Avocado

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

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

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

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

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

These are the early experiences of a black sorceress.

Obfuscation

This writer is either purposely confusing
or simply obfuscating

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

The diagram you put up

shows levels of creation.

I could make the argument

the spells from the old books are

basically saying that unity is the real,

individuality the illusion...

we've got to live

with an angel and devil or wolf and a sheep

inside our self at all times.

Yes. We know this.

But what that is, nobody knows. Do you?

Once I read

I read and read

when it boils down to it,

all this reading shows that

Death is the teacher.

The plants, the milk, the clouds.

They were the warriors:

by them this light was brought hither.

I've never seen them

trying to strive to be God

or strive to be a rock.

But then this go on to say

Whatever he desired from the Mother,

that the Subject furnished,

as a friend from his own spirit.

Of course this is true.

So both are saying that

although not the same.

The Subject is the teacher.

The Mother rules, shines forth.

Light becomes the ruler.

Looking at life

and how it is set out

you have to strive to be

any of those things.

You have to.

Admittedly, an audience of terrestrials

is all you will ever achieve.

Is that supposed to be good?

Who knows how many people heard this

when it was first written.

They didn't, they don't.

Through holy discipline and creative fervour

the king protects his kingdom.

The teacher through his own holy life

seeks and finds the Subject.

It's very clear what you should think

we should be clear and correct.

People can come to their own conclusions.

I've kept pretty quiet about this.

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

Through holy discipline,

through creative fervour,

the gods drove away death.

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

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

all of that man's imagination.

How do you get to the Real?

I don't have much to add beyond this.

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

the tree, the year along with the seasons,

have sprung from the Subject.

Its shines a light

this is what these voices are saying.

There are relationships between all these levels

start looking at what's really been said.

This made me so mad when I first heard it.

My former fellow workers!

How could you have fallen so low!

When it is too hot, jump into the furnace!

The earthly and the heavenly animals,

the wild and the domestic,

the wingless and the winged,

they have all sprung from the Subject.

This is the math.

You've thought a lot about this.

But there is a lot of venom in your words.

I'm not going to argue

I am totally confused.

I need a number.

All the creatures of The Mother

carry breath in their souls.

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

This, that was set into motion by the gods,

that is insurmountable, that moves shining forth.

But some things are not you.

You are more than things.

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

But the chart is useful. I must admit.

The writer insists on continuous willful obfuscation.

I can't believe that you seem to buy

something so difficult to understand.

You go over it and over it.

It only starts all over again.

The Subject carries the shining Spirit:

into this all the gods are woven.

Producing the inhale and the exhale,

language, thought, heart, spirit, and wisdom.

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

You can handle things

see them for what they are,

even the human body

nothing more than a thing.

It's difficult to compare.

We are one person, not many.

But nobody really knows this

although you might in some fashion.

What did you do to make

these things seem real.

What was it?

Then you became identified with them.

You are them as those things are you.

They can't be without you

you can't be without them.

Actually you aren't any Thing.

I must warn you now: this is a Spell.

The Spirit caste are the only ones authorized

to cast these spells.

In casting them, they save the universe from destruction.

So, if you accept this:

unity is, individuality is not.

Add another thousand years

to the time we have known this.

Why is this an illusion?

It seems like a valid assumption.

Be here now,

Let the evils of the day be sufficient for us.

Let the evils come on to me daily.

The big confusion

lies in the fact that the gods

do not pay

though they should.

I say again:

This writer is either purposely confusing

or simply obfuscating.

It seems like a valid assumption.

