NEAR/FAR

OF MY SHIP

2006-08-31T12:40:00.000-07:00

The truth is lack of imagination.
Justino Correa

Do you know how difficult it is to be this self that I do not comprehend? Might Rosa imagine what it is like to live with the severity of my existence and without definition? What it is like not to be able to find comfort sufficient to rest this heart and this mind, I sadly know well. If you might have it as a problem to explain this self that I am to others, might you not also sympathize with the actuality that I am in command of a ship that will not let me dominate. It fires torpedoes when it pleases, it navigates towards the tropics or the arctic with unfathomed desires; I attempt to figure to no cause, ultimately I have had to surrender to the mutiny of my ship. Ship refuses to understand the oceans that current beneath its hull, it refuses to listen to the winds that might predict a storm, and even in the dark of night, where serene reef or rock might lie in harmful wait, my ship impetuously navigates staring at star light. When the morning rises, the sun blares upon deck and upon this flesh, and I am stunned to yet remain alive; curse this mutineer ship that won’t kill its captain nor welcome him at the helm. At times the uncharted journey grows long, and I rationalize or dream a bearing, where I might plan to dock or anchor, but my ship, violating all human rights, hastily changes course into the mist of yet unequaled darker oceans.

I sleep a gentle sleep, where the slightest feather cry might awaken me, spirits from my past rinse themselves through my flesh, whoosh last night, one edged my soul into the ceiling, where I cried more reality than the savage soul, proven by my soul’s acceptance of gravity’s weight, whoosh back down from the ceiling into me flesh. I endeavor to realize reality; I see colors, my ship mostly white from stern to bow, sized in tonnage and appearance like a cruise liner; I search in vain for others there, open hatches, navigate corridors of endless opportunity, I plant my watch about the encompassing bridge, but all is empty. I blank my face, expressions serve no purpose. I walk into my cabin where red leather bound books stare blank pages; manuals in the dozen, blank pages all lay exposed on my desk and on my night stand. I try to write, but ink is white as paper. No ship’s log to be found, has been stolen, and it could not have been too long, for though no sailors clean the deck, the spotless deck, the shining pearl white and brass have not a spec of dust.

And so it is my dear Rosa that from my ship I write to you; I don’t know if you existed before me, having I no presence to say when I was not me; through you I sense that there is a world out there, of strange proportions, I imagine, perhaps not as cold, and sterile, and perfect as my ship; a dirty world where sweat and blood rub shoulders, where lungs cough in blood their memories, where brains torture to read the histories immune to me. But then you say that you are you, and I am me, and that it is a good that there are two or three or more?

That can not be! I see nor eat no fish, I see no lion roar from afar, I see no humanity laboring to exist; I know these to be fantasies, where they might disappear were I to blink or die, though neither are my practice. My sleep, I sleep, I tell is light, but just as certain I can not explain this self nor the aimless patterns of my ship; I know somehow, that big fish swallow the little fish and race to stay alive; that the mighty lion, and the bear too, will slaughter their progeny to reign uncontested; sun too shines its rays deep and bright as to obscure all others; and more I know and hear silent humanity crawling gently to triumph and be all. But then you say that you are you and I am me, and that it is a good that there are two or three or more!

I do not remove my captain’s hat, decorum is followed with precision in my ship, there is no tolerance of insubordination, no leave of duty, and always I am calm but ready for alert. It seems impossible that another ship will sail my seas, never have we seen another, and have no guns to fire, not even trinkets to appease pirates that might rain upon me, where might they be; the hooded night might know but I do not. I keep my watch, I do this day and night, I do not even bother to undress or hide under the covers of my bed, but sleep on top always ready to rise should the waves declare a sound.

Knowing not how I could be another, how I might dare abandon ship, and share a drowning with the sea, or swim in glory with the mermaids and my Luna, or to seek a treasure in a sand dune in the middle of my sea. I do not dare, I do not dare.

But war it is and it will be the day that I not long for all to board my ship, to cruise with me these aimless seas, as I have done with dignity and duty, and not as two or three or more but as one of two of three like me. You declare that I ought fathom how wonderful they all might be, but I am frightened to horror by such specter, I nightmare the idea and fire one and two and three torpedoes and more until I have but none.

Where Lion and Bear and Human and Sun are the sarcophagus embodiments of dead things done, where to harden the belly with the dead gives life, and blood, and conquers too; were I, as you request to let them manifest themselves before my glorious and perplexed ship, how soon you think before their certainty would sink me? Not three nor two nor one day in my log am sure! Less than a whole sun takes to transpire the long trajectory it does by day, and less and less where my Luna might not have a chance to wish me farewell as I sneak into the sea. Not three nor two nor one.

Where everything seeks to vanquish everything you ask of me, to let there be, and two or three or more! I do not know what it might be like to share your thoughts on this, I fear perishing more than I fear the emptiness and lonely voyage of my ship and of this sea. I lack not courage. And like all others desire to be more as one, and not as two or three; never ought I suffer the desire to let them all consume my thoughts, and nourish on my flesh of dreams, so as to be more with all; instead I offer them, the small discomfort of my ship.

BURSTS HASHED DENUDED SKULL

2006-08-31T12:39:00.000-07:00

Dark space surrounding his transparent figure, he walked floating towards me, in the cold silence of the void he arrived to me, solace but for us. There was smile in his tone, a voice at once calm and uncaring; he did not bother with the pronunciation of certainty, a steel bar bench served him well, he greeted me as if we had always known each other, not even expecting my reply, which I didn’t offer; he sat on a steel bench large purple gray torso arching over his legs, suddenly a brash movement from his palm smacked hard into his brow and instantly upon the smack the back of his head bursts hashed denuded skull fleshings and a flash of bursting light energy blasted out quelling as promptly as it had appeared. He nonchalantly apologized to me for the disruption: “sorry its just how we burp excess energy.”

He had come from a far point of space though to him all voyages were instant and needless, the appearance of his arrival was mostly my own doings, he accepted the limitations of my perception, he had arrived, he was talking to me, none of those things were true to him, they were true to me, he accepted it without the indignation that I would have felt in his stead. He perceived that I liked the darkness of empty space, that I was into silhouetted encounters, the silence was for me, so that I would not overwhelm myself with the stimuli of omnipresence and omnientities that cling to everything, which he felt and sensed, not as being, nor by being those things, but as a feeler of being and entities nurtured within himself into awareness, all those beings and entities that were not him so that they would feel him, imbued with all.

Me, I was a local being, a member of a tribe of disassociates, I felt very specific things, I knew very factual things, I did not accept everything, I was not an omnibeing, I was very much in favor of my individuality to the point of sacrifice, I was not at ease with a universe that could radically change to avoid me being in it; I mustered the courage to maintain and stay and be within the constraints of my mortal morality, with an astonishing amount of energy excavation which invariably placed me in touch with the world of isolationism that rebelliously chose to localize in one reality and then to tribe manufacture that reality so that it would eventually become everything at the cost to what was really everything. We were the tribe of sameness, we did not like the diversions of dynamic beings, we were a sedentary virus, a congealing mass that was getting colder and stiffer everyday through success. Cease the moment, hold everything, stay as you are, do not move, force everything to stay the same so that it will support our proven version of ourselves, rest forever in certainty, the tribe of one category converting everything in the universe into humanity, every aspect of energy converted into a carbon based being of absolutes and needs. Me, that was me.

Bursting at the seams of my limitations, my emotional fires raging under controlled conditions, I called him, I asked him to come to me, to demonstrate the dynamic truth and to explain to me how change was not death? Why it was not abnormal for catastrophe not to be known in any other part of the universe while being an abundant occurrence? Why consciousness ought not matter? Why the universe could sleep through its entire existence and us local beings chose to endure consciousness? Why did we fall in love with absolutes when the entire universe rested in one amorphous movement? More I wanted him to tell me how I could forget myself? How I could alter the consciousness of my being so that I would not have to isolate my sensitivities with the anesthetic addictions? Indeed to be so alive that I would look forward to my being equally dead!

And now this omnibeing that I had called for such a giant task was in front of me just burping. I opted not to express discouragement, though the burping of energy, much as in babies, implies limitations; limitations of how much energy an omnibeing can manage; excess energy management is not a sign of a perpetual heart. I ignored my thoughts, this being was after all more infinite and translucent than I, far exceeding my walking capabilities, of which our tribe was proud, he was a floater, a being that had a bus pass to the mountainous limits of our deep universe.

I stood before him for eons of time, not saying a word, waiting for him to say something to me, he just sat there touching his orb like head as if he were suffering head lice, his thick lips, his refined arms moving softly through the fabric of our empty space. We said nothing, we thought nothing, we both knew that at some point we would converse beyond: “sorry it’s just how we burp excess energy.” Perhaps we were waiting for time to synchromesh our beings, perhaps we were not waiting at all and only time was waiting; of course.

OCCUPIED POLAND

2006-08-31T12:37:00.000-07:00

I was In Warsaw during the second world war. I don’t remember any of it, except for my first brutal Nazi experience. I was staying in an apartment where we were hiding 29 Jews. When the Nazis arrived and broke through the hallways like virus killers with a blinding mission, they were a double column, moving fast and thoughtlessly, they plunged through our corridors with mesmerizing severity, “how could this be reality?” none of us could really believe that it was happening, five of us stayed in a room watching the telegraph that was sitting on a wooden table, evidence that we too should die, the rumbling boots causing the telegraph to vibrate sending messages to nowhere, almost falling off the table before one of our trembling companions held it from the precipice. It was the fear that they would hear it fall and rush into our room; I told him to break it, he hesitated, but realizing that were they to find it broken, we might have a chance at survival, he caved in to our fears and broke it then left it on the table and stood up to stand with us in nerving solidarity.

The rumble Nazi squad broke like a log through the door upstairs where all the Jews were not waiting and unleashed an arsenal of lead and physical brutality blistering our ears; leaving behind a blood bath drowning, they rumbled back down stairs, one of them severely opening our door, looked intensely, observed the broken telegraph, and made a hasty decision to let us live, to live as gossip mongers of the Nazi wrath. We plunged into nervous chaos, everyone left the building except for me and two others, the night arrived, and I, against all warnings, walked up stairs. When I walked through the frame that once held the door of safety, mangled bodies echoed their agonizing screams, breathing it all into my skull, petrified tersely holding my head while my eyes bled I rushed down stairs feeling freshly possessed by twentynine Jews, now all hiding and escaping inside of me. My memory of my life in occupied Poland ends there.

The next recollection that I have of the war years I am in England, chatting in the comfort of an elegant and cozy inn; the conversation of the night is about my guilt. Did someone use the telegraph to call in the Nazi dogs? Was it me and did I want it broken because of my guilt? Were the twentynine Jews now in possession of my body taking revenge? I drank my tea while a comforting voice from my host spoke: “It was not you, everyone tries to find themselves at fault when tragedy strikes, it is a way of explaining the inexplicable to the self, if you are guilty it simplifies the inopportune horror.” I remember agreeing with him, I drank my tea, no sugar.

At some point during that interminable war, before Sir Winston Churchill would single handedly accomplish everything right to end the war, I died of natural causes. I think in a place called Bedford, if there exists such a town, I went to my death quietly and was born again in 1959 in South America; a place where many Nazis went during their sabbaticals. Some people say I look German.

THE BETRAYALS

2006-08-31T12:36:00.000-07:00

I used to buy large doses of Marijuana from my dear friend Sergio. Sergio was this big dark Mexican with a jolly personality, very charming, whenever he was asked: “Do you know where I can get some pot?” He would respond: “I don’t know, every one always asks me that, but I don’t do that stuff, and I don’t know where to get it.” That was that. He was my dealer for four or five deals in a row. I would walk to his house, we would sit and chat about petty laughable things, always wondering when we would both move back to our home countries, to eat the good grub our mothers had raised us with. Papas chorreadas for me, Chile Reñeno for him, hay dios mio, Lengua lo mejor para mi. We talked about the pretty girls, and about our jobs, and there were things that we would never talk about, such as horoscopes, tortillas yes, carnitas more, horoscopes never.

Sergio came over to my apartment on the day that I got a new puppy. I call it an apartment because I want to give it a sense of home, a multidimensional cuddling space, but it was a studio with no kitchen, ok man, it was a room. A white but dirty bed-sheet covered the paint stained window, the bed-sheet poorly sustained by two nails, you could not pull it to the sides, if I wanted sun, I had to tie it in a centering knot, effectively splitting sunlight, a trick that is both fun and easy to reproduce, you can try it if you want, splitting sunlight. The room was white too, my mattress cover was white, there was a pee yellow covering all that whiteness, my dingy closet had all the clothes hanging on the floor, clean clothes chaotically tangling with my dirty clothes. Everything about me smelled like it was almost clean, I took a shower everyday, I don’t remember where, the room did not have a shower, there must have been a public bathroom for my pee.

Puppy was light brown, short fat, promising to grow into one big hunk of shit producing affection. His favorite thing was to pee on me, every time he jumped on me it was flying golden showers. I always manifested my distaste for his proclivity, but the urine would fade to the point where I could never really smell it, I knew it was all over my clothes because I had seen his ejection but not because I could discern the smell. Urine doesn’t spot dark clothes, I always wear dark clothes because bright colors dish out too much energy, they act too happy, they attract attention from the wrong kinds of people, I don’t like energetic beings, I like quiet beings, beings that drift through the human condition without being too happy and without being to obvious. I mean my character was made to have a puppy that had bladder control problems.

When I was a boy of seven I was still peeing my pants, wetting my bed, it was a terribly embarrassing situation, but I was afraid to ask where the restroom was, I was very shy, the fear of asking was insurmountable it was easier to pee my pants. When I was in bed it was not fear, it was laziness, I did not want to get up; I felt my bladder gloating about its disposition, urging me release, and I never bothered to restrain it; it seemed so wrong, animals in the wild pee anywhere, I was in bed, warming myself up with my pee.

My parents saw it as a problem specially because my very nice bed was one of those that had clothes drawers underneath, the mattress became a sort of filtering system which would strain my urine to its highest contaminant purity right into our clothes drawer. I never had children perhaps because I was afraid of having to deal with a child that would just pee anywhere, it is not an easy thing to have such a child. I presume that I would have been less prone to it if I had been more aware of the world around me, but I was a hermit child, I had invisible play friends all over the house, I was always kept busy by them, so I never had time for the humans.

Later in life my parents told me that I used to love to play with my shit, that I would dig my hands into it and cover my face with feces and even eat the stuff, creative baby was me, mierda on canvas, seen that many times but I was just more accurate in detail than most artists. I don’t remember those eschatological love sessions, today I mostly don’t like shit, I don’t get a thrill out of going to the restroom, and I don’t like the fact that we are held hostage by our waste disposal system. I suffer a phobia for diarrhea, something I am afflicted with every time that I return to Colombia. The last time I peed my pants was at a movie with Audrey, it was a sort of tangled date, I did not want to go to the restroom, finally I had to let it go, she wanted to touch my leg, I was coldly distant, I was fourteen.

Sergio sat on the head of the bed and I at the other end, playing with puppy while my bag of pot laid next to my plant Cassandra, a semi suicidal hypochondriac that I fed water regularly, we talked about everything, and the different women in my life would affect her in different ways, Some would sicken her, dry her, cause her to go dormant on me, a few others would make her feel well but never too well. Cassandra liked my general indifferences, we were both indifferent to each other, we were the married couple that slept in separate rooms, never talked much, or if so only about our liquids coffee and water, no toast, neither one of us liked breakfasts, and she was so indifferent that she only ate once a week, I liked that about her, I was so indifferent that sometimes I would not feed her for weeks, then she would launch herself into one of those incessantly bothersome sessions “oh no I am dying, my green leaves now pale yellow, my stems suffocated so much that even water can not be absorbed, I am shutting down, I am going to die, you can not keep me alive, I never asked you for anything, I never used that much of the house, I stayed with you through all your drinking, I never accused you of being abusive or an alcoholic like all the others, and still you never cared about me, you know I love classical music and yet you never play it for me anymore, and ever since you been seeing that black bitch, who refuses to water me, you don’t care if I die!” Cassandra, who could believe her, but she just went on like that, and I would ignore her until she had managed to yellow herself dead pale, much of her stem turning a hideously dark brownish color, and then her guilt driven campaign would get to me, I would talk to her a little, play some salsa music to try to lighten her morbid composition, I take her many dead leafs off and then feed them to her, she did not seem to object to the perverse cannibalism of self, every leaf I placed in her soil disappeared, I never asked her about it, it was a subject that neither of us wanted to address; we respected each other that much, and so slowly she would come back to life, and be green as green, again.

There was a bang at the door, bang, “police open up! This is the police open up!” I froze, the door busted itself open, three pigs, I hate cops, always have, I could never be a woman that loves men in uniform, they sicken me. This buffalo smelling insensitive monster in boots, stands in front of me, my sitting face dead smack centered on his penile personality, musk mustache, I am smelling the primordial history of the universe, this guy was a find, frozen in the primordial urine of cells that would eventually make up donkeys, pigs, some would make it to cattle, this guy had made it to buffalo, there was a lot of hair all over his body, bushes full, and the smell of stampede was all over him. Such a virgin thinker, pristine raw emotions what a treasure.

I was dead frozen, fear freezes me, my little brother once got hit by a school bus, I froze, rather than rush to help him, I froze in the moment. He gets hit by that bus many times through my life. I don’t believe is symbolism because if I did the torture would be more immense. The buffalo pig grabs my bag of pot and puts it to my face and talks in a broken language which I discern as an interrogation to ascertain his certainty, “is this yours!” Let me see we are in my studio apartment home, I don’t get a community rate on my rent, I decide not to answer, maybe I am still frozen but it seems to be a decision that I have made, not to answer. His boots hold him steady, he grabs me by the shoulders and turns me around, fuck, something feels gross about this, I know he is fucking me, but I would never be able to prove it, around these parts only physical evidence counts, judges are buffalo too.

Then Sergio, who has been silent up to this moment speaks: “I told you I don’t do that shit and I don’t sell that shit, but everyone is always asking me if I know where they can get it or if I sell it just because I am a dark Mexican, but I don’t do that shit.” Sergio had turned me in to the cops, he was a good guy, he did not do that shit. He sold me some shit, he sold me to the cops to clear himself for good. He dint’s do that shit.

I had to leave my puppy in the apartment all by himself, with Cassandra, she will not feed him, she doesn’t care, with any luck he might shower her.

FINGERS IN THE RIGHT TOP DRAWER

2006-08-31T12:35:00.000-07:00

After some time in the penitentiary, I went back to my studio home but it was gone, a guy wearing a real T-shirt, the type with no sleeves, never understood why they went out of style, anyway he answered the door, displaying his armpit’s generous head of hair, he was probably Italian, skinny but manly, Italians are the only men in the world that manage to look macho even when they are short and skinny, Napoleon was actually Italian, he was from Corsica, but don’t tell that to the French, anyway it is not like the French admit to anything that doesn’t serve their pride. Anyway Mr. Italian armpits just opened the door, stared at me with dark deep socketed eyes, did not say a word, I looked at him, imagined that puppy dog must have been bludgeoned to death in some kind of human dog wrestling match, I did not bother to ask about Cassandra, she was a survivor, I didn’t ask about her, but my heart would miss her always.

After doing some time in the local bars, performing a sort of liver cleansing ritual, I managed to get accepted to Medical school in Caracas Venezuela. I would miss America somewhat, but I did not want to have to lie in my employment applications: “Have you ever committed a felony?” “No.” Its hard to lie even when you are liar, people do not seem to understand that liars like me don’t do so because we like it, we do it because we are afraid, afraid of the truth. Anyway Caracas was to me a far off land, new and fresh, and accompanied by some cash that I had managed to acquire by innocent credit card fraud, I was admitted to the fine Medical School of the Americas. MSA, was sort of the great Latin hope for producing enough doctors to abort Catholics while they were still in the womb. Their graduates were all over the third world, some were as far as Italy and Spain. Their credentials were respected as long as they did not try to get into a specialty outside of their general practice: prescriptions and abortions. I was trying to get into prescriptions, the lofty end of it.

My counselor, forty seven year old Consuelo, a woman of means when it came to legs and ass, had a thing for doctors, and while many of us were not yet doctors, she pre-qualified us, I don’t think anyone graduated without her approval, but again it wasn’t that Consuelo was saying “You don’t have what it takes to be a doctor of the Americas.” It was that between her, laid the archers to the Americas.

It was with Consuelo that I learnt how to Salsa dance, music full of ripe fruits, papayas, mangos, bananas, and pineapples, Salsa is not so much a dance as a fruit feast of delicious succulent admirations. Pelvic compliance was one of the first lessons, which can be safely done during nocturnal awakenings to the memory of the music. The best Salsa dancers are always lusting lusciousness, there is no legal way to measure that in a person, no way to add it, you either have it in you or you don’t, I almost had it in me, but my overly active mind always got in the way of my lascivious lusciousness. I guess if you have lost the animal in you, if you don’t have the savage green jungle inside of you, if you can’t swing through the trees like one big ass monkey, if you can’t snake your way through the foliage, if you don’t have it in you to scare the existence pale out of a few giants, then you don’t have the rhythm, you don’t have the unhinged ass that Salsa demands and worships.

Some people feel, that if you don’t have the monster jungle in you that you can just feed it inside of yourself through avocados. Avocados are the creamy butter of the jungle lust, pregnant nippled bellies of the lush green lust, and greener still. They even rot with wanton, you have never seen anything leave existence with such perfect disregard for hygiene as an avocado does, when it throws itself into the dirt and just rots loudly proclaiming a kind of massive escalating vomiting of self dance that darkens and grows the night until the entire jungle is simmering in its darkness. The Indians always call it avocado darkness, it is considered the night in which the children are born, where bellies grow voluminous, where avocado darkness hides parenthood, where the night is not slept, where the night is not slept.

No one really knows if this is really true, though I personally believe it is; but there is one interesting fact, that many have been found dead from over stuffing themselves with avocados. The authorities sometimes dare to question the authenticity of the practice, wondering if it is possible that some involuntary assistance is given during avocado night feasting, but it would be difficult to prove that, there are certainly much easier methods of putting away your enemies, for instance, snake bites are popular and exceed chance encounters.

Anyway the villagers always keep an almost religious silence about avocado nights, they quietly condone the stuffing of one’s lover with avocados as a way to get Salsa in them, equal to a large ass monkey.

I have marveled at the life in this place, even my nights in the slammer there were muddy joys, there is something dirty about the place, dirty about the peoples, dirty about being there, dirt filled auras as wide as the planet, but the dirt is soil, pure life affirming soil, you are one with the cockroaches that chance in size with bullfrogs, the beer spits at you, the water is dirty, you have to drink the beer, the beef is tasted by the flies first, then by their vermin, the church bell rings but there are no saints here, everyone is into incest and rape and stealing from their neighbor; and wives are just as treasonous as husbands, and they all beat each other up, and they forget about it over hot chocolate and sweets, and dirty cock fights and even pigs laugh at the fun.

I was afraid of blood, demonios, I was afraid feces, of urine, of everything unsanitary, so I was glad to find that our medical school had suffered severe budgets cuts seven years back and so there was only one cadaver, and only one dead corpse of rotting flesh that was fresh enough in blood not to fall apart encountering living human contact. Still we were mostly kept away from the bodies. But for one so as not to shame our education. There were plenty of drugs to instruct those of us reaching for the pharmaceutical industry, while there was an arrangement for our fellow medical practitioners to test their talents on the local women who volunteered for free abortions. Everyone was a winner here, even sometimes the abortions would turn into frantic tube tying sessions.

But let me not skip the one corpse that was still good enough to eat, still clinging to a semblance of its past self. Some said that he was Consuelo’s failed love, a passionate romantic that got strangled by her thighs or maybe merely a metaphor for his having failed medical training, he looked German in origin, which fits the romantic part nicely and he was trying to be a doctor, which again fits the German theory nicely, but who knows, he could be anybody, he could even be a local, he was preserved in pure alcohol or formaldehyde or something like that which us doctors used to retain a certain scalable freshness in things, all the while killing other things that were trying to be borne off of them.

Anyway, obviously our school could not afford a full body suit or a decent refrigerator so they had hacked the guy up, into portions of himself, and placed him in these drawers on a sort of large aqua dilapidated table desk; legs and arms, each in separate drawers, even fingers got their own little drawers, toes too, it wasn’t quite a neat operation, and his head was in a pickle jar, kept behind the largest cover door. Pointless for me to tell you that this table desk was the center of attention. Somehow we were all connected to him, in order to graduate we would have to get to know him, personally I could have graduated myself without him, but you know modern medicine is not to be taken lightly.

His head was really only used during exams, it was a treasure, lightly handled, we were all very bright anyway, a shortage of medical schools in the United States had sent us abroad, some of us were here to please our parents, which is more evidence that we did indeed know where the frontal lobe was, the Petunias, and the Amygdala, an old time favorite of mine. Consuelo liked it too, we use to pay little boys to dig the Amygdala out of the head of dead bodies that had been abandoned in cemeteries, and then we would fry them over a fire and toast their crispy mush down our throats. Then, well, you know what then.

It was during these long humid nights that I would tell Consuelo that she could save her earlobe from my piranha teeth if she were to tell me about Aqua man. Yeah, that is what we called him. Oh Jesus, I am already telling you too much, why my doctor’s license might be at risk, say I more. Consuelo would say nothing, not a word, her fingers would glide to remove her long dark hair away from her earlobe, and motion closing her big dark eyes as if she was going into some kind of a voodoo trance, where all pain was equaled to ecstasy. I limped my way to her lips, held her cheeks with my palms, and kissed away the sands of all of Latina America.

I don’t think anyone slept at night, around these parts people wanted to be too tired to work and too tired to study, besides the dark underpinnings of the culture just called for us to accomplish our deeds at night, we sobered our days away, the heat was too much, we memorized body parts, and practiced listening to our hearts with stethoscopes, and when no one was looking we really enjoyed pricking each other with those long, silvery, pump glowing, seventy-five dollar syringes, I don’t think I can translate how exhilarating it is to prick a friend with a needle. It kept us awake even as we were sleep.

But the oddest of things, was the body of that young man in our main study room, the center of attention, was a truly fantastic affair; we loved him, everyone loved him, we never wanted to hurt him, we wanted to be near him, even Consuelo, that showed a severe indifference to him, had a certain way of coming into the room to see him. She would make a sort of dancing entrance, twirl herself 360 degrees and back right into the table, arching back, leaning her marvelous spine, which was as highly defined as her ribs, backwards, and then she would lift herself up with both hands, as if he were lifting her, only it wasn’t so, then she would lay her humid bulging ass cheeks on the table top, her hands would release her, and she realized a smile to our group; asking away our doings, as if she had just finished pleasuring her own. We were moved, twitching from the heat and from her, and from what was going on, the flies would land upon us and use the privilege of our humid stupor to nest on our pores.

When Consuelo wasn’t dancing with Aqua man, we were, that was the oddest thing about it, he made us want to dance, appropriately Salsa music, covered by tuition, was piped through the old and dysfunctional speaker system, and as soon as the music would start to dance, we would all stare at each other’s smiles and move to dance or flirt with one another into exhaustion. We would chat, we would laugh, we would joke with Aqua man, some of us, the sicker of us doctors, would toss his fingers around, and others would try to prevent it, and that was the whole dance, and the music blearing from the speaker would squabble, and pierce our ears, and our incessant laughter would inundate all. We finally ended by putting back all of Aqua man in the drawers, though not always in the right drawers, and often then a power failure and faulty generators would cause the music to cease poking at us, and so we drifted to the local bar, where we were considered rich because of our hasty cadence towards alcoholism. Many of us never made it to our home rooms, many of us were mud ditch dwellers, many of us would not graduate or make it out of there alive; one of us would be the next Aqua man, you see there had been some budget cuts seven years back, alumni contribution to our alma mater.

Consuelo, the name means consolation, the consoled one, she had been cured of all her suffering, appropriately by the medical school, not because she could forget whatever pains torture a woman with as many beautiful scars as she, but rather because she had Aqua man.

You probably want to know if I graduated, how simplistic might you be, would the answer make any more of a difference on big ass monkey salsa and dark avocado rotting nights?

Weeping surrendering hermanos embracing Aqua Man’s home.

THE WASTE LAND

2006-08-31T12:34:00.000-07:00

I get disoriented when it comes to my degreed or not practice, where I went, who I cured, how did I cure them, was it really medicine that I practice? Be that or not it was certainly charity; I never made a buck from any souls, my patients must have cost me more money than Consuelo’s place. I remember the Waste Land a place that was hurting for a doctor, as much as I was hurting for patients. I got there on a bus, a seventeen hour bus ride to nowhere. After one has been on a seventeen hour bus ride, one has done all the traveling that one will ever need do or want to do. I would of course continue in my travels, but it was not because I hadn’t traveled enough.

I got off the bus, into a middle of the night bus stop that was empty, just me, there was no bus stop, it was just a street to nowhere, in the place to nowhere, where a bunch of nowhere people lived, they were all asleep now, but later I would learn that they never slept, that this were the most here and now people I would ever meet, all two of them. For me, a creature that has never even been to nowhere or anywhere, this would be somewhat interesting, and more so because I would never want to experience it again. There is something remarkable about experiences that do not encourage repetition, remarkable that they exist at all.

My night welcome into the Waste Land was somewhat scary, I was petrified thinking, not feeling, that someone was going to kill me, granted that there was no one in the area, that the place was empty, sparsely populated by buildings and plant life, if someone wanted to advance upon me I would have been able to see them for miles before the attack. Still I was able to muster fear, enough so as to seek refuge underneath a rock, the least motherly object in the universe, I crawled and squeezed myself somewhat underneath it, asking her to roll over me, to act as if I were there, she did not move.

Underneath this insensitive rock, was fine grain sand, it had a light charcoal texture and the cold winds were a lure that this sand could not resist, yet nether wind nor sand emptied. Very soon, my ears were trapping sands, my eyes, my nose, and it was so speckle fine and light that it did not really stick to me, nor to other grains of sand but for gravity, so each would just fly into me and crash on its way to wherever, a place that I was buffeting sure was not to far from here. The rock and I stood immobile, that was all we had in common, which in this place was more than any one thing wanted to have in common with any other thing. I managed to fake some sleep, and then the sun, which never quite seemed to enjoy shining into this place, brought shadows and a gray dingy vision of this place, a vision that the night had politely hidden.

I woke up from my non-sleep, and made my way to the center of town which I discern to be three ghost town buildings, registered with city engineering some time before building codes and building registrations became mandatory. The fact that they were still standing I thought was ample evidence of how needless building codes are, but then it is harder to tax property that might fall apart, keep it together through regulations and you can tax it a lot longer. These buildings had never been taxed, tariff man had not been born anywhere near this place, not enough rascality in these spaciousness.

Sandy light charcoal streets everywhere, hour glasses were emptied here, the buildings grew in size and fragileness with proximity, the closer I got to them the more likely that it seemed that they would fall apart, their glassless windows were jet black, pits into the unknown, you did not want to climb into them, you did not want to throw a rock into them, it might just extinguish an entire civilization; pains me to say it but all of the dinosaurs died when someone threw a rock through one of those windows. I entertained myself trying to guess which one, I even contemplated throwing myself a rock and banishing something, but having just that night slept with a rock, I begun to even feel how insensitive it was to sling them. Hurdling is an act of detachment, I just wasn’t that detach, I know rock did not care about me, and I know that the protection I felt was more induced by my actions, but she made them possible, without her I would have had a more difficult time fooling myself.

