the click of the track

is a click clack click clack another train or another track
somewhere between wolf and fox somewhere between these somewhere between these
and the clickityclick is a clack on the track
another track somewhere between these somewhere somewhere between all of these
 and there's this dance here

june night

it seems like an important moment, the first blood of the daughter, on a night when the moon decides she does not like me any more.  i think i'll live through this.  storms are running under the streets, kicking up dust and sage and creosote dreams for a dog who wants to know things a little harder, and understand things a little deeper.  things fall away, things break, and our bones get revealed as stronger than they were last year.  this will not last.  soon enough, the shifting houses and changing bloodstreams will give way to another false certainty, and another period of mistaken identities.  we are well supplied to fool ourselves in the weeks to come, and we are foolish enough to believe that the things we know for certain might be up for discussion, but it's already decided, all of it, and sometimes it's easier than others to walk in our own skins.  we're all made of dust and the things of the ocean, and we're all carrying small flakes of an original fire, and the things we worry over in the morning grow so large by night that it's a wonder we can sleep, but maybe we are not supposed to be sleeping, in a moment as important as this one.

another siren song

They told me to be silent, but I could never hold a tongue for very long; they told me to be patient, but I couldn't wait any longer; they told me to be still, and sit somewhere where the light was clear, but I'm always shaking when I try not to, and I always liked the bottom of rivers and oceans, and cemeteries are better at night, because that's when and where things speak.

So I should have known, when I was sure I was in the center of the heat of it all, I should have known that I was closer to the sea than I thought, and that the things I was hearing weren't lizard songs, coyote songs, vulture songs, the story of the origin of heat, but something else entirely.  And I should have known that there would be something they asked for eventually, something that can't be paid by the things of this world, and I should have known that I was not lost at all, and knew exactly what would be coming next.

Because I've been through these rocks before, I've seen these waves in all their tides, and I understand what it means when I get so captured by the things that I think I see.  I don't see things that are in front of me, they disappear.  What ought to be and what used to be change places with the things that are on the way, and I can't tell the difference between my own hands and the mouth that holds the world.

But when you come floating through the waves, with your newly shorn hair and your button sweater, your wet pages and your wet openings, I wake up and remember what I came here for.  I came to get caught here, because I came to talk to the sea, because I have questions, and I have things I need to get off my chest.  "There are things that are torn to break," they say, "there are threads that don't sustain their ability to register delicate sensations when they are pulled too thin, and you are a thread, pulled too thin, and when you don't hear, you forget who you are supposed to be next."

"But your blood will have to guide you in the dark, and when you're too far from the ocean, we will bring oceans into the very same blood; you've been sleeping again," they say.  "But when you wake up again," they say, "you'll meet your own melancholy face, and there are those who will tell you that you have gotten older, and you'll think they're lying, you think that when you sleep you don't age a minute.  But your blood spins you like a whirlpool in your dreams, and the things you remember will be more than you wanted to know, because you always come here to learn more than you thought you wanted to know."

I'm starting to get to that place where I can't hold my head, and the rocks are softer when the sun is going away and the songs are pulling me under, and I'm afraid that I might drown, but there are always other plans that have nothing to do with what I want, or what I think I need.

Mother under the waves says, "There's a version of you under the grave, there's a version of you under the sea, there's a version of yourself before you stammer out your next drop of blood on your lip, & there's a version of you that's covered in wax and copper. Like everything or anything, when you need to rely or depend, lean on the water holding you so dear."

something for the sirens

You never did make it out to the middle of the desert, dark and white dogs in military clothes, escaping from the war, looking for a quiet place to finish a very long conversation.  But I suspect that the conversation really doesn't have a finish, that there is no end, like a road doesn't end, or at least it's too long to see all of it in one lifetime.  It's hard to be melancholy when there is no destination, and so many years ahead.  I suspect there are more years ahead than I can fathom from here, and the thing in me that beats my heart against my head to wring the neck of the moment to get out the last drops of blood is a liar, and that I'm not getting as old as I'm supposed to be acting. 
Sirens come into my house and tell me this is no time to act my age.
Sirens tell me to come into their living room, it's made of rock and smells like the sea, and if I go, I will get torn apart in a thousand directions and lose my sense of direction.  And I go, because my good sense never did treat me very well, and I'm partial to anyone who can begin a tempting invitation with a threat.  It's more honest that way.
It's a strange place to call home.  There are those around me who offer their advice, to lead a quiet life, to do things that are easy and comfortable, to find something that will keep me stable.  But they'll never know what it's like to find comfort in the cemetery, and the quiet that comes to you in the middle of a storm.  And they advise me to stay away from those hard and melancholy places, because I won't find anything worth keeping there, but they don't know that those places are where the songs are, and I'm supposed to make songs out of these threads of a life.
And that's the place where all the nevers and gone forevers turn, take their own turn, and revel themselves as the hundred thousand not yets that keep my blood running in my veins, and my eyes sharp and clear, and my head turned decidedly in the direction of another drum altogether, because I am old enough to understand that a threat is also a promise.
The strangest thing about this place is that I'm following these lines of flight, with a promise to help anyone who asks, and whenever I'm wanting too much more, someone shows up who needs to know something about the roads that are dangerous and rewarding, and I get to learn that I do have maps, and I've been places and done things that I have to keep secretly locked away, until someone asks the right question.  Alchemy is learning how to ask the right question.
The answer always starts with a yes.