North Wind

Stop making that face or the North wind might blow and freeze that look there. That’s what my grandmother used to say, and there is some truth in this, though I doubt she thought so.
You never know when the north wind is going to blow, when it will huff and puff and blow your house down. What kind of face will you be caught making when the cards come crashing down to the table? Will you find yourself as a queen of hearts or a queen of spades? A Diamond or a club perhaps? Will you be caught light as a feather on the scale or heavy as a noose when so and so weighs your heart?
The weight of your own heart can drag you down,
Down,
down.
That face that you were making, was it heavy with the charge of negative emotion as the North wind blew, or was it electrified  with the charge of real emotion?
As I ask these questions I ponder my own faces, the masks I wear in different plays, the uncontrolled contortions of my vessel, my outward shape.
I, like all of my kind, am a factory for processing light. I am a play, a shape, a program, a ride, a structure, a labyrinth for channeling the vital essence of life.
But am I a mad house or a sanctuary? What am I creating with the essence of life if I am making faces without will, the random mad house faces of jealously or greed or fear or even happiness? Am I making anything more or less than a hot mess?
The essential nature of creation involves three elements, the raw diamond of attention, the putty called matter (oh mother) that can take many shapes, and the essential essence of life, the being, the baby, little sleeping beauty- a thing of potential whose birth is yet to come. It lies passive in the mother's womb, in every particle of matter.
And when that cold wind blows that shape that it has assumed in the cup of mother's womb, is the shape in which it will be born.
This is the reason that we must consider death through the course of what we call life. Death in fact, that cold north wind, is an icy midwife who delivers you into the next realm of experience.
You will enter this realm in precisely the shape your attention forged in the mother and your journey of transformation will not be over then.
They call it work for a reason, for precisely this reason, because the attention works to create, it must if you would choose an apt face for a suitable birth. And there is no end that we can perceive, merely a series of doorways, through which to pass once you have oozed your way through the crystalline structure of a lifetime.
And you never know when you will be thrust through that door, when the matter will open wide and the midwife will grab you screaming by the crown and pull you into the next world.
What face will you be wearing when you arrive there?
That face will be the shape of the world.
Will it be the contorted face you wear as you grasp desperately for some object of desire? Or will it be a clear face of unattached and concentrated attention?

Kiss The Flowers

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

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

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

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

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

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!”

Adam

Now all these things came to pass by the will of the father of the entirety. By the will of the father of eternity, these things came to pass, as all things did, as all things do. By eternity, by will, by the father.

Afterwards, the spirit saw the soul-endowed man upon the ground. The soul-endowed man upon the earth, walking naked through the yellowed land.

The spirit came forth from the Adamantine Land, travelling like a forceful wind through the many worlds. From the Adamantine Land the spirit came forth; it descended and came to dwell within him, finding a home in his flesh. That man became a living soul, a living soul became that man. The spirit called him Adam since he was found moving upon the ground, walking naked through the yellowed land.

A voice came forth from Incorruptibility for the assistance of Adam, from a voice Incorruptibility came forth, and the rulers gathered together all the animals of the earth, the animals of the earth gathered the rulers, and the rulers gathered all the birds of heaven, the birds of heaven gathered all the rulers and brought them to Adam to see what Adam would call them, that he might give a name to each of the birds and all the beasts. They listened for his breath, for the names that would come.

They took Adam and put him in the garden so that he might cultivate it and keep watch over it, that he might keep watch over it and cultivate it. That olives might grow, that branches be pushed and sculpted towards the sun, so that dates could create sugar from light in endless bounty.

And the rulers issued a command to him, saying:
"From every tree in the garden shall you eat, you shall eat from every tree in the garden, yet from the tree that recognizes good and evil do not eat, nor touch it; for the day you eat from it, with death you will die."

They told him this, yet they did not understand what they said. They could not fully understand the workings of the soul-endowed man. Rather, by the father's will, they said this in such a way that he might be tempted to eat, and that Adam might not regard them as would a man of an exclusively material nature. As a man of an exclusively material nature he might not regard them. He might, he would, take from the tree of good and evil.