The winds continued at their constant pace, about twelve kilometers per hour, I sat on the wooden deck that was in front of the biggest building, must a have been, at one time, a huge trading center, buy your shovel, buy your grain, see you in a couple of months. Those were the days when people lived out there somewhere, when there were no addresses, the places disappeared, an address keeps you in place, it tells you where you are all the time, these places banished, there was nothing to keep them in one place, places are mobile auras, directions lock them up nicely, but here the sands of time had accidentally discombobulated themselves, you could not see through those jet black windows but you could see through the walls, everything was moving away, it was just doing so very slowly, when time gets lost it happens that things reach a level of disappearance which makes them exists much longer than their remains; ghost towns are such. The last part of any existence is always the longest.

I was waiting for whomever had called me to this place, waiting to be taken to my doctors office, waiting to be introduced to the socialites that would be eager to meet the new doctor and credit themselves with marrying me or assisting me in such compliance, but I did not see any horses or carriages, or even water buckets, save for some urine that I had left along the way there was no immediate sigh of water. But as the day grew midway long, there dash into my ears a quick up beat, bar town melody, it was quick and happy, and not the type of music that you dance to unless you happen to be from the Netherlands, a place where dancing has died but people still habitually do it when they hear music and one wishes they wouldn’t. Conking concatenations.

The music was ripples perky, breaking and recomposing itself at once, chatter and clash, “move along the drinking of that whiskey buddy, hop on my swing babey, look under my skirt I squirt you silly boy, wish me a lot of trinkets so that I can forget all my troubles, life is a parade of overfilled wishing wells …and we are wishing rebounds babey …we are wishing everything… but tune and soul. …Gold fillings and bullets hoopla me into drunkenness, carnival climbs into my bed with me but I forgot the tickets.” Anywhere else you can’t go bald and be happy with your fat whiskey girls.” There is nowhere else in nowhere.

I was disturbed by my ass feeling the soreness of the old weathered wood, soreness stays fresh, when the rapid fire spitting music came to an absolute hold and before me stops a truck that was not as old as this place, but old indeed, probably the third truck ever made after they perfected tires. It is gray too, just stressing to rust, everything here matches, the environment shapes you, two whiskered and partially toothless men are sort of serious but almost not, but really they are not telling jokes they just seem like they know this place, they pick me up, for some strange reason I really only see the driver, I consider the possibility that I might be the other man, but after seeing his toothlessness and gums I oppose the idea. Still I can only see the driver but I know, I am telling you that there were two of them, and the driver confirmed this by talking to the other without addressing me, in a language which seemed extremely familiar, only all I could here was the chatter.

And so sitting in-between these two, we emptied the gas tank into the advancing dust road, and they begun to describe the territory: “Don’t go there that is the wasteland, don’t wander over there that is the waste land, don’t step beyond the left side of the road, that is no man’s land.” You can get lost in the sand but more likely something terrible will happen to you before you get lost.” You could die of hunger, nothing grows out there but you will probably die of something else.” The incessantly repetitious scenery kept on subtracting itself, the closer we got to anything the more sand it would become, I saw nothing that called for attention to detail or that even catered to fostering the color spectrum. These guys were not telling me something that the environment had not already told me. I tried to tell a couple of jokes to soften their indifference to me, but they did not understand humor. I finally stepped off the truck, at some point in the road, my ride was over, I walked into the sand expecting to find a doctors office somewhere unexpected. My shoes kicking the sand, and reminding themselves where not to enter everywhere.

I ended finding a hut, size easily fitting for one dweller and two cats. One of the cats was half belly up dead, just as if begging for tickling had caused death. The one living was standing next to the dead one, staring at it, not even molesting to look up when I entered. There was no furniture in the place, no waiting room, the doctor was in and waiting for patients. I remember feeling hunger when I saw the cats, but my urges did not encourage effort, I sat to watch the cats. The dead cat wasn’t moving, the live cat wasn’t either, one was dead one was a live, both were immobile. I sat on the floor to watch them.

They were both gray, both seemed healthy, at some point I discerned that they were companions and that the inopportune death of one had deeply disturbed the other into a living stiffness. For a brief instance I contemplated reaching for the living cat and comforting its emotional absenteeism, but I had instant visions of the wild cat arching and scarring me with its nailed paws, finally with me dying from a slowly decaying infestation. I just watched them, occasionally I would snarl my nose, but the cats remained motionless for days.

Then on the third day, I saw the living cat move his head, I say him but I don’t know, the one laying on the ground was partially belly up, so I could see it was a male, I somehow also concluded that the living animal was also a he, and that was that. His head moved gently downward so as to look closer at his dead buddy, and it stayed in that position for a few more hours. Then I saw his tongue licking his snout, and then again we were back into a stalemate of being. I slept until the fourth day awakened me with the renewed grayness, always a welcomed sight of sameness. On this day cuatro cat, still not acknowledging my existence, in the cold of the morning, begun to gently kiss and clean dead cat. It was a very moving moment, and this lasted until the late afternoon. Where once satisfied, the stoic stare begun yet again; then I could see him looking at the dead cat that was the only action that I could capture. Late into the evening, I was dozing into a sort of muted sleep, when I was awaken by sounds that though not very intense were still large in comparison to the silence. And then my eyes caught sight of he cat biting flesh and licking blood and bone from dead cat, perniciously consuming the remains, still never looking at me, never searching for competition, cat ate cat, ate cat.

I walked out of the cabin, I had had enough! They wanted me to cure cat, and I did not know which one of the two was sick. That is the only time that I remember being called to practice medicine. I crossed the sands into the wasteland and I still haven’t died there, and here at least people look at me, even cats look at me.

SOME WOULD KISS THE HEAVENS SOME WOULD KISS THE DIRT

2006-08-31T12:32:00.000-07:00

You say to yourself I would never do that, you know you would never do that, when you do it you can’t imagine that you did it, you sit in a daze accepting an abundance of self pity from having accomplished what cannot now change, what will for ever mark one’s life. It all starts out so innocent, you are just like everyone else, dad and mom used to take you out to the park and push you to the horizontal on the swing, but the push was not a perpetual shove, at one point you were kissing the heavens the next your stomach would bottom out and all you would kiss the earth, dirt green grass sprouting amidst the sandy pit corroded by dozens of other swinging children that had come to play and gone. A little swing goring closer to the molten core.

I had always been a gentle person, full of fears, every kind of fear, everything to me was more masculine than I was, better suited for survival, better qualified, I was undeserving of this existence, I never wanted to hurt a fly, I even wondered if a fly could really hurt. We lived in a five story house and I would be at the top of the terrace playing with all of my imaginary friends, a lot easier to get along with them than with the street kids. In that terrace I would stare over the rail and ponder what would happen to a fly were I to pluck its wings and drop her five ways down. My mental experiments would consistently reveal the same results, the fly would pick up speed the first phase of the journey but then her lightness would overtake gravity and lift her descent moments from splattering into the ground so that it would turn a gentle landing. None of my thought experiments ever ended in the death of any flies, though most regretfully they moved on wingless.

Even the gamines, as we called the street kids, sort of the same as barbarians only at least barbarians steal a descent living for themselves, gamines never rise beyond bully-hood, but even they did not cause rough to blossom pretty and red from within me. oh they tried but the gamines were always armed with crowbars and rocks, rocks gave then the advantage of being well armed at all times, and they would throw those huge rocks as far and high as the third floor of our five story house. Sleeping, you would hear the sound first, it was the crash breaking sound of chattering glass splattering itself majestically like a lacerating big bang all over the room. And because cowardliness forced them to attack at night, we could not see the flagrant display, instead we had to imagine it, which made it all the more magnificent. The sound would burst into our dreams, we would instantly halt them, interrupt all neural activity and turn it into reflexive muscle energy, unaware of which direction could be outmatched, the fragments were trying to get everywhere first. Splattering concretizes me calculating a thousand invisible trajectories. My eyes fixed on the location of sound and then, within instants the half warped head size rock would trampoline vertigo next to me, dirty asteroid rock on my white sheets, my sleep spirited away.

The more fears you have the less likely one thinks oneself capable of doing the terrible thing, as my life progressed I learnt differently. There were many degrees of terrible things, in fact there are things that you are willing to tell the world that you have done that are terrible. I can see how admitting a murder is easier than admitting crimes which are unspeakable and which are irreparable and which torture the perpetrator far beyond this life. I had committed such crimes, crimes that were best kept silent, crimes which lived on far beyond my reach, rippling like dominoes within the souls that had been done by me. It was not pleasant, and always I would think that they would find me, always I would think that they would point my out in the crowd, shamed to insult, a crime that no jail can cure, a crime that one can never forgive one’s self.

It was that fear that made me severely shy, the fear of being discovered, the fear of being told clearly and in a descriptive and lambasting language what I had done, the crime pales in significance to how its effects increase in depth and torture with the rise of consciousness. Crimes awaken us, and from there one can only be more and more awake. I kept my eyes to myself, I shied always from all, from friends from people, I invented an entire self, later to be known as “my raincoat” a protective garment was my personality, everywhere I went, and everywhere I was, I was not there. Stare people in the eye and they will see you. Peer into their being and you are doomed to open every door for them, I saw no one, they did not see me.

It all started innocently enough, we were at work, teasing each other in that harmless manner which at once tells you that you are breathing animal magnetism and that you are also not a bull that is going to throw her over the copier and imprint her with your seamen. You know the light hearted humor that is spoken with a pencil, all erasable with a simple twist. Then one day we kissed in my office cubicle, that squared area of space that saves one from the rampage of business deadlines and business stares, you want to do something great but you always have to go to your cubicle first, that semi private office space, where everything can be heard by all your peers where the privacy of your lust and love is quietly exposed to all, where there are moments when you break apart and talk honestly your nerves apart because you can’t hang on to pretenses, where a personalized coffee mug and all it stains marks your territory, where two dimensional pictures frame the entire personality that you will be allowed to display; there in that space, amidst all the hectic activity of the day, her blue eyes leaned into me and her lips kissed freshness and hotness into me. Uh that was exhilarating.

The next time we were in a meeting, training on the beggary’s of ISO-9000 compliance, listening to the most boring creature on the face of the planet, we were in the back of the room, listening to Mr. Sleeping Pill dictate the guidelines for maintaining our ISO-9000 ranking. “When they ask you where is the ISO manual kept what are you going to say?’ You say, “It is over there by the secretary’s desk.” He says, “correct except for the last part, not secretary but rather administrative clerk.” The secretaries used to be good looking, they all had long legs that mandated miniskirts, they were a lot of toasting fun, the administrative clerk is not completely useless, ISO-9000 rectitude. So Blue Eyes whispers in my ear, “I am not wearing any panties.” I got instant insomnia, you don’t want to be awake during ISO training, I was now terribly awake. I was always skeptical about anything that a woman would tell me, especially one that was not aware of the bureaucratic intricacies of ISO standards. Well my hand begun to accomplish some vindicating research, which was unfortunate for my ISO instructor, never did get any of that stuff. Much to my fortune I was sick every time the ISO auditor would review our office. Besides, did you know that the paymaster for ISO auditors is the audited party.

Well that bit of training led us to make a bet which I had majestically contrived to Blue Eyes absolute disadvantage. Suffice it to say that she lost though that is often a woman’s way of winning. Her punishment, although, again, I prefer not to think of it that way, was to go to my place with me, and to dedicate her talents to my whirling standards, there would be a teasing dance which would eventually leave her naked before me, and from there I would proceed to ease the coldness that might arise from her nakedness, to gently kiss away apprehensions and sort of make her forget that she was naked through pure hotness. I broke a wine glass. That ought have been the first symbol.

We were both a bit nervous, or acting shy, hard to discern the difference between the two, but a bet is a bet, or so they say and we were, if not moral, at least honorable people. Wine pouring into our crevices, nods of gentle and infinite good days, where the calamity that passes the whole of the earth just perks the bottoms of our lives in living-rooms everywhere; a stolen moment from the immaculate so that we can rope it and slap it around a bit, and then twist into the frolicking insanity of our daily life, back into the production where everything gets rectified and notified, and adjusted, and is on its way to a perfection; the sangria and sushism the wasabism, toggles tangled dogs tied in chili pepper with onions, mixed ecstasy and pain, the carpet was the only bed large enough, the furniture had to be pushed way back to the perimeters of Andromeda, yes, matter fell over, others were lost to the wine, irreparable damage was done to one lamp, and we used the portable telephone but not to make a call, reception was solid at 900 Megahertz pruning annuals nicely, membranes found ways to express themselves, the roaches left from all the noise, fire alarms were going off and no one knew why, then the hemorrhage of inconsiderate fascination, pressing to hard against the fence of illegalities, the negligee, what negligee? The decency of oral mastering utilities from the recycle bin, chains here, glass there, hearts puddle synonyms, and then the long and devastating sleep, the pained flesh not felt by administered depravity, a collage of purples and blacks merging with white pale flesh, red cheeks gone, blue eyes dead.

You never know why you kill someone, one morning you wake up next to her, you feel that you have to strangle her, you are urged by every aspect of your being to do so, you are estranged by your own desires, you do not even consider that it is not an act that you ought not commit, you know it has to be done, something is telling you that it is not justified but mandatory, you persist at it, you dig into the idea dazed by tea bags, you take the menace by the hand and choke her fragile neck into exhaustion.

The world will find you guilty, the world will find you guilty. You do not bother to explain that Blue Eyes was an accomplice in the crime, that the universe was also involved; that you of all three had the least to know of it, and that you were the weaker of all three. Every murder is a setup and the most innocent person is always the killer. You see murder is simply an exclusion and expulsion, one becomes more real another less so.

Some would kiss the heavens some would kiss the dirt.

KUMQUAT SHAMAN

2006-08-31T12:31:00.000-07:00

Trying to chronicle my life histories, which by now you may have guessed expand many lives, I am not to clear in what order these things may have occurred to me or may have occurred to themselves. I say to themselves because there are so many experiences that I often think that there had to be more of me or many things which were not me experiencing themselves and fiddling their awareness within me. Cleopatra for instance could not have been just one person. But I am trying to maintain a sequence of sorts so that you don’t end up in some jagged edge and cease all interest in thinking about me. If you think about me I am that much larger, we make each other through our awareness of one another. A tree that you chop down never forgets you. A deer you shoot saves your image for ever in her eye. Don’t forget me.

The linearity of my biography, with the exception of the unspeakable, is based on what I remember, there must be some logic as to why I remember each thing in that order, so I hope that the sequence that divines itself works the magic for you. And so we move on to my next memory of myself .

I was sitting under a kumquat tree, I don’t really know what a kumquat tree is, I don’t even know if such a tree is large enough for one to sit under the thing, but I am telling you the truth. Sometimes as I remember things I don’t necessarily remember my state of being, I may have been an armadillo sitting under a kumquat tree, or maybe I was a giraffe wit my head under a kumquat tree, you can make it happen.

But I do remember eating a kumquat that had fallen on my head, and that sparked one and more memories. If you have never eaten a kumquat you ought to. It is a surreal experience, really surreal. It is this sort of orangely yellowish bluntly round fruit that is rotting from the moment it is ripe, and mostly not rotting so mostly ripe. And when you got to eat it you measure the idea that you might not eat the rotten parts but they are so strangely distributed, that it seems like you are going to have to destroy the whole fruit to accomplish eating the pleasantly ripe portions, and so it was that after contemplating this, I finally decided to just eat the whole thing.

As it is natural, the first time you eat a fruit you sort of eat it slowly so that if it turns out to have a large pit such as apricots, which have a pit that makes you not want to consume them because when you see a naked apricot pit it makes you sick. It looks exactly like a small tumor, and that is what you find after you eat an apricot, you are left with a small tumor, there is nothing pleasant about that. The most succulent and adorable fruit to eat is a Kiwi, I have an orgasmic expulsing feeling run through my being when Kiwi fruit enters my mouth, so gentle it caresses your tongue, it teases your taste buds; you will never know exactly what a kiwi taste like, you are always trying to assert what it is that makes it taste so good, you are baffled by it, I mean your eating a kiwi you are in some gentle way, even the pits are delicious, you don’t even think of picking them off, which is how kiwis reproduce, you then go and shit somewhere and something good will grow from that. Apricots do not like to be eaten and you have to be ugly to eat apricots, pretty people don’t eat apricots to flesh out a tumor, horror. Do a survey and you will find this out for yourself, you will find that apricots are popular with dentists and generals.

So I gently applied squashing pressure with my lips all around this tiny fruit, just a little over two centimeters in diameter, and the kumquat just begun to fall apart oozing out of itself, sort off, as if something was being born from it and it was just opening itself wider and wider no resistance only resilience, and when I caught a feel of the first pit it was huge, the thing might a been bigger that the kumquat, and then appeared another and so no sooner had I tossed one kumquat pit away when I found two and three all the way up to five and all of the pits seemed far larger in size than the fruit itself, and they were dark and alien looking, they had nothing in common with the kumquat, they were just evil brides from some evil world and I was releasing them into this one; and get this, the kumquat tasted wonderful, a sort of sweet and soft taste, I liked it! Just like aliens to get into our planet with something inoffensively tasty. But I am telling you that I felt really weird realizing those pits so much so that after the first two I refused to look at the others, I just flung them as far from me as I could and was done with that.

But the experience brought home to me a memory of armadillo hunting. Kumquat eating and armadillo hunting, yes the connection is obvious. I was a Chicha Indian, don’t ask me when in men years, I don’t know, but I remember being this Chicha Indian running around with a very sorry looking and overly long stick or spear armadillo hunting, and we trapped one, them armadillos run fasts, but they were no mach for our corralling abilities. And we Chichas were very good at corralling things. We ate a lot of meat, we had to be good at it. Besides that our tribe had in the beginnings been ruled by Chicha women, I don’t know much about that period, it was early in our history, but the little that is said of it is not good, so we Chicha men took power and corralled the women and things got a little better. It is all about corralling for us, so armadillos have it better to hide from us.

We Chichas never adopted farming, you see that requires to much thinking, preparation, and you have to have a lot of faith, faith that things are really going to grow, and that the rain god is going to throw you rain and you have to dance really hard for that, and we weren’t into rituals, even our sex was not erotic we went straight in and got on with it, maybe it was different when the women were our leaders, but if so we did not remember that. Occasionally one of our woman would get armadillo eagerness to run away and we the men would corral her and gang on her like with the armadillos. Everyone had fun. Besides being meat eaters we liked a lot of fun, Chicha, the name of our tribe, was not derived from the name of our beer it was the name of our beer!

I was one of the smarter one’s in our tribe, you could tell this because I did not eat horse or human meat. The others did, I was one of a few that saw horses and humans as non-edibles. Oh I had eaten both on occasion, horses taste better than humans, humans have a tendency to make a big deal out of getting killed which taints the flavor of the meat badly bitter. Horses just think it is going to happen and get this look on their faces like they are really scared but they are not, they just don’t want to be eaten willingly, they know that meat that fights its way into the stomach is better preserved. Humans get all frantic as soon as they know they are supper they just squirm like chickens, chickens and humans horses and pigs, strong associations accordingly. Anyway the humans we ate were usually the slaves we would capture, which we never kept for long because of our nomadic life style, hence the need to eat them or trade them, and slaves run really skinny not a lot of fat on them, I like fat I love fat, I love pigs and cows, you can feed me fat any time. I have carried that trait into this life, I eat meat every day, and if I don’t eat meat every day I feel bad, really bad. In my tribe, when we wanted a wife we gave her a cow, no real woman could say no to a cow.

Anyway I was one of the wiser Chichas and so I became friendly with one of our stranger tribesman, he was old, don’t ask me how old in men years I just know that he was old, he was strange in that he had abandoned many of our traits, he would not eat our meats, nor go on our hunts, you had to hunt to eat meat, only a woman would not hunt, but he was not a woman, he was strange. He ate fruits and grasses and kept to himself, we sort of let him be, he sort of kept a distance back, we would roam to our next location which change every few days, and he would follow a sun and a moon behind. Catching up to us as we were setting a feasting fire, and chicha drinking our tribe. We called him Horai. The name means stranger, but in a very bad way, sort of like the pits in kumquat, it can be in something that you eat but you won’t eat it and you try not to look at it as much as possible. Horai was mindful of that.

The problem with Horai was that he kept on telling stories about the bird man that he was, that he was here to fly our tribe some place else, a distant some place else, that eventually we would all grow feathers and fly away like birds. We were nomads, we did not have cities like the Incas and the Aztecs, I may have preferred to be born into one of those regal tribes, and certainly dress in fancy feather gear like Apaches. But we knew what an Armadillo and a woman were, both a lot of fun, we did not need to be imagining things, to be frank we did not even have an art form. We did not sit around thinking that there were magic bushes or spirits in the dangers of the forests, when it did not rain, we simply said that there was no water, when we had not animals or slaves to kill we simply ate one of our unruly young. Calm things down a bit.

Sure we were not isolationists, occasionally on our long circled travels, we would encounter Indians that made pottery to practice rituals with those things, we saw them celebrate a wedding, husband and wife taking each others drinking bowls and poring each their blood into a larger bowl from which the two would drink as one. We saw them wear rings around their ears and on their belly buttons; and we saw them erect temples to which they would surrender living animals with all their flesh still in the bones, surrendered to the altar and non to be eaten; we saw them do all that and then burn the temple to the ground. And we never were aware of what all that meant or what all that was.

Horai, however thought that our tribe had a future with the birds and Horai would be the first to fly away with them, he kept on telling us all this over and over again, and as the story never changed, we all suspected it was from his eating all those berries and no meat, and soon it came to be that I was Horai’s only friend, I didn’t believe him any more than the others, I was not a fool and the idea of not eating meat to become a bird seemed to me horrid, I would rather be alligator.

Then one day, Horai said to me, “I am as old as I will ever be.” Again I was smart one in our tribe but that meant nothing to me, I took it to mean nothing special Horai has said plenty of things that meant nothing to me, and so I just drank some more chicha to calm any questions that might dare rise from me. But Horai did not cease with these words, he went around to all of the members of the tribe saying “I am as old as I will ever be.” And the tribe would just laugh at him like wild dogs, “mas chicha mas chicha.” We even suspected that maybe some berries had fermented in his stomach or that someone had filled him full of chicha. It is true you know that chicha stops you from hunting. Many a hunters that have gone out there with chicha on their bellies never return.

That late afternoon, Horai asked the tribe to come see him fly away, he would go to the highest mountain and from there fly like a bird. The tribe had seen plenty of birds fly and was not moved into seeing one more. I felt a bit sad for Horai, sadness does not come easily to us, but I was one of the smart ones, I could feel a bit sad, so I told him that I would accompany him. He nodded, and I followed him up to the mountain which leaned towards the other side and into a sea of unknown jungle.

At the very peak, we really only climbed to the third tallest, but Horai was going to fly higher it did not matter which peak he was really taking off from. I got a little uneasy, it was windy and cold, very cold, did not seem like a good day but maybe that is why it was a good day for Horai to leave. We had said nothing to each other all the way up, and now we said nothing, he walked to the edge, turned his head back to give me one last look and jumped.

I was startled for a second but then nothing that I had not expected had taken place, and so I regained myself and walked back down the mountain. When I arrived everyone was waiting for me, they were all eager to know if he had flown away. I trembled at the crowed, they would be expecting my answer but I fluttered into a strange despair, and then for my friend Horai, I yelled with spirited arms in the air: “He flew! He flew! He flew!”

Since that, now celebrated day, many Chichas have flown…

SON OF THE MING DYNASTY

2006-08-31T12:29:00.000-07:00

Waves of memories have been defrosting me, I live my histories, such makes my present bearable, I have contributed crimes, blessings and fortunes to lives and times before and after this now; I do nothing here but sustain myself; for creativity, enjoyment and production I merely live out past and future memories. It may dignified hope that I am at least willing to dream here, a bed is not a bad place, even a bed of nails is still a bed. With each eager springing pricking ending one dream and inducing another. The nails on my back prevent me from awakening from my pillow sleep.

I was a child during the Ming dynasty, the very dynasty that refused to convert to Catholicism, something which I may, at the time, have objected to for in this life I was born into the catholic faith. You cant argue with Confucius. While that may have been how I felt as a child in Ming China, here in this life, as a lonely Western Catholic, I was saved from starving to death on the 25th day of Christmas by a Chinese restaurant, Hunan cuisine if you care. The Ming dynasty’s refusal to turn over millions of Chinese to the Vatican saved my life on Christmas day. Anyway I was a child during that oh forward looking dynasty. Maybe not long enough to grow to adult hood in it, something happened, there was an accident I think, or maybe not an accident, maybe I just got caught in the crossfire of advancing civilizations but I did not make it pass my twelve year.

We slept on the floor, we were a family of means, by means I mean that I remember our house being clean and large, one sumptuous floor of puritanical squalor, four large rooms all adjoining each other as if it made the walls so unnecessary, I slept, in the central room, on a thick carpet like mat, very voluminous with décor, largely red with gold spirals and the head of a few mean dragons screaming at the air, harmless, completely harmless, their menacing frankness drew from me only ambivalence. Remember I said that we were rich because the house was clean, if you went outside of our door you did not have to go far to test if your nose was functioning properly, you were instantly attacked by putrid smells jazz dazzling with massive personalities, to have been a dog in such days must a been like sleeping on a bed of nails. Cut all your noses off you dogs! I once did cut my dog’s nose off, it was an accident of course, but then maybe there are no accidents, could you imagine my dog barking away: “cut my nose! For the love of Confucius, cut my nose! What I was saying was that the house being so clean in a place that had exactly the opposite abundance would require high maintenance which must have been and meant luxury.

From my mat I could see mom, she was not well, but she did not complain, her body was a bed of nails from her innards, I don’t think she was ever well, good doctors tried, maybe that is why I eventually, wrongly situated in this life, I became a doctor to try to cure her. Doctors tried everything on her, but they could not see the nails, they could never treat what they could never identify, she would ache all over, suffer nose bleeds, bloating stomach, water would run from her ears, and often she would faint, and still all the symptoms had no illness that could be attached to them. Now I would say that if a doctor can not see it, it is not a doctor’s problem, the problem is that doctors have made themselves the physicians of all that ails the body, my mother had a metaphysical illness. Doctors have no insight into that, they have to be able to see what they treat, to treat my mother one needed to believe in unknowables, to touch things with one’s hands that one can not feel, to believe in unbelievable things. Mom was unbelievable in many ways, unbelievable beings identify with that.

I want to explain to you why I became a doctor to save my mother, though we now know that a doctor could not have cured her, and besides that I died in China by the age of twelve. I remember laying on the golden dragons, laying awake because mother was awake with her nails; me nails put to sleep, her they make awake, mom’s nails kept me awake. I never saw father, though I suspect that he was alive and a middle level official of more power than personal means. I say that because I had been to houses where even when you stepped outside the main entrance you could not see the outside, you were still far away from the unpleasantness and rubbish that would make a dog beg his master to shop his nose off. But dad never worried much about mother, nor slept with her what ever sleep she got. At night when the night makes no requirements of the eyes, my mother’s eyes were wide open, I could feel them wide open from as far away as my mat, her pupils dilating to expand faster than the darkness so as to reach some promise of light at an equator that they would never reach; her pale face, uncomfortably moist, bathed by exasperation, laying there awake waiting for the daylight where she would not be force to fake a sleep that never would arrive. I wanted to be a doctor, not knowing at the time that doctors did not know anything about nails in your innards, nails in your middle brain, nails in your ears, nails in your brow, nails, nails NAILS!

The problems with wishes is that they come true. Let me explain. In China we have a curse which I am sure you are aware of because it is so very, very popular, it has survived well into these times and far beyond them even. I say beyond our times because as you know I have already lived many lives, and I want to make you aware that the lives you live do not follow one specific time line, they are random, you can have a life in the future which is sort of a dubious term because there really isn't a future, since you can be born into the past as much as to the present, or and I ought say equally born a god or an amoebae, that is what I am trying to say here but not saying it very well; randomness is so difficult to imagine here, people are not aware of spontaneous evolution or evolved extinctions, the most highly evolved are most highly likely to extinguish themselves. Everyone that is successful eventually gets to suffer evolved extinctions, but these are all things I don’t care to explain, you will eventually know them, if you don’t know them already and just don’t know them here, because we forget so much of being in our different histories of the universe just so we can survive here; but what I am saying is that I have existed in many different points of existence and that because of that I know that the saying or curse: “May all of your wishes come true.” Has survived far beyond what we call our times. More I am saying that the universe doesn’t evolve but don’t you worry about that.

But what I wanted to tell you, and I apologize for taking so many detours and not following the linearity that is so adored here, but it is just that I haven’t forgotten as much of all of my other existences and so it makes it difficult to be linear. But what I wanted to tell you is why I became a doctor. You see when I was a child in China, my mother’s pain afflicted me as well, and so I wished myself to be a doctor and then at the age of twelve something put a mortal stop to that. I can still hear my mothers woes from that, her nails were one thing she could handle without saying much to me, but when I stopped aging mother got a spike! Before curing mother from her nails I became her SPIKE!

I don’t know why I died so early in life; maybe, as son of a bureaucrat, to get away from the calamity of India’s religious infestation that was colonizing our spiritual life with that overly jolly and overly here, here, rice salesman Buddha. Or maybe due to a premonition of what was far away but sure to come, Manchu pigtails, no pigtail for this little boy. I wish that I could figure it out, when you are a child sleeping in the middle of a clean room, with simple but beautiful walls, and shiny floors and you are not afraid of dragons, and you dream of playing with snakes, and you hear your pudgy and overly happy little brother sleeping in the next room, all dressed up in his dreams, sleeping fully and comfortably and happily, with a beautiful maroon and black silk hat, while mother lays in her room awake, there just aren’t explanations. In my next life I would make myself a doctor, but I got detoured to Poland, and there were a few other places and beings in-between, and I finally got here to Earth where wishes come true, and with the help of credit card fraud I was able to finance myself through medical school.

But you see this is what I was saying, wishes come true. The problem is that they are not real time instantaneous, the universe is truly kind, it wants to make us all happy, so when we make a wish and make it with all the desire that a bed of nails can inspire, the universe dashes to make it come true, but it takes time for the universe to get all things working just right so that the wish can come true. This is because the universe does not know itself too well, and so when the wish is made fully real and assigned to the wisher, for a dream has your name tag on it, it tracks you anywhere you go in the universe and comes true for you, and for you only; the problem is that as it comes true you are then living in another era, in another place, under very different circumstances, and you wish it were not happening to you because mostly you don’t know that it is a wish that you made, though realistic parts of your brain say “Well this is probably a good thing.” Only pretty soon you are trying to kill the damn wish, and the universe, which of course hears you saying: “Oh I wish this were not happening to me!” or if you are really inconsiderate you say “Why is this happening to me!” Not even a question and the universe just can’t figure you out and that is how black holes get started, the universe trying to get away from making your wishes come true.

