Monday, January 30, 2012

epic love; it's about time

It's already almost always February already, and everything that's fresh about a year happens in February, or January, it better happen soon because I am running out of places to fall when I pass out from holding my breath, and I'm not allowed back into the old places.

Epic: the love of the sun for the moon and the moon for the sun.
You would think they wouldn't be so different, but they are because they never match.
He's on a 20 day cycle, and she's all 28 or 30, and it's so hard to get this in sync.
Except this time around there are solar showers and it's making everyone flare up occasionally, and the sun and the moon see the best in everyone, and they see the worst in everyone, and these might be the same exact things.
This is the epic of the sun and the moon.
Next month is reincarnated lovers, and the weight of history (should not equal karma, but hey there you go, what the hell were you thinking would happen when you decided to ride again, right after you got done with the last ride)???
Silly silly moon.
This is me.
The moon.  Tricky situations here that are confusing, and that's just goddam perfect.
This is how it starts to play at the end of January, when we should have known from the beginning:

The scene opens and she is mad mad mad.

The sun says: You're mad aren't you?

The moon doesn't talk for a very long time, for her it's an eternity, but she's so goddam old that what used to be an eternity for her is only a day and a half.

She takes a breath and says: A little mad.  You shine on everyone and everything, and I told you, I told you, I don't mind, but you woke me up, you woke me up when I was in the middle of the nicest dream, and you told me you couldn't get me out of your mind, and I avoided it and I denied it, and then and then I decided that and then  I wasn't sleeping anymore anyway, so I gave in, and when I rolled over to look at you so you could tell me why I was in your mind, and what I looked like in your mind, all you could tell me was that you were so busy with so many other things, I gave you a chance to tell me something important and all you could talk about was how your life was so hard because you have to shine on all the planet and it's so hard to keep them straight, and I'm just apparently I'm just I'm just another call for you at 3 am when you are cold, and and and I'm mad.

Sun: You're not just another call.

Moon: I know, I know.  I'm emotional.  Moony.

Sun: You're still mad?

Moon: YES.

Sun: Because I made you roll over.

Moon: Because you made me roll over.  Now it sounds petty, when you put it like that, you make me petty, and you you you are too far away to pet and how does that make me feel, huh? 

Moon chest butts Sun it's the last time this month, and this causes solar flares to fly off and make young lovers everywhere go stupid, and even old lovers go stupid, because this is the chance they had to touch and that was all they got to do.  Goddam Sun and Goddam Moon.  This is a world made for the Dwarves, and the tall people keep pretending they can see so fucking far but they are wrong wrong so very very wrong.  Fucking tall people are not so very tall.  Let the Dwarves take over, they can work with this and we have fucked it up.

It's really embarrassing for the Moon, because she has a new lip ring (it's old now but that's not that important) and feels like she has to speak for the rest of us, and she does, but oh, when she does.

She is not as old as the Sun, and smaller, but she has taken time to get to know her landscapes, and understands early on that the bottom of the ocean is larger than the universe, even when it's eating too much bacon and butter and expanding like one might imagine Norway would expand, and it's not easy to talk to her when she's like this, so it's better to just leave her alone and hope she does the same with you.  Except.  There's always so much more to this story.  The Moon is suddenly aware that this year has started with a long and cold wind on her face, and it's frozen her lips, and it's made her eyes tear in the dark of the night and the light of the day, and she's just woken up.  This is the best time to start a year.  Right now.  This very minute.  Exactly like this.  Not even thinking about the Sun, not at all.  Fuck.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

alchemies of water and air

I lay still at the edges of my covers.  There were rough mountains beneath my head while I was dreaming about the last time the world ended.  There were floods receding from under my sink.  My houses always flood when there is too much to feel and too many details that get lost.  Finding the place where the broken fingernail is letting in too much light and covering it just enough so that it might heal by the morning.  Taking the last screen shot before the world turned to iron and iron technologies and keeping it frozen so that I could refer back to it when I needed it the most.  Lifting the lipstick stains off the edges of the same sheet I slept in when I was getting crowned with African spirits, and holding them suspended in the air, and telling myself that the world seemed to be sleeping, but this is how wizards calm themselves when the lovers are gone far away.  And the flood washes through anything anyway, and I'm left with my broken fingernail, the one that looks like hers, and the stains are on my neck, and the frozen face from a sad night is burned into the sides of my belly.

These are the icons and fetishes I sleep with, no leather with zippers and no silk straps with secret words, just the thousand and one descriptions for sleep that I have when everything is so far away from this hungry belly, the one that only knows how to eat after midnight, when all the neighbors are up and coughing in their beds. 

And in another blink, there's a sound in the dark, and I'm chasing after potions to keep the blue light of the moon centered just above my chest, and I'm distracted long enough that it sinks down, the moon fading into the water of my flesh, and the room is lit up with lines that go in every direction, and it's strange I never knew, I think it's strange, and this next world is already writing itself on the walls of my longing, that will not fall asleep.  I put these things under my pillow, and forgot about them, and didn't know that the ocean would rock me harder until they came dislodged, always already always there. 