cafe scene/new

I think I might have missed something, or I might just miss something, but I'm here again at the Cafe Ambos Mundos, and there is something missing already, even though I haven't been here for more than ten minutes.  I can tell already there's something missing. 

It might be something somehow connected to me not being here for a little while, I guess I haven't had a reason to travel on this stretch, or maybe I haven't really needed to, for awhile.  Things must be settled, then, and that makes me feel very unsettled.  But I know there are things coming up that will draw me here, and I will even live here for a little while, in this space between desert and ocean, and I want to check in first to see if there are any surprises.

It is surprising, then, to be noticing that although it's entirely populated with figures, none of them are particularly moving in any discernible direction, and most of them are covered with dust and the things of spiders.  I didn't know there were so many spiders here, I guess they come out at night. 

On the far table, there are the figures of a Copper Witch and a very eager and confused child of the God of the White Cloth, and they've both been frozen in time, ranch dressing still covering their bottom lips like a seal.  Something very important happened here, but it doesn't mean so much to me right now, because I can't hear the music they were hearing when they got frozen.

On other visits here, I've been coming in covered with leather and a need to wash, and smoke, and drink something powerful for the road ahead, and sometimes I've come in feeling powerful and mystical, like I come in from other worlds, and sometimes I come in feeling ridiculous, smelling like hard men smell when they take themselves too seriously.  I would like to think I am an iconic figure, but my Hunger Games boots and denim jacket make me feel like I'm just another survivor, one who wishes he were a little less tall and a little less visible. 

It shouldn't matter, because no one is moving, so no one can pay any attention anyway.  Except.

First, before the except.  I see two figures out front, caught in the middle of rolling cigarettes and about to tell each other something very important.  This couple, I love this couple, and it makes my throat feel full when I see them here like this.  Anything they admit to each other will be something that they will need to hear from each other, but the seaweed at their feet seems to have stopped them in their tracks, stuck here somewhere in between spaces, sometime long after they both stopped waiting.  But I sense that something in me is still waiting, waiting for these figures to come back to life and say the things that heal each other in other times, but this must not be one of those other times, and maybe no one really needs anything the way they once thought they did.

There's also a white suv parked out front, and that couple is frozen with their hands on each other's backs, underwear balled up on the dashboard next to photos of their daughters waiting for them at home.  I hear them, almost, can almost hear them, telling each other stories about dead priests whose spirits are caught in trees, making future plans for nights in hotels that are lined up in circles somewhere closer to the sea.  There is salt crusting over on their lips, and it doesn't stop me from noticing how beautiful the scene is, and how their eyes are still on fire for each other.  It's a nice place to be trapped.

And I know that there are signs painted in chalk on the walls of the abandoned and never-constructed house in the field out in the back, something there containing a spell that worked to seal doors with the same salt of the sea.  I wonder if I walked through the house if the spell would be broken, and they might find their way back to each other, but I think I have other things I'm supposed to do here.  Instead, I'm distracted by movement, someone starting to shimmer in the sun through the windows of this dead cafe, and she's heading in my direction. 

There's something about her that suggests she's working, and something about that tells me I need to be paying attention, because I'm probably the only customer with a pulse.  The side of her head is shaved, and I recognize her right away, only it's not right away really, because this has been in motion for awhile, I just haven't noticed.

"Now I know everything there is to know about you," she says.

"I don't think that's true," I say, "because I don't know most things.  I mean, I'm just finding these things out, and apparently I'm finding out only a small part of it."

"If you are interested in this small part, then I might very well be the only one who can bring it to life for real," she says.

"I kind of doubt it," I say.

But that's not at all true, because here, in this place, she would be one of two who could do that, and really, the only one I would allow it to happen through.  I recognize her.  I've been looking for her for a very long time, and inexplicably, I'm playing it cool even though that's never served me very well when it comes to anything with her. 

It strikes me suddenly that I have things back home, that there are things that move me through the days of heat and dreams, and it also strikes me that I feel at home back there for the first time in a very long time, and it also strikes me that I'm not at home here, but I like being not at home probably even more than being at home.