What matters here is that perhaps because of my resurrected memories in this world I did not want to be a doctor, which may explain why I wasn’t accepted at the more prestigious schools of medicine; if my will power had been involved in my decision then maybe now I would be doing something really phenomenal, and by that I don’t mean being a mere cartographer for the human genome project, deoxyribonucleic who cares, or a podiatrists, besides their licking pleasures what else is there to learn about feet! Angina, freezing heart, drip drain blood, rerouting and adding pipes, one ought never mess with heart, a pig’s valve belongs to a pig! An artificial heart makes you entirely a metal being with a stomach brain. No, I wanted to be something much bigger. The black plague, the potato famine, the infestations, spirited cholera, leper fleshings, cancerous venom that refuses to poison itself, and all the other countless of slow death tortures that have destroyed entire families and devastated towns and centuries, I have a gripe with all of them!

My adorable little brother, in this life, died of AIDS. AIDS doesn’t want to kill you, but it also does not want you to live all hidden by a wall of defenses that prevents you from suffering the feelings and ravaging menaces of everything else; and it is something else that kills you when it witnesses your nakedness; to stay alive you have to remind everything else that it has to go around you and not through you; architects sadly aside the universe despises straight lines they kill everything. Knowing all that there is to know the doctors could not cure my little brother, thirty pills a day to keep him alive were poisoning him, the doctor that saved him prescribed the dosage of death. I would do something to save him, to lay with him, brotherly naked kissing him life innocence.

And in this life I have my adorable mother pure declamation of poetry, suffers all of the symptoms that my mother in China had, both can not be diagnosed or cured by medicine, both got spiked by their sons, and here too I can not cure her; she is all by herself only in the company of what ails her, which again is metaphysical in scripture.

When you are walking the Western streets on a holy day, hungry and alone and wondering why you did this life to yourself because you forgot your wish, and all the restaurants are closed, and you think you are about to die of hunger, and suddenly you stumble into a Chinese restaurant raining manna you are in heaven! Such was the foresight of the Ming dynasty, providence sweet and sour soup kitchen for lonely Catholics. In the future everyone will be Chinese, more Chinese restaurants survive per square block than is humanly possible to stomach, so many of us have already been Chinese. Mother and I enjoyed our time in the Ming dynasty, so much so that last time she came to visit we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant. It is one of my fondest memories.

LATROCINIA

2006-08-31T12:27:00.000-07:00

The terrible thing is not that there is a conspiracy, it is that we are not involved.

He was powerful so powerful that he would grow to fear his own power, me I did not fear my power I wanted more! But he could feel the dangers of his powers so much so as to fear them, so much so as not to use them, so much so as to die of weakness and failures.

He was The Archbishop and I was but a mere Cardinal-priest, and I had maxed-out my rank. Maxed-out my political skills to accomplish more prestige within the Christian faith. I would die a Cardinal-priest, when you don’t get promoted by the pope your chances of being promoted by God are a lot less; that was when my soul joined Archbishop Domenico, I joined him when I realized that my powers were maxed-out.

He was an old man already and he would die an old man just like the rest of us, but he was a visionary, a man who fought for the faith that he won, a man of magnificent stature and character, a man that was promoted by the Pope not because he was political but because the Pope did not have a choice, given the option the Pope would not have raised him, plenty of reasons, he, Archbishop Domenico, had a questionable background, his real name was unknown, the Vatican doubted his Italian credentials, but there are men that are so beyond the system and its archaic structure that their luminosity alone promotes them. Archbishop Domenico was neither a good man nor a bad man, he was simply a great man.

I flew to find him in Puta Madre; a chilly town in the southern tip of Chile, unknown by name to anyone except the villagers that inhabit it, and even they do not use the name, they don’t need to, they are there. I had traveled far to be with him, he was now in exiled retirement, his whereabouts unknown to all but a few of his followers, myself being one of the more devout, thought I was critical of him, not quite a fan, I had joined him merely because I wanted more power than I could have won on my own. But I grew to admire him, not because of his convictions but because of his honest madness.

We sat upon a wooden bench table, weathered wood that had been exposed to everything that the environment could dish out yet still retaining its dignity; a table but a good table. We both had wine, not holy wine, it had been a long time since we could drink anything that was holy, we who had persisted towards our faith with duty and righteousness on our side were now unable to bless even our wine. The wine still has the same effect, chaliced or not, it was difficult to discern what the blessed wine did that the pagan wine did not, but then so much is feeling, and the old man and I had lost that magic feeling. We drank heatedly, we did not laugh, the reunion after a long decade of absence did not call us to rejoice, we had failed, and for us failure was not accepting of notice and neither could we ignore it.

It all started with the damn Jews, as so much and, hell! everything that has to do with Christianity, the Jews had their doings in it and yet somehow remained innocent yet not through innocence. And what makes it all more ironic is that Archbishop Domenico and I had more in common with the Jews than with the damn Christians! Every Jew I ever met yielded a better friendship, a better conversation, and moreover emitted a warmth that comes to a soul that feels that the promised land has not been delivered, that the savior has not cometh from the heavens, and that the exodus paces on and on… it was these same spiritual comrades that made our methods and path necessary, and, by so urging also made our grief.

Archbishop Domenico and I were not rebels. We were conservatives, we were for a stronger centralized Church, we wanted to clamp down on all the dissenters. There were, for instance, bells ringing to allow women into the priesthood, we were absolutely against it; we went as far back into Christian history as was safe to do so, to prove our point; as far back but not all the way back, you go back enough on anything and the whole damn thing will reverse itself. The Archbishop and I were not into fucking ourselves. Oh, and behold there were bells ringing for letting the priest fuck and marry. We were both adamant that that ought not be so ordained. The Archbishop was a celibate man, he had settled into a strange comfort zone which I don’t think men are generally capable of obtaining, an indifference to the sexual, an irrepressible desire it is, but he had reached a kind of marriage with himself, he did not need sex, he did not need to reproduce, he did not need to obtain the pleasures of woman and man so temporal to his menacing soul, for his soul was a menace, it was imperial, it aroused souls, it had no other cause. Cardinal-priest, I, was for fucking, I was what you could call a strenuously deliberate desire for sexual emancipation within the confines of absolute secrecy. I enjoyed everything about sex, the cross, the cross by the hand, crossing on the cross, or crossing with the cross. Women, I could sink into any aspect of their being, so serious, so absolute, so willing to reconcile their differences with god through me and with ingrained rosary beads, me, fatherly protectorate of appeals to god, the confessions slipping myself while handing out penance and forgiveness, the appeal of the violations of the sacred book, and more the unspeakable pleasure of the forced silence of nuns. Coerced innocents, Nuns are women that are required to remain innocent, they are not, but our faith calls for innocence, it was the perfect church for a naïve humanity, it is a miracle of purity to be a catholic, it is to always be innocent, in one’s own eyes, in the eyes of all, and more in the eyes of god. Men, oh with a fat O I loved to tease the men, oh the men, I was such a girl tease, I felt the power of the seductress when among my flock; and there were plenty to be had and pluck, not enough time to dwell on attachments, every encounter was the first and last, virgins of the pleasantries of relationships, dancing in the night and day, where every eye is out to snitch on you, you exploit the instant and hide, we don’t talk about it, though sermons often have those passion infested messages, I was never cold in my worships. Children oh the kiss of innocence, the notion of not being aware that you can harm is theirs and not for long, a blossom that rots so quickly must be pricked, the rose bushes, the bath water, to enlarge the eyes to the world and to perverse a life with memories of one’s adoring spanking tickles. Again for us in the church it is all about innocence, children are the absolute representation of our innocence, of our purity, and not all of them, there are plenty of rotten eight year olds that seem born with wit and savvy which was ugly and deniable. Boys are always more innocent than girls, our faith preferred boys, you can spoil the innocence of boys many times, girls only once. But regardless of all that I was a liberal in that I had ideas about altar girls, I was open to them. But my most favorite were my rare moments, when I would disguise with black suit, beard, wig and glasses, of orthodox appearance, but I meant no offence by it, it was just an easy disguise, and then I would trump out into the streets of our unholy city; and into the hermaphrodite and transvestite bars, vodka, vodka, and more vodka, my nerves drank that liquid down as fast as they could, the thought of being stripped of my disguise was severe, the tension circling bloodmobiles in all of my veins, the girls were wonderful, the ugliness beautiful and a kind of estrange breaking with the world. Hiding their masculinity an impossibility, but the girls were willing to be girls for us, to tease us and be in control and equally easy; and we would lure the teasers like ladies, and venture into the entanglement with false reservations, agitated desires robbing for themselves satisfaction; pleasures that could not exists beyond the bounds of this bar. I was particularly enamoured with one Yolanda, she was a herm, my absolute favorite, I liked the crossdressers but hermaphrodites were for me the life and joy and pure expression of what all beings ought be. Yolanda and I saw each other for almost three months, she lived in a dingy room, half occupied by a piano, she would play that out of tune piano and I would still like her; one night she wanted me to slap the shit out of her, I walked out, I couldn’t do it anymore. Her face against the window of abandonment, I never went back. But not to derail from our aim, I was against allowing marriage for the servants of our god, commitment is a problem, a priest is more qualified to discuss a marriage because he has not entered into union, those that are married get all tangled up in their idea of marriage, a priest is an idealism! Our faith was bound to purity and innocence thus refreshing itself by what we would not do. It was pedestrian to think that marriage was a necessity or a desire, or worthy! Saints stand alone, just like a hermaphrodite that has no choice, I wanted all of our priests to have a chance at Sainthood!

There were bells ringing to allow abortions, even just life threatening abortion, the type where you can guess which to save the mother or the baby, we were for risking both, all or nothing! We wrote hundreds of papers on the matter, the best, of course, were never made public, remaining locked somewhere in Vatican archives.

Let me explain the treacherous time our Church was enduring. Take the Mormons; they were being assisted by well-to-do capitalism, so that they were not only procreating but also reproducing the faith with the already born. It is one thing to bring a child into the world, but to get them to believe and be charitable with alms, and kindness requires a huge structure of moral, psychological and financial massiveness. We had a lot of real estate from any angle of the equation, but the success of capitalism catered more to faiths that were parsimonious on sacrifice and more symbolic in practice than in breath. That meant that, while we as Catholics had to convert a soul to our faith, all that the Mormons had to do was to convince all of those ambitious middleclass kids to call themselves Mormons and that was that. There was no formidable soul conflicts to resolve, a Mormon temple is a sort of lavish middle class home in Vegas, a sort of tripling of richness, lavished with ultra-whiteness more than hinting at the purity acquired through wealth, and then adorning itself with hard-core symbolism, you can worship the gold, the carpet is kept clean from your muddy shoes, where no sinner shall walk call it a prejudice cleansing of the soul, only believers move in those grounds. And like middle class managers, they are flexible, they now accept Blacks into the faith, an incredible exorcise considering that blacks were once heralded as the apparition of evilness; but if the executive office will have them the Mormons will follow suit. When the government decided that polygamy was not conforming to centralized hierarchical structures the Mormons were, though against their doctrine, willing to comply. And how could the system not love them? They don’t have holy wine, no drinking, no smoking and no damn swearing, and they wear suits when they preach, an intended contrast to our Christian rags, and the most superbly manifested contrast in that they are willing to mandate a Check to Temple Program, calculating percentages based on financial success, a sort of faithful adjustment to inflation.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are the same thing as Mormons, just the poorer cousins, Mormons gather the faithful white-collar brethren while Jehovah’s Witnesses, keepers of the secret name of God, gather the blue-collar workers.

The Mormons can afford to go abroad on long two year proselytizing missions, God’s long arm, while Jehovah’s Witnesses being lower class opt to stand in heavily trafficked city streets and hand out their tabloid battle for Christ. “Are you ready for the end?” Who is? “Will Satan have your soul?” Fair questions that make you speculate on the durability of canned foods, but my point is that these two spiritual food groups are not just building a church with newborn believers, but that they are converting a lot of Catholics that have grown weary of earthly sacrifice! Everyone wants to make life easier, the Mormons even claim to take care of their own, to nurture responsibility; such earthly discipline does not encourage a separation of church a state. A Mormon is easily 100 percent more productive than a catholic. Bottom line, the fun of being a catholic became no longer fun. Archbishop Domenico and I, and a few others, wanted to put the fear of god back to work for us; you know life is not easy, don’t have or enjoy sex before marriage, be hard on yourself, kindness to a fault, and prescribe yourself a rosary of illusions. But again there was that problem of keeping the believers in a harshly competitive environment.

The only religious sect that does not have competition are the damn Jews! You see they begun it all. Before their god there was nothing, after the God of the Jews, we and the other gods amount to no more than errant Jews. Christian and prodigal are synonyms. The whole thing about MONOTHEISM was the doing of the Jews! Before the Jews there were many gods, thousands of gods, gods could be born and banished, gods could be good and evil, gods could even marry humans, improving the blood line substantially. Before the Jews gods could do anything, after the Jews they could only be good tyrants. After the Jews there was only one supreme being, and not by accident but by design, he turned out to be the God of the Jews! Christ was not the first deity put to death by the Jews, he just had the honor of being the last one on record. They don’t bother with Buddha because Buddha is self destructive, Buddha accepts his lot in life. But any other vibrant gods have long ago been put to sleep the good sleep. You see, this is because no one questions the Jews; people don’t go around saying that there isn’t this one god thing, people assume there is only one god; the Old Testament is sort of a birth certificate that authenticates the whole holiness deal and after that it is just a question of when god would walk among men and women again. That was the act that got Jesus Christ the cross, he said he was the one, that he was here to cleanse humanity of its sins and give us all a fresh start, but the Jews prevented a nice happy ending which is why centuries after those golden days all alive with religious sentiment, happy endings are so adored in books and movies and tales. It is all about erasing all the bad endings.

But Protestants, Puritans, Lutheran, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Muslims, etc… they don’t, any of them, question the Old Testament, they merely move themselves forward from it, the Jews are the foundation of all. And since they are the foundation they do not have to compete with anyone, it is hard to become a Jew, you can dip yourself in a pool of water or embrace your fellow Christians and you are born again, Jehovah’s Witnesses will have you even if you just come to meetings once every couple of months, but to get into the Jewish faith you not only have to have faith, you’ve got to want to go back to school and accomplish some serious ritual learning. The State of Israel is not that big, the Jews don’t really want more Jews, they want more of the same Jews that they have now and more of the same, but converts are unnecessary and suspect. Intermarriage is discouraged merely to retain the values and the culture fostered by Jewishness. And, putting aside my genuine Jewish monotheistic plot, in a world that has largely been trying to accuse the Jews of every major world conspiracy, salvation is left to the pure retention and volume of the existing faithful.

Archbishop Domenico and Cardinal-Priest-me were not in a position to question the existence of the Jewish God, we owed our good titles to such a deity, but we were angry and oh so very angry, especially the good Archbishop, with the Jews. We were upset at the Jews because they demanded an apologia for our unofficial, “look the other way” policy during World War II.” Granted our Catholic souls were less that forthcoming in praying against the injustices perpetrated by Mussolini and Hitler, but why ought the Jews hold a grudge against our Church so much as to coerce upon our Pope a disgraceful admission of guilt and sorrow when they, they had Crossed our Christ!! Archbishop Domenico and Cardinal-priest me were already very angry at the Jews for what they had done to our Christ, and yet we had reconciled those differences and found it in our hearts, not so much to forgive, as not to demand an apology for their actions. And yet, here they were demanding from our beloved Pope apologia.

The pressures the modern world perpetrated on our faith were numerous and often difficult to surmount, we were traditionalists, we believed in our hearts and souls that a Church is forever, that is to say that it does not change its ways just because the times change and the people change, we believed in our hearts and with every blessing that we embellished upon the souls that came our way that we were not a Church ruled by nationalist fads and economics but a Church of Christ, a religion that had to remain true to its origins and to its blessings which had proven themselves with an inquisitorial seal. There is no such thing as a Church that evolves! A Church founded upon truth and right principles never ages or adapts, it is humane and good by its very nature, it rules the human heart through its benevolence and not through common takings and doings.

They cloned a sheep in England read the headline. They had managed to make a clone of another living mammal. At about the same time and not far from it, the Scientists, another group that you can’t get angry at easily, specially since they believe they have higher truths than us men of the cloth, although their formulas are largely the accomplishment of faith, but don’t bet you can reason that with then, but these folks mad at our Church just because of a few incidents with Galileo, in our defense largely overblown, they too were holding a grudge, we called it the Galilean Grudge, and thus scientists all over the world spend their days and nights trying to prove evolution and knowledge above faith and miracle and from every angle they attacked and finally kicked the faith out of the schools, where it can no longer be taught, unless disguised in comparative reasoning. The Galilean Grudge brought the fanatics from the camp of reason to torch our Churches and children with enlightenment. Succor! Succor! But when you are a church as old as we are you don’t cry pain, you abstain, you pray, you merit god with his will and crown yourself with observance of the candles, one for baby Jesus, one for the Virgin Mary, and fallen wax for Galileo.

What the damn scientists forget is that if it wasn’t for our Church, for our need to print bibles and from our love of knowledge there would be no Science. It was the Jesuits and Monks that invented Academia, there has yet to be rightful credit done for all the schooling that our blessed Church instigated, urged and commanded. Even the Americas owe their discovery to our bladed seal. But I am not here to dwell on botanical matters, there is plenty of fuel for my angers elsewhere, now I just want to say that the final blow for the Archbishop and Cardinal-priest me came when the damn scientists declared that the Shroud of Turin was false! That was the ultimate humiliating blow of all.

Oh, they did not just declare that it was false, that is not how those guys work, what they do is they say that the evidence makes it a rag from an era that is not near enough the time of the crucifixion to be associated with Christ. And they don’t really say that, what they say is that the carbon dating done of the fibers removed from our holy Shroud count to merely 1260 to 1390 years, ancient enough to be worthy of auction at Sotheby’s, but not old enough to be buried with our Christ’s. And then, they get even more bludgeoningly precise about it, carbon clocks have eons of margin for error but they are archeologically precise, and the more new and improved whims of carbon dating age the Shroud merely at seven-hundred years or so! Again, not enough old to have been buried with our Christ. And these scientist fellows don’t even applaud themselves for short dating our Shroud, instead they dwell on the advancement of their owe technology, marveling at how precise and sophisticated the entire purifying process of carbon dating has become; we and our faith a side note to the footprint of technological progress. Amazing, they immediately acquire more rational purity, more empirical faith, and more belief in the whitecoat scientific process, and all done at a cost to our faith, it cost them nothing. I tell you coldly that this is all a hoax created by the Galilean Grudge. Galileo a man that had to create a telescope to see stars because he could not feel angels.

Archbishop Domenico and I were sipping our afternoon tea, as was our habit between responding to requests from the Vatican or attending births and deaths of prominence, or mastering the art of sermons that had not changed for hundreds upon hundreds of years. When the news front line hit the nerve of our religiosity “The Shroud of Turin a fake!” “Christ be damned,” I cried aloud “forgive my Lord the expression.” That headline was enough for the Archbishop and I to put our tea aside. Tradition had been broken.

We moved silently through the rose garden, watching clumsy bees rough landing on the red hearts of Roses, and we felt what the Roses felt with their petals falling off, a body that can no longer support its limbs, fallen wings and flowing honeyed amber. We walked silently, I following the Archbishop with strides of solemnity, the Spring singing bluebirds and canaries outside irrelevant, we entered the Cathedral. Always my favorite aspect of our religiosity, the cathedral, every architectural creation is merely a subtract of our cathedrals, we have created and magnified every geometry soul angles of adornment crest our architectural magnificence; from the majesty of our cathedrals you can deduce every other structure, every word of god and every human deed. We went down to the basement, into a mild room where lay the secret documents that the Archbishop had hidden from me while impressing me with their future importance. A blue ring of spherical eminence laid on the table, probably his size, we sat. I suspected that we were about to begin our favorite game of chess, only this time we would both be playing with black, to end the scourge of Galileo and his gang of whitecoats!

Yellow cavernous candles blistering away their death, his steady hands unfolded the documents, one after the next, a mastery of words and intellect, every word I read was a sculpture of its master, all handwritten in Latin, and marveling with meaning. After an hour of reading all under his gallant sentinel, his hands grasping calm from each other, his eyes dizzying with alertness, spiraling everywhere with certitude, he had forgotten to shave the night before, he was a meticulous man, he had neglected it, Archbishop Domenico had crossed the Rubicon. Without drink, bathed in silence, I let the documents lay on the table and my head searched everywhere for the indecent justifications that they would require if they were ever to make sense to me. We had reached the point of our chess game that decides if we are worthy of the match, if there are going to be wrestling gut strategies, or if one of us is not up to the brilliant task and all ends with victims of a Pyrrhic victory. The candles, in our stillness faded from forgetting us, we outlasted the night in silence, exuberance reached me by morning I realized that the master had thought it all throughout, well enough indeed, there was no risk to it that wasn’t worth taking! He was right in his plan, he was working for the truth of the Church that we both loved and adored and had worshiped more than our own temples, I got up from my chair, he did same and seeing my eagle eyes, he spread his arms and we embraced. He walked towards his office I went into the Cathedral chamber to kneel before my Christ.

Our Conciliabula was a silent disgrace to the church, we had decided to bypass Sacra Rota and the Pope on these matters of the Church. We had decided to save the Church regardless of the whims of our papal master, him whom God had crowned above all others on this earth. But popes are not infallible, plenty have displayed carelessness in their duties, one could depose a pope, we were not after that, we merely wanted our Church of purity and sacrifice to survive above the Churches of convenient economics. We wanted faith and miracle to prevail.

The following week after making ridiculous excuses over matters of the Church I announced that I would be going to England. I caught a night flight, always preferring the discomfort of trying to sleep over the Atlantic ocean than having to search for islands or ships. Flying would never be a comfortable experience, we were never flown first class, difficult to justify to our flock, many of whom did fly first class. Occasionally I was offered free upgrades which my body desperately wanted me to accept, but I would reject them with admonishing kindness. Admonishing kindness is when you make the giver feel like they were wrong in offering and wrong in having that which they were offering.

I arrived at Gatwick, England’s second largest airport, an immense fabrication of modernity, impressive to a Cardinal-priest like myself that had abstained from all technological advancement. I still wrote my letters with pen and paper, I liked receiving physical letters, opening the envelop, unfolding its contents, touching what my many correspondents had touched, not so much reading their writing as reading their handwriting. That was magical. Computers they were strange beasts that just seem to require so much in-between you and I, so many things in-between before they would communicate my sentiments and longings. The Archbishop had a computer, he always marveled about its trappings, always tried to convince me to accept one, but I was scared of those things, I don’t mind admitting it, there, I was very scared. And that is what I felt here in this place scared, scared at all the buzzing, everything here seemed electric and dashing fast, and moving; me, I liked my rose garden, my soil, my grass, my earth, my bees, my Colombian chocolate con queso defrosting the mornings.

I went to an Inn very near the airport, hosted by an impressively proper couple, the wife had very large breasts, and it seemed to me that she wanted me to touch them, and it also appeared that her husband was aware of her desires, and hesitantly agreed to them. I considered that they owned an Inn with fetish intents; perhaps there was a secret dungeon underneath, well hidden by the airplane noise, all within the wonderful English pretense to civility and antiqueness. But I was far from my home, not about to explore the treacherous fantasies of others, unlike most people which actually feel freer while in a far off land, I actually locked myself up deep inside, I went into a catacomb, I was very much beyond the outer world. Besides I was on a mission, that to me meant more than any shenanigans could offer.

Having been unable to coerce sleep over the turbulent Atlantic, I slept the entire day, occasionally waking up reciting obscure Latin prayers that I had thought forgotten. I was not fearful, I was simply trying to cope with all the stress that my mission had burdened me with. I deliberately did an hour of prayer, and then, having only sipped tea in 24 hours, the next morning I joined the other Inn guests for a delicious tea and buttery croissant breakfast. One guest was a skeptical lawyer from America who seemed all too interested in the trappings of our Church, only to counter my every response with witty criticisms which I found bothersome. Two ladies from Paris, very charmed by the lawyer, overly dressed and perfumed, one of them wearing two very large diamond rings, where one would have been sufficient, made no impression.

I took a taxi to a prearranged destination, it was in a large warehouse district, I entered through the back shipping area where huge lories would back up to relive their heavy loads. A man was waiting for me, he recognized me instantly, I was, after all, wearing my vestment, because of the nature of my mission I had considered wearing a suit, but to me, though my activities were unknown to the church hierarchy they were to me official church matters of the highest order and, therefore, to be carried out with dignity.

Our man in England was in his fifties, gray hair, husky build, he had a charlatan’s demeanor, which he carried very convincingly. It was charming to listen to everything he had to say, that is until he got to the point that he wanted to make. For instance he was an expert on many matters, among his many accomplishments, which Dr. Solomon made me aware off within the first ten minutes of our meeting, he had in a mere decade discovered and mastered some Lymphatic gutter so as to keep the body in a “dry state” so that it would be able to heal itself from atrocious ills in days hours and minutes. He said to me, “baby falls into a septic tank, for over ten minutes, parents pull him out, take him to the hospital, the doctors say he has irreparable brain damage and will never fully recover. Mother calls me I tell her what to do, baby is alive and well and there is no evidence of brain damage.” He goes on… “diabetes, cancer, heart disease, the body can reverse repair itself, all you have to do is do what I tell you to do.” What he wants you to do is a lot like what the Mormons want you to do… “…give up coffee, alcohol, cigarettes and breathe deeply so that you can increase the oxygen supply to your cells which needed so that the sodium potassium electric engine can power your cells into high energy.” But the doctors, and not just doctors, but also Chiropractors don’t want you to know about Lymphatic cleansing and healing because if you cure yourself they would be out of business, “no one else is doing what I am doing, and they have threatened me with death…“ After listening to the incessant auto pilot affirmations of his incredible accomplishments that were yet to meet with their success, I wondered if the Archbishop had chosen the right Englishmen for the job; but I always knew that Archbishop Domenico was no fool, he knew everything he was doing extremely well, he would not risk it by hiring the wrong constituency. Nuts were great allies.

I kept on trying to interrupt him so that we could get to the matters that interested me, but I soon gave up and just let him rant on until he had convinced me that everything he had said was true. Then he ask me the question he needed to ask: “Well Father, do you have the DNA?” I tried not to act insulted, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small black case and surrendered it to Dr Solomon. First thing he did was kiss it, big fat lips plastered with saliva on our holy possession, I kept calm. He said “Now we will prove them all wrong, they will not doubt our Christ, they will not be able to doubt our Christ!” His eyes were lit with fire passion… “Now we have the guidance to the Arc; those that will not listen to us will be oxygen starved and will spontaneously combust.” This, of course, had all to do with his theory that if you starve your body of oxygen you burn up, hell is all inside of you.

I left Dr Solomon to his duties, which, like any fanatic he would guard and pursue zealously. I shall not suffer your curiosity any longer, the Scientists that had done so much to destroy our faith, the very scientists that had dated our Shroud a fake, had also Isolated DNA from blood found in the holy fiber. We were now giving Dr Solomon, a man that had already grown and cloned many horrible things in secret, we had now given him the Holiest DNA on the planet, Christ’s DNA. His mission was to clone Christ twice.

You see how what might try to destroy you can also bring you miracles. The scientist were out to destroy our faith but now with their cloning abilities, and while trying to destroy the sacred holiness of our Shroud they had stumbled upon the blood of Christ and the Archbishop had secretly acquired a sample. And now we would be able to clone Christ and prove the Shroud of Turin and the New Testament both genuine, prove the Jews wrong, and prove that the Catholic Church was the mother church and the only true representative of our Lord God!

Archbishop Domenico and I had decided on cloning two Christs from the DNA as a safety measure, there were a lot unknowns in our endeavor, we were not taking any chances. Upon my return the Archbishop was marvelously delighted with how well my mission had gone, he felt exuberant within the possibilities, we set ourselves to work on the task of addressing the holy clones.

Our first and most solid assumption was that the cloned Christs, plural, already aware of our resurrection scheme, would basically guide us once we had them among us. Our mission was guided by their providence, god was aware of our actions and had conjured them, we therefore made the assumption that upon facing the resurrected Christs we would merely offer ourselves and our devotion to their wills.

But I had made a good point which was based on the life that Christ had lived before the crucifixion. There were many actions that Christ committed that seemed lacking that all knowing guidance of a divine being. He knew all of the ills that were to befall him and his flock and he did nothing to prevent them. He could have, for instance, swayed Judas against the betrayal, he could have converted the Roman guards, they could not have been that far from conversion if they nailed him: King of the Jews. Every joke, for the laugh, has the truth behind it. Anyway my assumptions, which were well taken by the Archbishop, was that Jesus Christ had a lot of innocent and naïve tendencies, tendencies which I suspected were caused by his mortal apparition, the carnal causes limitations, for Jesus to walk among us, that is for Jesus to make himself visible to us, for Jesus to be understood by us, a god is incomprehensible, it is illogical, irrational, it is impossible to relate to the impossibility of god, so when God sent his son to us, so as to speak to us within the constrains of all of our human limitations, he had to impose those limitations upon him, hence the cause of his misfortunes; the apparition of Christ tried to reason the faith with us, he was sent on an impossible mission, God knew his son would fail, still God wanted his son to obtain for humanity the impossible. Archbishop Domenico and Cardinal-Priest me, were going to offer cloned Jesus one and two, the guidance and support that they had not in Roman times.

There were other problems which also came to mind, cloning was a new science, neither the Archbishop nor I had much faith in science or in Dr. Solomon, everything could go wrong with both, and science and scientists allow themselves to err as a matter of evolution, they believe that they are fallible but in the long term infallible, every fatal error in their calculations is a gain for knowledge and loss for ignorance, anywhere else when you are proven wrong you are dead, scientists are ever self correcting and therefore unimpeachable.

Fearing that, and knowing ourselves to be holy naïve on any and all scientific matters, we decided to develop a series of tests to ensure that the cloning process was indeed successful. For instance, suppose that the cloning process merely reproduced the son of the Virgin Mary and Joseph and not the Holy Spirit of Christ. This would not serve us well, nor would it spiritually guide us well, we would basically be stuck with a couple of carpenters whose ability to make furniture would do us no good. We needed a mortal Christ like the original with the Holy Ghost inside of him, anything else would be useless. With that most pertinent matter in mind we developed a test to determine if the faith had been cloned or not.

The incessant preparations to all the unknowables were demanding and tiresome but we were alive with our act, we were about to accomplish the incredible. Dr. Solomon kept feeding us reports of his progress, much good in all and we were very excited, oh very excited. We even took to risking reverence by uttering a few sanctimonious jokes, all just to temper the absolute severity which our actions carried either way. We accomplished very little rest, consumed a lot of tea and became brothers of the spirits. When you walk in the darkness of our being, when you feel the holiness in every movement, in your palms, in your blood, when the sunset brings tears to your eyes, when you bless a child and born in him Christ, the sanctity of every instant bathes you in blessings; you end rejoicing with everything, the woman dying a cancerous victim, is beautiful in her pain, she closes her eyes to see her new essence, the suffering poor in some reckless comfort of desperation, with eyes that claim no knowledge of perdition, precious with their meager satisfactions, I have bathed in all those moments, I have found joy in the sadness.