Familiar Domain

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

The Three Directives

There are three directives which move a human being into action. These are “need”, “desire”, and “will”.
Need is the most basic and primordial mover. The human machine needs food, needs water, needs warmth, needs affection, needs to excrete waste. Once a need has been met there is a sense of concrete satisfaction that sets in until the need arises again according to the physical cycles of the human machine. Needs can be met.
Desires are a trickier monster. They arise when needs have been transformed through the symbolic structure. For example, thirst is a real need for the human machine so an advertisement for a clothing line might depict a well dressed man and a woman drinking from glasses. A human machine that sees the ad will unwittingly transform the need to drink into a desire for a dress or pair of slacks. The trouble is, that while drinking a glass of water will quench thirst, buying a pair of slacks will not. Satisfaction will be denied.
Desires can never lead to satisfaction because they are born of the symbolic realm and not of the real. This is true of any desire, it is what distinguishes desire from need. It is an endless circle, a wheel fit for a hamster. The pursuit of desires can never yield fulfillment. This is not because there is something fundamentally evil about desire. It is because desire is a need that has been disfigured by language and made abstract. You cannot eat, drink, or hug an abstract.
A young gorilla needs something to love in order for its life to continue. This need can be met by a kitten or a doll or a fury blanket tied to a post, as long as the gorilla can touch it, the need is met. The same is true of human animals. You don’t need a porn star to hug. You could give a squeeze to a warty old hag to meet the need. You desire a porn star, a picture from a magazine, but even if you meet a live porn model, she will never be exactly the same as the picture from the magazine. She may meet some of your needs, but she can never quench your desires, those will go ungratified into eternity.
Will stands in a category all of its own. It does not arise from the machinations of the human, physical or linguistic. It is neither a need nor a desire. It comes from elsewhere. It is infinitely more difficult to act on will than it is to respond to a need or a desire. Will often conflicts with the needs and desires of the human biological machine.
With both needs and desires occupying the attention and energy of the machine, it can be almost impossible to heed the strange call of the will. Desires are particularly an obstacle. While the human machine has a limited number of needs which have to be met repeatedly, the ghostly world of desire is as unlimited as it is insatiable. The desires will breed more desires and will come to occupy all the space of the mind, demanding that one thing or another be pursued until the will is nearly buried in an avalanche of desires.
Desires will propagate on their own without any effort being made on the part of the human machine, but the true will, if it is denied attention and left unused, will wither like an atrophied limb. Efforts must be made to invoke and support the will, efforts which may seem most unpleasant to the machine because those efforts will be of no direct benefit to it.