When I was in another place, I spent hours memorizing the parts, so that I could reconstruct them for myself on a cold night, but the parts never stayed still long enough to separate, they always held the mettle and the ore of the whole, and all I knew was the whole, the forest was the trees and this was something that I never thought belonged rightfully to me.

So I followed the drum for another 270 nights, listening to the pattens and getting distracted by the way these stories unfolded the other forgotten identities of a life of already alternate identities, and on the worst nights I could only fall asleep by telling myself that no one knows and no one cares. 

First silence is a welcome lover.  Then it becomes unbearable.  Then it becomes a constant pounding at the back of the neck, and then it burns more quietly, a soft blue that turns white and is impossible to hold, and that's the point when fire and water start to speak, as if for the very first time.

This was a burden that I wouldn't give up, because it was the only way to keep dark in a time where there was too much light.  This was a pain that had to burn its way out from the inside, so its inscription would write on me from the inside out.  You can follow your heart, they say, but first you have to let it speak to you, and you're too sure of yourself for that to happen. 

To love this ocean you have to be more than man, more than woman, and trained in how to follow the beat of the drum until you become the mountain that speaks, the mountain that shakes, the mountain that erupts on the lap of the sea.  Panic turns to love, and love turns back into panic, and you don't need any particular friend to read your marks in the dark, anyone with eyes can read them for you, and it says what you should have expected, it's that thing that you didn't want to say but had to say anyway, it's that lesson you thought you learned but had to walk through in your flesh anyway, it's that lover that goes away but you decided you would love anyway, because any wizard can tell you that the feeling that time has stopped is that same moment that the horses under the sea are working their way to the surface, and they start riding you until you can't remember the promises you made to yourself before you saw her marks on your ribs, a story that isn't complete, it's never complete, because it's true, those marks you made on each other with your tongues reached all the way to the bones, and there won't be another day that passes when you are not hungry, and there isn't a mask in the world that can disguise you from your real twin.

this is why it's all so very different and not about you or anyone

this is disguised, it's a writing disguised as this story about a pigeon, a chance to check the brakes, there were two in the road, and the one flew at the very last moment, and a 2 and then a 1, and that's such an interesting number.
this is more interesting and not at all what this is about, just something to remember, first this:
please dont judge me
this will show up in something later.
this is what this is about, and not about anything or anyone at all.
this dream, i'm stoned and walking thru gavin's apartment, or hotel suite, somewhere in the pacific northwest maybe, we're traveling and i'm stoned, and i'm looking in the mirror and this is all so cinematic, and i'm suddenly worried because i want to be more high and i am leading myself back to get more high even though i know i should not be high at all because of what happens and wanting to die eventually and i'm wondering if this is going to be a problem but maybe it's about my back,  my back hurts and i could say it was for that and i know that won't read true to anyone who knows me, this is complicated because on one hand i have to consider what i'm going to tell people and on the other i have to be more high, on the first hand there are options and on the second hand there are not options, i have to be high and there are no more hands, and suddenly i am waking up and i wonder why i'm waking up and realizing that ok this helps to sort things out, because it was a dream, so i don't have to worry about how to talk about this, but i do have to be higher because it feels so cinematic and i am worrying about that, but then i remember that this should not be a problem because i don't like being high and i am relieved.  at this moment my phone beeps, someone someone something something on facebook something, i open my computer because it's something to see for sure, with a dream like that waking me up and someone something commented on something i something and it's a minute before midnight so i was only asleep for an hour, and got so high in that hour, and now it's a minute before the day i'm writing this and it all seems very significant.
because pigeons are allergic to pot, they don't bloat or explode like seagulls with alka seltzer, but they get very paranoid, and throw themselves at motorcycles to get the voices in their heads to stop, poor poor things, the day won't get stranger it can't just try to get stranger i fucking dare you
and i am 14.
x
c

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

been there done that (x5x5x5x5x5)

"That's what it is," he was thinking, in the middle of a thought, like it were the middle of a conversation that they had just left off.  And honestly, every life is picked up in the middle of a conversation, one left off from last time around, and the ones that are cut short are not beautiful because they're short.  That needs more, he was sure, but first, continue the first thought, in the middle, in the middle of a life, picking up on where they left off, a thought she gave him that he wanted to give back to her in a new form, because that's the nature of the gift.  Too Derrida.  Not really what this is about.  Life generates itself on its decomposition which is regenerative because it decomposes, it lives and dies, comes and goes, comes and goes, and we said nothing all the day, and did not come, and did not go..."some are born over and over and are very old souls.  And some are born into one life, one time only.  And some, that's you, or her, that's her, there she is again, comes and goes sometimes to water and sometimes to land, and I think I do that, too, and the others have an advantage to this place, because with so many times around, it's like home to them, but not like that for us, because we're only home under the cave where you can still here the sounds of the waves, even though it is too far above our heads to make out any of the sounds, not natural to be here, nothing natural about this place at all, not to her, at least, not to me at least, there must be others, but now that we is the only one I know, the only one I know."