The phone rang, and rang, and rang endlessly one morning, we were unable to reach it because we were in the garden dialoguing our preparations. How we would break the news to the Pope? How long before we could go public with the modern resurrection? How would we protect Christ? We had access to a monastery in Spain which seemed easy enough. The phone kept ringing, part of us felt that most of our plans were unnecessary, The Holy Clones would perhaps dictate from inception, and of course we expected to surrender to the whims of the Pope after being properly admonished and forgiven for executing our actions without his blessings. The Archbishop finally asked me to check the messages, which I hurriedly did. It was a beautiful Spring day, I love walking on grass, moist grass, I love the feeling it sends off tingles through the bottoms of my feet.

There were 13 messages, they were all from the good doctor, “Call me!” “Call me I have good news!” “Hurry up I am having problems!” “Bloody call me! call me!” He was happy and molested and angry. Each call seemed to encompass an entirely different event transpiring on that Island they call England. I could have returned the call after the first message, but I listened to all of them, you have to let the moments happen. I calmly dialed his number, it did not even finished ringing, he must have been sweating next to the phone. His voice frantic and exhausted. “I did it! I did it.!” Just like a scientist not to think of the world at large, it was his accomplishment, if anyone had done anything here it was Archbishop Domenico, but he would not be so foolish to claim credit for any of this, only God created miracles. Dr. Solomon believed that miracles were the product of lack of knowledge, he would say “Its only a miracle if you don’t know.” I asked him to calm down and tell me if he had the children with him and if they were well. In that cold and matter of fact language of his came the response: “One died in the incubator, not my fault everything was right, but the oxygen compressor failed and I did not have a back up, I told Dominico” irreverently, “…that I needed more funds, backups are mandatory when the experiment is this crucial…” I interrupted, “Doctor, doctor please what about the other!” “He is fine, sleeping like a baby Jesus.” My heart stopped, I placed my fingers to my lips, I held my breath, through the window I could see Archbishop Domenico in the Pergola writing calmly, my severe contemplation of the moment halted by the screaming doctor, “Hey are you there? What is going on!” I recovered myself, responding “Doctor this is very good news, you have done well for our faith and for our god!” “Yes! Yes! I bloody well have done it but right this time!” “Care well for yourself doctor, we will be there by morning, and “god is with you.”” Clung.

I couldn’t care less about the grass now, or the Spring day, I raced the distance to the Archbishop, and knelt before him with immense tears in my eyes, and told him of the happenings. We both hastened to the altar and drank holy water, then we freshened our faces and hands with it, took our suitcases that had long ago been packed for this miraculous moment and dashed to the airport. We were in England by early morning.

Doctor Solomon welcomed us with pride, he was full of himself, we walked into the heavily instrumented laboratory and there before us lay our Baby Jesus. Archbishop Domenico knelt before him, blessed the incubator, and I followed appropriately, we sprinkled holy water on the incubating holy shrine, and more holy water around the room and on the exterior and interior of the door.

Not until we left the room did we dare to speak. The Archbishop first, “Where are the remains of the other Baby Jesus?” The doctor with his hands in his whitecoat pockets, adumbrated his shoulders and said “I flushed them down the toilet.” Both the Archbishop and I turned towards each other and speaking not words but with iced eyes spoke cold necessities. The doctor sensed something was wrong and immediately acted to defend himself, “It was dead. There was no Christ there, I made sure there was no breathing or heart murmurs, I made sure of that!” I responded to comfort the man, “Yes Doctor Solomon, he was indeed clinically dead, you did no wrong.” To which he quivered, “Yes, yes, he was clinically dead.” Only, when he repeated my words they flooded his mind with hideous doubts.

I would have to stay in England to monitor the good Doctor, incidentally, at the same Inn that had hosted my first visit. Familiarity, it was about nurturing familiarity. Two years transpired and we witnessed miracle after miracle. In those two years the miracle child Jesus grew to the age of twenty. Doctor Solomon discovered that his cells were showing the aged discrepancies of being centuries old. This was strange, his rapid growth must have been an accelerated way for the cells to reach their actual preprogrammed maturity. While Christ had died in his thirties, his DNA on the Shroud had not ceased aging through the centuries, it was almost as if time could not be stopped at the cellular level by a mere mortal death. The doctor was very puzzled by all these strange happenings, wondering if the age of our Christ would end by equaling the years of our Gregorian calendar. We of the cloth did not doubt it. More over neither the Archbishop nor I believed that Doctor Solomon’s science had had anything to do with this virgin death. Of course we said nothing of this, we just let the Lord work his strange miracles.

The Jesus of twenty years did not speak a word, he looked every bit a Jesus but not a word was spoken by him. We did not teach him anything, in his holy presence we would merely pray, ours was not the knowledge of what to do or what to preach, we had to let him be. I read the New Testament and prayed aloud only to keep myself in his presence with the utmost holiness and reverence, he would address us when he was ready to speak.

On a Tuesday morning I was sitting at the Doctor’s desk, when I stumbled into a note with a phone number which looked curious to me, I sensed that there was something wrong with it, the numerological order was screaming for my attention, I dialed the number and received the cold shock of reaching the London Times news desk. I did not have time to contact the Archbishop, I went to the Doctors room and demanded to know what he was up to! He told me that he had merely played with the idea, that he had not spoken to anyone, but that soon it would be time to tell the world of his accomplishments, he fancied himself a Nobel prize, and a good laugh against all of those that had doubted his greatness. I permitted his gloating knowing that once asleep he would never again wake up. The killer injection had been preordained by our plan, the doctor’s actions had merely accelerated the inevitable.

Protecting Christ was my paramount mission, we were not going to let this Christ get crucified, this time he had protection, not a bad branch of apostles that were willing to let him go to his death. We were meek and loving but we were not about letting the world kill our Christ! There maybe faithful among you that will question the integrity and sanctity of our actions; let you remember that God has killed to correct wrongs! Let you beware that our God is not always a forgiving God; Our God is not a God that shies from enforcing his will! He is a God that is prepared to attack to perdition the evils that befall his creations! Our church had for too long been docile to the wills of the material world, the Archbishop and Cardinal-priest me understood this beyond all doubt, it is a sin to be so weak of faith as not to act with the severity that the times may demand from a spiritual soul.

The Archbishop and I accelerated our plans, he mailed the necessary fake passports and travel reservations to get us out of the England that had long ago divorced our church and denounced it and created their own earthly temple commanded with cannon seals uttered by a mere monarch. Perhaps the cause for their condemnation to puritanical hard work and bad food. Ironic and telling that a place that had abandoned the Catholic faith and bragged a large community of atheists would serve as the new Jerusalem. Praise be to thee Father.

For reasons of security and because I was not sure how Christ would take to flying in a modern airplane, I decided to take the train underneath the national moat to arrive in France. Once there we rented an automobile, of great discomfort to me because I was always in the habit of using public transport, but our situation called for as little public exposure as possible. Christ remained quiet through out our journey, only bothering to make gestures while he ate his bread and water. It was not my idea what he ought eat, I offered him everything from steak to those horrific and tasteless Shepherd’s pies, he only opted for the bread and water, not even butter would get his attention. I attributed such behavior to a preference for familiarity. For instance, he seemed to want to try fish, he would stare at it longer than any other food, but still not consume it, I finally gave up and just made sure he got plenty of bread. He seemed as healthy as any twenty-eight year old ought be. There was so much that in the end we just trusted would be his choosing and his instinct, we had faith in him.

The journey to Spain was majestic, forgetting the recklessness of the drivers, where my heart was constantly pulsating with never ending madness, but the vista, specially crossing the Pyrenees glorious, glorious. We made it to our secret monastery, which unfortunately must still remain nameless so as to avoid Papal wrath. I had dressed Christ in a suit for our journey, he looked like a music producer but near the monastery I changed him into a tunic, he didn’t really seem to care what he was wearing, it did not change his movements or his character any. When we walked into the premises I flashed false Vatican papers that granted me absolute secrecy and clandestine emperor rule of the place. We were to be left alone, and not a word to be uttered about our existence or goings. So much as a murmur would excommunicate the mouth that dared to utter it!

Impervious Christ and I resumed our silent existence, we would take walks in the surrounding mountains much I think to both our delight. By using the doctor’s formula I calculated his age and contacted the Archbishop when he turned thirty. The Archbishop flew in the week before Easter. He asked me what I felt around him, and I said that I was not sure but that I felt his spirit growing, that I felt he was close to speaking to us, that I thought Jesus knew everything though he manifested no particular expressions. Archbishop asked me to leave them alone, which I dutifully did, anyway I was being kind and helping the Monks with the preparations for Easter; it was really nice to work towards something which I secretly knew had more meaning with each advancing day, and more it was a joy to be doing Church work again, three years with Christ were an experience in isolation, it was good to work with the community, to hear the good deeds being done, the good people praying, to smell the incense, to touch the holy water blessed by another, I only waited with awe for the moment where our Jesus would bless me and forgive me for all of my sins. The golden number moment I sensed was soon nearer, the following week would be Easter Friday and I felt this would have monumental significance. More my engorging joy as I worked overtly for the ceremonies hidden with my secret sacred pleasures. Amen.

Easter Friday arrived and Christ and Archbishop Domenico had said nothing, I was getting ready for the celebrations of the day, when the Archbishop interrupted me and asked me to come with him. “He spoke.”

I walked into the room that viewed the mountain ranges with prominence, and there was Jesus sitting calmly, unfinished bread at his side, he nodded his head to welcome me in, it was a sign that he was allowing me to be before him, I kneeled before him, and he motioned me to sit next to the Archbishop, both of us across from him. Then he said to me, not addressing Archbishop Domenico, but just directing himself to me and his eyes at me, gentle and sweet movements accompanied his essence, the spirit of Christ did not need testing, just the calm with which his serene presence filled me spoke Christ our Lord was before me, I did not even need faith to believe in him, I had immense faith, but in this instance before our Jesus it was irrelevant! His holy words, “You are a good soul, all your sins will be forgiven, you will walk on the earth much longer and much with no rest in your soul, but your sins are no longer your sins, you are a free soul.” Saying no more to me he kissed my forehead.

Then he turned to address the Archbishop, “You have deadly sin in your heart, you have talents all gifts from me, which you have used to accomplish unforgivable things, you have dared to rule where you are not king, you have given prayer to destroy your opponents, Galileo is my son as much as you are, the Mormons and the Jews are my children too, there is only one me and I am everything and in everything since nothing is outside of me. There aren’t any trilogies, the cloth imprinted with this image is not my cloth nor my image, I have no image. Christ was my son, as all are my children, but he was not the Messiah. The Shroud of Turin is a fake and Jesus, a lost but gentle soul. He was no less or more than you whom are also my son. It is not time yet for the Messiah that will come to represent me, it is not time yet, it may never be the time for that. You are a sinner in my eyes, you have worked for the darkness; I require no protection or vindication from earthly matters, the Pope is not a bad man, he is a holy man, he does not mean badly, he wants to comfort those that will follow him, and in so doing what matter that Jesus was a false prophet, that the New Testament and the Catholic faith is mostly a folly of human ingenuity, what matter that? But you come to try to prove your faith above those that are closer to my truth than thou have ever been; you come to make divisions and to foster destruction of entire faiths; and yet thee has nothing better to offer them but your plots which merely make everyone more human and more fallible. You want the truth, I have told you the truth. That very faith that you have striven to prove right can only be proven false! False! There is your truth. You are Damned!”

Astounded I saw Archbishop writhing in anger then surprising me by wildly rushing God with a phur-bu in hand, and God just stood there, indifferent, indifferent to the Archbishop’s strange reactions. But Archbishop Domenico could not remain indifferent to the truth, he droppeth the phur-bu and walked out; escaped the Church and flew to Puta Madre to end his condemned existence in full awareness of God. God disappeared from our lives as if he had never been there, I collected the phur-bur and tossed it through the window over the cliff.

I am writing this from our times, the times that you and I live in, the coincidence of the simultaneous and inexplicable nature of the magnificence of my existence as Cardinal-priest, is explained by the axiom of the universe that everything must exist! The universe hates nonexistence, and with valid justification, the universe doesn’t just want you to exist it wants you to exist in every being and in every aspect of yourself. I have laid out a memory that is literally transpiring at this very moment of existence in a parallel earth within the constraints of another dimension. In this life I am not a Cardinal-priest, currently I am not even a catholic, I am an atheist, some lives call for that. In this life I am a customer service worker for a cool Internet company, wear whatever you like, wine and beer every Friday, video games and corny fun, stock options for the janitors, in the new hip way to work. I am cattle-bussed to work every morning, I plug my brain into a phone-headset, and I type in orders for teddy bears for people that have too much love to give, hot dog making kits for aspirants to the perfect barbecue, golf games that you plug into your computer and swing away from the comfort of your living-room, no caddy fees, all and everything mostly costing $19.95 plus shipping and padded handling. Most of the time things go right here, that is mostly good, our company theme seems to be: “If only we can get everyone in the world to give us one dollar.” Most of our customers, highly unaware of the plot are satisfied with their purchases, many call just to talk to me, me, their very own customer service worker. But being in customer service I get the calls mostly from those that are not satisfied, I don’t know why they are not satisfied but it seems to be because their order was lost in the mail or because there are people in Israel that are buying an American made software program to trace their family roots, and it is in English and not in Hebrew or mandatory French. And the root of the root get angry at that, or because the import duties are twice the price of the software. I try to explain that the duties are not charged by us but by their governments, hence the reason we do not quote them, but this doesn’t appease them any; or maybe it is because the package got lost or stolen, packages just don’t get lost, but we use the term. They scream at me, accusing me of incompetence, they accuse our honestly capitalist company of fraudulent intent; I fancy myself by thinking that they just paid that $19.95 hoping that they could scream at me. I get a half an hour for lunch, I eat fast and try not to get to comfortable with myself, and then I plug in again, to listen to these $19.95 human beings that are irate because they had to wait for an hour on the phone to get through to me so that they could find out why their $19.95 order has not shipped yet.

The day that the Archbishop revealed his magnificent plan to me, I entered our beautiful Cathedral chamber and knelt before my Christ to plead, not for guidance in our plan, I never suspected that he would agree with it, I merely begged him not to make my punishment painful. God, unfortunately, has no concept of pain.

TWO MEN DEAD

2006-08-31T12:26:00.000-07:00

I walked into the bar of a Western town on the outskirts of a mining operation. The tales of the miners that were buried during their unnatural search for freedom was entire atmospheres high. They don’t like drifters like me around these parts, they want us strangers out in a hurry. I was passing by just stopping to pick up Eretea, just like her name she didn’t belong in this place.

Eretea was from, I think Bombay India, she had left that country after enduring the virus of much human ambitious greed. I say I think that she was from India, though I am almost certain that she was, because so much of my memory is only about the events rather than the specifics, the movements and feelings rather than facts, I don’t know. It really did not matter that Eretea was from Indian, she was not Indian, she had abandon her culture and place at birth in heart. There are souls that are just born out of their locality and family, once born they immediately migrate with mind and later with body to their intended ancestral homestead. Hers was in America, near the cowboys that would stay at her Bed and Breakfast Inn.

It was a wayward point for us wild cowboys because she was so different, not never one of us, or of any, she was simply the hostess, making sure that everyone felt like they were home, eating a nice saucy bacon and egg breakfast, and that was so as long as our money was good, and up front. Some times them cowboys would get all out of hand and refuse to pay their pence, and dance on her nice tables, and try to pick her up and call her a Mexican. Eretea would swiftly slap the fellow while disclaiming her blackness: “I ain’t not Mexican I am from India you ignorant!” Of course she now wasn’t from India anymore than you and I are from India but she still looked Indian and to the cowboys she looked Mexican but she had no place.

The difficulty for Eretea was that she did not have herself a man to defend her, so she had to play tough with the boys all-the-while allowing their molestations so as to guarantee their return to the Inn which was her livelihood. She would often talk about selling the place and moving to Texas. She loved Texas. I was always very curious about what she found so attractive about Texas, it’s not like back then the rest of the country wasn’t some how or other like Texas; but I never got around to asking her why she liked Texas so damn much. Regardless, because of her desire to move, to Texas the Inn had been for sale for the last two decades long. And every time that someone so much as hinted that they liked her place of business Eretea would jump on them with enlarged gleeful eyes popping out and tell them good how good the Inn business was, and how easy it was to run, and she would herself keep this Inn only she did not have enough money for two, but as soon as she would move to Texas she was going to open an Inn there too. And to entice the offering plea even further she would rest no words on telling the captured ear about all the peoples of the world that she had met, all without traveling a bit, all from the comfort of her Inn; famous doctors, politicians, musicians the list was endless and she was friend with all of them; why she corresponded with many, I suppose.

You don’t get any more obligated to the world of Lords than when you have to host their patience, often short; and Eretea had it in her to calm all with the gentle meanness of an Owl, I am a bird, I am light and feathery and I sleep a lot and move much less, but a bird of prey none the less and more so when you gun touting cowboys come around. And so it was that she managed handsomely though lonesomely to empty up their wallets. Its hard for a hard woman to survive in this world, its just as hard as for a fragile woman I would say, maybe harder; Eretea was a hard woman, she was never going to get a man, or sleep with one, she was not from her country of birth and she belonged not to any man, and this she did not see as odd because she was trying to correct it and she never saw what she did wrong in her corrections.

There had been a man in her life, I have to tell you I mean no humor by telling you that he was distinctively from India, he lived here in the States for I like to think six years, that is what Eretea told me, and he would travel business wide. He was a smart man, very proper in his manner and suit, round top hat and a cigar, an intellectual in manner and high-minded in his ambitions; and he stayed at the Inn every time his travels brought him to the area. He and Eretea would talk long into the night, swinging in the balcony chair, like a couple of serious kids, talking about the world and how they would change it all, and about the proper ways that people ought behave, and how it all made sense to them and to no one else. Oh those precious moments Eretea was Nirvana joyful with his presence, all alone her heart felt feelings, but when he was around her loneliness all a gone. Mind you that he would still keep a separate room, and never did he wander to her room, nor from what I think I felt did he ever want to sleep with her, but rather kept a rigorous and voluntary distance; though I imagine truly, from seeing her sparkling eyes and beaming face in his presence, that Eretea would have been pleased if her longings for his body next to hers would have been answered. Oh I may have forgotten to mention that his room stays were always on the house.

But then one day he came and told her he was moving back to India, she got serious with those eyes and cold with her face; more closer they had never been and only now for him to announce a denouncement of the States, he would go back to India. She pleaded with him but not with sobbing cries, not with mournful scorn, she simply said to him: “You go back to India but you will never be able to close your eyes to what you’ve seen here.” Perhaps she was hoping that the new world would offer more than she could offer him or to increase doubts in his certainties. They were both so isolated in their mutual regard. Both travelers in the distinguished world of uniqueness. Her mother India stealing her man. Eretea continued “You might end up with many regrets.” But what regrets are there for a man that is going home to his India, a place that has cuddled him, that has more of his existence in its spices and memories that say six years? Eretea was matter of fact about it to me: “I told him he better think it hard because there might be no way to come back to America if he pressed a return.” I did not say it but I thought: “America’s thirst for migrant labor would soon capsize?” I think he knew the truth but I don’t think he told it to himself, he did not waver in his certainty, he was going back to India, he went back.

Eretea got really serious about selling the Inn, removed the swing chair to make room for pretty plants, she started prospecting for buyers, Crows were substantially capable of hosting an Inn, her sales pitch a line of hope, to all and any that would hear her; “Business is good, really good! I just want to move to Texas, I love Texas.” The Indian fellow was probably announcing himself to a dowry, “…handsome fellow been to America, never tarnished by its luckless values,…”

Eretea was not a woman to ever drink or to believe in surrender, she was a mountain of certainty and capacity, the world moved, and she accommodated the world in its movements but she herself was manifest destiny.

I had slept long that morning, past the breakfast hour, and when I awoke there stood for me the afternoon. On the table there was no buttered muffin bread just a note: “I am having a drink at the bar.” She was having a drink, I zipped my jeans, did my buckle, and went there like a dart to hit some spot on the board, just some spot sure to be near the center but never really. I liked the woman, I liked her coldness, I liked her indifferences, I liked her love affair with that Indian man.

I got to the bar and was the case that some drunkards were tittering away her flower, I told them to step aside and let her be! She brusquely persisted and hasten away from them, I watched her run outside; only now these two miners felt that I had broken the gentleman’s code of honor, you don’t mess around with the men when they are hanging from their woman. Molested they stood there no drink in hand, more efficiency to be had, no drink in hand I either, and I just decided to follow Eretea out the double doors.

The desert sun a shone quite bright against the sand; paying no resistance to neither stance, I saw Eretea jump on her horse, seeing me, she reigned beastly horse to a halt of love and stared me rattler dark eyes; I held myself but by a string of luck; then them miners blasted out them easy doors, both full of body fat and alcoholic armor, told me to be ready to cure their strung-out pride. I jumped my gun and shot them both while it was still safe to do so in good light. Two men dead.

So that I could escape from the strong arm of the law we went to Texas.

THE FEW TOO MANY

2006-08-31T11:26:00.000-07:00

I was a high school no-body, did not date much, did not join in school activities, did not do my homework, and did absolutely nothing in class, except just attend, I attended well. I did not have many friends, my lunch hour was spent by myself, with books on physics that I never understood. The teachers were not aware of my existence, and to be fair I was not aware that they existed, with the exemption of my English teacher because I tried to kiss her. It is difficult to forget or deny rejection, I hope the world remembers me.

At home I did not suffer any discipline, my parents were known for their temper tantrums, but once the temper tantrum had come and gone there were no side effects, no judgement calls, no moral lessons that lasted, everything was momentary, instant, and forgotten. I grew up by myself, I thank them dearly for this; both mom and dad left us to grow up by ourselves, accordingly, our current miseries are largely the product of our own doings. I have seen a thousand other childhood’s, and I have observed countless parenting styles, I would never prefer any of them over the one my parents gave me, none! I was free, occasionally mother or father would go on a rampage, I was in a jungle, I was free, occasionally bad things happen in the jungle, but you are always free, freedom is worth freedom!

And so it was that other than reading fiction and science, I did not know anything, except that I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Not because I wanted to kill anyone, but because I wanted to fly that fancy hardware that went supersonic, that charged into the heavens, the breached the envelop, that broke the edge and perforated the sky, I wanted to blast myself as close to space as possible, to escape the bonds of earth and make love in weightlessness, to, as they say, to touch the face of god. I wanted to join the airforce.

How that was going to happen I had no idea, I never gave it any thought, all I did was say it to myself, I mastered plane trivia, I could tell you about velocity, range, how difficult it was to fly, the F-4 Phantom was a brick, the F-104 Starfighter, razor sharp but would not suffer fool pilots gladly. The SR-71 Blackbird, a breathing fuel menace, a heat storm, fastest jet alive, fly it, and you get your astronaut wings; and the damn thing is only a sonic camera. I was going to join the airforce.

There was that thing math, calculating coordinates, tracking your drift ration, mapping yourself by starlight, I counted on global positioning satellites, I did not need calculus, why at the time, and even today, the higher math of fractions had not been touched by me. I know algebra and calculus only by name, and I suspect that an isosceles triangle has something to do with trigonometry and that I only know because they both start with a “T”. I surmised that to figure anything out all I would have to do was push a button. Our generation was not into changing its own oil, we wanted to push a button for everything, the cold war was fought because a button could be pushed, we were trained that at the push of a button you could have anything, and it is because of that mind set that so many of today’s pushbutton devises have come into being. Our generation silently automated the world.

A friend joined the Marine Corps, I don’t remember his name, he wanted to be a policeman, so he joined because he thought that it would look good on his record. He wanted to be a particular kind of cop, a highway patrolman, the guys that pick dead people from their car wrecks if they did not have their registrations or rack us in the slammer for drinking bearableness into our lives. He wanted to be one of those guys because his older brother was one of them, and his father was proud of his cop son that was always trying to find the wrong in people. Unfortunately my friend was not good enough to be a cop, fact is, he was mentally unstable, sure he had indeed a massive inferiority complex which was a requirement, but he was not mentally stable enough so as not to cross examine himself, he would not qualify. One time I had the pleasure of talking to his father on the phone, he basically told me that his son was a complete disappointment, nurturing 101. The inadequate boy joined the few, the proud the Marines. Last time I heard from him, if I remember correctly, he was driving a delivery truck. I suspected that he would probably speed a lot so that he could chat with those highway patrolman of the sky.

One day he called me up from boot camp to tell me that I would never make it through that hell. I laughed at him, I thought he was insane, but I immediately went to the Air Force recruiting office and took the exam to join; I failed the test, as I knew I would, how can you pass a test when your teachers don’t even know that you exist. But to be fair to them, I am incapable of learning, I am untainted by knowledge, even if they had wanted to teach me something, it would not have mattered.

The Air Force, to their credit, would not have me. I walked over to the Marine Corps office, and took their same test. They were under their quota for the month, that much was evident, they loved me, this soldier thing would put his malicious arm around my back and pronounce that he would make a Marine out of me. Damn, I could be something, maybe they will have chocolate shakes too, I mean, they really like me. I took the test, I failed. No, no, no, soldier boy was not going to accept failure, he was a can make quota kind of guy, he told me to take the test again, I did. Match the square to the square, which of these items more closely resembles these items, if you take eight apples, and eight oranges, and eight artichokes; iron is to ore what shit is to pig farms, what is one fifth divided by three thirds, and multiplied by n, n being the whatever. The questions did not dance around my mind for long, I never really read them, to me multiple choice just means that you have to pick one of the letters, the answer will take care of itself. And a thousand hail Mary’s I passed. The principle of passing: On your first test the Marines give you the benefit of the doubt, on the second test they just pass you.

After letting a few doctors touch my genitals as they philosophized on the demerits of being flat footed, I caught a flight to San Diego, a republican strong hold, a navy town where navy seals are trained to be superman by the sea. The sincerity of the nightmare unfolded on the bus from the Airport to the base. All the others were nervously chatting away, I remember rain though I may not be correct, I leaned my head against the window of the bus and thought myself a remake of “Father why has thee forsaken me?” more accurately historically and now, “What have I done!” Immediately I missed home, my family has always been warm, passionate and loving, I knew I was not going home, I knew I was not going to a place of mad passionate love, the fact that cockroaches reproduce does not mean that they are passionate. I remember saying goodbye to everything.

When the bus arrived at the base, late into the night we got our first shower of screams, “get out! get out! get out!” and shouts, “what are you laughing at boy, what are you laughing at boy!” All accompanied by our massive silence, we were warned that we would not be allowed to fire back, that we were to be captives, that there would be terror and that we would be its victims. The sergeants, lower class success stories to themselves, were in their sadistic heaven, they were going to make men out of us, but before they could accomplish that task they needed to make little girls and mama’s boys of us all, to dehumanize us into the vermin that we truly were. Ah nothing like a good brainwashing session. Thanks to my childhood I was able to recognize this for the psychological game that it was, I silently told myself, “non of this is real, they are faking everything.” After few screaming sessions magnified by sleep deprivation, they finally allowed us to find the mattresses that the roaches had not taken and we crashed into a slumber that would find the morning to soon in coming; its manifestation heavenly pronounced by a soldier scandalously banging acoustic garbage can lids . I think I hear the drums, I was instantly awaken, but I wasn’t awake. In the back of my mind, war is hell, I knew I was never going to war, I knew that I would abandon ship, that myth of retirement ruthlessly kept me on board.

It would require countless pages to describe the three moths that were to follow, but I think you can imagine how severe they were if I tell you that this masturbator did not play with himself for almost three months. Well, but relief was to be had, on one of the final phases I had to climb a rope, as I climbed I found myself incredibly stimulated, the drill instructor was yelling at me to climb faster, well his urging was unnecessary because I was feeling a rush of sexual pleasure ascending the length of my vertebrae, finally rising erectus maximums into a volcanic release of draconian proportions. With all of my energy drained from me I reached the top of the rope, and then slid down burning my hands from the frictional speed of my descent, but I did not matter. When I reached the sandpit my drill instructor, upon seeing my exhaustion, got the urge to tell me to climb the damn rope again. I looked towards the top of that rope and though exhausted thought that I might orgasm another load of seamen off my ship, so I eagerly begun my second climb, remembering that the Marquee De Sade had noted the extreme ecstasy that can be had by hanging from one’s limbs, I had also read that hanged men get erections, pick your pleasure. But the second time around ecstasy was not responding and the cumbersome pain of forcing my strained muscles to assist my ascending motion, was a ludicrous exercise which thoroughly devastated my earlier pleasure.

For three months, we were gassed, my lungs still cringe at the memory, we climbed Mt. Mother Fucker, we jumped, we kicked, we stabbed big puffy human dummies with our bayonets, while yelling kill, kill, kill! The water Buffalo emptied, we watched our dehydrated peers hauled off, in cinematographic perfection, by the truck load, one sweating body on top of the other and more. I watched people intentionally surrender into a ditch, I watched pride being built by foxhole digging and toothpaste, some of these guys learnt how to brush their teeth in the Marine Corps. The pride run deep, that we would be the first to fight, hurray! That congress did not have to declare war for the president to get us killed. Hurray! Did we want to climb Mt. Mother Fucker again? Hurray!

“From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we would fight our countries battles on air and land and sea.” All the other services were nothing when compared to us; “if the army and the navy were to set their eyes on heaven they would find the streets are guarded by United States Marines.” Remember that I was raised a catholic, the idea that the Marines were God’s own must a had some appeal, you know, I was watching god’s back, sure I was an atheist then but for an atheist like me to make it as God’s body guard, that he was alive because I was watching his ass, was indeed no small accomplishment. And if you can save God from harm, well why not the entire country too.

I wish that I could tell you that they challenged my brain, but obviously that was not their intent, training and learning how to destroy and kill is the easiest thing to accomplish in the universe, young men, men in general have a natural propensity for this act, it is not an academic undertaking, it is merely a release of the masculine in us. But much to their instructional credit they managed to shut down any critical thinking processes. There I was to be trained to be a murderer for the American way. Surprisingly I did manage to score sharp shooter with the M-16 rifle, must a been the drifting wind playing with my bullets, I put a lot of bullets into the head of something 200 meters away. My machinegun run was not as successful, the damn thing jammed. Fact is that the M-16 rifle jams a lot, it was rare back then, for the thing to work properly, and a fear stricken boy can waste rounds without limitations which far exceed capacity. By good fortune, maybe the god thing again, our group was not allowed to throw real hand grenades, though I often lie to people and tell them that I did throw the real thing. We were told that a recruit in the platoon before ours never managed to pitch his grenade, it lit up nicely and kept him company for the rest of his foxhole nesting life, foxhole digging is so foretelling, anyway they restricted our group to dummy grenades until the incident was fully investigated. I assure you that the final report did not read, frightened boy got a grip of grenade with all of his fears and they would not let go. Corrective measures, make it look more like a rock and place a pseudo neighbor’s house full of windows next to it. Investigations are important in the military, everything gets investigated. That boy blowing himself up like that saved my life, I tend to get attached to destructive things.