The Sleeping King

There we go, you needn’t look down to see how it is that you are moving. No, no, don’t look down, for if you should happen to catch a glimpse of what is carrying you, you may become paralyzed with horror and fall clean off the edge of the world. That scurry, scatter, pitter, patter is the sound of the busy feet of many little demons, and you, their great lord, sit atop the rigshaw being pulled along by their whim and urge, their fevered desires, their insistent directives.
They are good little demons, helpful little demons, demons that assist you in the act of passing yourself off within the society of human kind as something exactly the same as your neighbor. They move you through the big fierce world, smile for you when it is appropriate to smile, turn red in the face and storm off when it is appropriate. They pay compliments to the beautiful and readily available members of that gender opposite to your own, or even to that gender the same as your own. Whatever program it is they have learned, they execute it with lightning speed and precision so that you, oh mighty emperor, can lay back and enjoy the ride in a soft blue haze of apathy and delight.
Isn’t that ,after all, the way things have come to be all throughout this opium dream? Doesn’t the master ride like a bloated invalid upon the backs of his servants with out glancing below to see what is happening down there in the dark places below the mist enshrouded castle?
Long gone are those days when the Emperor commanded his people, and likewise suffered for his people, taking responsibility for them. We have come into the bleak and black valley of this dream in time. There are few masters worthy of their charge. Those little demons, like hordes of tiny yapping dogs drag their ward up and down the road so that they may piss on this hydrant, hump that other king’s Chihuahua, or nip this ankle over here. The great king has become a slave shackled to a wriggling animal mass doing what it does best.
The fault, you see, is all yours, you who are drowsy, and perhaps even well meaning in your hands off approach to their care. You must exercise your power, command the demons rather than leave them running the show so that you can catch a few z’s. You may well think that you are just going to settle down for a little catnap, leaving things on auto pilot, entrusted to their eager little hands. Suddenly you will find that you have snoozed away an entire life time and in your absence the kingdom has fallen to ruin. You will not be a king anymore, no, indeed you will be a vagabond, living down in the gutter, the only empire you can manage.
Don’t look down until you are ready to face the frightful truth, that you have been a complacent passenger, that much of what you have considered to be you, is in fact, your dark carnival entourage. They are like pets, like little children that have been left with all of the responsibility, they have chewed the blinds, crapped in the corner behind the sofa, jumped onto the table and eaten the chocolate cake, all in your name. There is no sense in blaming them, nor any sense in trying to cover up their wrong doings in order to hide your own negligence. When you are ready just look down and begin to give them the loving guidance they need to be truly helpful little demons.
Buckminster Fuller, of course, has said that there is no up or down in this universe, only in or out, in which case, when you are quite prepared, look inside and see what they have been doing while you were smoking in the back bed room. Of course you will have a hard time recognizing them all to begin with. Don’t worry, you’ve been asleep for a long time, as the lethargy wears off you will come to know them each. You will be able to assign them names and call them out to perform their tricks when you will it.
There may be an appropriate time to smile, and they will execute this action with your approval or they will abort the mission if you give the sign. There will be no smile, however socially appropriate it would have been, unless the emperor has nodded, likewise no red faced storming, compliment paying, nor nose picking.
If you wish to see your kingdom restored, then rouse yourself from the dreams of what was or what will be and see what is REALLY happening in there, carrying you along until death.
Awaken Oh King. Awaken and rule your people while there is still time.

NOVO

For years I had been near it, but that boundary between us had never been crossed. At the end of the small street where my grandmother lived, from the time when the house itself was built when I was only 4 years old, there had been a small hotel, the "Novo". I came to visit my grandmother many times, week after week, month after month and year after year. Eventually, I lived there for a couple of years. I walked back and forth from the gates to the main street and back, and the sign "Novo" was always on the periphery of my vision without fully catching my attention. I knew there was a hotel there and that small bit of simple information was all that was necessary for me. My reality tunnel was clearly etched in the sidewalk, through my grandmother’s black gate and to her big house at the top of the long cement driveway. And the hotel was very distinctly outside of that tunnel.
A few years ago, when I was back in El Salvador with my companion on the path and the world had taken on a strange dream-like quality that we could both clearly perceive like a translucent liquid all around us, I walked into the hotel. This hidden chamber was very different from the one that I had imagined. First and foremost, it was full of detail where my imagination had been only a faint outline without depth or mood. There were walls of red brick, little lawns in the middle of short pathways, a small swimming pool and a bar next to it with European reporters drinking beer and sharing stories, laughing and arguing late into the night. In their interaction amongst themselves and with the waitresses that brought them their drinks and food, I could sense a history, not only made of individuals but of adventure, connections between worlds and life changing discoveries. Upon experiencing this rush of new information, which removed inside of me many years of false assumptions and simplified imagination, I felt the kernel of a greater truth. Here was this place, complex and open and mysterious and full of color, and it had been sitting next to me for decades, it had existed falsely in my mind as a simulacrum, a mental place holder that separated me from what was Real and right there, only a few steps away.
Today I look around me and I can faintly perceive the many narrow reality tunnels that surround us. Faced with an infinity of choices, our machine has responded with limitation, extreme and uncontrolled. The reality tunnels that surround us, our habitual sequences of motion and attention, our steps that have settled into a steady rhythm and refuse to change, these can seem insurmountable, like giant black walls that prevent our escape. Faced with a city full of wonder, my machine will walk in the same directions, turn on the same streets, look at the same places, point out the same sights, park in the same streets. Faced with a land full of life, my machine will reach for the same fruits, stop at the same places, rest on the same benches, stand underneath the same tree, look at the same two rocks, the same that I saw before, the same that I will see many years from now.
How truly difficult is it to move away from these predetermined steps? Would it take only a momentary decision to allow me to step away from life as I knew it and onto a completely unexplored path? What would be the price? How much will the unknown charge for admission into its dark caverns?
When the machine finds itself awake, momentarily devoid of these habits, it may be unable to decide what to do, it may find itself frozen by the new and vast universe of possibilities that suddenly opens before its eyes. If no new conscious habits have been developed, the machine may then return to the habits it knows well and, in the process, fall into a deep sleep again. Each moment of freedom then becomes a golden opportunity to push a step further into the vast unexplored territory of the infinite Labyrinth.
Even in the midst of deep machine sleep, where there may appear to be no hope of flight and our tenuous attention fades away like a dying ember, may we find a way to strive to step away from the Paths of Death that are made of stone and dust and, through our sincere and persistent efforts, create new paths that flow freely on ever changing waves of Light.

