elegy before turning older

You aren't the same kind of coyote that always left me alone in the heat of the road, in the place where the railroad tracks run faster than the freeways, leaving me to figure out the meanings of the marks in the ground where you decided to disappear.  You're not the same kind of coyote that goes away without leaving marks, your marks still speak, and I can see the places where you are still speaking through them, and if I had my wits I would find out how to put those sounds in a mason jar, and bring them into my bed when the nights are hot.  You're not the kind of coyote to leave me without warning, so I'm left spending the months digging through the laundry to find the last thing you touched so that I might remember your smell.  Because on some nights, your smell is everywhere.  And on some nights, I might even remember that we love each other.

It's a harder bone then that's lodged in my skin, it cuts through my lip and collects the heat of the day and starts to burn whenever the melancholy dogs come calling.  And you know how they come calling, relentless and hungry and make it impossible to say no, they lure their own way into the yard, past the porch and through the door, and sometimes they make it under the sheets where they sing sweet songs.  I'm always waking up at three in the morning, when the sweetness has taken back its power, and I recognize that they are not you, and never will be. 

No one knew the layout of this landscape like you did, no one could wander as recklessly as you did through the desolation and find things to adore, and faces to fall in love with, when the rest of them could only recognize their own shadows.  And even though it left its scars on you, its fingernails on your back and its thorns on the side of your head, you might not know that you leave marks on it, the body of this mother is covered with your love bites.  Everywhere you touched, I see traces that are born in love, and your traces make me forget how to wander, because I can't tell myself any more that I don't know where I am, and I don't know where I'm going, because this plays over me like stars fall over me, and they know where I am supposed to be.

And I do think you know, like I know, how it is when you are paying attention to the ground as if it were filled with bones of ancestors, that when the heat turns impossible and every living thing starts to know the place as a dry and dead thing, that if you are paying attention to your body as if it were filled with the bones of ancestors, the mouth starts to fill with blood.  When our lips have gone dry and start to turn to dust, and there's no water in the body left to speak the things we want to say, the mouth starts to fill with blood.  That's something only the oldest souls know, the ones who have been through this before, and know what it is to find something and lose something, and that it comes back to life, born in the mouth, at that moment when the rest of the desert has given up on birth and is running on reflexes for survival. 

Maybe our reflexes for survival are not as strong as the others, or perhaps we know something they don't know, and never will.  This is how to get life out of these things that are dry to cracking, it takes an ability to stand the heat of the sun and the relentlessness of the scavenging dogs, joining their direction without becoming a member of the pack.  It takes a willingness to shift shapes at the very last second, without losing the connection to the blood, and blood is strong, and blood is also very patient, and it tells our mouths what to speak before we know what we're thinking.  And it tells me that I haven't lost my teeth for fighting, and I've been keeping my muscles tight for a very good reason.  And it tells me that I know the way, that there are too many layers of dead branches and burnt leaves to see from a distance, but that in the heat of the day when my mouth is filling up again, that underneath this, buried deeply within its womb, there's a heartbeat that tells me that you're not gone and lost forever.

daughters

I was already past that particular mid-point that defines a life when I started to learn the things I thought I was supposed to know when I was less than half that age.  For a long time I had assumed that it was just due to that particular folly of youth, where intoxications are central to the core of the body that wants, and that naturally I was just lost in those particular hazes.  But when years went by without putting anything into my blood stream that would make the walls speak, I still found myself in the same patterns of thought that make it impossible to look outside the consciousness that wants.  I am convinced, however, that there is certainly some wisdom to that, because our stories are filled with the lessons learned from endless wanting, and that it is the key to that peculiar alchemist stone, and some of us are born wanting more than the others, and that can mean that there are more paths to wisdom for those who have an excess of desire and longing.  And it has definitely been my experience that the periods of impossible wants are always followed by a vastness of knowledge, the kind that the ancestors speak of, and the kind of which the best adventure stories are made on.

I am also convinced that there is in some of us a certain mechanism toward narcissism, and it's a kind that is not terribly common, where it isn't there as a barrier to reality, but a bridge toward it, and sometimes a buffer against the worst kinds of it.  Because the ones who truly want the most are often the ones who lose the most, and not through any design related to the wanting, but based more on circumstances which mean this life will be harder than most, and there will be more suffering on the road, and there's no way to avoid it if one is really living in the world.  It seems, then, that the wanting and the vanity are there as tools, as coping methods in which to take the hardness of the experience and to transform it internally into a story that makes sense, enough sense to get through a day or a week or a year.  And the luckiest among us understand that our versions of the events are necessarily wrong, but also very beautiful, and at times entirely inhabitable.

So it was that I was walking into another turning point, entering a year that was sacred in number according to my own sacred numbers from the initiations I had to pass through to come to know that I could know some hidden things.  I was getting older.  And like most birthdays, I was entering into this next one alone, or rather, without a lover, or rather, without a lover that lived close enough to be considered present.  In truth, half of me was feeling quite miserable, and the other half was having a very extended celebration, because there are times when being alone is a blessing, and after certain kinds of intense experiences, it's better to hold those golden cords in the chest so they can teach, and so that the wisdom there doesn't spill out in the body of another lover and the power get lost in another flood of another desire.