So after they defecated all over us and told us what worthless ladies we were, then they made us march in procession and told us that we were not yellow, black, brown nor white but green, we were all green, and we would all fight together. And so all of us green men started to chant like a Baptist congregation about how wonderful Eskimo pussy was, even mighty cold, and how many goons we were capable of killing, and how we were going to kill, kill, kill, all the communists pigs in the universe. Who would have thought then that I would actually go forth to slaughter all the chickens in Hon Kong instead. After a few ladies dropped out of the race to be the best killers, they graduated the rest of us.

The most interesting part of the final week is that you are given your job title, a job is assigned to you based largely on how well you did on the initial IQ test; I suspected that I had outscored the proverbial wet rock, I was sure they would throw me to the grunts, infantry, the congregation ground for the lower classes. My number came up, I think it was 5051 or something like that, my drill instructor and I eagerly searched the code book, it was “Logistics.” My drill instructor gloriously laughed, I would have laughed too if I had known what the word meant, it sounded sophisticated, I repeated it to myself “logistics” it sounded like the ballistic trajectory to be followed by a projectile. My drill instructor hated me, he was laughing hard because he hated me, and he hated me because I had said that we would win the marching competition if another drill instructor, the chain smoker frantic fellow, would lead our troop instead of him, a wet potato. The wet potato led us and we won the competition. So when wet potato realized that I was going to be doing dirt work, he was thrilled, overjoyed, I watched his whale mouth open wide and his glittering gold fillings blinded me into an obscure silence.

I was not sure what the word meant, I knew that he was laughing because it could not be good, but I did not know what it meant; which goes back to the days when kids in school would ask me to repeat words that I did not comprehend, and then they would break a laugh, which nicely strings us forward to the day when standing on my foot locker, in boot camp, our officer in-charge asked me to “Pull your foreskin.” It was an order, you are to follow orders, “Pull your foreskin.” An order given and repeated in front of fifty, sixty or so of my peers, all standing stiff naked on their foot lockers prepared for the rectal and penile visual examination, these being performed by drill instructors and officers that had no medical expertise. And there I was, confused because I did not know what “foreskin” meant, and it was in front of all my peers that I learned the meaning of foreskin. At another’s foot locker, the duty bound officers and drill instructors: “pull those cheeks apart or do you want me to do it for you.” Ah the perks of being an officer in boot camp, all those assholes exposed to sunshine. I still remember the day when our chaplain, the man of the cloth, was giving a speech, and he went out of his way to note how fortunate we were to have such a handsome captain as our leader. Oh I don’t know if I was the only one that caught it, but that chaplain wasn’t just gently praising the He Man.

In the Mojave desert, they have a military base where the ground temperatures can melt the soles of your Italian shoes, fortunately no one in the military can afford Italian shoes. And it was there that I went to find out what “logistics” meant. Everything was always taught in relationship to grandness and bestness. “Privates listen to me, we operate the largest conveyors belt in the entire world, we own more warehouses, we have the largest logistics operation in this category, we can move an entire operation within 24 hours without…” I never saw the largest conveyor belt in the world move, which nicely made it also the largest idle conveyor belt; there is just not limit to the number of number one things the military is. Larger that the post office, most secretive, most misunderstood, most leathered footed, left foot first, largest government founded school for walking, left foot first. Everything they were responsible for was the most important thing in the whole wide world, and they were the best at doing it, none better. I was in awe. And come to think of it they were right, the military is certainly the largest employer in the world besides the government. For me it is impossible to see the differences between the two. These guys were not just bragging about their collective might, the only thing they could not brag about was their individuality, family life, affairs, though they were probably number one in the latter category too. And they, specially, could not brag about their paychecks, number one worst compensation package. All these number one’s made me a supply clerk. Rooming with three despicable people, training on how to inventory parts, “here is an invoice number, 234.77764646.989.99 now tell me what it means?” The distance from here to the moon? The matter anti matter misalignment ratio? Suzy’s phone number enumerated backwards to its lowest possible common denominator? I never paid attention there either, and no one cared, and no one noticed.

My first tour of duty would be to Japan for a year. I got a little closer to airplanes, I sat in an A-6 Intruder, a plane capable of taking out skiers at low level altitudes. Even worked for the legendary Black-Sheep squadron, as all legends, until you get there. My first week with the air wing, I was told to get some “flight line,” I could not find the flight line, so I went to my Gunnery Sergeant for assistance and he got the joke, me. It was in the military that I educated myself on the fine art of sarcasm, communication by other means, vengeance.

It did not take them long to figure out that I was incompetent and incapable of learning logistics, so they gave me the job of delivery driver, got me a big delivery truck. I would ferry the nose radar and the eight day clocks of those A-6s, racing through the base like speedy Gonzales. I was even on stand-by for part deliveries, the air wing had to be kept flying, I was an instrumental part of the American Defense Strategic Puzzle. At night I would park my truck behind the barracks where the glue snifters would climb into it, and glue themselves into a poor man’s nirvana. The rest of the gang would consume more interesting drugs and rocked themselves to sleep in sweat and saliva pits.

The local whores and bar owners loved us, if you can call the desire for money love. Some of the general populace would nurture friendships so that we would buy them goods and cigarettes at our discount stores. They were always overly polite and overly indifferent, but their indifference was indiscernible. A couple of times a year some of the suspected non-whores and non bar owners would parade protest our presence within the sovereignty of their emperor. We did not retaliate by pointing out that their constitution was written by Americans simply because we did not know it. So we were locked in our base, we stayed put. Ah the Japanese are such xenophobic elitists that the whores that screwed American men are avoided by Japanese men. A base closure would certainly have a severe effect on such enterprising women and their entourage. I never did find out how Japanese men know that their whores have been tainted by American males, must a been the cigarette smell. I was a Colombian, they can’t detect that shit.

A guy a few beds from me, drunk enough to forget closing his mosquito net, drowned in his own vomit and slept the good sleep. There were always drugs, fights, within feet of my bed, farting, gurgling, swearing, and rock music rusting the humid air in my ear canals. It was a rioting gang, I once commented that a guys wedding tuxedo was old fashion and I was nearly strangled to death. To save the world from the menace that we presumably were some captain, accompanied by the military police, took the time to make a surprise visit upon our hut, and literally read us the Riot Act! We were accused of subordination and a proclivity to mutiny. News to me, I was not aware that we were such an errant gang, being the bubble boy that I am my ignorance is comprehensible, still I think that, that captain was actually overstepping into theory. Shoot the people in the village square and you get promoted, Napoleon 101.

The gang got quiet for a while, that is the sort of thing that happens when that happens, we slept, we ate, we worked drugs and alcohol. Nothing changed. We were read the Riot Act. Imagine that, I am sure that, that guy is a congressman by now. My friend Jerry has this theory that in order to make it big you have to accomplish a lot of insignificant things. Without knowing Jerry’s theory at the time, I got into an affair with a navy wife that had two children. He was a medic, that kept him in the hospital while I played racquetball with his wife. They had two adorable children, fortunately I was incapable of feeling empathy, fact be told, at the time, I did not even know the meaning of the word. Eventually she would leave him and follow me to America, of course I had never intended for it to get so serious, it ended badly. I had the pleasure of getting into a fight with him, a day that I was terribly ill, he was able to claim victory. The gossip on base the next day was that, a sailor had beaten up a marine. It was a sad day for the Marine Corps which is why all those guys in Iwo Jima fly the flag at half mast inclination.

I ought note funny that her sailor-husband was unable to satisfy her, which was of course part of the problem if not the whole problem; she seemed to do quite well in the racket ball court, though she sucked at the game. But much to the credit of our knowledge base society, the therapist, during family counseling, told them that the reason that she could not climax was due to her sailor’s foreskin. Please don’t ask me how they arrived at this brilliant conclusion, I am merely repeating verbatim what she told me. Of course at the time I was satisfying her despite of my foreskin; a word I now comprehended better than ever. You know the Latin factor can cause everything to work upside down. Anyway the hilarious part of this, as if it wasn’t all hilarious, was that she could not tell the therapist and her husband that she had substantial evidence that foreskin wasn’t the problem. It thus came to pass that sailor boy had his foreskin removed, got a nice dose of pain killers and erection prohibiting drugs, which of course only added to the demands placed on me by his wife, and despite his heroic sacrifice, they still got a divorce. Double ouch!

After a year in the land of the rising sun, I got orders to move to 29 Palms California, a place about an hour or so from Palm Springs. Also in the Mojave desert, I gave up on the Italian shoes. You have to understand that being from Colombia I love greenery, I love lush green plants and vivid green trees, soothing jungles, California is a dry place, the draw back to its sunnyness, the hills here have yellow backs, and the plant life always has that feel of drying and dying, I am living cuddled within a famine, and of course the sort of plants that can survive our harsh environment don’t merit the attention of my visual cortex. Georgia O’Keefe paints the desert well, but in all of her paintings the overwhelming death of the land is despairingly omnipresent. Being from the tropics I don’t find cactus attractive, pricking menace, always telling you not to come near and yet seeming much like an average adult human, arms tirelessly flaunted into the air craving attention, but its pricking essence telling you to stay away. Tropical creature stuck in a desert, a desert of indecent perspiring. Your sweat evaporates, you are now a baking radiator.

This time I was to work supplying parts for an electronics school. Again it did dot take long for my supervisors to figure out that I was more of a problem than an asset so they would send me off to the most simple, distant and isolated jobs. This was just fine by me, I was a loner, this was precisely what I wanted. I got a desk in a cage, with parts in it, and the electronic gurus would come with an invoice and ask me to fill their orders.

But every now and then a good and kind act backfires. Here they were trying to keep me away from anything complicated thus beneficial to both parties, when they Colonel in charge of the electronic school, needed a driver and it was our troop’s turn to supply one. Obviously you always surrender your least desired asset, me. For six months I was to drive Colonel around, that is right from delivery driver to chauffeur. Soon enough the colonel, himself a fan of sport cars, would find that I had a lead foot. It was always a joy to watch him squirming in the back seat as my inconsiderate driving philosophy materialized with grand spectacle. On the way to the airport the colonel and I would argue about the shortest routes, and we never agreed but we always took my way. The undulating straight desert roads were made for speed. In the back seat the colonel was uttering macho expressions which would most closely translate to: “I want to live, I want to live.”

One day while on my way to Palm Springs to pick Colonel up, I made a gallant display of my driving abilities by passing the commanding officer of the Motor brigade, the pass was flawlessly reckless, and this after I had persuasively tail-gated his ass. It impressed me that this turtle, after my hasty pass, accelerated so as to catch me, I took it as fine challenge; only later I would learn who Mr. Mystery driver was, as he would suspend my license. Of course my beloved Colonel revoked his cancellation, which of course bonded us even more.

Later too, the Colonel would halt impeachment proceedings against me, the charge being that I had refused a direct order from a sergeant; and that I had called him an asshole. I pointed out to Lt. Colonel that I had not called him an asshole, I had merely asked my friend, standing next to me when the mundane order was given, I asked my friend, “Can he be an asshole and do that?” Hardly the same as calling him what he was. Further, I did not wait for my friend to wisely respond but instead, shouted my social security number aloud so that charges could be properly brought against me. I then left the base for a grand time in Los Angeles. I don’t know if it was the marvelous legal technicality, or the reality that I was an untouchable, but the charges were dropped. Incidentally they had also tried to remove my military license in Japan, for reckless endangerment of human life. I was driving a jeep with a trailer in tow occupied by my comrades in arms, and turning fast enough so that the wheels were able to acquire a slight degree of flight. That charge too was dropped, drivers are just irreplaceable assets.

I paint these scenes so you can see how deplorably mundane my existence had grown.

The driving assignment had its perks, I had three or four privates to manage in the delicate art of watering the grass and taking out the building trash. These boys would tell me their life stories combined with lots of lies, which some how always manifested themselves. One boy from Kentucky used to tell me how rich his father was, tale after tale of all the great things his father had accomplished, how the two had built roadsters that were equaled by none. His tales were always delicious, he had charisma, he sounded genuine. But then one day, I stumbled into a letter from his mother. As always when given the opportunity to snoop, I don’t pass it up, I tell myself it is my job to know the inner workings of our humanity, it would be a sin to deprive my curiosity. I read the letter, mother was telling him how father was still the town drunk, behaving like an total ass, and mother could not sustain the household for much longer. There was also something about a terrible uncle, the woman sounded like she wanted him to return home and rescue her. For sure after reading the letter he must have sent her money. It was so fascinating to listen to his stories after that, I enjoyed then even more, and to this day I think he was being sincere, I just did not know how, but he was.

But the boys did not always limit themselves to tales, sometimes they did not want to do the job of watering the grass. I would force them, “turn the sprinklers on,” I would say, and the smarter than me private would say “but it isn’t necessary,” I did not like his cross-examination of my orders, so I commanded him to water the grass, which he did, but then he told an officer that I was making him water the grass during a mid summer desert sun. The officer who was carrying a cross with my name on it for reasons that are better left unsaid, entered my office and asked me, why I was having the grass watered when grass does not grow in the summer, and specially not in desert summer. Damn, you see why I hate knowledge it is such a powerful tool and it can wreck havoc on a good power struggle, which was really what all us boys were really doing. I immediately walked outside and called private whatever off his futile watering assignment. Grass does not grow in the summer, what an epiphany, paint something black and then paint it white and it looks whiter because of it, such an incredible learning experience.

Colonel had an assistant Lt. Colonel that was sleeping with all the secretaries or, and female recruits. He had that Lt. Colonel badge and he was a very handsome fellow; I would watch as the women would crawl into his office and fall gently into his charm. Of course for an officer to be dating the enlisted was taboo, but everyone was aware of it, they just kept quiet. But women that join the military, mostly virgins back then, and mostly ugly, and mostly ridden with a complex array of mental problems, were, shall we say, easy. All those men.

Lt. Colonel and I both got involved with volatile women at about the same time. The one that I was involved with bragged about reading encyclopedias for fun, and one of the two that he was dating was just Calamity. Calamity was going insane in the military complex so she asked Lt. Colonel to help her escape, which he was obliged to do, and so they staged her insanity, less difficult to accomplish than it seemed, she got a medical discharge.

My own Insanity was expressing her emotional inability to cope with the Marine way of life, which to me meant then, that she would move out of my life, and this would be a good thing, she had an addictive personality; these young girls all thought that sex meant that they were going to be with that soldier for the remainder of a their lives on earth, while us males were philosophically applying diversity theory to relationships. Obviously it was a diametrically opposed association, bound to failure and birthing many spectacular tearing sessions, some one was always comforting someone, the girls would try to band together, the healthier few would become lesbians. In the final analysis we were all in the Marines because we were weak of character!

Anyway, I went to Lt. Colonel and asked him to help my beloved out of her tour of duty. He objected gently pointing out the impropriety of a senior officer participating in such a scheme. I persisted a little. Finally he just said there was nothing that he could do. I then boldly suggested that he might help her out as he had helped out my other friend, secretly his lover. He took my diplomatic suggestion to heart and gave me the outline for a medical discharge based on psychological disability. I was rather fortunate in that Insanity qualified. Of course she thought that we were staging the whole thing, we weren’t, she was nuts, got discharged accordingly, went home, a place that she had never been qualified to leave.

The colonel, for reasons that I can only guess at, often preferred to drive himself so I had plenty of spare time in my hands. Made a lot of friends chatting away my philosophical nastiness, often lecturing to the naive young men the horrors of military life, of training to kill something. I watched with dismay how often they would respond, “But Corporal don’t you think that we could learn something here that will better prepare us for civilian life?” I pointed out that the military was merely a welfare institution for losers, that everyone that stayed in the military, and thus became a manager of sorts, was unusually incapable of surviving in civilian life, they were just there collecting the easiest check to pick up in the world. I noted that there had to be nothing more horrific than the idea of being led by the most incompetent beings in society, and more atrocious, you could not cross examine their orders. But much to their benefit, they were immune to all of my pacifist preaching, this was because they were all able to pass IQ test that placed them far above the average Marine menace and Tolstoy. They were after all technology students, a bunch of 120 plus IQ’s which could reason away my grievances. Regardless of my ineffectiveness, I had just a grand time in the undesirable job of chauffeur. I think I was there for six months. Chatting with the Colonel must have given him the impression that I was more intelligent than most people suspected, so he master minded a career change for me.

At the time the Colonel was working on a huge project which would move all the students that were studying electronics, from the lock step system of teaching, that is, everyone at the same time and disciplined; to a self pace system of learning, meaning, as needed teacher assistance, progress at your own random pace. To me a fantastic idea, I was after all later to become an admirer of Ivan Ilych and Paulo Freire, both which admire the self learning skills inherent within all beings, but unduly obfuscated by the, learn what I teach you establishment. I was told by the colonel in charge of the project that the Airforce had tried and failed. The Navy had also tried and failed. But the Marines, The Marines pride themselves in succeeding where the other services fail, which translates to don’t learn from the experiences of others.

The Marines, are actually a part of the Navy, and when the Navy retires its planes the Marines inherit them as hand me downs. The Marine Corp is proud of its ability to patch up and fly what decent and intelligent Air Force pilots would refuse to fly because they are not idiots. The needed efficiency as mandated by the Salvation Marine Corps acquires a ludicrous humor, every year, at least while I was with them, it was tradition to give back a portion of the Marine Corps budget. It is a way of saying to the commander and chief, “We managed with less, we are saving you money and we are doing a great job.” Personally I would fire the accountant that keeps on ever projecting budgets.

Anyway the new self learning project needed programmers, and the Colonel decided that I could be one of the three, or four, Cobol programmers, for the new seven million dollar computer that we had purchased. Ah lady fortune shining on me. And all those logistics folks had to have a nice laugh when they heard that I would not be their problem anymore, and of course they must a thought the Colonel had lost his mind, but then they had suspected that much earlier. I ought to have been scared at the offer, but I wasn’t, and you know why I wasn’t scared? Because I did not know what a computer was, I did not know what programming meant, I did not know Boolean nor the difference between analog and digital. As is often the case my ignorance spares me many fears.

I got to my new job and before me was this small computer, with no pretty graphics that I could understand, an it would only accept words that meant nothing to me, format, delete, format, etc… but it had something that I could understand immediately, a word processor, WordStar. When the seven million dollar computer arrived with its 200 or so terminals, I knew that I had me a great a word processor, it never occurred to me that a word processor did not need that much computing power. Later in life I would work for Lanier’s copier division, a job that I would get fired from; completely their fault, during the hiring phase they gave me a test which I failed; the manager that interviewed me, a rich looking Gorgon with more confidence than his abilities could assume; this Gorgon, refused to believe that my charming self had failed the test, so he requested that I immediately take it again, only this time he locked me in a private office with a magnificent window. Taking my cue, I placed the test against the window, and the sunlight outlined all of the correct answers that were waxed sealed from me, I passed with flying colors. But it was at Lanier that I saw how little computing power a word processor or a Gorgon required.

That seven million dollar thing, was beautiful in an ugly way, she was a row of blue and black boxes about nine feet tall, a creature of somber silence, with diodes lighting up her panels like earrings light a woman’s face, she stood inside of a clean room that was temperature controlled with alert buttons everywhere should her ideal climate not be met, fans whisked away her heating elegance. She did not like to make sense, everything that came from her was cryptic and more immense with meaning because of it; all of us labored to understand her, when she did not accomplish the task that we had wished for, she would spit out errors in our code, she was never wrong, it was instead that we did not know her, we did comprehend fully how to communicate with her, she demanded absolute knowledge of her essence before she would concede us her analytical Siberian agility. So often we were wrong, so often we felt incompetent before her, so often we failed to know what she wanted, and no greater pain can be felt than our knowledge that she could accomplish no wrong without our assistance. We would feed her twelve hundred lines of code, she would spit back our errors in triplicate. And worst of all we could not talk to her directly, she would not allow it, she would not dare speak our language, we wrote Cobol a structured tower of Babel, a keypunch machine would translate it into holes on cardboard and this cardboard cards would be translated into one of her languages, which would then compile and recompile itself into her souls language, and it was the compiling into her soul’s language that created the bounty of errors we had to decipher. I had, till her, never met anyone so many times removed from my world, so complex in construction, so demanding of our attention, and her gifts to us so few.

Someone surely, we suspected, knew her well, perhaps her designers, perhaps those big men that brought her to us, and put her body’s essence together; circuits, circuits, red green lights, clamps to contain her, grills of metallic fury, magnetically disking her memory with spherical spinsters, memories that would not allow a spec of distance between themselves and their image of her, surely the master minds that composed her, could ask anything of her and she would not deny her creators. But she did. They all knew only parts of her, and not her whole being, and the portions of her essence that they were aware about were not enough to know her well, nor did they seem to be truly aware of the nature of each body part that tested and failed their expertise. She was as savage in action as she was sophisticated in being.

But of all those of us concerned with her well being, and with harvesting the fruits that she would not willingly bare, I was the most fortunate, the most privileged to be in her presence, and this because, of us all, I understood her least, I did not even understand what it was that we really wanted her to do.

The Colonel placed me in the Cobol programming training program, and I quickly realized that I was not going to be able to learn Cobol. That was not a language that I could understand, too strict, too unforgiving, to willing to refuse my advances, too absolutist, too set in its ways as I was in mine. There was nothing insane enough in it for me to relate to, it lacked paradox and labyrinth, she was difficult to talk to because she did not like Cobol any more than we did, she in fact hated Cobol so much that only the compiler knew Cobol, and it was the compiler that would translate things into her language, and that is what she loved and understood, and I could not love a language which did not grant me core level access to her digital personality; I wanted to talk to her in sentences, and with my heart, the compiler would not allow it, and so it was that my many attempts at learning how to program were thwarted by my incessant and insurmountable desires to kiss her technological ass, to keep her company while she was ruthlessly crunching numbers, blazing with her aphrodisiac formulae, dizzying my calumnious heart with her error proceedings.

No one at the white temple understood that my inability to program her was because I knew that we had gotten it wrong, and gotten the wrong her, and approached the wrong problem, I knew above all those orthodox preachers, I knew that we needed an emotional computing platform, a quantum computer that would be willing at least to consider that we, though wrong, could in fact be right, in some dimension, in some heart, in some manner, we needed her to try to understand us, to understand our demands and hungers and wants, and to sometimes, not so often, but just some times, for her to acknowledge that we were right in following our path. But her passions were not from the cosmic gas that formulates the universe, she was really cold to the touch and liked it cold, to see her we had to wear jackets so as not to freeze to death, so that our blood would not frost, so that our nostrils would instantly icicle, she was too dead, she liked the cold, everything that is alive is hot, and the more alive the hotter, and she liked to think in the coldness, that is why she did not deserve to work with us, to be a part of our solution. But I was the only one that understood that only a soul that would love quantum energy frying through her veins would make raging absolutions, what we were truly seeking possible. I gave up on her, I gave up on the white coats, I gave up thinking that I needed to understand her.

The guardians took notice of my absentia induced inability to relate to her, the sun was not brighter; they, being unable to disappoint the Colonel meant that they would keep me, so I was relegated to designing some screens, I don’t think any done by me ever worked, at some point the white coats were able to arrive at the same conclusion, but they were patient with me, kind even, pathetic for sure! had I been in their shoes, faced with a non believer like me, I would have ordered an execution, but they were cowards. Finally as a sort of exile from the group, and to intensify my suffering to equal their anxieties, they made me her night watchman. There she was, nourishing her instructions as she mandated. The console would beep for my attention, I would hear her blinking and thinking, the screen would say, insert me tape 19181818, change me disk 88443947, you see she was not self contained, a library of data was constantly being exchanged in her bowels, long nights with her, endlessly feeding her routine which only proved more that I had been right about her, only now I was stuck with her, in the “white” room, for entire nights, freezing in her adoring coldness. I eventually learned how to sleep behind her, away from prying eyes, I would run her reports, set her data feeds, she would take hours to think up errors, and so in between I would lay on the cold tile floor, and treat her to my snores. It was during those cold nights, pacing her monolithic indifference, that I started to type into her what would eventually become my words.

It was also during those long nights of depravity, that I learned her chess moves and repeated them to her, mirroring her until every new move followed the path which cost her to err in my favor. Her consistency was gruesome, a horror to my magnificence, a terror to my chaotic soul, but it brought her death, and more death, I could precision kill her, my check mates were guaranteed, my pleasure was not.

And it was during one of those days, when playing another pre-calculated victory against her, that our in-house master chess player came up to me, reviewed her doomed battle strategy, and decided to challenge me: “Why don’t you play a human being if you want a real challenge!” The human being was he, which I can assure you he was not, he was an emotional recluse, a semi bright programmer if measured against my incompetence; he thought himself educated because he religiously read newspapers and boasted trivial accomplishments. But that aside he was an astute chess player. Paint your opponent big before you destroy him and it doubles your victory. But he was really good. During lunch, we would gather around the board, winner stayed in place, and he was the one to beat. I always abstain from the games, for fear of being discovered as the worthless chess player that I am. But now he had challenged me and there was no way out. I sat in front of the board, feeling that Wellington had just asked me to my Waterloo.

But, there was fortune to be had, I don’t know what it is, but there are times that I can quantum dance on the chess board, I was also going through a celibate phase, all that energy was going somewhere, and so my fated defeat did not surrender. He threw everything at me, some how always I was able to save my men, and with that conflict avoidance strategy, I suddenly found myself without alternative but to check him, and mate him. His consternation flaunting itself, he could not believe that I was beating him, he demanded a second game, check mate, as much a surprise to me as it was to him, and a third game, check mate. I was so surprised to see all those check mates, but perhaps my sexual abstinence had brought me alertness. That day was a victory for quantum thinking. We were in her cold room, with her diodes acting sleepy, but I know the frigid thing felt my triumph!

Time dilated four years within the confines of a uniformed life, a life lacking the discipline it advertises, we were drug addicts, whore lovers, magnanimous curses, and naive about history, about politics, about our humanity. And all those things were what bonded us together into a fighting machine. Void of our characters and personalities we were the Corps. Some of us wanted war, and we wanted war because we suspected at the periphery of consciousness that our definition depended on war. The military is not at home in peace time, it is dying for a war, and it is dying without one, conflict unites and rises to murder the philosophical and spiritual conflicts of youth; but there was no war, more, for us there would be no war, we lived with the glory of those who sacrificed before us, we would not merit medals of action or monuments to our patriotic sacrifices.

My last day I was a bottle of joy, I drank to my freedom, I threw my uniform into the garbage, swearing never to wear such a hideous denouncement of my being, and drove out that base killing all the roadrunners that got in my way.

BIRD SONG

2006-08-31T11:24:00.000-07:00

And now a bed time story for my beloved sister Cristina.

As requested, for my sister Cristina, child of Christ savior, Christ who was murdered by the sins of humanity. To die for our sins was to forgive us all of our sins. The atomic bomb died proving its existence, ceasing the suffering of a suffering humanity. Painted white walls of ghost carcasses, ringing silence bursting open in the mist of a fiery craze. Dogs barking away the furnace, children staring into the human sun, blistering from the experience, withering dust. Erasing our sins Christ and the atomic bomb. Liberating souls with benevolent maledictions, blessings all, the bomb would not burst if you were not in sin, no furnace can be nurtured by the sacred, no more crosses to bear except for the electric chair.

I woke up one autumn morning into the flagrant exposition of falls maddening and ravaging colors, paling leaves preparing to spend the winter underground, hasten to fall so as to avoid the ferocious winter of the northern plains. The wooden window frame creaking, cracking the cries of evaporating fat fibers; my eyes reach beyond that yellow, red, rusty orange brown mist of fall, into the ledge where bird lay dead. Bird’s transgression through the ether halted by the advantage of being able to see through glass. Broken avian neck, snapped, could not have felt his death, a chorus trounces my every thought, was he flying into the melody of his beloved? A melody that cried that she would love him until the day after forever; it was now two days after forever. He was perched dead there now from two suns ago and no moons have shone darkness upon his amorous soul.

I ponder the possibility of rescuing bird, there his body stares at me, dead on the ledge, plumage no longer being replaced, mangled head, broken neck, bleeding halted by the cold of night, by the cold of heart, disoriented by his lover’s call to forever, painted night in red. Two days after forever, death.

I procrastinate the rescue attempt, breakfast first; buttered croissant, I taste it but the dry saliva rolling in my mouth is not enough to overcome the plastic enhancement of a croissant, as interpreted by these colonists; I consume it just to commemorate lascivious croissants buttered to perdition in the old world. Coffee rushes in to save me from realizing the specter pastry. No sugar, sugar kills the flavor of coffee, and adulterates the effects of the caffeine upon my circulation, both in me body would try to kill each other, no sugar in my hardy dark roast, bird waits, I add a touch of milk, toned down purist that is me.

I hear singing birds and wander, is her lonely voice among them or has she rushed to find another lover? A song of grief and a song of love, impossible to discern. Wings crumbled, forgotten unison, it is a life to die I tell myself, and remove my underwear on the way into a cold shower. The electricity bill was spent on coffee and croissants, sustenance, carrying the responsibility of four generations, messages delivered by strangers, they turned the lights off, they left on those thousand candles that is sun.

When I was a child I used to love taking a shower, I have never understood why every dog I have had, has fought so hard against a bath; I think maybe it is because they are being washed by their master, but I think to myself, how wonderful to be washed by another, to have someone washing my dangling body, running their fingers through my hair, sweet shampoo, soap bubbles sponged into my flesh, massage my weary cranium, keep the water warm, wash me, yes, and please make sure that you cleanse my ass; why don’t my dogs enjoy all that? These days I don’t really enjoy bathing myself, when I was a child the water from our shower would run like torrents from a waterfall, water shortages have changed all that, now more air bubbles than water bubbles fall from my shower. I step into the cold wooden floor, wet feet planted there, generations from now, discerning tenants will notice the humid foot, traced and edged into the wood, by my warm foot branding burning wood.

I don’t know what day of the week it is, but I know that it is a day that I have to look for a job, everyday now is dedicated for that. And now I have the responsibility of that bird, which will make it all that more daunting to search for my daily bread. Thump! he slammed into the glass, where once he flew…

Towels that do not hold a lot of water are bothersome, I reach for a candle so I can shave these whiskers that perforate me flesh; jealous of Indians that don’t grow beards, seems more evolved to me; evolution notes that our ancestors were hairier, even a mammoth had more hair than we do today, my scalp is evolving so fast that it is rushing into boldness, the defeated Indians must be more evolved; in the future everyone will be born without hair, pubic hair, gone, a head of hair, gone, a leg of hair, gone, horses will lose their tails, gorillas are more hair than they are gorillas so they will perish all, European women will have to search for a fashionable oddity to substitute hairy armpits, doomed too; men who try to lose weight by growing a beard will not be able to, terrorist that grow a beard to hide their character will not be able to, and anyone suffering nostalgia will have to wear a wig or a false beard, and everyone will know it. In the future everyone will go bald just like me, I am just forward of the evolutionary curve, beyond my time, hair loss prejudice is not a long term thing. I have razorblade scars under my chin, as if a knife had been pushed through me from below the earth, rammed straight up, like a man hanging from an arrow lined fence, body dangling from an arrowhead, rain and night pouring down the flag.