This would be longer, he realized, he would rewrite it all and it would be longer, perhaps Wednesday, because everything is longer on Wednesday, it is longer and lasts longer and everything worth waiting for is reminded why we wait when it is Wednesday, but wait on that. 

Lives do not become beautiful because they are short, and loves do not get made beautiful because they are short, they are beautiful for reasons that no one can say, it's a certain mix of a certain spice, a secret.  Things that are short are tragic.  And worse when they revealed themselves as so very beautiful right before they die, because that certain mix does not come around very often, and it makes things grow.

Step Two, we turned and turned and turned again.

And this time it's a parking lot of an Indian restaurant, and he was talking to him about her, but not so much, not so many details, just that there were thoughts, and sweet thoughts, and it was somehow sweet but he didn't expect anything, just wondering about patterns, because remembering this time around or that time around, and especially that one time around when she could not emerge and he could not submerge, because they had their meeting places crossed, he was dry and she was wet and it was like that for a very long life, that was the worst, but this one, not the worst, not at all, but remembering this has happened before makes him feel part of something much larger and older and waves of something coming through him, something hard to put into words, something like the weight of tears and longing on the flesh that makes the blood flow, makes the blood flow in sweetness, the kind of sorrow and longing that makes things emerge, makes things submerge, over lifetimes, and despite time, here you are...and he's talking to him, and the bees, here come the bees, one bee, here comes one bee buzzing around his head, a funny thing, be careful of the bee, and the bee comes around his head, again and again, circling and landing and circling and landing, and he knows what this means.  They come around again, after lifetimes, in new bodies, and he's become so attached to this particular body, though, and doesn't want to have to wait for the next one, because he sees her with his hands in the air, in the air she is lying on the air in an afternoon that will not turn to light, and her body is covered in honey, and her body is filled with honey, making jokes about nuns, what made sor juana so sore, and this is a sting and that is not a sting and everything is a little like a sting, in varying degrees of tension and release, and this is being stung, except he is not stung, only courted.  The bee is buzzing his head, and he is lost in his thumbnail, it still has the moon in it, it still reflects the sun, how much sun and how much moon, everyone has a little or a lot of both sun and moon, held under the tongue after communion to remember which lover you were to know which you were supposed to be next, nature loves repetition, the first time is not always the best time, but the third and forth, yes, and every time after, and sometimes sometimes always it always takes at least 256 times to get it right the first time. 

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

epic status

this is a repeat of things if you have been particularly stalky:
(dec 11-jan 12)