Something about her always lets me let her try, to do whatever it is she has in mind, because even though it usually hurts for awhile, it's something more important than what I had on my schedule before she came into the room.  So it's not surprising to find myself lying on a table, where she is standing over me with a needle in her hands.

"I'm not wearing gloves," she says, and this is somehow more exciting than anything I've heard in a long time.

There are seasons for dogs, and seasons for wolves, and somehow I imagined the dog world had come to stay for a very long time, and maybe it has been a very long time, but I hadn't really noticed until just now.  I'd been distracted by the metal by her mouth to notice that her teeth really have gotten a lot bigger than I remembered.

"I miss your teeth," I say to her, because it's important now not to be cool, to say the things I want to say, just in case we get frozen and I don't know when that might happen, but I want her to know just in case that's immediate, and just in case she forgot the things we say to each other when we get the chance.  "I miss thinking about your teeth, I miss the nights I would watch you sleep, your face changing even while you were dreaming, but the thing I miss the most is the thing I never saw, that transformation that happened after your body turned blue, the thing you changed into right before the ocean came in through my window and you slipped out.  I never did get to see what you turned into right before you slipped out."

And she's preparing the needle, and preparing her teeth, and I get the sudden not at home sense that I'm about to learn something very new and important, and that the season has turned utterly, and we are still children of the ocean, no matter how far away we might be at this very moment in this particular place in time. 

porch story

Because there is always a dog that lives on the porch, the dog needs to be in the story, but it's not a story about a dog, it's a story about the porch.  At least as far as we know right now.  That's all we can know for sure right now.  It's sometime in the beginning of summer, but the way the days work here, by the time we get to the beginning of summer, it's already been playing out for some time already.

The dog, who is not the center of the story, likes it so much better when the days are 110 degrees, because the 90 degree days seem disingenuous.  Even to the dog.  Maybe especially to the dog.  Because for the dog, this is the heat, the kind of heat that reminds him (or her, or other, we haven't really said yet what or who the dog is) about those signs with the red hot chili peppers that you see everywhere.

It really shouldn't matter that dogs can't see colors, this one can.  That's very important.  It's possibly even a clue as to what's really going on in a story that needs a lot of hidden clues.  The dog, who loves the heat of the summer, is too tired to do anything essential right now, so instead of doing things like eating or drinking or sleeping, he (we'll say he for now) is spending his time on the porch thinking about the porches between this one and that one.

Not to dwell too much on anything, that one is one very far away, and one he has never been to, and he's not even sure that he's seen it in pictures, not even in her pictures.  He's seen her pictures.  Dogs have facebook profiles and unlimited access to everyone else in this story.  He thinks he's seen pictures of her on her porch, and he wonders if that's the same one that she's sitting on when she thinks about him.  To say that he's thought about what they might do if they were both on the same porch is an understatement, because it crosses his mind all the time, especially when he's having something important happen to him on a porch.

And it's seeming to be sort of obvious, even to a dog, that important things always happen on the porch, and maybe even only on the porch.  Now it's true that not every first kiss happens on a porch, but some of the most important first kisses happen there, and sometimes it's a front porch and sometimes it's a back porch, and that shouldn't matter much which porch exactly.  But it does.  It does matter. 

Because there are some nights on front porches that seemed to tear them wide open, and there are some nights on back porches that seemed to tear them open just enough so that they stuck to each other, and in some of the secret rooms of his heart, they never did leave there.

But this isn't really just about that, it can't be, because there are other porches in his mind right now, and they all have their stories, and each story really does deserve to be its own single story.  If he had a mind that was not constructed in sevens, maybe this would be possible, but as it is, acceptance being the answer and the mystery of the seven being something that's part of him by now, they all blend together and sometimes it takes reflection to bleed them out of each other's shadows. 

There's one memory, maybe recent, maybe more recent than the heat in his head would suggest, when he was out on the back porch, smoking, in bikini underwear, sometime after midnight.  Not that anyone should wear bikini underwear, especially not a dog, but sometimes you have to because it's all that you have.  And that porch seems very important because it was a place where the beginning of summer hadn't yet come, but close enough, certainly close enough to count as happening in the summer.  In that place where spells get broken, and the only spells that stay are the ones that always come back, the ones that come back and stick like napalm, the ones that remind him of what it was like to cross deserts in too much leather for the heat, when his head was as broken as his heart.

Dogs have hearts that break, they break easily, but anyone who has spent any time rolling around on the floor with a dog who was stronger than themselves understands, the heart of a dog mends easy enough, too. 

There was also another memory, a front porch story, that happened a long time ago in dog weeks but not so much in human time.  It's a much more difficult story to remember, because there was no significant underwear that played a part, but there were ponies, there were definitely ponies. 