So I found myself alone, not entirely closed, but certainly not looking, and certainly not willing to open the door at 3 in the morning just because strangers came knocking.  And for some of us, strangers always come knocking. 

It is always at this point in every year where I end up spending more time than usual with my daughter, because of the way the seasons fall where I live, and this was turning out to be a particularly good one, though not without its sharp teeth digging into my very heart.  Because adolescence is all sharp teeth and glitter and secrets written on the body when best friends have time alone to themselves.  I was able to witness that, and also collected enough, for a change, to let myself not be part of it, because my adolescence was already given to me, and I opened it up and I used it as best I could, and now it was her turn. 

Even though I've always felt I could paint myself as something eternally young and unconnected to anything that usually ties a person to an identity in this world, my daughter always destabilizes me, because in those places where I am not part of her identity, I find my deepest roots in this earth.  In some years, this has been a horrible season, particularly if it came in the wake of another insane love affair when I was left with a sense that my destiny as a witch was to be continually introduced to soul mates, and then severed from them, because my Great Goddess was loving but also very protective, and wouldn't let anyone linger for too long if their intentions were not in my best interests.  She wanted to remind me that she was my first and only real love, and the rest was candy for the journey, and I was not meant to have too much candy. 

So the summer months would often begin with a kind of lover's quarrel between myself and the one that I thought I lost, until the Goddess would remind me that She had intervened and sent her away, and that my quarrel would always have to be with Her.  And the months would pass in misery, wishing for things that had gone away, and unhappy entirely with my circumstance and situation.  But this was a different season, or a different pattern, because there were some of the old yearnings but there was also something entirely new, and that came from understanding finally that my heart was truly in Her hands, and everything blessed would be coming directly from Her, and if I pleased Her, then I would find myself pleased exceedingly.

It was this frame, then, that I found myself face to face with my daughter, and I discovered a human being who was very much like me, and very different from me, and she was on the verge of entering into a kind of battlefield, and I had a role to play.  But it wasn't as though I could help her if I were her best friend, or even her best ally in war, but as her father, and I was learning how to do that, and it was a role that I was suited for.  And that I was supposed to teach her as best I could about the old ways, with the same charms and spells that had been taught to me.  However, in order to be a good teacher, I would have to keep my own spells in order, and make them when my mind was collected, because the spells that one casts when they are heartbroken or freshly in love are always filled with fire that is reckless, and that would do no good to someone who needed to see how these things worked against a clear background, where the waking world was clear and still somehow in relief.  And this meant getting myself together.  My life was impossible, as messy as a circus, but I did have some say in my own state of mind. 

I understood, then, that I would have to start with myself, and use myself as the example, and this meant living the life that I was supposed to be leading all along.

The thought terrified me, because I am always anxious that this means wearing suits and becoming the kinds of ogres that keep putting these horrible things in motion, but I always forget and have to remember again that this is not my case, because that is not my destiny, and never has been.  We are, none of us, as fragile as we pretend to be when we are frightened, nor are we as simple as we would like to think we are when there is no opposition.  However, I have always been fortunate in being in a destiny that is never free of opposition, and my own deeper nature is reckless and fearless when the larger beasts come running, and I could do this.

What was most striking however, to me, at that time, was that I discovered that by acting on the love that I have for my daughter, I learned to fall in love with my destiny again, and I began to learn how to court this destiny in the same way that I would court a lover, because they are always and inevitably one and the same thing.

from the place where anger was born

You never really get to leave it, the place where they took your mother's heart and your father's land and didn't give a second thought for leaving you all for dead.  There are very few days left where the living remember the dead, and the dead need to walk the earth just like you, or just like you their muscles will start to harden like bones, and soon enough no one remembers how to speak to each other.  A loss of the chance to speak in this world can mean you speak in dreams or any of the other realms, but no one can sustain it for very long without the occasional contact, and when we are despairing we light candles on both sides of the dirt, and start to say the old prayers that draw us up and down to each other.

That endless tango between the living and the dead, it's a kind of movement that brings dead things to life and makes the tired things crawl back into the ground where they can disintegrate properly.  You were entirely correct, sir, in imagining that I had news for you, and that the teeth bones in my jaw bones clack only when I have things that need correcting, beginning with the bones in your spine, and soon enough you will be awake enough to remember the rest of it on your own. 

There is a terrible breach of understanding among the ones who are holding the chords to power these days.  It's the same awful folly that ever was ever in this shivering, aching world.  There are forces in conflict with each other, yes, on a large scale, yes, but it's much deeper that what any single human consciousness is capable of understanding in one lifetime.  These forces are indeed in a constant struggle for power, and the old ones always knew well enough to call it Nature, and they could know, because they knew it wasn't begun with them and it would surely not end with them, but was much larger and older than that.  Larger than a generation, even, and older than the first human civilizations.  But there are those who imagine that they know the reasons behind these struggles between forces, and they are called upon to intercede, some by what they perceive as conscience, and some by an imagination that is entirely born in hunger and greed, and when they participate, they fail to understand that these forces are larger than their egos, and if they never wake up, they are capable of turning this dream into a nightmare for the rest of the living.