Orpheu Mixes the Songs of the Dead: An Epic for the Ribs
"She's standing on the point where the river meets the ocean, with a wish in each hand. I ask her which one she's going to choose, and she says, "It doesn't matter, they're both the same. And every time you remember me, the moon gets a little bit bigger.""
"The siren who was protecting her door was reading the lines on my face, and said there was good news. "But it's strange," she said, "those flighty ones, those are the ones who know the least about flying, because anyone who knows about flight knows that first you have to learn how to fall.""
"Woke up to a braid of hair tangled in a blue cloth that smelled like the ocean. Heading back to the sea, trying to see how long I can pretend these things don't matter any more."
"The thing about waking up into a dream where you're underwater is that uncanny feeling that you never did leave there."
"La Bruja del Cobre is complaining about the cold, and wishing we had more of that soup I made for her a long time ago, and she is reading the blood running parallel to the bones in my hands. "Everyone has their own alchemy: art, love, or money," she says, "and yours is love. But you knew that already. For other people it's art." She is looking at my forehead and remembering something. "For other people, maybe, there's a difference.""
"Orpheus," she said, "if we don't act like this is a war, then maybe it won't be one. Can we stop acting like this is a war?"
"He wants to say something original and profound to Eurydice, at least mention the newest scars, but his tongue is hijacked by mad faeries. Fortunately for him. "'We miss you,' hiss the Lovecats," he says."
"He couldn't remember if he was going down or up, but either way this was deeper. There was the sound of wild dogs circling, and he could feel the marks she left on his back start to burn again. When hunger is sustained this long, it becomes something else, becomes part of the pulse, becomes a gash or a glimpse into the eye of a goddess who is always raining."
"She said that when the floor of the desert looks like the moon, when snakes fall from people's mouths when they speak, children's hands are hiding birds and dogs are disguising themselves as trees, you're closer to the moon than you think. And there's an ocean under your tongue, so remember that when everything hurts the opposite is also true."
"The dogs keep barking at the waves, and the woman with brooms for hands is frantic to clear the area of sand, on the other side of the mountain everyone is holding their breath steady; the longest night waiting just underneath the lips of the sea."
"My feet keep getting tangled in all the seaweed that threads its way through a year, and when I see bigger waves on the horizon, I start to panic, because I don't think I can run fast enough. The woman with scales on her legs keeps telling me that the threads are there to keep me from running in the first place. That's how it happened to her."
"It's the longest night of the year, the kind of darkness where you can't see your feet moving across the sand. The sounds of wild dogs and things of the sea start to gather from far away. The tides are the only things with a sense of direction on a day like this. A decision to stay still, and leave it up to them."
"dog wakes up barking, dog stands at the foot of the bed and licks my feet because she is ironic, dog says, i am the sea and the mountain, i am the fox and the wolf, the butter and the churn, the honey and the fingers, and you, you, you too are more than you were when you fell asleep."
"Covered with ribbons and bones, the dog wakes up again and again with the same dream about the love affair between the sun and the moon, where they carry each other's pictures in their wallets, the dog licks everything the dog sees to mark the returning of the light."
"The sun is staring at the moon for a long time, then says, "You, you look very familiar." The moon says, "Stop it, I am not playing that with you again.""
‎"You think about me way too much," is exactly what Persephone says, and she could very well be right. "You could very well be right," is exactly what Hades says, sprinkling more pomegranate seeds on her plate."
"Odysseus is looking at the sea with longing, and waiting for something from the moon, but she is silent (but she is smiling). He misses being on the water, even though it tries to tear him to pieces every time (and he is smiling)."
"When I open the door, 2011 is standing there, salty water dripping from her hair. "Just give me one more night," she says, and I should say no, but I can't."
"‎8-5 mentirosa revoltosa"
"five witches standing around me chewing on leaves with wild dogs in their eyes, they mark the ground with an 8; i'm asking, when do we go into the forest? and they're answering, when did you ever leave?"
"And so at the beginning of the year, the sun decided, that's enough, the moon is too much to think about, that he would forget her. But it really only worked for a week every month, and for three days it was so much it was more unbearable than ever."
"Fists full of feathers and a moon that pulls at the living and the dead, we never get over the reeling at the mysteries of birth."
"lunatic restless writing the book of love without the long spaces between the chapters (longing) and tickling the surface of the moonplanet with new hipster shoes, when failure is certain adventure is always near"
"The ground outside my door is covered on the morning after a vinegar moon; half-used love spells, branches coated with white chalk, and a small piece of chain. Like spring coming without warning, I'm not yet packed but already leaving."
"A white room, a white chair, a white cloth tied around her eyes, the blind sculptor reading my cards at a white table, and she says, "Shave the ribs, clear the area, make room for someone to write epics of underworld rescues over your ribs, using the bones as stepping stones.""
"The moon is up later than anyone, waiting to see the sun, a thunderdrum buried in the back of her throat, and a thousand kinds of courage gathering in the center of her rivers."
"I'm watching the movie about the guy who learns to appreciate his life and trying not to be too marxist about it, when five crows fly onto the coffee table and I can't see the film. "Ok, I give in. This is a beautiful and clumsy start to a year, one that's going to be good for any kind of birth.""
"things i still love in 2012:
butter, hysteria, mystical experience, devious stares, dark corners, blue lights, fearlessness, papaya, the cycles of nature and memory, the moon, impossibly spicy food, sitting in the dark, and cream."
"i had a dream that abelard & heloise were alive right now, and she wanted him, but she remembered what happened last time, and so all she could do was send him new wallpapers to decorate his room in cityville
#idontknowhowcityvilleworks #evenmydreamsarepretentious"
"He woke up to a starry sky, with no trace of the moon. She left without saying goodbye, he thought, unaware that she had burned herself into his shoulder over the course of two hundred and eighty sleepless nights."
 
 

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

epic poems are tragic poems

Calliope, sing me sweetly, my breath is supposed to come like a hum but it burns into the air like a drum, and the patterns are songs I never heard before.  This song should be the song about the twist of an ancestor stick in the ribs, should not play too hard or too sad on the ribs of the living, this burning in the chest comes out too quickly, and there's not enough time to seal the room so no one else can hear the words, only an echo from the edges of these worlds, playing 56 octaves lower than last night's dreams.  This is a time of dark spells and salt on doorways, even though it looks like there should be bird songs in the air, but all the birds are nervous, and all the messages at my door talk about the things I have to close.  The new year starts with an anxious prayer, one that goes on relentlessly until the words no longer make any sense, and the storyteller has to switch tactics, because the main characters already think this is a different kind of story than the one they are living in, and this kind of recognition of powerlessness, coupled with the beginnings of a map, are the things that tragedies are made on.

At the beginning of the chapter, the hero knows he does not get the girl, and the adventures ahead won't make him rich, and the rest is still too unknowable.  The only way to enter into the poem is to place oneself at the will of the muse, and let the poor excuse for a map be the only light to serve as a guide.  The rest of the guides are liars, and they tell the truth only often enough to keep things interesting.  There is no clear light in them. 