I know, I know, don’t rush me, I don’t like to be rushed. I can only do one thing in a day, more than that is more than I can handled, but I will take care of bird, I promise. It’s 10:34am and I am still here, gotta get some more candles, I will stop by the church. I like candles, no one has said that they cause cancer, but they are carcinogenic, friendly smoke I call it, friendly fire, candles smoke themselves to death.

I walk out into the autumn day, blistering prism hastily expounding brilliance into my eyes, never have I seen so much blinding beauty as that lavished by agonizing fall. Daring in its brilliance, a plumage of inspiration, rushing in the nakedness, to survive the winter, a trunk must rest alone. Torsos coming bare, torsos soon to dare sun to shine on them alone. The leaves that shaded the trunk from the blistering summer heat, now sacrificed.

I enter a cafe, sure I should be searching for a job; more than coffee I need a drink, poverty cures alcoholism in a bad way, my desires are exposed to grotesque denial, surrender to reality, surrender to reality my heart tells me, I take my seat; unusually at the mid center area of the café, unusual for me, I am paranoid about having my back unprotected or exposed to moving unknowns from behind my shadow. Disperse, disperse I feel you are all insane. I think of my dead bird, he did not care about what was behind him, it would have been safer to have that window behind him, all around we are not safe, paranoid schizophrenic I am not, which is why today I sit almost at the dead center of this café, risking exposure to all, from every angle, but somehow I feel I have witnessed enough tragedy so as not to be exposed to more, tragedy is a loner, it does not roam like a pack of wolves, tragedy is rare I tell myself, tragedy is in danger of extinction. I feel safe now.

A song resonates in my coffee, splash, a combination of big band tunes, singing: …carrying, marrying my love…, dead bird is not going to marry anyone else. I think of all the birds that must have died in the Spanish civil war, not many I think, maybe even none, I ponder how many died in the American civil war; you see occasionally there was break from brother killing brother, and there resting on the ground, having a rifle in hand, a bored Union soldier would see a bird and shoot it dead. His fellow soldiers would cascade in laughter: damn good shot that boy! Old wars were indifferent to birds until the atomic bomb, I don’t know if anyone has counted how many birds took the option of death in that one; I picture the pilots of the B-29 bomber just turning that baby around and heading for home, they still had a home, but a lot of other non metallic birds died to end that war.

The war did not end for the birds because the war was the birth of much technological innovation, new and miraculous way to make steel were developed to fight the war, and when the war was over a peaceful use had to be found for all that new steel, and so skyscrapers rose from the ashes of the war to colonize a new world. The wind had been an obstacle to tall buildings, even an obstacle to birds and planes, but the new steel was flexible, buildings that can sway and shake are more solid, new steel fresh from the war. Tall magnificence rising like an immortal earth god invading the heavens with radiance and splendor, the skyscrapers sparked city nights. Architectural brilliance mirrored the outer layer of the building so that blinding radiance could be had by day.

I don’t know how many birds died in Hiroshima, I don’t know how many birds knew their death was on the verge of rising into their existence, birds know things, they know that an earthquake is near, they know when a storm is rising, and they know where on earth thy are, better than we know where on earth we are. I presume the birds knew that something strange was happening to the atom and the atom is not very tolerant, I think they knew, but I don’t think they had the mathematics that the bomber pilots had to get away. If you fly in this direction, and at this altitude, and at this precise velocity, you will never feel the atom cracking.

I visited Hiroshima once, not a pilgrimage to Mecca, there I stood in the presence of point zero, a dome finished with wire so that the imagination can illustrate what it may have looked like before the decapitating explosion. That day I thought of the birds that nested in that building and I promised myself that, should I reincarnate as a bird, I would avoid civilization, better to risk my neck with the owls in the forest.

After Hiroshima people continued to die from wars, and birds continue to die because of their proximity to me. I am the unemployed inhabitant of a huge city, a marble of concrete and steel, and here in our city, a bird in flight, suddenly notices at a distance, another bird flying in his path, towards him, and so he lowers one wing and raises the other so as to outflank the opposing bird, but with split second precision the other bird reverses imitation of that action, opposite wing up, opposite wing lower, and again aligns with astounding precision upon a new converging path, our bird seeing the increasing size of the advancing avian figure reflexively makes an immediate dive, dive, but peering upwards with his bulging eyes he is again confronted by an opponent diving with identical precision; never has he witnessed such a talented flyer, at once impressed but more fearing the impeding collision, our bird hastens, aiming to ascend with a darting left, but then it is late, and he meets the graceful flyer as himself, snap, a long ungraceful spiraling fall follows him to ascend no more.

I make it back and manage to drag myself to what has now become more of my mandated duty than a desire of my own choosing. I have done all to avoid the ugliness of this moment, but it is so close to home that I can not ignore it. I put on my bright yellow plastic gloves, gloves that I use to wash the dirty dishes, grab a brown paper bag, and my procession begins towards those small round eyes that have not ceased from staring at me all day. A thousand birds singing now but one dead drowns them all.

Pleasant dreams.

EMBALMING WOMB

2006-08-31T11:23:00.000-07:00

Omnibeing dreams…

A pool of blood her bed, arms floating limpness, her flesh too consumed to feel her trembling soul, a cold dark room, hundreds of miles from home, a pool of her blood indiscernible from the blood of another; cruelties, that her mother had abandoned her when merely a child, and now too her own child had abandon her; left her in a pool of thickening blood, now her cleansing bath, drifting into swirling torments, abandoned by her child’s denial to be born into her nesting arms, denying suckling her yearning bosom.

Years pass…

…another child to born her womb, glorious miracle, but trembling repetitious fate that abruptly aborted her first born is born yet again; and she feels and touches blood, she is aware of the meaning of blood, but neglects it; her faith thinking, clinging to her dead within her embalming womb; clinging, not to be herself accused of the abandonment that she suffered when, as a child, her mother died. Supplications in silence, that the dead come back to the living, supplications in her silent prayers, the steel of the night creeps, moving away within but can’t, supplications, grave mother’s shoulder allowing her daughter’s tears to crater the earth, a day of tears eroding her soul; calamity breathes well and brandishes a thousand years to live. Purging agonies with painkillers, she is an experienced hemorrhager, dilating her essence, releasing her life gripping clamps, allowing mother earth to absorb her still born, gripping moments, blessing earth mother to drink her child a shrine.

Surreptitiously, behind the black wall universe that is invisible because it is infested with infinitesimal little holes, mother’s soul breathes exculpation, “I never left you, I was mortally wounded but I never left you.” Her path lighted by beautiful daughter’s longings; stringing fabrics from universe, knotting with her precious long fingers, urging with boils caused by a universe that is so huge that it makes everything that composes it small, for what boils in the universe is the absence of friction, our inalienable distance from each other, absence from her child, and the fear that her child, missing mutual friction, is feeling deserted boils her loyalties and boils the universe; and boiling mother weaves a net to trap life’s essence so as to rejoin with her despairing daughter; once she tried, twice she tried, in both daughter miscarried mother.

The earth is mute to spiritual mother’s cries, the universe a hostage listener to her gentle sufferings, “I never left you my child, I am still trying to reach again your company and warmth my dear daughter, nearer to your heart. Oh but I have felt your pulse, I have drank your blood, twice, twice no less, as once you drank mine. I am sworn to disobedience and manifests to break universal law, that a child may not born her mother. I never left you. I weave, tempting all agonies, to return to thee my child, but every plan works right up to its beginnings.”

TRILOGY PREGNANCIES

2006-08-31T11:22:00.000-07:00

Omnibeing philosophizes…

The metaphysical does not allow for the exclusivity of love, there are metaphysical pregnancies, metaphysical relationships, and cosmic orgies, souls that are in us all, loving us and extending our beings, some souls are identical to us, when we come together it is an expansion of self, others are unique in the manner of the clouds, we can drift with them, touching them but never quite grasping their essence. When souls enter the carnal they recognize those that they have danced with, they recognize some kissers as sisters, and others as friends, but the height of all love is sensual love, the love a soul feels for souls, and the universe is inundated with bosoms sensuality, the fundamental particle, the sensual forgets exclusivity. It is a fabric that is born of many souls, when you love the cosmic you are in love with humanity; Buddha was the first quantum physicist.

Black walls passing atomic pebbles, our universe is full of tiny holes, so many and so tiny that you can not see their circumference with an electron tunneling microscope, and these atomic pebbles pass in and out of these tiny wholes, creating dimensions, and as they accomplish this you can see coronas flashing into another atomic pebble, pebbles but none of the pebbles know that they are not the other, they all think they are the same tiny pebble, going back and forth through these universal black wall full of tiny holes, with no visible perimeter, and flashing a tiny pebble into another part of the universe, because it does not know that it is not there and more because it feels that it is there.

You can feel the same thing with your cat, when you find each other, you know something about your cat and your cat knows something about you that you do not know about each other, but that bonds you together, as if you had never been apart and not known each other; and it is what you both know within yourselves, which you can not communicate to one another, that allows you to feel and know each other. The same thing happens between the little pebbles that seem to move through the universal black wall full of tiny seemingly circumferenceless holes.

Sometimes souls can not consummate because they are too metaphysical, they inhabit an astral moon that makes them more like ephemeral clouds, full of form and symptoms but impossible to grasp and flash; flash is important here, it is a flash that allows you to feel another that is your twin, your soul mate is a flash of you, you don’t know that your soul mate is a flash of you which serves to create distance and perception; you perceive that the universe is bigger than you are because you don’t know that you flash it into existence, and that all the matter in the universe has been flashed by you, and continues to be flash, which creates the reflection of yourself that you see as universe, and another, and another, and this is because there are those tiny so very tiny holes that you have to get through, and brilliantly you accomplish this without splitting, yet without touching their perimeter, and now you see how at any given time you could be giving flash birth to another you within another soul that is willing so, because of the affinity that you share in our star dust orgy.

The metaphysical does not suffer the exclusivity of the terrestrial! There are trilogy pregnancies happening on earth at the rate of one every three minutes; and sometimes only one soul is aware, sometimes only two souls are aware, it is rarest that three souls are aware. Then there are odd times when pregnancies represent a separation, a moving away from, and you feel an entity being born of another to another, and not of you or with you, so that you do not know them, and when that eventuates you feel a cold night pass through your body, and all your cells contract and lose touch with one another, and then you disappear from...
...from the clouds

SHAMAN

2006-08-31T11:21:00.000-07:00

I was laying on the floor the aches would not disappear, my legs, my throat, my ears, my muscles, my head everything within me was hurting boils, steam from every pore, coldness immersed in all of my flesh, my eyes bloodshot, I rested no sleep, spent my cries fully, exasperated but too young to understand the nature of my pains. It just hurt all over, on the floor, next to the bed where my parents laid listening to every agonizing cry, and the rush of endless pain upon me, sautéed onions heated on top of newspaper on me belly, pure onion juice to swallow, lime drops on my eyes, a penny on my forehead. I was cured.

Dad had taken me to every doctor in the city, we lived in Bogota, the capitol, the capitol of any country surely ought have the finest doctors. But with his dying child by the hand, Dad covered the entire city in search of a cure for his agonizing son. Everywhere he went the doctors could see that there was something very wrong with me, I was close to death, they had all been able to make that diagnosis; they did not need to tell my father that but they told him anyway. It was a way of proving that they were experts in their field, “Your son is dying.” I did not really hear what they were saying but the look that father gave me was long in grief and slung a heavy burden; I knew that I was the one sick, I had to guess that they were not telling him that he was going to die. But while the doctors were impressive at diagnosing death, inevitable death, impeding death, death of the kind that orphans a father, they were unable to prescribe a cure for inevitable death. There is something vindicating in that, a doctor can only cure what is incurable, what is not curable will kill you that is not the doctors fault.

But my father was not a doctor, he was the Manager of Operations for Phillips of Colombia. He could buy solutions, he had a panel of experts to solve his problems; only mine was not a problem that he could bring to the Executive Committee and expect a solution. Dad took me home where I continued to religiously pray with my pains, wild thundering screams announcing the precise location of every ache, almost saying “Here is where you can not cure Father? Here is where your son is dying.” Dad would lay next to me and try to comfort me, to give me inspiration to say that it was all temporary, but if it was so temporary, and not so serious why were we going to all those experts? Even a Psychiatrist; my dad took me to a Shrink, dad thought that if the medical doctors could not find what was wrong with me that there had to be something wrong with my brain. And there was something wrong with my brain, a brain is not suppose to feel pain! A brain doesn’t even have pain sensors, you see when you are thinking you can not feel pain! That is why all the great thinkers are so indifferent and so insensitive and so utopia! My brain was hemorrhaging pain, if the insensitive scientists are not just making an excuse for themselves, and there are indeed no pain sensors in the brain well I did not know it, and I did not know it because I could not think it and I could not think it because I was suffering in pain!

Am in this room, very nice place, red blue pillows, a couch, a couple of armchairs, lots of light coming in thought skylights, shiny wooden floor, and there are lots of children’s books, lots of colors, funny faces, cartoons, everything a sort of distorted form of reality, one reality was orange, another was apricot, some realities never made it beyond crayons, but all of them were playing with me, trying to get my attention, trying to get me to come out, to reach to them and touch them and give them life and perhaps I would become real while reaching the enticing process. I picked up a rabbit, a large stuffed rabbit and I started to toss it around, against the couch he flew, against the wall, then I sat with him and we chatted a bit, I told him about the time that I wanted to have sex with a cat; hey, I was a little kid I did not know then that it wasn’t ok to have sex with cats. It’s true, I even told the cat that I wanted to have sex with it, the cat just walked away from me like if I hadn’t said anything, I haven’t liked cats since. Anyway pretty soon I get tired of talking to Rabbit, he was not like a great conversationalists, he just kept ON this goofy smile as if everything that I said was funny and it wasn’t, so I got kind of disenchanted with the enchanting Rabbit, so feeling the hardwood floor with my skeleton motivated me to place Rabbit underneath my Butt and he was a much nicer seat cushion than he was a Rabbit or a friend.

A nice lady came through the door, smiling a lot like Rabbit, oh no another seat cushion; the lady had an old haircut style by today’s standards, but back then I was about eight so she had an excuse. She wore a lot of makeup which made her look pretty but she might have been pretty underneath the makeup too. My parents briefly entered the room but only so as to let me know that she was somehow with them and that she was ok, then they left us alone. I suddenly felt as if I was being watched from before, as if the entire time that I had been playing with Rabbit this lady had been observing me, and my parents too, they were watching. It was a weird feeling but I did not let the lady know that that was what I was feeling, somehow I did not want to make her feel uncomfortable.

She took out a couple of puzzles, one was of a boat in a large Ocean. The puzzles were all very big in comparison to a kid, but the pieces were few, so one large puzzle was only seven or twelve pieces broken. The lady, after telling me that I was a nice boy, shuffled the puzzle and told me to put it back together again. I tried to puzzle the Ocean together, and the ship, but to be fair to me, Bogota was in the middle of the Andes mountains, Bogota was surrounded with these earth beasts rising magnificently over a basin, and in this basin was Bogota; above sea level eight-thousand-six-hundred feet plus of flatness and still surrounded by ascending Andean mountains; Colombians did not know what to do with these mountains so on top of one they placed a cross, on top of another they placed the Virgin Mary, and on the Third, Mt. Monserrate, they placed a Church with Christ Lord bleeding in a glass case. Colombians, sinners and sickly, pilgrimage up the mountain to visit the agonizing Christ in the glass cage, and he makes them walk again and talk again and listen again, and forgives them again. The place was littered with useless crutches, braces, blind canes, etc…The priest in charged of the place did not bother to remove the litter but they did remove the coins that were left behind. But Dad and I never took that climb probably because my growing pains would not have survived it; I could not reach Christ our healer and savior. But what I was telling you is that I had not seen the ocean, much less a ship that could carry all those people, so putting the Ocean and Boat puzzle together was not possible, lack of a real frame of reference. The nice lady proposed that I look at the picture on the box for comparison, the box was smaller than the puzzle, the pieces did not come out of the box put together, the lady of course did not hear any of my thoughts, I merely suggested that I did not know what to do with the pieces, I just let them lay there. The Shrink Lady then takes the pieces and starts putting the puzzle together all the while asking for my assistance. I only touch the pieces, and she smiles like she is happy that I did that, unfortunately instead of seeing this as positive reinforcement I am puzzled “Why is she so happy?” “Why is she enjoying putting the pieces in the puzzle so much?” …. .”Am I missing the fun here because this is hurting my brain.”

Anyway she got another puzzle; a fish, that is all that was there a fish, we did not eat fish at home, we ate meat, my Dad loved meat and so we ate a lot of meat. I remember when we would go to our farm, and there the farm hands would kill themselves a cow, and then we would barbecue the whole thing over a fire, everyone taking turns turning the wheel that made the cow rotate over the fire; and when it was done we ate the tastiest meat imaginable. Fish, I had fish once, in a restaurant downtown near the presidential palace, the fish was dead and golden gold-like, and the whole head and tail was present on my plate. I did not think much of it, nor found it tasty either, it seemed strange to eat something that had more bones in it than meat, I had to cough out a few spines, and the eye would stare at me, and the head looked decapitated or fake, and I just did not like fish. I never complained about the fish but I still think that it is wrong to bring such a thing that far and high inland. Asphyxiated fish just don’t keep. But even that experience was not enough to help me put together a puzzled fish.

Nice lady put all the puzzles together herself and left me to watch them as barriers to my understanding. Then a few minutes later both her and my parents walked into the room and I felt something uneasy about the whole affair, maybe they had caught me talking to my invisible friends, anyway the nice lady told me again what a nice boy I was and then told my parents the same thing which I sort of took as a claim for normalcy. No more puzzles.

The pains continued, the doctors continued to not know what they did not know, one made a valiant attempt to find a cause by telling dad that I was suffering growing pains, I was growing faster than my anatomy could cultivate, your kid is outgrowing himself, or more precisely unusual, “your son has a procrustean body.” Dad would not say anything bad to the doctors, he would just reply “Thank you Doctor. Thank you very much Doctor.” Your son is going to die. “Thank you Doctor.” But as soon as we left the hospital dad would go off, telling me how stupid those doctors were, how they did not know anything, how they and the entire medical establishment were just a bunch of know nothings that were just out to make money, and didn’t care who they hurt in the process. And Dad has stories to prove his point, plenty of friends had gone to their death soon after visiting Hospitals and Doctors.

But one of those know nothings told Dad that he could cure my brain, ear and throat aches by taking my tonsils out, Dad agreed. At least he was trying something. I went into the hospital, where they promised me a lot of Jell-O and ice cream after the operation. I did not like ice cream, I did not like sweets, I did not like Jell-O never have liked anything with sugar. My father would buy us sugar canes, the real thing, and we would lick and bite the cane but I only did it to please dad. Now as for Jell-O, I did not like the texture, it felt like plastic, it was indeed a polymer of some kind, Jell-O progenitor to plastic. But everyone around me was so happy that I was going to get to eat ice cream and Jell-O, why some of the nurses were envious, “Oh you are so lucky you are going to get lots of Jell-O.” I got out of the operating room, tonsils gone. Doctor says that the tonsils don’t really do anything, oh they are suppose to guard against inconsequential infections perhaps, but tonsils don’t really do much of anything. The things really look big for something that doesn’t do anything and there are two of them. Yeah here is God saying: “Let there be two tonsils because one of nothing is not enough.” But I get out of that operating room and they place me in a room with a guy that has been shot across the chest, still talking, he tries to explain to me what happened to him, but I am to busy swallowing all the blood that the tonsils do not need, and still feeling all the other pains only now I felt even worse. Good idea Dad.

I went home, and get this not once during my recovery in the hospital did they offer me or give an ounce of Jell-O, maybe they were billing my parents for it, “a thousand pounds of Jell-O were fed to your kid on such and such a date.” I don’t know why but I never got any! And when I got home I was so sick of Jell-O that when mom offer it to me I kept on telling her that I had eaten so much of it at the hospital that I never wanted any ever! I think about it, that may well be why Mom never questioned the hospital bill. A bunch of crooks. But with my tonsils out the pains persisted, even the growing pains persisted, tonsils don’t only do nothing they cure nothing when you get rid of them, makes sense to me now, if they doctors say that tonsils don’t do anything, then the net effect of removing them equals nothing, except for the bill of course. A bunch of crooks.

But the tonsils are there for a reason, god does not play dice with your tonsils, they are there to guard against evil spirits that want to possess your body. Tonsils are metaphysical body parts, glands that act to defend your soul. Of course the doctors could not know this because spirits can not be measured; so within weeks of having my tonsils removed, the guardians of my soul, the mean spirit of a dentist took possession of my body. And no, the pain did not go away it just kept on getting worse and worse as would be logically expected once you get possessed by a dentist. Sreecks! But no cavities.

It was after realizing that I was not going to get better that Dad begun to experiment with alternative medicines. Homoeopathy was the first option, it looked like a drug, safely close enough to credited medicine, but it wasn’t a drug or a traditional cure. Traditional medicine is antagonistic towards the ailment. Doctors treat cancer or AIDS by attacking your body and suspecting that it will take longer for you to die than it will take to kill all other rotten things inside of you, you will survive but not because your doctor wasn’t trying to kill you. Homoeopathy is not antagonistic towards what ails you it is more like what ails you, similia similibus curantur, someone in Germany had deduced the cure to all ills via this strange digesting of infinitesimally small quantities of what ever is ailing the body, shaken in water solutions in just such a way, minimized to insignificance, and then digested in the form of mostly tasteless pills, take a million of them and they can not kill you. They are non toxic, they are natural, these pills cure everything, stress, diarrhea, chronic fatigue, malaria, toxic shock syndrome, whatever that is; and all it is, all these tiny pills are, is just the smallest constituency of the cause of your illness. Maybe the illness tries to match the tiny size of its smallest constituency, an illness trying to be like less of itself never goes away but it most certainly stops expressing a host death wish. You take the homeopathic pills and walla you are cured. Why it works, who knows. The quackery did not work on me.

Then we tried the herbs, I drank a lot of teas from China, I used to like Tea in Ming China, but Colombia hosts the best chocolate in the world and the best cafe in the world, I adored my hot chocolate con queso. But not tea, and when the tea medication did not work Dad switched me to mushrooms, not sacred mushrooms, big Portabella mushrooms, maybe not portabella either, but big liquefied fungi, and drink it me would. Lots of nice smelling herbs from India and from the Amazon, you could just see peasants, numbering in the hundreds, picking these plants one by one just so they could be delivered to Bogota to save me. Lots of herbs made it into my nasal passages and down my throat. Oh Dad was sure that there was a plant to be found that would cure my ills, I had not the heart to tell him that it wasn’t on earth.

But Dad was no quitter on the quest to save his son my dad did it all. Finally he just searched deep inside of himself and became a Shaman. Dad did not have time for the slow process of scientific discovery, his son was dying fast, the silly stuffed Rabbit had the potential to outlive me, so Dad gazed at me with tender concerns over his feverish little boy, and he placed a penny on my forehead and these sizzling onions on top of a newspaper laid upon me exposed belly; and fed me some onion juice, not from concentrate, adding a few drops of lime to my eyes, ouch! And cured me. I have never been really ill since, and I still like onions. And ever since those days, Dad has been curing ills as the Shaman that he became because he could not wait for Science.

FAKE CHINA CABINETS

2006-08-31T11:19:00.000-07:00

People still got rich back in those days, young hard working men would go out into the world with pennies in their pockets, and never pausing but for quick sleeps would rise with thousands in their wallets. It was hard work then, it is hard work now to get rich and only a few ever get there too; never as many as it is advertised today, lots of people back then just did not have the publicity making magazines of today, these publications now have to find people that are doing great things and in a hurry make big bucks, back then you got your money and your big house and big friends too, it is hard to stay humble when you are rich, Dad would always say, “Only the poor can afford to be humble.” Dad was humble.

We lived in what was called a track house, called that later but it was before that, we sort of lived on the first suburbs, but also before that was called that. I am trying to give you an idea of the time based on what I remember and I remember very little. The houses were all white and all had the same architectural style, flat square, efficiency built in, though no architect had done them. Back then architects only designed big and important things, track housing back then did not require such expertise. When I compare neighborhoods today which are all the same even down to the plants and cats, back then it was grass and dogs, I sense that we have come a long way from those days, people care more about the look and feel of their track housing, they almost look rich now, of course many of them today are just like us back then, barely making the mortgage at the top of their spending curve, maximizing their responsibilities just to have enough, but their houses sure look prettier, and they even have gates for protection. You have to call the guard up to let your friends in, in the old days it was the rich people that had gates, but now the rich people have money gates, you can’t get into their neighborhoods without a million dollars, no gates though. Regular folk now have gates because they live in dangerous communities, but still kind of sophisticated to have a gate with a guard.

The neighbors were just like us only different enough so that none of us would think that we were like the others, Mama would say things about this or that neighbor and Dad would say, “That is just how those people are Maryann.” And he would butter his white bread and eat it cold just the same.

Dad was a sort of entrepreneur, just when all those big housing projects were kicking off Dad was picking up loads of work as he was equally fading off in years. Things were going good, Dad did something in construction to the houses, I don’t really know what, I never worried about money or payments, I just went to school, rode my bike and fixed a lot flat tires. Dad worked four or five other men that kept on coming over to the house for supper and beer and card games that would go profanely into the night. I slept a good sleep, I never felt attacked by anyone or much afraid of anything, everyone was mostly solid, there were not a lot of people doubting who or what they were such as there is today. We knew who we were so much so we never bothered to ask “Who am I?” “What am I doing here?” When you live in a place that is very much the same from end to end, where everyone is eating the same foods and drinking the same beer, smoking the same cigarettes, and they all pretty much look and talk the same; well when you live in place like that you don’t have to ask any questions, things are very clear.

I was a growing boy in all that certainty, a bit naive I admit but we were all naïve, we sort of just knew us and work, and while there were some perversions they were rarely worked out; the neighbor’s wife gave me the eye but neither of us had the courage to act out that act. We got a TV, which was grand indeed even in black and white. All those great shades of gray photographers that refuse to adopt color were raised on black and white. Actually we did not watch much television because Dad still preferred to listen to the radio, so my sister and I sat next to him, listening to breathing voices while mom would knit us cotton-wool blankets.

Life was good but for one night when Joe came to our house with some men; they came storming into our house breaking down the door, and standing in our living room barking Dad to come out: “Henry, you son of a bitch! you’ve been doing some dirty work haven’t you!” Anger stuttering and jumbling Joe’s voice, “Come, come out now here Henry!” He did not really need to urge my Dad to come out, my father was not a menacing fellow, but he was not afraid of anyone either; Dad had awakened and hastened into the living room to figure out what the hell was going on, just as had Mom and my tomboy sister and me. We were all there, standing, wearing our pajamas kind of like we did not know what was happening.

Joe was sort of the leader of many of the work projects that were given to my Dad, Joe would pay my Dad to do work on these projects, but Dad was a contractor supposedly free to work on other construction sites, only there was hard won competition for the building projects, not because there were a lot of people competing but because there were a couple three guys that wanted all the work that was to be had. Joe was one of those guys; he paid bribe money to get projects, sometimes he would bribe his competition to stay out of a bid, even though they could not have done the work if they had gotten it, other times he had to buy their laborers to finish a job that was more than could be handle by his work hands; and there were times when they just had to take a guy out back to close a deal. And so there were many crooked feuds and many regulatory violations to make the money that was saved on the bidding process. And since Joe gave my Dad a lot of work he did not want my Dad working for the bigger guys on the other side.

“I told you Henry not to work for those assholes but you been doing some work for them haven’t you!!” “….answer me Henry!!” Dad did not try to deny it, he gestured with his hands pleading for obvious understandings, “Joe I had to do some extra work to keep my boys busy, they have families, I have family you know that Joe, and times aren’t always going to be good.” Dad was not even angry that Joe had broken down our door, he was just trying to explain why it ought be ok for him to work for the other guys, Dad was always reasonable like that. Joe came back “Henry you know how damn hard those guys make it on us, you know how they steal our business, I work hard! my boys work hard! we have to keep the business somehow and you are not helping!” Then Joe moved himself over to the nice glass windows that we had and crow bar stroke them into shattering. Dad did not move, the family always did what Dad did, we did not move. Joe moved over to another window and struck it to pieces too. And then he walked over to Mom’s China cabinet, her fake joy adorned of unleaded crystals, and Joe said to Dad “We are all working hard Henry. Here we all work hard Henry, we need to STICK together you just can’t be thinking of just your family, you have to think of us too.” Stroking shatterings!

For a moment I thought Joe made sense, thinking about community and not just our family but my philosophizing ended quickly for when Joe broke Mom’s China cabinet Dad broke with tradition, he went wild and trounced upon Joe like I’ve never seen him fray before. The boys just stood by watching my Dad punch Joe and Joe would try to defend himself and punch back but my Dad was now more angry, more angry, and finally Joe just had to succumb to my Dad as he sat on his chest and punched poor Joe till his ugly face was blood swamp. Then Dad looked at Mom, who was tearing with pride, and let Joe go.

Joe managed painfully up and, pointing his finger, muffled uttering… “Henry you gotta stop doing work for those guys, it is just not right, don’t do anymore work for those guys.” Dad said nothing back. Joe and the boys walked out.

The following week, on schedule, Joe and the boys came over for the usual drinks and card game; I overheard Joe complaining that Dad was winning too much, “…maybe you are hiding a Queen Henry?” And that is all I remember.

RAPID FIRE LOVE

2006-08-31T11:18:00.000-07:00

I opened the refrigerator door, old plastic containers brewing mean waste, a pizza box that was weeks old, bottles of mustard, ketchup, chiu chili oil, all filled only to the base of their bottom, all awaiting that day when either Lola or I would throw them away. We were a messy couple, the dirty clothes were awaiting the same thing though dirty clothes have a limit to how long they will wait to be washed, eventually they nest pincer bugs and worms to eat them away. Amidst all of the cryogenically maintained foods from our gastronomical history on the main shelf lay a Dead Goose, a dead Goose. A Starch White Goose!

I yelled at Lola who was in the other room, wasting away in anger, we had yet brewed another argument, they were getting easier to repeat by the day, “What is this feathered Goose doing in our refrigerator?”

Lola scurrile yelled back rancorously scratching her voice as she did, “I am going to cook Goose on Saturday, Victoria and Robert are coming over for dinner I don’t care if you are there!”

She really did not need to add that last comment, I would be there, we had not called off our irritating relationship, we were still a couple, and she was still a terrible cook, which made me more curious about Goose and Saturday. Victoria and Robert were two of our funkiest friends, Opera buffs, connoisseurs of expensive wines, dinner at their house was always an exquisite perfection, it was dangerous to cook for them, it was dangerous to go out to dinner with them, Victoria was known to make chefs and waiters squirm, male emasculation to her was a liberal practice. Robert was a nice guy, how he ended up with such a bitch is an unknown, and now as a couple they are incubators for everyone else’s bad luck.