It is, at its roots, a question of power, because they interfere so as to make it impossible for anyone to fulfill the very first imperative, and that is to know love.  Every soul has the unique capability to enter into the alchemy of the spirit, and the pathway is always through knowing love.  The second imperative is to learn how to enter into that same dance of forces, and to know all the forms that discord in harmony can take.  But very few ever get to enter into the second stage, because of the way these things are being played out by the ones who think they know.  And they are the same ones who have lost the ability to honor the dead, and so learn how to talk to ghosts.

Because you know, you are not only given the opportunity to hear and speak the words that come from somewhere that is not you, not you at all, but the chance to make these things happen in the world you know.  But you'll have to be careful, and you'll have to be reckless, and you'll have to let the fire dance your bones for a time, rather than take too many cautious steps, because you say you aren't sure this is the right path for you.

There's always a clue, and it always begins with birds.  When they land on the road, or fly into your head, in numbers that seem significant, when it seems as though there is one particular bird who is always looking at you, when they are only coming to you as skeletons or residues of the flesh they used to be, or when you are in times and places where you are always hearing them, then that is the right path.  Sometimes they are beautiful and colorful, and sometimes they are skeletons, but they always mark for you that this is indeed the right direction for you.

So there may be times when it is necessary to hold the silence for awhile, and there are times when you will feel like you are saying too much, and leaving the chords of your heart and mouth too exposed, but this is how that unusual dance of speech evolves in these lifetimes.  But when you think you have decided that the best thing is to hold the silence indefinitely, then the birds all go soft and dull, and even the bones become soft, because this reminds us of the times when the living stop speaking to the dead, and when this happens, we go away.  So that tapping on the walls of caves that makes you so lost, that makes you feel this is endless and impossible, is really a part of your destiny, and the only thing you can do to be sure you are on the road, is to keep tapping, and if you have to tap a hundred times in the course of a season that you still love her and you still think about her, it's not a futile foolish game, for you, it's just your destiny, so walk it with the blessing of your ancestors, and don't assume for a moment that we are not walking with you, because you hear us, and when there are no words, there are birds. 

surrealist play about love

(Because it is a surrealist play, he writes on the bodies of all the skeletons from the models of paintings from Vienna in the 16th century.  There's music, unaccountably, playing in the background.)

HE (writing):  The candle holder is angry, a drunken constable.

HE (speaking): Note to self: what is a constable?

HE (writing): And there are seven dogs surrounding my bed, because they have come from the sea they are wet and they are angry, dressed like hierophants, and making shadows on my skin that are the signs of the winter coming fast.

HE: (speaking): It's not even close to winter, this is so brilliant.

HE (writing): And suddenly quite without warning, he blows a high pitched whistle.  The dogs make no notice, because they are from the land of the dead, or the sea of the dead, they are from the dead sea.  But his daughter, Melancholia, she notices, and she is angry, angry like the sea and the dead.

(Sound of daughters singing songs that remind them of their fathers, who are not around as much as they wish.)

HE: (writing): My hand grows extra thumbs, and they are all covered with the blood of this goddam war, the very goddam goddamed war.  Generals disguised as insects come through the wounded gaping holes, and everyone becomes entirely aroused.  In the antechamber, there are women in leather with vampyr teeth, beating each other with whips made from living cat-tails, and pouring melted wax from silver chalices over each other's chests, and there is a song about the inquisition playing softly from the mouth of a dead walrus.

FRAUNQUAY (enters, drinking a miller): How, how, how.  How will the wax stay melted.

HE: Fraunquay!  How did you find me here, I've been hiding for centuries, and now I am the undead, filled with longing, longing, longing for you.

FRAUNQUAY: How will the wax stay melted in the chalices.  It's winter.  It would congeal, like the blood of a two-headed ram.

HE: Oh, you could always see right through me, and now here I am before you, a broken shard of nothing particularly interesting.

(But oh, ho ho, there's more, because HE dies suddenly, because he is not writing anything interesting these days, and there is a MINOTAUR in his place.  The MINOTAUR has an interesting head, shaved, of course -- everyone's head is shaved in this -- and he is wearing spectacular black leather boots.)

MINOTAUR: How, how, how do you like my boots?

FRANQUAY: I want you.

MINOTAUR: You cannot have me, because I am elusive, like the flying dogs that tore you from your mother's womb.

(And tun-tun-tun, the devil's symphony starts to play, and it's a tango with clothes made of barbed wire.  No one turns without a little blood, because it is the time of the running of the bulls, and we are all so very savage.)

SHE (enters, and writes): She was contemplating the delicate flower that lived inside of her skirts, and saw how it was growing fangs and filled with bullets and the memories of a thousand dead men and women who dared to know her.

SHE (speaks): I am tired of writing, because the things that we are when we are locked inside of our animal skins are always much more suitable for the time of year when the girls in their summer dresses are incinerating from within, from the terrible heat within.

(And the dance becomes unexpectedly elegant, like a poem about love that got lost between translations in a hundred imaginary flights between then and now.)

End

end of play/7 (1a)

It's impossible to believe how old I am about to be, and I still don't know how to control people with my mind, or the power of magnetism.  The mystical power of magnetism can cure headaches and colds, and bring back lost spleens, and reinforce windows on a windy night, and make bread for you while you spend time with your dog.  I fucking goddam love motherfucking magnetism.