At the beginning of the chapter, there is a woman hanging upside down, looking at the world with ironic eyes, this is a waste, this is a tragedy in the making, this is a version of something real that happens on the surface of the earth to those people who might believe in it.  But she has been born and raised to believe in nothing, but there is a map, and that's more than enough, and no reason not to, let herself be cut loose to begin the first part.

The first part is a little rough, because it is unformed, because it will only take form when the second and third parts start to unravel and we can see the threads start to weave together.  Right now this is all much too loose, and there are too many variables, and objects that no one understands yet.

The objects are (in order of appearance): an arab strap, a round ball of white powder, a container of water from the muse of the erotic (she runs through all of this because water runs through all of this because water runs that's what it does), a prayer card from a funeral, and a small round mirror.

He is lying in state at the start, only not so stately, having been recently torn up a bit and living a little too much like a fake rock star, even though he is already much too old.  He's been told who he is, and even acts it sometimes, and sometimes dresses the part, but he doesn't recognize it enough as something that belongs under his skin, so it feels like a costume.

If he were a little more well-rested, he could put some of these things to make spells with to good use, but he's still waiting for his shadow body to wake up.  He doesn't know, however, little does he know, that the shadow is already up and clearing paths and everything is in the right place.  Little does he know that all the prayers and songs made in the dark in the middle of the desert are about to be answered, and it would be too easy to say that the same thing is happening to her, but it is, and this is where the last epic tragedy starts to come to tell its story, because they do that, so that we might recognize what the territory can be like if we decide to go through it all again with our eyes sealed shut.  That decision is still and always up for negotiations.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

after another flood

The floor of the desert outside my door is covered with objects that I didn't see the night before.  There is a pair of boots that wore through when I skidded off the side of the road.  There is a broken bottle of perfume with a jagged flower made of glass on the stopper.  There is a torn jacket that has the name of someone I love written on the back of it.  There are also letters that I wrote on the inside, in the front pocket, next to a bag that holds my heart, or something like my heart.  All of these things are covered with a thin layer of cobweb, and everything is wet.

You never know what kinds of things the floods will bring in after a vinegar moon like the one we had last night.  Everything comes back.  This makes me feel hopeful and terribly sad, because I have a sense that this hopeful feeling is very temporary here.

There are too many people walking around for this time of morning, and I don't recognize any of them, so I do kind of wonder if they are alive or from somewhere else, if this is a trick of light from the moon.  Nothing makes sense and everything is a little bit sad, and some things are more sad than others.  But everyone here seems to be a little more wrinkled than people usually look, maybe it's because I'm working harder to look at them this morning, maybe this is a morning when all the haggard people have been released from their burdens and we all get some peace and quiet.

It's not too long, though, before I hear the sound of flutes and drums, and I understand that this is the next story, the next chapter, and everyone who will be in it is leaving soon, and I am supposed to be in it because it is my book.  I run back to my door, because there's someone close who I want to be in the next chapter for sure, and beyond that I have no desires, and no requests, and nothing more to ask for.  I see her from below, she's overlooking all the damage from the flood of the vinegar moon, and her eyes are full of silver slivers and they bleed silver and red, it's beautiful, just beautiful, I love the look of silver and red from her eyes, especially from her eyes, no one else does that to me.

I find my way to her door, which takes about three months, but eventually I remember the way, and by the time I get there, I see that she has tied her feet to her chair.  I tell her that everyone is leaving, we have to go, I ask her to go with me, we have to go, I ask her or tell her we have to go, I don't know which, I didn't think it would matter so much.

She points to her feet and says, "Look at what happened, I can't move."

It's very sad, sure, but it happens all the time, I've done it to myself enough times, and it's easy enough to fix because the solution is as easy as it looks, only this time when she says this I do start to cry a little, and this turns into something that lasts for a very long time, because there's nothing that I can do, and I've seen this sort of thing too many times before, and it can takes years to untie a knot that's that simple, and I start to remember last night, and how the flood outside probably did come from me, from all of this, because this has been going on for a long time now, and probably so much longer than most doctors would recommend, it's far past four hours for one thing, and for another, my stomach still hasn't healed over from the glass flowers and that was even longer ago than this.  And I know I cause floods whenever there are too many things beyond my control, and whenever there are people who want things from me, even though they can't really say what they want, because that would mean some kind of commitment, and no one wants that, not in this century, not with things as they are right now, revolution is not a good time for a new relationship.  So the flood that started all of this, or that was a part of all this, this is all my fault in some ways, or at least the flood is my fault.  Even though I was working in cooperation with the moon.

