as we sit before the eerie glow of the television set pushing the peas of our microwave dinners around in their individual compartments, it is happening in our school rooms under ceilings laden with asbestos or in modular units that pound like a war drum as the pupils enter the room in straight lines and proceed to their desks to fold their hands and turn their attention back to the dry erase board and the drone of a fully damaged adult machine who is ultimately eager, like every chained dog, to beat the free spirits under their dominion into submission so that they will not be alone in their dysfunction. It is happening in the den in front of a liquid crystal computer monitor where the television is enforced. It is happening on the highways lined with the mammoth billboards suggesting products that we may use to fill the void left when the Being was starved down into an invalid, it is happening on the play structure where those who are most susceptible to the multilevel procedure in turn indoctrinate their peers, bullying and tormenting.
Soon we are all the same, or at least we are all striving to be the same, and those of us who can’t achiever sameness, by age 9 (sometimes earlier)we are driven to a therapist once or twice a week and drugs are prescribed which will at last break our will to live. Then it will be easier to shuffle us around with the ringing of a bell, and by the time we are adults the routine will be engrained in the muscle memory of our bio machine so that we will be able to shuffle off to work and clock in, take a break at noon and clock out, clock back in 30 minutes later, and shuffle back out at 5 or 6 p.m., so that we can wait in nice neat lines inside of the shiny metal cars we bought with our hard earned money, and wait for the light to change colors deciding for us when we should stop and when we should go.
The very idea of being active, the notion of being a creator and not a consumer is frowned upon. Artist and musicians are bums, actors and actresses are flaky unreliable people incapable of holding regular jobs. There will be a few of them to sing the songs and play the plays that enforce and justify our consumer existence. The act of being creative has been reduced to something which should fit into this handful of categories, anything which is otherwise will not even be given an outlet as it might disturb the digestion of the masses.
We consume and, in turn, we are consumed by the companies behind the products pouring through our households like a flood of metamphetamines giving us a momentary fix, a distraction from the nagging sense of wrongness which develops into stress, nervousness, aggression, and addiction. We are reduced to complicated beasts of burden with little or no chance of forming a true soul. Bound to the worldly mechanics with only half of our self functioning, the dangerous, beautiful, and free element of self, the pure Being, having been disabled, we crawl about waiting to finally not exist, dreaming about heavens where the master will give us more of what we like to eat, but we wont have to pay for it.
This is the terrible harvesting of unformed souls taking place now on this little planet whirling around a yellow star. The culture of death and decay is most prevalent here and infectiously seeks every pocket of resistance so that it may submit and snuff out any possibility for life.

Doubt Your Perceptions

Imagine yourself as a lonely creature, buried in a solid metal vessel full of thick chemical liquid, in the basement of a dark forgotten building. You were born there. You can’t get out of the box. Your body is so degraded that you have no hope of escaping. And so you will probably die there. The darkness of the box is all you know, all you have ever known and all you will probably ever know.
And yet you get information from the outside. It comes through little messages that are sent to you from helpers, creatures that you have never directly met but which you are convinced are there. They send you these little messages through wires that reach directly into you and feed you images of the outdoors, the smell of the rain as it hits the asphalt, the rustling of the leaves as the wind rushes past them, the slight rasp of a violin bow as it hits the strings, the gentle touch of lips against your skin… it’s all being sent to you, it’s all being communicated through little wires by your trusted helpers… trusted helpers that you have never met, that you didn’t choose and that you have no discernible connection with.
Given such a predicament, it is very tempting to simply drift and dream, let your degraded body float in its endless bath, close your eyes and let the movie play. Enjoy the constant flow of messages and let them wash over you. In this dream world, you may have a job that you go to every day, you may have a wife, a husband, a boyfriend, a lover, you may have mountains of money or none at all, you may have people talking about you or you might be ignored by the masses. You may have parents that love you, or say that they do. You may have kids who are very loving or who can’t stand the sight of you. You may have friends that swear undying loyalty or you may have enemies that wait behind doorways ready to stab you in the back. No matter what the images are, you may feel that the best course of action is to let them flow over you, let them come and go, and just enjoy them for what they are: ghostly images sent to you by unknown directors.

Maybe one day something doesn’t match quite right in the images you receive. Something rubs against something in a way that seems wrong. Somebody has made a mistake. Something else has come through… maybe something you were not meant to see. It could be as small as a sentence in a book, as big as the sky painted in the wrong color, as subtle as a moment of time repeating in every detail and revealing its unreality. It doesn’t matter what it is, but you can taste that there is a quality to it, something that feels different.
A strange itch may begin within you, an uncomfortable sensation that something has been present with you all along but you have not been able to look at it directly, an anxious feeling that tells you that you have assumed too much, that you have rested too long and that it is time to act.

A long series of questions may emerge within you, questions that were not there before, each like an ancient comet that you have sighted in the distance before but now rages like a ball of fire in front of your eyes:

What is really outside the box?
How can I trust these unknown helpers?
Should I figure out who they are? What they are?
Is there something else out there?
Something that is not the images I receive?
Have I been lied to?
If so, who is lying to me?
Why are they lying to me?
Is there something Real out there?
What is Real?

You will need three bowls.Fill the first bowl with hot water, the second with very cold water, and the third with water of a medium temperature.(The hot water should be quite hot, but not scalding as you will be submerging your hand in it.)
Put the three bowls in front of you, on a table or other surface, within easy reach.
Place your right hand in the bowl of hot water and your left hand in the bowl of cold water.Count to twelve. Then place both hands in the medium temperature bowl of water.Pay close attention to what each hand seems to be experiencing. Each hand will register a different sensation, even though they are both subject to the same environment.
Consider that you may not always rely on your highly sophisticated data processor (also known as your nervous system) to objectively determine what is Real.

Cogs

Where are the boundaries?

The lines etched into our minds that dictate how we behave and interact with our world, tell us what is dangerous, what is safe, lovely, and frightening- how objective are they?
We move like animatronic pirates, revolving in the same circle in pursuit of wench and wine, endlessly running round and round.

But what is it that keeps us in formation, revolving without question. Are we afraid of the outlying caverns and doors that lead from our world into the sun drenched alien landscape beyond?

Or have we been lulled into a stupor by the repetitive motions of the entire clockwork fantasy, the mechanical motions of living acted out by ourselves and our peers?

We are chained in the invisible binds of conditioning. Such subtle bondage requires abnormal astuteness to be observed.

When we are asked to accept this or that, right or wrong, black or white, we are really being asked to forfeit our perception of everything in between.
When we sacrifice our vision to preserve contrived divisions we are absorbed into the machine, one more cog in a sleeping giant.
And our apathetic submission has consequences beyond our own miserly existence.

For one truth to rise all others must fall.

Consider that your choice to remain in the service of the sleeping giant because it is easy, comfortable, and sensible is a choice to send a myriad of worlds into exile.
Consider that whatever fate you sentence them to marks your own destiny.