In 24 hours in a house that isn't mine (but I used to live here), three things have jumped off the walls.  A statue of the Virgin with two cherubs with a font for holding holy water.  The string holding it to the nail wore through and it fell and shattered in a thousand pieces.  It was something my ex-teresa got from her hometown, and was made in 1934.  B. A candle holder from Oaxaca that my ex-teresa had on a shelf, and the shelf fell off the nails, and the candle holder shattered in a dozen pieces. I love Oaxaca.  And number three, a newspaper article with a picture of Elli and me, 10 years ago.  In the picture, I can see that she has aged, alarmingly, and I have not, which means that, at 44.92, I look like a 34 year old man (who drank himself nearly to death for 19 years).  And to look exactly like that, all I have to do is shave, but the hair grows so fast on my face, and chest, and sometimes I would like to let it grow, but after just a few days I already start to look like a child molester, and it will only get more pronounced (I know from experience). 

And I also know from experience that there is a curious stream of coincidences in these things falling.  And at my mom's house, she is talking nonstop about how they will not put everything back on the walls after they painted, but there are so many things to put on the walls and they still don't know where they will put them.  Except she will put back the nude in the bathroom again, one of my dad's paintings, the one I always thought was kinda hot.  They'll put that up, she tells me, because she was the model, she says, did I ever know about that?

No, mom, oh, god no, I did not know that, oh, god....

So it's all about walls, I guess, and I suspect there are ghosts in this house where my daughter is sleeping, and the ghosts get very naughty whenever we spend a lot of time together.  Which suggests that I have some relationship issues with females in relationships, and even though I may have a developed feminine side, or at least a post-feminine side and sensibility, I don't really do well on my own, because I am only half when I am alone.  Is what I get reminded of. 

Oh my gosh there is a lot of nudity on tumblr.  I've discovered.  It's fantastic.

It always goes back to the suicide girls.  I'd love to say I tried finding pictures of older women (older like almost as old as me), the ones who have given up their reckless youth for something more sensible, with extensive purse collections and heels that are still saucy and sassy and go with everything, and if I could get that spark to ignite, then I would have more options, but it does not work so very well, but at least I tried.  But pregnant women still do strange things to my pulse.  I don't know why I am writing that here, out loud in front of everybody.

In my house, Oshun has a new collar of peacock feathers, and Oggun has a new cauldron to live in.  These are good things to put right, and it might come back to magnetism.  There is something profoundly broken in me, and it's related to being raised by broken men, and still being surrounded by some of the same broken men.  And the thing that's most broken is the thing that keeps things in balance, and that's the thing that makes me forget that I am not broken like them, not in the same way, and it's nothing as simple and psychoanalytical as me trying to prove my hormones by riding motorcycles in the desert.  My hair testifies to the etymology of testaments, and the crazy and reckless things I do are things I do because I like them.  The miles of rumbling metal are the residue of living in a direction that I like.  And the thing that speaks to me in the dark on the road is not the gritty loneliness of broken men, but the breaks in the dry clay that give in to the force of the river, and Oshun sings to me, or I hear myself singing to her.  I would marry her if I could, but oranges and peacock feathers are as close as I can get to that (at least, as much as I can speak of, here, now, on a windy night in the desert.

And I wish you were here.  Because I miss you.  Because you know things.  And because you know me, and I know you.  I suspect it's something very simple, and very mysterious.  And will always be mysterious to us.  And here, by you, I mean you, the one in Denver learning how to attach things to bodies so they don't fall apart on themselves.  Because walls are not as secure as we think, and are not very permanent, much as we suspected. 

approaching something else

This is what it is.  Strange summer nights where I am in other people's houses, wearing overalls and green hipster glasses on the front porch and thinking about smoking cigars while smoking cigars and writing it all down and resting for awhile.  Not that there was any big turn in things, not on the surface, like anything that grows in the desert, everything that happens for real happens under the ground, because the ground is too hard, and on the surface we just make selves up, so we can be them, but it's hard to be anything because there's so much resistance, so most of us end up deciding on the easiest thing, and we go with that for now.

I like the music that we're making, and I like how it doesn't have to be about anything except for this moment right here, and I like how we move together, and the moving is about moving in the time that's happening right here, and the only thing that has to fall into place is this.  And I like how it did shift with something on the surface, and that something had to do with dance, and I like how I know people who know how to move with fire in their bones, and how we can talk about the fire, and how that fire is easy to talk about because I have that, too, but it comes out differently.  And I like how sometimes music is better than words, because words can't contain this thing, this hard knot, the words can't place it anywhere that's right, and the words just come out wrong, and I end up saying something that I didn't expect, and I suspect that it might not be true, only pretty.  Except, here lately the words come out hard, and the hard words sound pretty, and that's not really right.  And I suspect that the words that can come close are soft and beautiful, but they don't fall anywhere, because there are no echos that I can hear any more. 

Like that.  I'm not so sure about that.  I'm not sure that's true.  Like there may be echos and like maybe I can hear, but I am pretending not to, because they are pretty but knotted.  I would like to be impressed by pretty words, but sounds will also do, and moving the body in time and space will also do for now. 

So I'm trying to feed my head with things that are working, things that are open, things that are not caught in knots.  And I'm trying, and failing, to be silent, because these are words that tell things that might be true.  And I might say that I would like to be in love, and maybe I am, but maybe I can't really do anything with it until we all get a little bit older.  And I'm on the verge of getting just a little bit older.