But the sounds are getting louder, and I can't avoid it any more, it's been too many months now, and the vinegar moon seals doors, and it's time to go.  If we don't leave, we might become like those undead things that disintegrate in the sunlight, and I'm too much phantom to be allowed to disappear like that.  So I say we have to leave, I ask her to leave with me, I tell her it's time to go, whatever I say is the wrong thing, but I see sea monsters starting to reach through her window, and they're going to get in because the water is rising.  Because of the flood.  My fault.  And she points to her feet and reminds me that she has tied herself to her chair, and she says, "You can see the difficult situation I am in." 

I think we are both in a difficult situation, but this is a good opportunity, and it might be the Greatest Adventure Anyone Ever Had Anywhere Ever, and I realize I probably should have told her about this before now, because it is rather rash and sudden, but there are sea monsters, and it really is a good time to go, and it even seems like another flood like last night could start bringing things back to life, but not the ones we like, a flood that brings back the ones that shine like gold but lie like thieves, and are more interested in the jewels in our skin that the ones under our tongues, the ones who refuse to use words like "lover" or "later" but tattoo our names and faces in their skin as soon as we've fallen asleep.  This is no place for anyone who's awake and can see that whatever this moon is bringing in through the windows, it's not something to wait around for, that things are going to get very complicated, and the sound of the song outside the window is so much closer and it's really so very sweet, and it sounds familiar, and it tastes like honey and cinnamon and grass and peppermint, and even though I don't realize that these tears are already falling on my face again I do realize that I am not in her house any more and that my feet are on the ground and I'm moving with the direction of a beat that was once distant, and is now as familiar and familial as the bells that ring in my blood and even though I don't recognize any of the people around me, it will come soon enough, all of it will come clear soon enough, as clear as it's supposed to be for me soon enough. 

Monday, January 9, 2012

but then there's also this

Odysseus wants to set out again, but there's something still keeping him here, and he wants it to be like that forever.  This is not Kalypso's place, this is not her sister's place, this is not even the place he was just a few months ago.  In fact, it is the very realm of the dead, the island where the dead are disguised as the living, and it's impossible to find on purpose, and those who stumble upon it accidentally fall in love with the place even though they know it's trying to kill them. 

He landed here without knowing it, and he was being courted by nine muses without even knowing it, and he thought they were the Muses when they are anything but those Muses, because these muses have been sent by someone else entirely, and when he thinks he knows who it is, this someone else sends out another flock of birds to distract him, so that he won't pursue it any further.  This is where he is supposed to be right now, is what he tells himself, when in fact that's anything but the truth, and so far from the truth that it just feels right.

But it is not. 

He mulls and mulls and mulls, and eventually everything mulled will turn into wine, and if he drinks the wine he will forget everything, and for a very long time, and it's a very good chance that he will stay crossed over, stay crossed in the land of the dead, and never come back.  These are his pomegranate seeds, and the underworld is open 12 months of the year, and is even open on weekends and holidays.  While he mulls, he is also writing, and he has decided to write a letter, and the letter comes out something sort of a little bit like this:

Dear K--
Oh my god you have got to be out of your fucking mind.  This, this, this, I can't do anything with this.  This is the only card I haven't played:  I am still in love with you.  Please don't take it personally.  Or come and find me.  I can't find you.  You call me close and then you run away.  I can't find you.  It's like chasing a cat that turns into a bird that flies away.  Find me.  We could sleep together, or just have coffee.  I am not particularly attached to anything.  But open to whatever, you know.  Especially the sleeping together part.  But I wouldn't push it.  I mean, I'm cool about everything.  Or whatever you want.  You tell me.  I won't keep pushing.  Or even waiting.  I'm done.  But I'm here.  You know.  If that's what you want.  Find me.  I'm wearing the same scent from when you left.
--O

And here O was short for "Oh, fuck, what the hell am I doing?" because in truth no one should play their cards for a lover that they cannot trust, and it's even worse when you do that in the land of the dead, but how could he know that.

(He could have opened his fucking eyes, supposedly, but even then, he wouldn't have been tall enough to see things from any height.  He is tall but not that tall.  No, what he needs, what we need, is to become birds, to see things from a higher perspective, and on some days it's more metaphorical than others, but this day is turning out to be less and less of a metaphor, and it would be epic if the year ahead were filled with things that seemed like metaphors but were really not at all, exactly themselves.

The androgynous bisexual goddess that lives on the floor of the ocean is the floor of the ocean, and she represents herself, the beginning of life in the world, and more mysterious than anyone will ever know, and nothing more, and nothing less, and metaphor of nothing except for herself.  The head that is cleaned with feathers dreams of being a bird in flight not because the head wants to become like a bird, but because it is becoming bird.  And the land of the dead is not a place where the skin goes to get shed, but it is the land of the dead, and no one in the realm of the living should be walking in the land of the dead, and there's no metaphor that's better than birth or death for anything, but here the death is a metaphor for death, and the face in the mirror is the face in the mirror. 