My Time With The Blind

My time with the Blind Tribe taught me to see.
The Blind urged me to trust unconditionally, to trust what cannot be seen.
In the swirling darkness, midnight black with a ripple of gray, I would feel myself spin, faster and faster. The void would open up before me as wide as I wanted the mouth I once had to open and set me free with a scream. There was no down or up or right or left, no body large enough to gravitate towards, just endless empty blackness swallowing itself.
What was I when I departed from the earth spinning and screaming that soundless scream?
The Blind Tribe dug a hole in the ground long after I departed. It was large enough for them to crawl in together and sit around a ring of smoldering coals, unable to see one another, but able to smell each other sweat.
The old woman would not go in with them for fear that she might loose consciousness and free fall as I have. Her stiff legged gait carried her over the earth along serpentine pathways surrounding the hole. Upon the Earth’s dusty hide her feet drummed out the sacred rhythms that invoke the nameless.
Once, in only semi darkness, I danced to those rhythms with a coy dog. His spotted coat shimmered under the flicker of candle light. The coy dog put the executioners mask over my head and let his little bitch put her blade to my throat. A chorus of voices asked me, "In whom do you place your trust?"
"In myself" was my answer.
In all that I can ever know.
Gaining velocity, I could feel the soundless scream contort into silent laughter. I lost my lost in a somersault of I am, I am, I am. With my no shape I pass through another no shape, neither attracted nor repelled. There is no other to whom I might gravitate. I am I.
I am a dragon, and a coy dog, and an old woman, and a she bitch.
I am the one who got carried away.
I am the six rayed star.

Now or Never

The human organism convulses compulsively. It yearns to eat, it yearns to defecate, it yearns to reproduce. It wriggles, squirms and cries until it gets what it wants.

All this is done even through adulthood, but the wriggles, squirms, and cries are displaced by socially allowable substitutes. Sometimes there is a complex tie between the original yearning and the jerk and pull dance the organism does, sometimes not at all. In either case, the animal twitches through life, running in an endless wheel of desire until it is spent. Then it expires and rots.

To what end do we do so much twisting and writhing? The best wrigglers, squirmers, and criers end as food for worms despite their aptitude at wheel running. Could there be any objective use for our jerking jiggling lot?

How many have asked, "What’s the point?" before introducing lead to the delicate tissues of the human head, only to find that lead traveling at high speed is quite uneatable.

Listen closely and I will whisper a secret in your ear, a sound only a little louder than a bullet slicing through air: if life was Hell, death will be worse.

So long as we are slaves to the wheel in the flesh, we will be slaves to it in an even subtler way.

If your will is to stop convulsing, then stop now or never.