And I'm looking for something to be next, and I would like to think I could do it in overalls, because that would be easy, except I don't like them, really, and I don't think I can do African rituals in overalls unless they are white, and even still, it wouldn't be right because religion is always so coded, and I already have enough trouble performing the right gender through my clothes.

So I take that with me, that self that's part of something larger, and my role is to do some things in the exact correct way, and it's also to create something very new at every moment, like a chameleon.  And I would like to think that there's a theory for this, something French or Eastern European that will liberate me, but the words fall short, and the thinking is too always already inscribed, and it makes me choke, and I can't have things around my neck, not even with safety words (safety word here is mojuba).  But the music of my blood liberates me every time, and the more Polish, the more dark and morose and absurdly tragic, the more I feel the beat in my blood, and that brings me back to things that I don't know how to talk about.  The voices in my head are loud except when there is music, and then they have a place to go, and a way to teach me where and who I'm supposed to be next.  It's a rhythm and a lightning in the blood.  All of this will be resolved in a dance, and it's unlocked in the body first, long before there are words for it, and I forgot, but I just remembered again. 

end of play7 (10)

Scene: Wherein the DOG takes over the most important and pivotal role and everything is revealed to be exactly what it is supposed to be, suddenly.

(By now we all know that he's just talking to the dog, because everything that was once on the surface is now moved deep under the ground, silent, and growing in that way that almost looks like it's going away entirely, because it is so quiet in the desert on nights like these.)

DOG: This is good, very good, I think we've made very good progress, and now I can reveal myself to you as your one true love.
(DOG is revealed as his one true love, so beautiful and strong, but HE doesn't notice.)

HE: That's fine, because it's been such a long twilight, and this twilight isn't doing much to turn over into night finally, but is just staggering around my head, I am living in a twilight staggering around my head.

DOG: That's wonderful, now look at me, now kiss me.

HE: Maybe we just stay awake for too long, that happens every now and then, and we think we're grown up, except we're in another extended adolescence.  Like when I am convinced that I'm accepting everything as it is, only it turns out that I'm really just not participating, and not even telling myself exactly what I really want, and it's nothing like this, because that would mean I have to do things very differently.

DOG: Yes, do things differently, look at me, love me, now we can be together.

HE: I hear you, dog, except I think I haven't told you what it is to live inside a man's body and love a woman in a woman's body, utterly.

DOG: I think we already get that.

HE: You don't know what it is to ride 500 pounds of metal across the desert for 500 miles without stopping, because all you can see is her body on the road in front of you, and you move in time and space on your way to that, even though you know it will kill you before it heals you, and you go anyway.

DOG: You would need to stop for gas.

HE: Oh, you stop, you do, you stop and the sweat is another body on your body, living on the oil on your skin.

DOG: You should just exfoliate and get over it.

HE: Not when you're a man in a man's body you don't.  You become your layers of sweat and grease and you build up your identity with the fluids that come from the inside of your body and the residue of the road.

DOG: Oh, just tell me what you're looking for, and I'll be that.  It's not that hard.

HE: You don't know the songs that wake me up in the morning.

DOG: Wait.  They don't love you like I love you.

HE: I think I might be just a little crazy.  But it's hard to tell, because everyone around me is broken, so I haven't had a good measure to rely on. 

DOG: Maybe you need to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing, and know what they want, and you'll pick up something from them, and then you'll understand why I love you so much.

HE: I don't think it would help, because no one knows me like I do.

DOG: Oh, I do.

HE: Oh, this might be getting weird.

DOG: Oh, you might like it.

HE: Oh, I am positive that I will not.

DOG: You've never seen me dance.

HE: Maybe I need to leave all the ones who are giving me advice behind, and take my coats of selves to a place where they can get clean, and the place where I get clean will be the place where I come to, and find out that what I'm looking for is also looking for me, and that might be the place where all the lost things come back to me.

DOG: I don't think you're right in the head.

HE: I am willing to take that chance, because honestly, I just got bored and there wasn't enough to go on, and the messages written on the walls in the corners of the city were only lovely until they started to look like notes passed in class, and class was already over, and the girl in 4th hour will always tell me the things I want to hear, because she's just bored and wishing she had something else to think about, but maybe she just needs to get through 4th hour and I just need to be walking in my highly charged boots that have nothing to do with anyone but me.  Like the last note would be somewhere between I will always love you, and I think you lost me there, and in the next version, someone will have to leave their husband and wife and dog in order to find me, but I'm not so easy to find, not after this, I think I need to be hidden, but not like you hide when you are waiting to be found, hidden like you hide because the things under the ground are telling you about your real place, and you come back different, and no one recognizes you, except for the ones who have been under the earth, and you recognize each other only because you have the look in your eye that tells that you were willing to give it all away, and you have scars to prove it, and everything has proof, because when I asked for proof, no one stood and no one showed me their scars, and that was the night that I decided to leave here forever, and that night looked just like this one.