He, this Odysseus on another adventure, about to start another journey, is ready to fly, and he takes one look at the ocean, long enough to get dreamy, and blinks his eyes once twice three times he blinks and his head goes forward and the muscles on his shoulder blades tighten and he falls fast into a narcotic sleep and off the cliffs at the Ocean Beach of the dead, and when he falls, the nine sirens come screaming, trying to catch him, about to lose their jobs their cushy siren jobs, and the indecisive lovers of the last decade come to testify in heaven, asked to give an answer, yes or no, but they don't understand the question, or don't want to commit to anything just yet, it's been a year or two years or three years or maybe it's been a lifetime since they had this chance to meet, but that's not long enough to know for sure, and there's lunchtime coming and who knows what the choices will be it's so very hard to get out of bed when the world is this complicated, yes or no, it's a simple question, but it's too early to reply, this is too soon too sudden, is this the same question from three months ago?  yes or no? really?  this is too sudden, it was sudden then and it's still sudden now, and he falls, and he is so deep asleep he looks dead almost, and he falls, and if there ever was a time to come forward and say this, yes or no, just yes or just no, she answers, Please remind me of the question, please just remind me of the question, and she aches for him and her loins burn for him and her heart needs him and she just doesn't know what her time will be like next week to commit to anything so sudden, and while she is still deciding, the rocks on the sea open up like a sweet and vicious hole, and suck him in, and he is not dead but gone so very very gone, his chest fills with the wistfulness of all the squeaky dog toys of all the squeaky dog toy shops in the world of the southern hemisphere, and in English and Spanish and Portuguese and Esperanto, his chest beats squeaks tears open and bleeds for her he wants her he wants her he wants her he was waiting for her for so very long and he doesn't even know that the muses are dying, and his sucking ears sing sucking sounds he is being sucked into a song he doesn't recognize because somewhere at the bottom of the sea there was a mermaid who was intent on saving his life, and this is exactly what she did and the happy part of a vicious hole is the whole hole and the sad part is obvious and the next part is goddam fucking epic.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

except there's always a new cafe

Every new year they begin their fiscal calendar by revamping everything that ever was at the cafe between worlds, and for the new year that is doomed to be one filled with destruction and the end of everything, even Jesus, they decided to put in new blinds.  The blinds for the new year were literally blinding, made of a composite of gilt and the tears of a hundred undecided lovers, so that anyone spending too much time looking out the windows would be unable to see the forest for the trees, and fall into an incomprehensible and irreconcilable sadness.  They made an important business decision when they first opened, at the beginning of the fourth world in the calendar, when Cortez landed on the shores of the Americas and thought he could make something shiny and new based on betrayal.  Despite this beginning, the cafe was surprisingly empty of any traces of the spirit of spite or resentment, although it certainly is a place where the regulars can come to feel things again.

It is said that whenever there are combinations of gold and tears that certain spirits who rule over the human heart will come to inhabit and confuse, wherever appropriate.  And these spirits are not entirely appropriate in any way, except in their taste in shoes, but they do lack in the principles of social decorum, which is what makes them such enticing and entertaining company.

So it is that he found himself seated in front of a table of empty espresso cups, with a fresh spirit of betrayal and a keen desire to read his own future.  Even though it was still terribly early, there are already too many cups to discern a clear future, because chance would seem to want to make sure that the patterns were all different.  Only this is not the case this morning, because the gods of chance are here to make an annunciation for this next year of his life, and the messages in every cup are the same because the patterns of the grounds are all the same.

This is not supposed to be a good year for vague messages, and one in which those usual obscure flirts will not lead to any idea of something-somethings in the air, that's already so 2011, and it will fit him like a horrible leisure suit if he tries them on, and leisure suits are not proper for a motorcycle.  It is still much too cold.  In fact, he is starting to wonder if he will ever be warm again.  In fact, he is starting to wonder if all of this recent reborn hope and longing might have been a trick of the light.

In fact, that's entirely true, a trick of the light, in order to bring his body from a there to a here in a state of severe agitation, where everyone and everything around him seems empty and old.  It's not the worst way to begin another year, because such states are useful for either shedding skin or causing a kind of a severe stroke that is almost imperceptible, except that at this moment he thinks he is having a stroke but isn't awake enough to notice that the inside of his helmet is layered with old skin.  Enough to simply watch it shed and let it fall away, but he, oh he is much too much engaged in the process of mulling things over.

This rough beast is one that has been slouching for a very long time, and this is the morning when, while he is entirely focused on the slouching, the beast has decided to roll over and die for good, and it will be some time before he notices, because he is focused on the shoes of the beast and not the breath.  The breath is absent but the shoes are magnificent, oh so magnificent, with three inch heels and a lot of spike and spunk, and show a certain panache in design, just like the shoes the elves used to make.  The breath, on the other hand, is from other elves, the dead kind, and some days those are the only ones he can see.  Without giving away the ending (everyone dies), he doesn't notice yet that the red couch he is falling asleep upon is breathing more than the beast, and that's because the couch is living furniture.