Seeing Goose in the refrigerator made me forget my anger and instead remember why I had fallen in love with Lola, she was an enervating nerve ending at the bottom of her own sole, walking around disguised as a woman, every second dying to explode. Such reckless passion was a formidable attraction for a man such as I that spends most of his life planning and never executing the infinite number of master plans that were always on the verge of being perfected. Lola had but only one plan, to have a nervous break down, to be dangerous, to be sick, to have a massive illness nasty down on her depressions; it was like cohabiting with The Cold War, at any second the world would explode, you were her hostage, but most wonderfully amazing it was that, while Lola was Neutron Bomb Lola, it was me that was the Atomic trigger; Lola was set to go off, yes, but it would be my fault if she went off. And I don’t need to tell you how insensitive we men are, we are very insensitive. The cold war got colder, no intimacy.

There were many times that I avoided going home just to shelter my emotions, exoskeleton building activities, my hands to my head, a Martini calling my name, an olive distastefully asking me to eat it, I was in love with Bombay Gin, I took the olive out and threw it at a man that must have thought I was crazy like Lola and not crazy because of Lola. I don’t know if you can love your captor, there have been many cases of male prisoners falling in love with their guard-women, but you don’t have to swim too far to figure out why a prisoner might find a female or for that matter male guard attractive, love is an escape art; but Lola had me hostage to her rollercoaster, and besides that it was all my fault.

Lola was The Scream in my life, I never had to yell at anyone, Lola was able to tell everyone off in any furious direction so that we would all repel each other. Now Lola was not a phenomenally attractive woman, she was pretty in her own way but not pretty. Still I held it to be true that an applied force creates an equal and opposite force, Lola, by fatally repelling the world was causing an equally fatal attraction towards herself. I did not know why I was still with her it had to be this force thing or maybe Goose on Saturday sounded good.

I went to work, I was managing a restaurant, it was a temporary job until I perfected one of my master plans, everyone could see that I did not belong there, true they all thought that they did not belong there either, but there was something special about me, I had a master plan. Restaurant work is the best, everyone in restaurants knows they are losers, you will not catch then telling you “Yes this is what I have always wanted to be.” Bankers, brokers, doctors, lawyers they all act like they are doing what they want to be doing, but restaurant workers never. And there is something humbling about working for tips in an obvious manner, brokers work for tips too, so do politicians and salesmen, technically everyone does, but restaurant workers beg for their tips. “Can I take your order please.” Translates to, “Can I take your insults please.” Or “Let me feel you superior while you chow down our grub." I was the restaurant manager, which means that I was the most overworked and underpaid of all the employees.

But being the manager had its privileges, I could account for most of the money at the end of the day, I could fuck with peoples schedules so as to make them love me or hate me, I could give away free dinners to all of my friends, though Victoria and Robert would never be seen at my restaurant. And there were terrible sides to it too, missing cooks had to be replaced by me, I was a terrible cook, I would swash and scramble things around to make them look sophisticated and different and customers never complained about my cooking because it looked so unique that they did not know if they were suppose to like it or not.

The worst thing about restaurant work is cleaning restrooms and doing the freezer inventory. If there is any evidence of how backward our civilization is, it’s in the fact that we have to clean restrooms, humans originally roamed in the wild and did their shit wherever they might happen to be, so it is difficult for these roaming assholes to get their shit and urine right into toilets and urinals, they miss all the time, it is amazing how inaccurate they can be even as they try; and then there are those that do not want to get it right, instead they want to send a DNA message through every other asshole that sits on that particular toilet. One day you walk into the restroom and before you is an industrial size sculpture that someone has managed to erupt, magnificent in its repugnance and you have to clean it up, and you have to clean it up, that is the horror!

And then there is freezer inventory. You have to go inside of this huge freezer, which has an axe inside just in case you get locked in, not very encouraging, and then you have to count all the roast beef, all the pork butts, all the honeyed ham, all the sausages, all the prime rib, and you know when meat is deep frozen like that it looks scary, blotchy red and fat and purple cold and it hurts you so much to touch it that you want to take an axe to it; only it is so damn solid it is only going to hurt you more, so you don’t, and instead witness your frustrated breath belching out so as to keep you warm but it is really making you much colder, and then there are the sauces and salads and dairy products, and by the time you finish your freezer and cooler inventory the last thing you want to do is be around food and well, there you are.

On this day however there was no freezer inventory, no big bosses coming around to prove their existence, no ordering to be done, and it was a slow traffic day, few customers all very nice and quiet. I sat at the bar, our most profitable center and chatted with Geoff our most intellectual bartender. Geoff was not just an intellectual he was also a superb athletic masterpiece. He participated in He-Man events like triathlons, Alpine bike races, that sort of thing. One day, while lighting the restaurant’s glass fireplace, an action that required one to lean forward, bend the knees, and slightly twist one’s torso while searching upwards with one’s head, our Geoff almost fell into the blaze that he had started; fortunately he managed to recover himself instead turning the incident into a back injury.

But it was not all just back pain for there was pride to be had from the incident, Geoff, explaining to me the complexities of a highly tuned muscular body, paraphrasing words spoken by his doctor noted, “An average torso under the same situation would have collapsed and suffered little injury but because my torso is muscularly highly tuned the muscles overreacted, sensing perilous disaster they quickly exerted reflexive reactions to recover and caused a differential straining disengagement from the left side of my lower back to the right side, which in the process tore some ligaments.”

In other words his body was too sophisticated, geared to respond to severe situations such as ever perilous mountain climbing, it overreacted and ripped itself apart in the recovery process. The distance one places between averageness and one’s self is not without its dangers.

Geoff was always teaching me wholly useless things like that, there was for instance a time when someone was stealing money from our cash register and Geoff argued that, “…management can be sued for making it too easy to access the cash register.” Yes, Geoff believed that to cause temptation was a crime.

That is how we chatted away the infamies and consulted each other on how to best handle this or that piece of gossip, person or situation. Geoff’s final advice on any of my predicaments was always good and equally untenable, He would lean into me whispering the final solution, “Well if he bugs you so much I tell you what we can do, tonight you and I follow him home and kill him.” While I never took him up on the offer the truth was that there had been many managers and many servers that had come and gone, but Geoff had been here for eons.

So while drinking my Martini along come these two women, both a bit average in their own very different way, and we sort of make conversation with them and for some strange reason I find myself unusually attracted to the uglier one of the two. Maybe I wasn’t feeling lucky, maybe I just want it a sure shot, maybe we were soul mates, I doubt all of those reasons, all I know is that for some strange reason I really liked her, her name was Carrie.

Carrie and I strolled outside through a dark night, lots of tourists everywhere, but we went to a balcony that was unseen by most and talked about petty things. Carrie had a child but she was not dating anyone, and to be truthful I don’t know if I was dating Lola, we were abstinent lovers, twirling knifes at each other and not as members of a circus, one of us ought end dead; I did not molest myself with explaining my relationship with Lola to Carrie, she did not ask about it, it wasn’t like Carrie and I were really sexually attracted towards each other, I sensed that we were just feeling like the emptiness was ours to share, so Carrie and I ended up kissing each other but only once. Again it wasn’t like we were dying to do that, it just happened that way and it tasted like a perfect pot sticker. Then we parted company and we didn’t even bother to exchange phone numbers.

I get back home very late, past midnight, and Lola is, naked, sitting on the bed crying naked, she had been nurturing into existence many tears, she was now a marathon weeping body, a bath of tears was not unusual, I was into spiritual crying myself, occasionally once every six months I would just cry for no reason at all, hey that is good for you, you don’t have to know why, I don’t have to know why. I asked her if she was OK, holding back possible guilt while wondering if someone had seen me with Carrie and called her.

“Lola, what’s wrong honey?”

She began to cry more ambitiously and holding her hands to her face spoke: “I can’t cook the Goose…” her breaking voice, “…I can’t cook the Goose.”

I said, “Is there something wrong with Goose?”

She was way to busy crying so I went to the refrigerator opened the door, the light from within flooded the darkness outside, and I looked at Goose and while he was dead, he looked ok to me. I went back into the bedroom thinking maybe Lola was put off because of her very unrealistic cooking talents, or maybe Victoria had wanted to avoid the entire evening and had called to cancel as was her usual manner.

“Honey, what is wrong?”

She got a little quiet, intermittently sobbing, and responded, “I can’t cook Goose he’s an Aries.”

My eyes dashed to the ceiling to see what I was missing, oh dear me and she repeated herself, “Our Goose is an Aries I can’t cook a Goose that is the same sign as you are.”

Well there you go she did love me, the damn Goose was an Aries, I was an Aries… “But honey that doesn’t matter…” She interrupts me…

“You’re so insensitive sure it matters, I don’t want to eat a dead Goose that is the same sign as you are that is like killing and eating you… but I bet that if the Goose was a Libra like me that you wouldn’t care and you would eat it anyway…” sobs.

“But Lola honey please, how do you know it is an Aries maybe it is something else?”

“No, no, I know, I called the Goose Man who sold it to me he knows a lot about Astrology and we counted back to Goose’s hatching days and he is definitely an Aries.”

So come to find out that this guy is so fanatic about horoscopes that he has a preference for Geese that are born Taurus and Aries and Leos and the one he sold us happens to be an Aries and he won’t take it back, he can’t exchange meat, so we can’t get a Goose that is at least a Leo which neither one of us are.

At some point in the night, not as concerned with Goose as Lola was, I was able to sleep while she stayed awake staring at my abominable insensitivity. The next morning Lola went to work and I took Goose out of the refrigerator just so that I could look at a fellow Aries that was now dead. He was a good looking Goose, oh you just have to imagine how many places he visited, how many fishes he ate, how many little Gooses were running around with his DNA, but then all imagination fades when you find out he was raised in captivity. Hard to keep us Rams in captivity sooner better dead. I talked to Goose thinking maybe we could change his sign somehow, I even called the Goose Man to see if he would cooperate but he was too ethical to try to deceive Lola and recalculate the hatched date of my fellow Goose.

I went to work counting that we ought cancel Saturday’s dinner, counting that maybe we ought substitute Goose for Chicken Salad or Pasta Primavera, and I drank away wishing that Carrie the woman that I kissed once, would show up and drive away with me. This was Wednesday. The same thing happened on Thursday and Friday and Goose was still dead in our refrigerator.

Saturday morning, Lola was sleeping late I went for coffee and to read the headlines, revolutions and murders were priming themselves everywhere, I tossed the paper aside and just tasted my coffee, don’t ask me why but coffee started to taste like a kiss, and I begun to suck kiss my coffee and the heat was moisturizing my lips, and it just felt better than that pot sticker kiss from Carrie but remembering Carrie I just wanted to kiss her again too, maybe so as to accentuate the difference between coffee and pot sticker kisses. While trying to perform that imaginative trick, kissing away every sip of my tongue licking coffee just to ascertaining why pot stickers could taste like a kiss and a kiss like a pot sticker, mushy, semi indifferent, you are going to eat me, you are going to kiss me, I don’t really mind if you want to kiss me, I sort of want you to kiss me too, and I shall well follow the perfunctory actions that are required here, move my lips, my tongue, attempt to feel sensual about the moment when in reality, I just really like you and don’t really need to kiss you.

I Am there thinking all this out, still preferring a kiss from my coffee when a voice at another table interrupts me. “Hey, hey aren’t you the guy that was with Carrie the other night?”

I turn and act as surprised as I was, which was a lot, “Yeah, how are you?”

And without responding she rushes to my table, grabs herself a seat and wobbled on it as if she could not sit still, “Did you hear what happened to Carrie? did you hear?”

I frowned creating a labyrinth of doubtful looks, “No, what is it, is she ok?”

“Well, after she left you that night she was driving a bit drunk as you know, going home and lost control of the car, off into a ravine she went, they did not spot the car till morning; she bled to death.”

Without waiting for my response she followed that with, “I am sorry I have to get going now, bye.”

I went home, despondently wishing the whole earth to end my kiss of death.

When I got home, Goose was already in the oven, baking at 380 degrees, its hotter in the center of the Sun, colder in the North Pole, Lola came to welcome me at the door, looked like she had been cleaning for Queen Victoria’s arrival, I hugged her, she embraced me and gave me a big smile, “its going to be a great dinner you will see.”

I kissed her and went into the room to shower and change. Aries Goose was smelling up the place. Lola was playing some lively tunes and had drawn aside all the curtains so Sun could shine on our happiness. Coming out of the shower Lola greeted me with a towel in hand even helped me to dry my back and said, “You know I think with the leftovers from Goose I am going to be able to make you a wonderful Goose soup too.”

I thought at that point of asking how she had resolved baking my fellow Aries but I did not want to deal with the possible outbreak, I anointed the soup idea.

Both Victoria and Robert were their usually properly boring selves, we discussed all the latest movies, Victoria listing in detail which directors had done what and noting their individual styles and backgrounds, she was the equivalent of a Baseball fan, oh but she hated sports for they were so inane; baseball card collectors were not as sophisticated as movie buffs.

Robert had a butterfly collection, he talked about that, there is a name for butterfly collectors, I don’t remember it, same as stamp collectors. I had always been fascinated by butterflies that did not have to eat their entire lives, to only fly and then to die, no Goose meals in-between. Robert did not seem to know which particular butterfly I was talking about, maybe it didn’t exist, we talked instead how lots of these butterflies only live a few days, hours, whatever. How long do you really need to live to watch the same old Sun and the same old Moon avoid each other? I do admit to being enamored with Monarch butterflies that fly from Mexico to California, most welcome migrants that flourish the tourist trade, there is even a Monarch butterfly parade.

Interrupt, Lola got a little upset when I told her that I could not eat any Goose, my stomach was upset, I wasn’t lying.

Both Robert and Victoria praised the Goose, praised the soup idea, praised Lola; she was ecstatic with joy, and once gone, Lola plummeted into the couch into a ravine sleep.

I called Peter our Chef, it was 11pm. “What are you doing calling me at this hour!”

“I was just wondering what you would think if we added pot stickers to the menu?”

“Pot stickers to the menu? what are you crazy there is nothing in our cuisine that compliments pot stickers, we are not Chinese you idiot, we are a blackened, or mostly not, steak and potato house, all of our customers are over the age of fifty, they don’t like pot stickers, they don’t eat pot stickers, they don’t even know what pot stickers are!”

Peter didn’t like me, he earned a higher salary than I did, he was the Chef. All chefs think of themselves as kings, and they are really miniature kings, rulers of Serfdom Land, every restaurant their castle. Peter the cook ordered me around; he had created an award winning potato dish with a special sauce, someday in the future people would be eating his stupid potato dish out of an instant carton meal box, today he was the only one that knew how to prepare it; it tasted like hollandaise sauce to me, but I don’t know about those things.

Having used up all of my influence with Peter I went to the library and searched pot sticker recipes, a pot sticker is not that complicated of a thing, you wouldn’t imagine it but there are more recipes for these things than there are for hamburgers. I wanted to perfect pot sticker making but I wasn’t a great cook. I decided to meander through the Chinese joints in search of pot stickers.

One week later my boss asked me into his office, bottles of expensive wine everywhere, he fancied himself Bacchus, he was appropriately fat and more a roaring pig than Bacchus may have been. My boss questions me “Peter tells me that you want to add pot stickers to the menu is that true?”

I peevishly respond “Yes…but..”

Boss interference, “…and what is this that you have been leaving early to go into china town? What business do we have in china town? Is your heart in your job? Are things alright at home?”

I was forced to resign, that bastard Peter he never liked me, and the wait staff did not like me either, mostly because I did not do anything, nor did I tell them what to do which people really need, they had complained, to human resources, that I provided no direction; I don’t know how much direction a restaurant requires, specially a steak house, not much you can do with that.

Lola could not believe that I had resigned, I told her that I was working on my master plan, whatever that was but instead I spent my days hunting down the perfect pot sticker. A couple of people directed me to places that they were certain had the perfect pot sticker, but neither place tasted like that kiss of death. Reaching nothing but dead end after dead end, I felt that I was cornered into learning how to make the perfect pot sticker myself. Much to Lola’s consternation I got a job at a Chinese restaurant. There I would spy the methods of the masters, I was the only one that was not Chinese, I was the only one that spoke English, I never tried to correct the spellings on the menu, I always used numbers when ordering and I bowed my head a lot, those simple acts won me their acceptance.

I did the soups, not much to do there, you just add noodles, cabbage, peapods, ginger, celery, onions, etc… …add this add that, boil, add salt, add pepper, boil, and re-boil and you never stop boiling, it is steam room ten hour facial; one after the other cauldron after cauldron, doing my time so that I could get to the perfect pot sticker, thinking… “…one amongst these people must have admission to the divine pot sticker kiss.”

A very old woman, called by some Tzu Hsi a name that meant nothing to me, was remotely the nicest of the group, all the rest really did not want me there but Tzu stood by me with mindful assistance; offering extra spices and extra herbs, occasionally gently urging me with grouchy menace, she would not say anything, she just gave me this very quiet push, her teeth all gone, her lips curling inwardly could not much manifest more than that. I was happy that she sort of took me under her crabby care, and I expressed it by occasionally caressing her shoulder all so marvelously without words or meanings.

One day I was moved to the crab boiling pot, I had boiled all the herbs, vegetables and roots that the land and sea had produced, even done in a lot of shrimp, all boiled in my endless boiling pots. Shrimp are ugly, very ugly, I used to eat them all the time sautéed in garlic buttered cilantro, but once you see them alive and walking, forget it, you become aware of their inedibleness, Geoff used to call them “The cockroaches of the sea.” But my experience qualified me for the higher crustaceans species, Crabs. Those creatures that have one tentacle claw longer than the other, lack of symmetry problems, a formidable right tendency; I don’t know much about crabs, I did not eat crab meat, too much work, and while the whole world seems enamored with crab cakes every recipe I ever saw for those things and crab salads too, used imitation crab. In Spain, home of my most favorite dish, Paella, they serve it with a Crab that serves as garnish. The Crab sits with you throughout your dinner, sitting there on your plate, that is wrong, that is why we South Americans had to break with Spain. Anyway them crabs are just too much work. Boiling them was now my new job. I left the toothless Chinese lady all by herself boiling noodles away.

A very diligent, skinny and energetic fellow took over my charge. He said his name was Fong, I don’t know if that was his first name or his last name, or where in China he was from, he never tried to laugh with me, he never sparked an emotional connection to my being, I was just someone there to help him with the Crabs so he could smoke more cigarettes.

My first lesson was tying the Crab’s very menacing Claw. You get these Crabs, they don’t look deadly, but Fong explains with gestures, sort of saying, “very, very dangerous these claws, you be very but very careful with Crab you hear. Now …grab here, like this, and then clamp claw shut, like this, and then toss the Crab back on top of all the others, so they can be uncomfortable and fully miserable right up until we boil them, ok, ok.”

Life is hard even for crabs. It was for me difficult to make sense out of Fong’s gestures, specially for a fellow as verbal as myself, but I managed, if only through intuition to get the idea, clamp the claw, let the thing live as long as possible before eating, then boil it alive just like a vegetable.

I had heard that Lobsters make a shrieking sound when they are discharged into boiling water, butter, lots of butter eliminates shrieking echoes; but I wasn’t expecting the same from exoskeleton armored Crabs, but I tell you true that those Crabs, all of the ones I tossed into the boiling pots, substantiated a hideous piercing shrieking that brought many an army of Crab nightmares to my dreams. And you just can’t kill them fast enough but you just have to keep on killing them as fast as you can, but you really can’t expect beady eyed crabs to love you, and you can’t expect to out survive them for there are more Crabs than there are people like you, you and I will die before we boil all the Crabs.

It was with this weary knowledge that I followed safety standards and made sure to keep the Crabs at a fair distance while clamping their menacing claw. They would stand on the wet ground, I would bend over and while they were looking intently into my eyes I would grab them from behind and snap the clamp on. Its not like those things can fly, still there were stories of clampers that had fallen victim to the Crabbing menaces before reaching their retirement plans. Jostling his finger at me Fong, threading similarly black beady eyes himself, would motion, “You just better be careful, they are swift and shifty creatures of the sea.”

I had never seen any Crabs running, maybe on the bottom of the sea they could clock a decent kilometer, but here on concrete that exoskeleton could not possibly help them any; I smirked a little at Fong, but he did not move his beady eyes.

Lola was on the verge of leaving me, she wanted me to get a real job, she did not believe Crab Executioner Maximums, at minimum wage per hour had much of a future, so she wasted much effort on trying to get me to quit but I was after a recipe here, so I stuck it out and Lola was boiling to get out of our relationship.

Then one day, I managed to sit during a break next to my dear old Chinese lady, and so I ventured to ask her if she knew a really good recipe for pot stickers. Oh her eyes lit up like a diamond dragon, “Pot stickers!” She knew pot stickers! She was just doing time in this joint because at her age she could not get a job anywhere else, but it was obvious that her vegetable boiling was only a side job, her true and secret talents were her magical pot stickers. I asked her for the recipe but her revolt was absolute, more or less gesturing, “oh no mister, no mister, won’t give my recipe to no one, go to my grave with it, this world isn’t good enough for my pot stickers.”

Behold, I had stumbled upon the divine pot sticker Chef and she was not willing to share her secrets because she thought this world not good enough, and where else might they make pot stickers like hers? Still I understood her, there are things one ought never give away, so I nurtured our relationship very carefully easing here the idea that I needed to have just one, one of her pot stickers. And then one day, Tzu gesturing, “Ok, ok I make for you, but you no tell nobody, you no try to make, you just taste, taste one, one only!” Her cursive finger raised “one, only one!” One kiss. I fervently agreed.

Not three days later, she came to me while I was clamping crabs, not three days later, she halted me and handed me a foil paper wrap holding no more than just one, one, singular pot sticker. Then she went away, ushering her hands and making frowning faces in such away as if saying “Now go away, leave me alone, leave me alone!”

I held the moist and tender beauty in my hands, forgetting the unclamped crabs on the wet concrete floor, I stepped aside and took a daring bite, oh what a gentle kiss my lips did feel dash deeply through them, a moist tender moment, I don’t explain the taste, I don’t know what condiments adorned this succulent delight, what ingredients composed such an edifice of joy, I just wished to slosh pot sticker flesh in my mouth eternal, and not to let it wander down my deep esophagus ravine; ecstasy! Look me to sky above and heaven I could touch, and then, all the foil paper in my hand but only empty.

Fong, seeing me not cooking gestured me to get back to my work, I nodded my dazed head many times, “yes, yes, yes,” back to work it was; there laid a big crab below me, I went carelessly to lift Crab from the wet concrete floor but beady-eye Crab swiftly reached for my neck before I could grab and clamp his enduring claw, Crab’s claw rapaciously unleashed around my Adams-apple, smack front of my neck, clamping hard down on my neck crab seeking to extract divine pot sticker, while I fought and struggled to jerk Crab off of me, but it was not to be, asphyxiated, dangling from this Crab, I crashed into the wettest ground.

If everything is attacking you, you are in enemy territory.

MY BASKET FULL OF SWEETS

2006-08-31T11:00:00.000-07:00

I went to sleep thinking that those that seek to liberate others are the least free. I woke up in a coffin sleeping next to a dead man that had bad taste in suits and in relatives. A red tie, really who when dead needs a red tie? Accompanied by a white Carnation on his lapel, had he been alive it would have been red; he had not shaved the day before his unfortunate demise, and had been sepulchered in a wooden coffin soon to be nailed; would have preferred marble for my mausoleum, but this poor chap obviously hadn’t given much consideration to the occasion, and his relatives were probably trying to rush the reading of the will, which may have had too few trinkets worth gathering and few if any reconciliations.

After I got over this chap’s poor choice of tailors I came to the realization that my being in his coffin was probably not a sign of good roads traveled by me. I was reaching for confusion, and there was plenty to be had. I decided to try to get out which I did, walking into what must have been a holding area for those that are about to rematerialize as the equivalent of volcanic ash with maybe a little less pump. The place was lined with coffins, I decided to peek at the dead, it is not an opportunity that we all get, it wasn’t like I was here to stay so I opted to trounce upon the opportunity.

I uncovered a small white coffin, pleasantly flowered with a strange combination of Orchids and Daisies, inside a perfumed pearl white interior contrasted with a little girl that was wearing a very bright red dress, against what was her pale skin, red lipstick lips and curly red hair, the contrast was magnificent, she was meant to die just so she could look like that, really an art piece worthy of exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. I could see it eventuating, an exhibition of the dead and these were not mummified, and this special little girl in her red dress would be the star exhibit, the core of the show, thousands lined out the door to circle the spectacular magnification of contrast blinding the living with its deathly magnificence.

Having enjoyed the wilting masterpiece of the collection, I walked towards the largest coffin, a very large mahogany perhaps, I really don’t know my woods, if mahogany is an obscured cherry, then that is what it was, this coffin was huge, I decided to see it next because it had regal qualities that were to be expected of a high member of our society, I wanted to see the best of the best. I climbed a small staircase, and opened the coffin easily enough by realizing brass latches, then my eyes gazed at this very odd looking fellow, maybe he died of a terrible wound to the head, bruised blood vessels decorated his face like the arterial map of a metropolis, his eyebrows splendidly thick, his hands and fingers bloated, you could barely make out his finger nails, his eyes were also hidden by bulging bulbous cheeks, it was sort of like a case of wrinkle free flesh winning over every other protruding utility. The eyes, small tiny inlets in this sea of flesh, tiny ears virtually swamped out of existence by his huge head, which in relationship to his body seemed half in like that of a cautious turtle, his neck did not even bother to manifest itself, he had no neck, and then from his head unrolled the body, torso shaped like a malformed almond, disillusioned shoulders, huge arms floating in internal water tanks ending in tiny hands with huge stumpy fingers, useless biological mittens that again made finger joints and nails imperceptible; and then his abdomen squashed by his inflamed upper body, almost fully collapsed rose only enough to expose a belly button that still held moisture, perhaps being released from within. A pubic area was non existent, I could not see his testicles, they were hidden by a tiny penis that was not even slightly wrinkled, implying that it might be erect even as it was obviously limp; I would imagine that any kind of sexual act might endure him some pain, it wasn’t meant for any kind of exertion, and I presumed urinating with it might have been an accomplishment of sorts. From there followed his thighs which were massive swells of flesh, none wrinkled, starched even, then the knee caps, again lost to the rest of swelling legs, finally to reach tiny feet which could not under any circumstances have supported this body though undoubtedly they did; these feet must have been tightly wrapped at birth so that they would stay small like that, and the entire body had this essence of baby; a mother had cuddled this thing, a nurse must have tended his needs, a woman loved him, and all three of them were Mom. Mom had undoubtedly outlived her son, she buried him naked just like she remembered him the first time that she fell in love with him; the only time that she fell in love with him or any men; the time that she could never forget, for if she could have forgotten to love him she would have, but the thought never crossed her love.

Walking away from the adult baby thing, I thought how fortunate I was not to have breathed in the same room as him, how fortunate I was not to have adopted such strange physical proportions, how fortunate I was that my flesh had never over-imposed itself upon my body. For a moment, moving in-between all the coffins, lined, waiting on the drive-thru to nonexistence, I, reasoning of catching some fresh air, caught sight of two huge double doors, and commenced walking in their general direction. But my eyes got caught by a golden coffin, I could hardly comprehend why I had not noticed it earlier, the thing was sparkling gold nuggets of lights, using the whiteness of the room as a way to magnify itself and stand out beyond the bounds of mortuary, where I became sure that telescopes were blinded from their visionary missions, and Astronomers must have been busy at work, building lenses that could see through light, so as to locate the brightness that obscured. I fled away from the doors towards this altar coffin, this chalice of death, this moribund specter that was daring any grave to dare diminish its glowing auras of death. I could feel Golden Coffin hiding from envious Sun, what more to fear than that which glitters in its corpus death.

Part of me still wanted to get some fresh air, but I perceived that my heading towards the goldness did not veer from its shortest path. At first I was just walking, then I increased my gait like a gazelle, as I was surrounded by coffins, I began to aggressively coerce them from my path, hurdling over the ones that had not wheels, caring not what damage my brusqueness brought to their unyielding occupants; future anthropologists would conclude that they had been ritually buried alive. There must have been more than thirty coffins in-between, but my steps and my breath grew fast and I stood before the Golden Coffin, glaring bright where I took to glancing at my feet, not from reverence but from a fear of blindness. Not being able to stare at its blinding presence for long, I brought nearer a wooden coffin that laid not far, and this would be my stepping ground so that I could reach the Golden trap door. I rationalized that once the casket would lay unmasked, the glare would subside as reduced by the white silks lining its interior, thus allowing me to recover some sight, and also slaughtering my curiosity of the inhabitant hiding within this luring magnificence.

My efforts may seem less when told, but I tell you that my exhaustion had reached maximum, I was buttered in sweat, my nostrils, neither taking turns to rest, wanted to bleed from over use, my mouth drying up, and my heart debating palpitation rates and skipping beats just to maintain with me. I sat on the wooden coffin, got a few splinters in my extremity from the unfinished wood, but I did not feel them nor the bloodletting they unleashed, and resting only long enough to count to ten and not beyond, I rose again to conquer the attraction that repelled.

Again standing on the wooden coffin, I twisted three oval brass hammer like knobs, obviously all of them had been uniquely hand sculpted, my fingers touching them did not wish to release them, each different in their enamoring tactile feelings, each making my fingertips tingle and shivering me elliptical anguished pleasures, getting lost on them, I had to pry myself away, and then resume again; and discipline enforce that my desired task was not to dwell on the sensual majesty of each adornment, rather my task was to open the casket, which I again began to pursue not without occasionally tracing the sensually drafted finish, while exquisitely twisting those oval-hammer-headed knobs. The sumptuous joy reached my palms, and after being done, I stood there just to capture myself, feeling that I was being released by too much pleasure.

Finally I was able to unleash all and exerting massive force, perhaps injuring my spine, I pushed the casket over the 90 degree angle where gravity grabbed it from me and swung it open with all insensitivity, slam! But the abysmal aura of glittering blinding essence was not diminished as I had hoped, rather it changed color into a pearl blinding silk white, occasionally grayed by emanating patters that I was too blinded to discern. Having no sunglasses, for I never wear what hides the eyes, I was left without a choice but to keep my eyes shut; though light still perforated through my eyelids which made it unrealizable for me to imagine anything, my mind could not draw images against itself; incessant bath of whitewash that allowed not even for the shades of shadows to manifest, I was then more blind than a blind man, unable to conjure images within, I then felt my way into the source of all my blindness.

I immediately touched a skeleton of magnificent proportions, there was no flesh on this cadaver, not an ounce of blood, it might have been made of marble, but my medical background allowed me to discern that what I was laying beside, was bone and cartilage. All of it emptied of living tissue, just the pure skeletal essence, drained to the bone of all existence, and further I concluded that if it had ever had a soul, it had been extracted and blended-liquefied into extinction. And anything in its purest form is magnificent, and more irresistible and splendid, and that is what undoubtedly had masterminded my lure, oh please I cried give me your perfection.