(And he's leaving as he says this and the dog is dancing as he says this, and it's a beautiful dance, but not the most beautiful dance ever, but just enough to close a moment, just enough to leave it like that for awhile, because the ocean is loud, even from here, and there are things that happen next when class is over, and there are no more safe places to go, but under.)

in between

heat came sudden and sudden heart swells up in the chest that feels full to breaking i have 8 pounds of new self in the shoulders and chest and i don't know where that came from the heat came sudden and sudden breaking of waves of every kind of longing cataloged for easy access longing comes too easy these days but the heat carries a day and melts a day and pours itself over the day like napalm and we are all crushed but the night - oh - when the night falls the molecules that swam around terrified under the sun are stopping and resting on their own porches of desire and fan themselves with the photos of their old lost lovers - oh - you lost me this is true this is true - oh - and this is the porch where i remembered what i was supposed to be doing with my aging body i wish i felt older i wish i felt weary i wish i felt worn but all i feel are the things i feel when the night gets cool and the summer is stretched out in front of my bones i am always sixteen at the beginning of summer - oh - i lay out my neon clothes on my bed way before i go to sleep and when i do sleep i sleep restless dreams about perfume buried in the crevices of necks and the best way to hold a clove cigarette when someone nice is watching you, the floor of my dad's van covered with m&m's, casettes of the who and the cure, and something that's hidden until we get to the cemetery, we will always get caught and we will always get away - oh - and you will lose me again and i will lose you again, and no one will feel the weight of loss and absence until the fall comes around again, and it's so far away from us, the fall is so far away from us - oh - and in my room when the sun rays compliment the woodsmoke of the sandalwoodsmoke, the dogs are gathering at my feet, afraid of paint and concrete, and tell me this is true, this next story, this next chapter, is all about the fall, this story is the one about the fall, what happens in the moment when the lovers in the garden wake up and know where they are, because when you know you are in paradise, you have to leave it - oh - this is not about sin or redemption, this is a metaphor for the soul's climbing the ladder, no one stays in paradise because to stay there is to die there, but to touch it, is to know what love feels like, so you know what to look for the rest of your life, and to know you will never find it, but you have to keep looking - oh - you were not written on the easy part of my bones, but inscribed on the marrow, like a fire like a seamonster like a brand, you are written on my marrow - oh - and - oh - oh - oh - i will keep looking for you

gemini in the house

I think this is how it's supposed to start.
More from the dog world, mornings aren't always like that, but there are some strange things in the sky these days, everyone has a guess as to how things turn out, but no one really knows, and all the dogs are teaching lately is that once you have the traces of a scent, you just follow.
That's the best time, because no one has to second-guess themselves any more.
The undefined signs in the road might not point to anything more than letting you know that this is still road, that you haven't left the road.  Those things you used to need to keep certain, you just don't need to be certain any more.  Some of these things have been going on for a very long time, and it gets a little bit easier when they start to fade into the background, the raw material of this skin that you are living in.
Every thing starts when the morning is spent in the graveyard, the ones who wake up in the graveyard are the luckiest ones, because they get to know the roots. 
This is a place of strange representations.
It's a first day.
The one where the heat opened up like a clam when the sun rose, and all of the things of the desert smell like themselves, a green smell that only we know, it's somewhere in between healing and dying, and it's hard to know which, especially this time of year, when the floor begins to look like the sea that it is and used to be.
It starts in the graveyard.  This dream, this cycle, it starts in the graveyard.  He's asleep on his back, and there are songs blowing through his head from the families visiting their dead, first thing in the morning, because when the moon and the sun dance like that, the next day is always the one where wishes get heard (even if they don't get answered).
He wakes up on his back in the graveyard, with a hundred desires melting out of his skin, and none of them can be answered from here, but they can be heard.
Something about the way the wind moves across our faces, something about the idea of no relief in sight, and something about the way everyone starts to talk about water.  It's a strange dance.
This is the place where we start to look for mirrors, something to give ourselves back to ourselves again, because the sun is taking everything else away.
Some kind of strange grace when he wakes up, where he wakes up the mirrors are all covered, and the answers are still too far beneath the ground to make any kind of sense.  And the signs are starting to repeat, this is the path, this is the map, and this is what will happen if you keep walking.  But if they go on for too long, no one in their right mind would believe them any more.
And that might be enough, just enough.  Things like faith get moved aside for survival, and the things that the stars set in motion come around whether we believe in them or not, and sometimes it's just better if we decide to stop waiting. 
 The things that will happen are already written on the veins, and the things that are left to chance might not make their way through another summer.  And in the best circumstances, the ones that are the hardest to live through, the things that can never be lose their footing, and the things that are start to show themselves for the very first time. 
"There is no difference," she says, wrapping her teeth around a bone of a cigarette, and her bones of legs around a bike, "there is no better." 
He suspects that she might be profoundly wrong, maybe even as profoundly wrong as he is, because he lays these things on the railroad tracks and tells himself that these are things to leave behind, but he blows them to life with the vapors on his breath, forgetting on purpose that every spell has a result, and every desire buried in the ground has been buried with the secret of how to resurrect itself.  Even, or maybe especially, the dogs know that.  The dogs especially know that. 

end of play/7 (9)

(This is a hard one, because it's an intensive therapy session with just him and the dog, but she's also there, hiding in the bookshelf, disguising herself as books, but we don't let on that we notice that she's there because it might spook her.)

HE: This is hard because it's so intense.

DOG: I am an intense dogtor, so it would have to be.  Please, go on.