He has not had to contend with living furniture for some time now, and the reason it's so necessary today is because the living things of this world are multiplying already, after only a few days in, because that much death and destruction, the kind that only a world's end would bring, there is a panic in all the kingdoms and the phylums, and this how that issue gets resolved.  It takes five goddesses to open a door, and it's the same for closing...and when they are reluctant, the door will not budge, and when it is something they all want in unison, then there is nothing that will keep the door solid, and when there is any conflict among them, the body starts to shake and shudder to reflect the indecision of the universe and this is why love is a shudder, because those shudders are the way the bird sheds her uncertainty and enters into the realm of something solid.

And when the conflict reaches a peak, then everything starts to come alive, and the more he avoids it, the more alive it gets, insistently calling him into the place where he is supposed to be living, and this morning there are red couches everywhere and they are all making him very anxious because they are ready to close one door and open another.

"It's not that hard," they tell him, but he cannot hear, because he does not expect it from a couch, so instead he interprets this as residue from something else, something else altogether and entirely different, that has also ceased to really matter.

Every goddess swings, and every heart swings, but it is like roulette, where eventually it has to land on a number, and he is acutely aware that he is not the one choosing, but the number, and his number is being played, and this makes him very resentful in the place of so many worlds.  The black birds come, because they always do, because they're good at it, and they come cleaning his heart, and this makes him even more anxious, because what happens after that has always been tumultuous in the past, the the past is the present.

It is 2012.  There are people raining outside.  This year will begin something extraordinary, something that hasn't happened yet, something that only exists in the sparks in the inner chambers of the heart, ready to pull, the dice or the gun loaded with powder that doesn't travel well, and doesn't stand the test of time, and the flashes of gunpowder are not enough to backfire on his head, but only enough to obscure the light, so that he thinks he is looking out the blinds too much, when, in fact, it is not not not not ever too much. 

Monday, January 2, 2012

no more cafes

It's that peculiar trick of light that's always there at this time of year.  There's a warm glow around the days, marked by the sun, where signs of spring are already swimming just below our waists, we move through a haunted water that isn't yet wet.  None of this would be unbearable if the other things didn't play out the way they always do, and this is what happens.

I go by that cafe where I was getting used to meeting her, the one where we could talk safely about everything that happened before and everything that will happen later, without having to worry about sleeping together.  It's a little too public, but private enough that she can bring out all the objects she likes to play with and we can put on leather masks and watch the servers start to get nervous.  In this cafe, no one knows who we are, even though we come here every day, because it's one of the few places where everyone recognizes that no one wants to be recognized, and no one really wants to be alone.  I go by here.  And I told myself that I hoped it was closed for the holidays, because I didn't really want to see her today, but when I see that it really is closed, my heart drops a little.  I guess I was lying to myself a little.

The windows are not clean, but I can see through them to the tables, and there is a chalkboard behind the register that says, "Happy New Year."  It looks very dark and grey in there, and it makes the rest of the day look a little grey, even though I know that the sky is a prettier color than it has been in awhile, and everyone is talking about weather.  I suppose I like to think of it as a place that's never closed to me, but today it really is.

There are things about the sadness that I was feeling a month or two ago that have turned into other things, and some of them have stayed exactly the same.  This is the "how things are" that everyone who is healthy learns to live with, and I am uneasy, but not as unhealthy as I have been before.  I would like to say that I understand there is no river twice, and I do understand that this is the time of year when I look for the repetitions in everything.  It happens a lot around times whenever there are big shifts, and there's one shift that is an 8 and another shift that is a 4, and there are more numbers involved that make this all very complicated.  And I like to try to freeze time whenever there's something coming, because I want to try to remember exactly what I was doing before everything changed.

There are big bags of fruit on my floor, and they're waiting to feed the African goddesses and gods that were born in me, and there are beads on strings that mark another opening, and soon enough I will be talking to them all with coconuts, and soon enough I will be driving across the desert to where people lose everything so someone else can get born.  I am starting to understand that birth is a metaphor, always a metaphor, and it always refers to something else, and everything else refers to this.  This is how things work in the natural world, this is how things grow, and this is how things die.  Sometimes it's nice to be connected to something much larger, and darker, and secret, and sometimes it is overwhelmingly sad, like the sadness that a mother feels for the children she loves too much.

This is how it is with us.  We have a gift that is a large debt that we can never repay, and sometimes we get to find the sadness of that gift when we fall back into our bodies and fall in love with another one of the sea's children.  This season holds magic and this season holds light, and the trick is to know that the sadness doesn't come from us, but it's something we inherit because we have the ocean running in our blood. 

MANIFESTO OF CROSSED ONTOLOGIES Everybody (and by everybody I don ’ t mean everybody I think I mean one person, and I mean you, in par...