This gets better.  Not for the details, but for their lack, because here, in dog porch time, the lack is everything, it is that small and hard thing that drives the story forward, and doesn't seem to care too much about things that are proper or timely or adequate.  It's the small and hard thing that starts to announce itself, saying, "This is not enough, there should be more, but for the moment, this is exactly right."  It wakes up the thing in the heart that is tireless, and merciless, and can see much further up the road than what we might be used to.

Because, this is giving away entirely too much, these porches are all suggesting something about the things that happen outside of the house, and they suggest that outside and inside are not at all the same thing.  And the porch in one time and place is really the same as the next one, and they all tell one perfect story about circles that repeat, repeating with difference, in order to make something of themselves, whether we pay attention to them or not.  Like the way that small organisms reflect the larger organism that we all live in.  The rat, whose heart beats so fast when his feet are sore from standing on plastic, to the whale, who beats four times a minute whether she needs it or not, to a universe, that beats every billion years, expanding outward to make us all molecules of things that used to be whole but are now very different than they ever were before, and contracting, contracting to a single point that we all remember, and it is here, the dog thinks, it is exactly here, that I can remember you. 

end of play/7-6

(It was sometime before that, in the first days of the new regime, before the new regime would be knocked over as already useless, that things started to get heated at the front, because of the lack of fighting.)

HE: That moon keeps looking at me.

SHE: It's not looking at you, it's looking at me.

HE: It's looking at both of us, because we're both so hot.

SHE: Hooray.

(They clap hands, not high five, not ever, but even still, it's not that tight, because everyone is tired and has things they need to do in their very proper Victorian houses.)

(It goes on like that for awhile, sad, but no ad libbing, please, just say the words of any line in a different order, please.)

(And while it goes on the DOG enters, unbeknownst to them.)

DOG:  Hey, hey, there kids.  Hey, hey.

SHE: Puppy!

HE: You came back!

(Everybody loves it when the dog comes home, and they are not so different from the rest of us, and they go to the dog like Buffy and Jodi.)

HE: It got so very strange when you weren't around.

SHE: It was like a dream, except one we couldn't analyze, because we are not properly trained in linguistics.

DOG: You don't need a degree to know that there's only one dream, and it's always about the moon, and tonight, the moon is looking at me, because I am so doggam hot.

(This isn't quite a dream, but it's very close, especially if we are able to wake up their sympathetic sensibilities long enough to evoke a willing suspension of disbelief that would lead to a catharsis that would no doubt be so entirely sexual that it would feel as though the pelvis of the world were butting up against their secret spaces, except no one really gives in to that any more, not today, not with so many funny animal videos out there.  Maybe that's sad, or maybe that's just where we are.  But if we were not there, then it would be entirely sexual and everyone would be thanking us and we would say, no don't thank me, it wasn't me, it was you, or rather, us.  We did that catharsis together, on this rainy afternoon of our lost youth when all the world was green.  And we would surely notice how the dog is now dancing with the moon, and they are starting to eat each other, but we don't notice.)

SHE: Tell me something about how you think about me.

HE: Oh, you go first.

SHE: No, you go first.

HE: No, you go first.

(This starts to repeat, long enough that we suspect this is how it ends, but then something interesting happens.)

(There are these apparitions, versions of them in white, bodies painted white, that rise above their bodies on stage, and they start to face off with each other.  Every word that's uttered by the people below draws blood from the ghost bodies, and they don't notice even when they are bathed in the blood.  There's a lot of not noticing in this play, they must be distracted by other things.  And perhaps they should be.  Life is confusing and complicated, and sometimes the things that are happening before your eyes, the things that can be touched, are enough to drive away the rest of it, those old ghosts that try to steal our sleep like wounded cats.  I, for one, would love to bring in the wounded cats, but I'm beginning to suspect that if one comes in, then they all have to come in, and that's how I like to live up until now, apparently.  But while this goes on, the dog and the moon are dancing and starting to rise in the sky, and as they rise, they get smaller, and look so very far away.  Oh, this might need projections.  Oh, there are already plenty of projections, though, and those can get so confusing and complicated.)

(There needs to be a scene where they are talking and their bodies are covered with ears, but they still can't hear anything that's being said.)

(There needs to be a scene where someone is crying on a street corner in the rain, but it has to rain more often here first for that to really ring true.)

(There should be a scene with unwritten letters falling from the sky, but that's already been a play, and there wasn't enough porn.)

(There needs to be a meditation on growing older.)

(There needs to be a scene where all the lost loves come back into our beds and stare at us while we sleep, and they have to be distracted enough for us to slip out of the window and fall into a forest that we've never been in.)

(There has to be a scene where I decide that I live here and I want to live here for awhile, and there are things I want to do here for awhile.)

(There has to be the longest and saddest I miss you scene ever.)

(I miss you.)

End of play

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