HE: I feel like I can tell you anything, dog.

DOG: You can, you certainly can.  Your secrets are safe with me.

HE: But at the same time, I know that I really can't tell you everything, I mean, I will, but it's not safe, because you'll tell people.

DOG: I promise I won't.

HE: I believe you, except I really don't, because everything I've told you before has been spilled out of your mouth anytime anyone asks.

DOG:  That's not true, and if it is, there are good reasons.

HE: But this time it's different.

DOG: Absolutely.

HE: Because this time I feel like you won't tell because it's all too secret and true and I'm sure you won't tell.

DOG: You're smart.  You learn from the past like no one I've ever met before.  I had a patient once who was told by African priests that he shouldn't get involved with indecisive women, and he did get involved.  Over and over.

HE: That was me.

DOG: Oh, that's right.

HE: But I'm sure I had good reasons.  I mean, maybe that's what I was looking for.

DOG: I doubt that, but go on, I won't judge you, even if you do keep doing the same stupid things over and over like a goddam fool.

HE: Well, this time, it begins with this morning.  I was watching the Office. 

DOG: I fucking love that show.

HE: This was the one where Jim is missing Pam, because she's attending body modification school in another city, and he thinks she'll come back, but not soon, but some time, but he's starting to think she'll never come back.  So he's sad, so he locks himself in his room and shaves off all his hair, and becomes a performance artist, and he's starting to wish he still had hair, and wore shirts with collars, so he could have a normal life, and buy his parents' house for her, but he can't, because he's a performance artist, and by the time we get to the end of the first half, he's already thinking of new categories of gender, because he's still, like, you know, he likes women, but not the ones who like to live in houses, and so he's thinking maybe there's a category for that.

DOG: I doubt that gender has anything to do with housing.

HE: Well, it's just a tv show.

DOG: I doubt that tv ever influenced gender, it only reflects it, and what's important here is that you saw a little hint of yourself in this Pam.

HE: Jim.  I'm Jim.  I'm not Pam.

DOG: Sure you're not.

HE: Oh, now I'm confused.

DOG: Analysis is confusing.  Tell me, where is this Jim, or as you say, Pam, in all of this?

HE: That's the thing.  He thinks she's forgotten about him, but she hasn't.

DOG: How does he know?

HE: Because she tells him she hasn't.

DOG: I see no conflict here, and I'm bored out of my skull, you're not unhealthy at all, you just watch too much tv.

HE: But they don't speak, not like people talking, you know, not like that.  She can't speak to him.

DOG: Why?

HE: Because there's someone else.

DOG: Oh, hot damn, I'm not bored, yes?

HE: She's with this someone else, so that every time they do communicate, they have to do it by going under water, and they meet under water, and sometimes they don't meet, but they've left messages, messages on the ocean floor for each other. 
(By now the DOG is crying his eyes out because this is the saddest story he's ever heard.  Or she's ever heard.  We haven't defined the dog yet.  There are lots of things that the dog could be, and he or she are just some of them.)

DOG: What kinds of messages?

HE: There's a "like" button on the bottom of the ocean, and they hit that "like" button.

DOG: That's all?  I liked the British version much better.

HE: Sometime, well, let's say every day, he leaves her these complicated notes, hoping she's going to see them, and she does, and it goes on like that.

DOG: I see nothing wrong with that, unless it goes on for months.

(HE can't talk because he's crying.  DOG understands and starts crying, too.  They cry together for an impossibly long time, and it's the kind of crying that would need a drink at the end of it, only HE doesn't drink because it makes him want to die in a short amount of time, and that's even sadder, but suddenly DOG gets an idea.)

DOG: I'm going to try something, where I'll get a replica of her, and you talk to the replica as if it were her, and we'll see how that goes. 

(This is very sneaky, because DOG grabs SHE from the bookcase and she sits in front of HE as if she were a replica.  And maybe she is, because no one is what they pretend to be, except sometimes we get close when we pretend with just the right amount of panache.)

HE: I wish I had shirts with collars, and I wish I could buy my parents' house for you.  But it's a problem, because there is lots and lots of room, there are lots of people who could live in it, but you can't bring him.

DOG: (talking for her, this is getting a little strange.)  And her?  Would you bring her, too?

HE: There is no her right now.  I broke it off after I saw you because I understood that I was still looking for you.  But buying a house takes time, and in that time, there will be another her, or two, I'm sure, but I don't think I'd invite her, unless I fell in love with her, and if that happens then I don't think I'd even want a house, because she would be from somewhere else, and I would probably end up going with her to the somewhere else where we would practice our art together in some somewhere else, and all of this would just fall to pieces.  It's a house made of feathers, and it would blow away, and I suppose that's what I have to do, and I'll probably be okay, but I don't know what that means for us, because I wasn't looking for her, I was looking for you, and I found you, and I knew it as soon as I found you, and I don't think you believed me, because if you did, you would have stayed, or maybe you would have run away, and maybe you did believe me, then, because you did what you thought you were supposed to do, and I guess we'll both be okay, but I'll always know I was looking for you, and I don't know what it would feel like to live like that for very long, except I have, already, so I'm confused, because I thought this was how it was supposed to go.  You look for someone and you find them and then the story starts.  But if it turns out that you're not looking for me, then the story has to end there, because there's nothing more to the story if that's all it is.  And if that's all it is, then I just have to clean myself with herbs and move on, if that's all it is, and I guess I'm on the verge of deciding that that's all it is, because that's all I see anymore.

(But it's not even up to him, because the DOG has already cleaned him while he was talking, and that's all it is, and she is silent through the whole thing because the DOG is talking for her, and we know that's unfair, but that's how the DOG works, it's not a nice DOG, really, and can't keep secrets.)

(Next scene: HE is with a different SHE, in a nothouse, and he's thinking about the other SHE the whole time, and SHE is thinking about HE, and it's sad like that for at least a hundred years, in which time all the new gender categories have been recognized and the world is a much better place than the one we live in now.  And everyone has shaved their head, of course, and wears terribly interesting boots.  Who knew this would be such a utopian play?) 

end of play (7)/8

Words on screen: And the eighth time around, in the retelling of the story that should be called, "I Miss You," he went into the same psychoanalytical room and was putting on the suit of the therapist and adjusting his new beard when she walked in.

HE: My gosh, it's been years, how are you?

SHE: Good afternoon, doctor, I am making a very innocent visit.

(However, when she drops the arab strap and we see the centaur legs coming out from beneath her victorian skirts, we get the feeling there's something up.)

HE: I often get confused for being a man who dresses in men's clothing but is secretly wearing something special underneath.

(Oh, but this makes her mad, mad, mad, but he doesn't know why because she never did send him her paper on Lady Gaga.)

(*it's not too late.)

SHE: I really did intend for this to be innocent, it has to be, because now I'm a teacher and I'm married to a lawyer, and we're expecting.

HE: Congratulations. (He says with great composure but then he bursts out crying.  Pause.  He goes into the other room and shaves his very bearded chest just for closure. Meanwhile, the DOG turns into everyone that talked about them while they were together and broke them apart with horrible gossip.)

DOG:  (smoking a pipe, to disguise himself as the dogfather of psychoanalysis)  Love is mad.  There's no way around it in any direction, and I've tried.  Tell me, secretly, tell me, do you think about him?

SHE: Yes.

(DOG exits and we hear their conversation off stage.)

DOG:  I found out what you asked me to find out.

HE: I didn't ask you anything, please stop licking the hair on the floor, that was my beard, the beard I was growing on my chest as a symbol of a love deferred.

DOG:  Pleasure, when it is delayed, has the seeds of ecstasy.  Pleasure denied is the beginning of fascism.*

(*A direct quote from my head while riding a motorcycle through the mountain pass at six in the morning.)

DOG: She loves you, and she thinks about you all the time, and she doesn't love the lawyer, but they are going to have a baby on television.

HE: She told you all this?

DOG: In so many words.

(They come out, his chest is shiny and smooth, and the dog's mouth is full of hair and he can barely speak.)

HE: I had no idea.

SHE: I heard everything, and it's all lies.

HE: All of it?

SHE: Most of it, and we don't have a contract yet, but we're shooting a pilot next week.

HE: That's so ironic, because you finally get to make your film, only it's not yours and it's not a film, and I'm not in it.

(HE cries, utterly.)

SHE: When you miss me for too long, you kind of turn into an ass.

DOG: That's exactly what I told him, too.

HE: You did not.

DOG: I hear your aggression in between your words.

HE: It's all aggression, there's nothing hidden.

DOG: Oh, you should hear yourself, you'd be shocked.  You remind me of my brother.

SHE: Tell me about your brother.

(This is one of the most extraordinary moments in modern psychiatric medicine, when the patient heals the doctor, but not through traditional means.)

(The dog puts on the arab strap and speaks.)

DOG: I was not an only dog, there were others, there were brothers.  But there was one, born before his time, and his breath was so very brief, and there was nothing anyone could do.  The grief haunted my family for more than one generation.

HE: In dog time that's not very long, it's 1/7 of everything.

DOG: Your math is good but your heart is cold, you crybaby in women's underwear.  My dog, man, have you any morals?  Grief is grief, and the way we long is exactly the way we love.  Sometimes you're lucky enough to experience it the way you both do, as a slow and persistent itch, its weight is beautiful, but you don't know that, because you can't see how it's changing you, making room for you to become exactly who you are.  That's what love and death do to people.  With dogs, it's something else, it's like madness.  I lost my brother, and I've been looking for him ever since, and it's an endless cycle, but it's the one that I ride.

SHE: Dogs can't ride bikes, their legs don't work like that.

DOG:  Can I please have my moment here?

(They wait.)

DOG: No, that's it, never mind, that was the moment, I said my piece, and now I am whole.  I feel three feet tall, it's amazing.  You're some doctor.

HE: If I could tell you one thing right now, it's this: I decided not to wait for you, like you said, but I also decided that I would have to be alone for awhile, so I broke off all of my ties, because I didn't want to settle for anyone who didn't make me feel the way you do, and so far, you're the only person I know who does that, so I think about you too much, but it doesn't hurt, and it's heavy, but I'm learning how to live with it, because that is what I have.

(There should be a moment after this, but everyone has to go to work, and angels dance around their heads, and bells ring whenever they walk in the world, and if they could see it, they might see that it's the most beautiful thing in the world.)

not end of not this not here