Skeleton was not rejecting my advances, but neither was it welcoming them, and more the penetrating essence was still going through my flesh radiating my inner being and blinding me so that I could not see the object of my attraction. Blinded by commitment I unleashed my sensory organs into action, slowly flinging my tongue to stick it to the skull bone, at first slightly then more, and once I tasted the supreme texture glowing, my tongue salivating wetting flavors of one incessant consistency, the lack of variation was extreme, where I engulfed myself with perdition into the eye sockets, while letting my fingers lasciviously probe skull, reaching under mandible into the middle cranial throne where once must have seated Empress Amygdala, my lips inspired by this unleashed a barrage of kisses along mandible maxilla; irrevocably these only served to excite more within me, translucent armor had not been able to avoid my fingers, I persisted using my lips and nostrils to explore a definition that was marked by crevices and cavities. Ah but when I kissed the clavicle I sensed the history of infinite pleasures suffered, my nostrils drinking away, my fingers clenched it, my mouth sucked from it all its pleasures; only so close to this shoulder laid the magnificent attractor, at the tip of the spiral spring, the hidden pleasures of cervical vertebras, each producing with my gnawing devouring bites different rhythms of strangulatory passions, all while rasping sharpness to my teeth. But from there I could resist no more my impatience and my hands begun to feel every dominion of the breastbone to true and false and floating ribs, oh I adore ribs and now I was at them with no flesh to restrain my wanton; my odor menacingly engaging gushy ponderous wonders of thoracic sensibilities, where lungs and heart once housed, I broke one with my writhing hands and consumed its cartilage delectation. Sight? I did not need sight, I was seeing everything better than my eyes could dream, nibbling spine, kissing sacrum, sucking coccyx, licking tibia, humerus delight; and feasting on phalanges, metatarsal, tarsus, ankle foot and toe, the three holy reasons why Italy is the most aesthetic fetish on this earth. Ah I had found my basket full of sweets, my tongue and person lacerated by its loves, my heart resting on my smiling spine, I felt myself unable to bodily resist the earth, and fell wholly through it.

CLIMAX

2006-08-31T10:59:00.000-07:00

I died in materialism

UP-&-DOWN

2006-08-31T10:52:00.000-07:00

Immortal Minerva came in through the minuscule hole twisting her body a full rotation every inch of a billion miles. I helped her in that journey away from Aquila into Sextan’s arms. And now before me she seemed a bit changed, I remember reading that noses grow bulbous with the years and so indeed had hers.

Aquila was rude to her, and his rudeness had markedly been felt through all the expressions that reluctantly adorned her face, much to be made from it, her longings which were not, were ever present. She was determined to come through, she was desperate to reach Sextan’s flesh, but more from predetermined impulse than need or want. Twisting her body an inch every thousand miles, an inch every billion miles, coercing light to make an extra loop around her body so as to flash her essence, forcing light to take a little longer, pressing light to separate from its continuity of self, a single wave of ray with sudden disparate identities, her body a rising ocean with light waves of accumulating disparity crashing into her shores.

Sextan was less to her, less of what she had promised, less of what she desired, less and less of everything in a void where for emptiness everything could be more, all her directions were violated, all her susurrations stolen, all her manners revoked by dynamic inundating radiation, pulsating unwanted blood, that we are yet at another end?

“Another end?” spoke Minerva. I ignored her comment to acknowledge it would have been to condemn her to a morbid death. To ignore her comment was to reassure her of the emptiness of space, of the aimless trajectories Minerva dynamics. We wept together, I, from the resilience of her splendor, she, from the distance that having traveled for Sextan, she, had made longer and meaningless.

Aquila was at the other end patiently waiting with ring, hating Sextan’s ringing allure, deprived of Minerva, well knowing of her return, a return that would coalesce one into the other ignoring the polarity of their souls, of the vacuum heart into space. “Who will stop me?” She asked me.

I wanted to say I will, I will stop you Minerva. But I did not want to lie to her, besides she knew that I did not have it in me to bring all her tumbling energies to a halt. She knew that I could not master myself and self, that her tumbling would continue, that her passage was to return, that her emptiness was for perpetuity to be full, that the wrestles sun would crush her path, that Sextan and Aquila were the true lovers and she, a mere go between. These things are known to her and so I did not bother to respond to her question, instead I begun to sing her a song about how nothing is ever forgotten, how every memory must magnify itself with the passage of time, how memories were more real and satisfying. She responded with a song as well, about how immortals never age and time does not for them a passage make, and going here and there, to and fro, does not mark a passage more than a memory can magnify itself.

I helped her back into the minuscule hole, I kissed her emptiness, and she left her sadness with me.

MAGNIFICATION

2006-08-31T10:51:00.000-07:00

I was telling Omnibeing how all the stored memories coming alive leave me dazed and blurred with illusions that refuse to solidify into significance. Wondering if Omnibeing could rescue the dog of existence? He responded in the nonsensical manner which I might have expected: “Everything has a thousand billion quadrillion lives, the universe we are seeing now is all dead already, the universe you feel is the only thing alive for a week. Each memory helps you to be aware of the infinity of being, each ending is just a change, all those lives you have lived are the minute repression of your greater existence that just flows energy every-which-way in the universe, always heading where you will find the least resistance, and when resistance wins, accumulating yourself into something that amounts to a personality. The sun is not more than that, a personality accumulated by resistance and escaping through every hole that it can find in the universe. Sun, an interesting diametrical oppression, is trying to get out of here. The solar wind is sun telling Earth that it does not want to be here anymore. Someday sun will be gone from here, two years anywhere is too long a time, you don’t stay anywhere for a billion years unless you can’t get out, something is holding you back, you’re a person because you can’t get out of yourself, and everything around you is holding you together. There is no such thing as sound, there isn’t any distance in space, nothing can be separated from that which it is able to feel and observe; because everything is occupied by something and everything is apart of that something and so there is no edge to space that could be bridge by the idea of sound. The entire universe is pressed against your ear drum, when a contortion causes a ripple through the flesh of the universe, you feel those wrinkles splash into your being and call it sound. Everything is pressed against you, your being is a manifestation of where everything else can not enter, and they are trying to get in and you are trying to get out. Find a leak.”

Well what a spectacular gesticulation of words, easy for an Omnibeing to say things like that since there is no suffering involve, but me, even as I could slightly fathom that everything was pressing against my skin, and phantom that I was trying to get out of here, being and existence is all about going places, traveling is good for the soul, hermits contradict the dynamic universe. I wasn’t against believing any of that, it’s just the problem that for me to believe it I had to worry about possible starvation. Omnibeing was probably right in that death wasn’t death but a mere transformation, death only amounted to “observable change” to the visible world which was not much, so the universe was mostly aware but of course mostly invisible, which is a good thing because visible things have a tendency to invite curiosity which eventually ends in open hostilities.

Omnibeing sensing my slight distress continued; “When the magician is pulling a rabbit out of a hat it is just an act of impressing that concentrated energy manifestation. The implications are wonderful in spirit, evolution is impossible! Entities are always moving energies, when they get claustrophobic they represent characteristics which are apparently existing though they are really trying to get out from the confines of their own existence. The cosmic wind and warming rays are the foot prints of Sun stepping on all of you as Sun hurriedly abandons local space; the moment something is born it is being trapped, from that day forward that trap magnifies the apparent characteristics of that being, and everyday hence forth that manifestation is trying to figure out how to get out from its own undesirable accumulation, the entire universe arrives at a point and wants to leave it immediately. The bones that you find everywhere are just evidence of the many energies that fell and felt temporal and are now gone; everything will leave this place; evolution believes that things want to stay here but they don’t really, they want to leave! The most evolved specieses are the most trapped.”

I was watching Omnibeing sitting on the metallic bench like an athlete that will never be played, his long black pearl arms fully extended acting as bench anchors, his calm demeanor just destroying away at evolution. He continued, I did not bother interject, he knew my curiosities, he was aware within instants of where clarification was required, we communicated with almost undetectable gestures, the most wild being his incessant burping.

“Evolution is a trick, contrived by unequal symmetrical expressions. When energy gets trapped it happens because the energy is being put upon equally on all sides, the energy does not have time to turn around and get out of the energy trap because of its dynamic momentum, so whatever self energy follows continues to accumulate and accumulate, (hence your memories are catching up to you, if you live long enough you will remember everything, the aura of a being is always a comet’s tail, walk in front of an entity and you will never travel through, or be tainted by aspects of their being.) energy accumulation acquires characteristics, personality; Sun, a rabbit and a plant are all personalities, manifestations of energy that got caught in this point of space. The symmetry of the energy trapped is relevant because it determines the escape shape of the object and also the apparent beauty of the object.”

I couldn’t help but repeat those last words “…escape shape and beauty?” Omnibeing paused, I could tell that it was difficult for this being to remain still, here, it was an impossible but constant reverse exertion that still carried him diminutively forward, Omnibeing soothed his beautiful large palms through his head, then regaining oscillating momentum continued. “The sun is really beautiful because it is equally trapped on all sides and it is equally escaping on all sides, the sun has a close to perfect symmetry, though there are more perfect symmetrical entities in the universe. A rabbit has very bad symmetry, but there are entities that have more horrible symmetry than a rabbit, but then it is not like a rabbit is a high energy manifestation, rabbits are a thin energetic manifestation. The size and magnification within being of an entity is determine by its forward momentum when it crashes into the trap zone. When energy is trapped it has no choice but to turn into something, the degree of pressure that is applied by the trap, combine with the intensity of the energy that is caught determines the physicality of the being. Spontaneous physicality is how things come into being. We call that physicality Magnification, to the unaware it will seem like an evolution. It is not even a magnification because it is not making more of the energy it is just burning it up, trapped energy overheats itself into existence, most energy in the universe that is not trapped is not visible nor fighting a point of severe contention with all other entities; but hot energy is trapped energy desperately trying to get out. The petulant manifestations of that energy as is Sun, trying to escape, creates the idea of light and or matter; matter which is exhausted trapped energy that has manage to seep out of its trap. All traps leak, it is an inherent characteristic that there is no perfect resistance to anything, so all entities, the Sun, you, a plant, will eventually escape, it is just a question of time. Time is what is created when trapped entities are trying to breakout, the releasing process becomes a clock, all things suffer this clock. The time that is really being measured is nothing more than the release of the energy within the locality of the trap point in space, and such measure is relative to its entity and location.”

“When an entity finds itself trapped and it can not reverse this, it can try to diffuse itself so that it does not blow up by burping energy, releasing all extra energy, this process can be observed in human beings. The need to reproduce or to mate with someone or to transfer one’s ideas unto another are methods of releasing energy. When two humans mate what they are doing is transferring excess energy unto one another which they will hope will somehow escape the energy trap, if the energy is not released in some direction it will go critical and to the extreme spontaneously combust. An unaware, knowledge based observer, would call that an extinction. Unfortunately what is really occurring, in the material, is that humans end up creating more trapped energy. Every new born is a manifestation, and repetition of that magnification, of the same trapped condition, rather than escape the condition humans reproduce the material condition which traps them more. Black holes are depressions where everyone can go, a black hole has no personality to define it, all entities near find there is no resistance to their entry, they escape in that direction where everything can escape into, supposing that a black hole were to ever consider itself a character worthy of definition, that is a resistant symmetrical essence, we would witness a belching black hole. Instead it is the easiest path for resistant symmetrical entities to escape through”

I thought that Omnibeing might have settled there, but he continued unperturbed by pauses. “To know something requires a high asymmetrical imbalance. A symmetrical perfection is when you can escape in all directions, this means that you are overcoming the entire energy trap, the Sun escapes in all directions, the Sun should be very happy at the rate it is escaping, based on its time line, it will be out of a here and gone very quickly. A sun then has a high symmetrical projection, though the sun is not perfect, as perfect symmetry can not be caught, proven or be seen. When a trap has a symmetrical perfection, or oppression if you will, it will not let anything escape, it is highly unusual for there to be negative points of space that are able to repress equally on all sides, symmetrical oppression is highly unlikely, but blackholes might possess it, still we can not know because we Omnibeings are highly symmetrical so we do not need to explore the condition that explodes in a lower burning energy state, this because it has no relevance in our existence, nor do we care. But when you are obtuse, oblong, uneven that is ugly because it means you have lesser chances of being pure dynamic, it means that you are being trapped on most sides and only certain portions of you are managing some form of escape into another dimension or point of space; and so it comes to be that the oblong, obtuse, asymmetrical manifestation has time to think, lacking dynamics pauses awareness and induces doubt, it creates questions which we Omnibeings could not even fathom, much of ignorance is impossible to us, it is not pertinent to our condition. If you think, you have to be in a very bad symmetrical condition, the need to ask questions and to solve the mysteries of the universe is a condition acquired by a very low state of escape, most trapped equals most confused, if everything is stopping you from moving on with your dynamic you are left with little choice but to knowledge yourself. A scientist wants to know the universe so as to escape, what the scientist can not know is that the building of knowledge equals the trap walls that are all around. The locality of the knowledge is based on the surroundings, the more you know about your surroundings the more you are to replicate them, the more you are to support them with your energy, the more you are all walled up. Knowledge is the classic paint yourself into a corner. The more you know the smaller the universe gets!! The most beautiful beings will always know the least, their symmetrical escape condition will be the highest, the most trapped will always be the most asymmetrical beings and the least likely to escape and they will build most, the here trap.”

Wow! You see how I needn’t be glad that Omnibeing was visiting, these creatures can say things which are completely irrational yet make perfect sense only they can not be applied to anything remotely known as our living condition.

Burp!

“If all that knowledge can show us is that the insignificant, when magnified, can make a difference must I then suppose the Big Bang is a big hoax too?” I said this angrily perhaps because he kept on burping where I would have preferred that he hold it in. “Well…” He commenced very slowly with a twisted provocative smile smacked on his expression. “…Well your universe is actually neither contracting or expanding, it is being squashed.” “Squashed!” “Indeed squashed!” Burp. He proceeded so as to magnify my horror… though worrying about my universe being squashed was about as forward thinking as I had ever gotten.

THE BIG SQUASH

2006-08-31T10:50:00.000-07:00

The Big Bang is a hoax. Allow me to explain, it is well known to all those in the know that the universe is not expanding but rather that it is being squashed! That is right, your universe is being squashed, it is not dispersing, it is not accelerating into an infinity vacuum, it is not expanding, it is not even voluntarily contracting under its own gravitational weight, rather the universe is being squashed. But much to your fortune, and thanks to your mortality, the final point of the great plastering finality, is still billions of billions of years away. Scientist and governments don’t want to tell you this, because they think that you will panic and stop dieting and working hard for a living. So they have taken to explaining that the universe is expanding and expansion does have that nice empire building, colonizing, ring to it. By such measure your expanding universe gets bigger everyday sort of like adding rooms to your house all the time.

These hellacious expansion is being rationalized and empirically justified by a phenomenon called the red shift. The red shift is basically a scientific way of saying that the entire universe is mooning your earth. That the entire universe has turned its back to you! That the entire universe, that is all the matter in it, is running away from you! That you are not a big attraction, and that very hefty escape from you, red exhaust, is what is observed as a red shift.

Of course the red shift is really an optical illusion that can be accurately perceived if one has the irrational ability to peer into the plastering finality. Imagine if you will a huge giant spherical entity that has within its spherical essence galaxies, solar systems, black holes, you, comets, space, moonshine, etc… now imagine that giant sphere; imagine too that there are other spheres even more giant than that already very giant sphere that you have made as far and wide as the perimeters of your imagination, so much so that you can not imagine a larger imaginary sphere, yet that is precisely what I am asking you to do now. To imagine a sphere larger than the largest sphere that you can imagine, which naturally turns into a very hypothetical spherical object, you really can’t fathom it, at best you can imagine segments of it, you see curbing lines that somehow will meet at unconceivable concentric polarities. Now imagine that your universe, is actually sitting betwixt two of these ephemerally very real but unimaginable spherical universes, and they are being pulled together by each others warping of space-time, in short, two very, very giant universes are being helplessly attracted towards each other, and your universe, the very one that you have the capacity to imagine because you can’t escape it, reality is produced by a failure of momentum, yours is stuck in the dead center middle.

Now your spherical universe has polarity, one end of that polarity is somewhere around and beyond Sextan and the other pole of that around and beyond Aquila. Now let us focus back, You are between two universes that are fatally attracted to each other, their weight squashing you from both wherever universal poles. Betwixt your universe is helplessly collapsing but before its final collapse, like all things that are being squashed, it appears incorrectly to be expanding. For instance take something smaller than your imagination on hand, such as a nice big orange, apply pressure to both of its poles with your hands, you will notice that the equator, and most of everything that is not in direct contact with the pressured poles of the orange, will actually expand as you squish it; and if you place yourself as an observer, standing somewhere within 65 percent of the inner spherical body of the orange, the orange and all the matter in it would appear to you to be expanding, while it is technically being squashed. You would see the matter in that area actually dashing away from you towards the perimeter of the orange, you see all the matter is trying to get out of the way of the plastering finality, and that dash makes it all look like one grand unified expansion. Your universe is indeed seemingly expanding because it is being squashed. I will let you conclude the implications.

Burp.

WARM BELLY

2006-08-31T10:49:00.000-07:00

Night jogging through darkness, my ears cold, my lips blossoming red, my eyes sore, dry irises, breeze so beautiful and undesirable, breeze climbing seas, sand, rocks, cliffs, wet breeze.

Cantankerously body freezes stiff resisting freezing, shivering, shivering into the stiff of night. If I convince myself that I am not here! this is not happening! it is not me! Ambushed by terror I prepare for evacuation into the astral plane; forbidding that, spontaneous combustion readily warms my belly.

Steam and mist are not the same but so difficult to tell which is which or which is friend or foe. A toll is paid either way. Pores are inspired by both; steam urges ripening, mist urges cessation, either an expression of avoidance against cause.

If your pores are able to expand at a rate of 164 millimeters per second spontaneous combustion is not obtainable. The astral plane can be reached, or not, with fully dilated pores.

MOLD AND I

2006-08-31T10:48:00.000-07:00

I pour out shower water
Droplet Wetness is inspiring
To hold my naked self
Sensing my body raining water droplets
My definition defined by rejection
What does not enter into me
Repelled by me
Is not me

The droplets cling to the tile shower wall
A last hope not to end down the calling drain
Mold grows from clinging lost
Mold stays from indiscernible differences between mold and I
Mold the escape exit for my shower wall

THEY DISCONNECTED MY MOTHER'S PHONE

2006-08-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

All I could see was the zipper being closed, the upper part of the zipper, they were closing the plastic bag having surrendered of my existence. I wasn’t yet dead, but the plastic begun to sweeten my suffocation, I could see the blurring images of those that had placed me within. I had wanted to be here, they had done no such deed against my will nor had they denied themselves the comfort offered by their displeasure, muttering “strange creature… shame to put him away…” The mastery of putting the dead to sleep not their trade, they were doctors, strategic analysts from the universal palace that decides what works best in the grand scale of things; I had not worked out so well, my awareness had mesmerized me with possibility all too dazzling for me to settle for the specificity that angry reality warrants. Gog, gog, gog…

Umm… sorry about that abrupt interruption but death is not into continuity, you get yourself dead it stops all run on sentences, please don’t get any ideas; fortunately for you I remember what took place to cash me out from that existence. The universe likes to tweak things en mass, to accomplish this high level of complicity, hehehehehe, it has to absorb all randomness into a chaos, which is the fundamental philosophical architectural foundation of the giant cosmos. This is why the universe is mostly the same no matter where you are, because of the consistency of the chaos, if you can observe it you are not going to observe anything radically different, because observation is bound, chained and gagged by similarities. They disconnected my mothers phone today, I have been trying to reach her but can’t.

The universe is one infinitesimal kink, there are souls that are born to undo it, I was one of those creatures, unfortunately I got discovered by the regulating committee of the cosmos. When things are mostly the same the universe does not bother with anything but as soon as there is an altercation somewhere, an entire tribe is sent in to normalize the situation. While I was in my bed of dreams, merely but a child, they took tweezers and metal pinchers up my nose, stuck atomic tubes up my spinal chord, then they inserted all these silent sensors that would monitor my awareness of being, my alertness, my emotional quotient, the universe does not care about logicians, they are harmless, but emotional characters flow lava and cracking existence, it is imperative for the universe to curtail such anxieties, they left the probes inside of me, and I continued to grow around them.

I did not know what was happening to me, when you are a child you get probed by adults all the time, so when creatures from the cosmic tribe come and disarrange your emotional symmetry and put needles everywhere to cause your emotional awareness to chaotically diffuse, you think it is part of what you get for being a sentient human being.

After every posing introspection of the probing, happening mostly at night, where dreams can hide their reality I cradled their impossibility. And so lived on, doing poorly in school, couldn’t concentrate, all those emotional diffusers worked, I could not gather myself for attention even to such basic functions as personal hygiene, the gesticulation of the love that I might need to have for another, or the caring for knowledge as something which if retained might serve unknowable futures.

When you are impeded from harmonizing your self energy, self energy leaves you no choice but to kill yourself. And so my self energy matured into assassin status, afraid of what made it happy, it begun to self destruct. When you aren’t aware of yourself it is impossible to become aware of another that might also know you and share in the universe your exorbitant loneliness. Unawareness tangles with the disentangled. Diffused by the cosmic regulators I was falling apart. I took an overdose of sleeping pills and canned the astonishment out of my existence.

Only, I was rescued by well intentioned beings, a delivery woman, found my purple blotched body, wrinkled in stench alley. The medics rush me to emergency and pumped the sewage out of my stomach, only there was a dosage full still in my circulatory system, so they had to get some fresh blood into me, which they promptly rushed to do, but unbeknownst to them, the universal regulators did not want me to survive the experience, only problem is, the universe can not officially kill an entity that inhabits within, so it was up to me to do the job, and the emergency ward was not helping the situation any. The very worried universal trio were behind the scenes and I could detect their disturbed malcontent as the machines dialed improved readings of my condition.

Only if the machine had been able to diagnose that the universe was entirely against me, that even if alive I would be dead, dead in that I would be maintained in an involuntary paralysis of existence, where my every move would be detained, where my every aspiration curtailed to insignificance, plastic wrap my emotions into exhaustion, do not feed his heart, do not respond to his awareness, implode, implode, catastrophic malcontent, the links that die within our resolution.

Those seeking freedom are not in their own prison.

Spurious madness, pinching myself, black marks, black hearts, black holes of non resistance, against all contradiction, sinking into the sea of disillusion, purple lips so beautiful when dead, frost of universal savageness, pump all you want but you can not reactivate me, rain, rain, rain into my severity, smell me breathing your insanity, smell me breath that stinks of cosmic sulfur, you will never win this heart and you will never win this life, and into the perdition…

They zipped the plastic bag while I was still alive…they saw a white straight line.

Run, run, the river winding and unfolding into cascading curls, waterfall majestically dashing my eyes with sparkling sensations, where the river rock lay in patient wait below, harsh and moist and succulent and asking my body to surrender to their essence; the air off loads me wishing not be between the dashing squash, I grace miraculous sky with receding stares, it is not ascension nor bed of roses down below, even waterfall thins out below, her undiluted effort from the fall dispersed underneath to reveal only those perfidious rocks that have resisted and grown sharper with their stay, to live you have to be alive, to die you have to be alive, the rocks caught my rescue from the torrents.

IT DOES NOT SWING

2006-08-31T10:45:00.000-07:00

Gloves for my hands, socks for my feet, a hat for my head keep me warm where four walls dare not challenge the ambient air. Strange world we live in, collapsing into earthquakes of most unreal savages, romantics, living in fantasy worlds corrupting ours only more; murdering true romance by adhering to canned romanticism. And I am trying to be gentle with you, to tell you a song that won’t repeat your being in a bad way, songs vibrate through our being, they cling, resonating bodies that assimilate their melody.

I was trying to tie it all down now, so I will tell you a tale of tying it all down. About being so secured that everything makes you afraid. About being in joy as if one could be happy. A tale of a mad time that was sane, a dirty time that was clean, a repulsive sterile time that was Perdón perdida piada. (It sounds like I know Latin when I do that, or French.) I did not wish to be the one to tell it, still my obligation leaves me no choice but to speak and burn my tongue with these here words, spoken from my heart which fears them and fears repeating them, bludgeoning sounds that they are.

I come from a land now, where I go is not the same land, I come from a land where they die overjoyed as if they could be happy, a land where there rises much gold, where fire experiences ravage the senses, where every movement is measured by speed, where every core is nuclear, where it pumps, pumps and manifest production, where the beat of the music is athletic, where the heart beat of love endures marathons, where friendship thinly widens hemispherical influence; I come from a land, a land that I am divesting myself from, I come from this land of obtainable perfection, a terrace of munitions, a land disfigured by the child that has ripened before sensuality could find his heart, a land that waves arrest warrants towards its thousand cultural faces which share the same fearful expression; and so all together Ostrich their souls into terra firma. Know them for these fears, the fear of authority, the fear of control, the fear of individual tyranny; and only to those fears will they surrender all their struggle and toil.

A land of a thousand faces all sharing the same fearful expression. The fearful expression of fearing emotion!

They were not always like this, they are all fragile and beautiful souls that come from every place the earth would birth. They marched, swam, crawled, wombed, married, asylumed, pilgrimaged, refugeed their fears and tears here; here in this land they promised themselves no more suffering, no more pain, no more uncertainty, here in this land everything will be well and endure; an abyss to be placed between the place of birth of agony; a distance so wide that any crossing needs end in clashing perdition. It is a matter of right, of making right in the world, of having the certainty that comes with golden justice. Unmovable perdition.

It was a somber morning the craters in my heart were dulled up from all the beatings, they had taken a crow bar to my kneecaps, mostly just to remind me what a privilege walking was, Maria, my histrionic pleasure chamber, had been incarcerated as well, for a very different reason. She had worked with a lady seamstress who had befriended her, and over time they shared many drinks, if you can call Amaretto Sour a drink, and manic conversations about how men are so little knowing on the ways of women, having they substantial academic evidence from the lack of male induced pleasure in their lives. One might better think they were just teasing each other by affirming the divisive stance of the repudiated relationship between the sexes. Maria eventually got bored with the production aspect of her job, not wanting to stitch away repetition, this was how Maria was, not willing to partake in the labor aspect of any relationship, I put up with it because it served to grant me some control over her, which was hard enough won; so it was that she left her stitching job, just forgot to go in one day, never really quit and never really got fired, and one might correctly suppose that the lady kept her there much more for conversation, and affirmation, than for sewing, which was stitching their souls anyway. But on Maria’s unknown last day, she had borrowed a shawl which was dark green and royal blue beautiful with petals mushrooming comforting dispositions; Maria just had to borrow it because she loved it so, she may have just taken it, but Maria was no thief she just thought that all things belonged to the person that had them in their possession, and all possession was temporary; this was the part of her philosophy that forbade her to declare her undying love towards me. Everywhere Maria went wearing her sumptuous shall she rose life affirming smiles, and envious compliments were dashing her way like bullets, and Maria was basking in the sunlight of all that lovely veneration. But unexpectedly, no more than three days into her parade, all the eyes begun to turn to grizzly stares, people would look at Maria as if she were a member of the now defunct communist party, their eyes were marking her every move, the shawl hanging around her neck like a tracking bracelet, stare after stare growing less shy, and whispers of her whereabouts and complicity were marching military bands; to such extent that Maria begun to paranoid her walk and gaze, defiantly almost, which only added to her complicity in the conspiracy that was unfolding with her every movement; not five days later, it was an odd number, she was arrested by the authorities while mounting a bus. She was a surprised as might be expected of an innocent, but the evidence against her, and the witnesses but too numerous to refute. All over the town she had been seen wearing and even brandishing the stolen shawl, as was reported by her confidant, the lady seamstress, “stolen!” The lady very much reported that her lovely and irreplaceable shawl had been stolen after being convinced by her new young male lover that Maria’s taking of the shawl was an act of treason. Ah the controlling rancor of male youth, he certainly had orchestrated the separation of the two women that would have performed his psychological autopsy. Maria found herself unable to refute the charges against her. A lie detector caught not her innocence but rather her nerve endings spasmodically masticating her inner being into strenuous madness. She called me to come rescue her but got the answering machine, I was busy getting a crowbar to my kneecaps.

Incidentally, after Maria’s prosecution her defense attorney felt victim to her emotionally volatile heart. Unable to rescue her on appeal, he eventually concluded that histrionic individuals would invariably fail any and all lie detector tests. The idea that he might have been a horrid defense attorney could not cross his mind. So he led a successful campaign to create lie detector test prints of every citizen; to be kept on file by the federal authorities. In this way, if a citizen were to be accused of a crime, the results of the lie detector test on record could be measured against those conducted after the presumed crime was committed; if the citizen was innocent the variation between the two test ought be comparably insignificant. Or so went the theory, regardless all citizens come their eighteenth birthday had to take a lie detector test, which also became an opportunity for a non-tax, only $16.00 Dollars a pop.

I had bad kneecaps, inherited from Dad, there was really no need to make them useless or more painful but they did, which was not nice, I was caught with drugs rushing out of a crack house, I went down the corridor of F street, then into an alley, where I bought a large doze of stuff that everyone, including the cops was using at the time. Niche dreams could come out of that acid, you just kind of imagine a thought in your mind, rested with it and plunge the syringe deep into your veins beyond your tomato flesh, and the unfolding machinations would hallucinate your original imaginings into Technicolor with surround stereophonic sound, blast. Crossing the street blocks, from F to H Street, don’t ask me what happen to G Street, it all goes back to bad city planning, the major of the city had been shot over in G street, I am not telling you more, only sometimes G is H or H is F, that is how nasty happenings were civilly erased in our little town; you don’t have to ask any more than that; only I will rumble on a little bit so as to say that at my work, the building had more than 23 floors, but not a second floor, it went 4, 3, M, and then the First floor. You see there was nothing on M, hadn’t been nothing on M for years or so I was told, sometimes the elevator would stop at M, the doors would open, no one would dare get out, and no one got in, I never saw anyone get in, but then back then I could only see real people, today, today I can see auras and emotions and floating energies, today I might see something on M floor, but back then you just kind on knew to follow your path and not to M. Anyway I was jaywalking, across the streets with my heavy load of narcotics when I was turned in to the cops by a citizen that decided to take the law into his own and make a citizens arrest; he even knew to read me my rights, and to alert me that he was acting on the authority temporarily granted to a citizen by the legal system when suffering to witness an incriminating calumny. Detained, I did not take to panic, thinking the cops would busy themselves with other things, but I had been detained by a prominent member of the community, a member of every association known to men, and maybe even to god. A citizen with a loyalist voting record that went back to when he was twelve year old activist, demanding the right, the school principal, to tell us all that he loved god and country. Wow them daring harmless acts that make a difference enough, if kept in the school yard ok, but that boy grew up, Jesus I was dog meat. The Authorities seemed much bother by my case, they made it plain and clear that they did not want to arrest me, but neither could they ignore a respectable citizen that had the tendency to report all and any that might dare to trespass the civil code of duty. They took me to the station, just hoping to take a picture of me, grab a share of my money and let me go for good behavior, only during their financial search they stumble into the drugs and then to look away became immediately, for them, more difficult. I chagrinned a little, sort of saying I was their buddy and they could trust me to move on and ignore that they had ignore my felony; but they thought better not to trust me, they concluded that maybe Mr. civil citizen was testing their integrity and their adherence to the law. Which made me a decoy to test the ethics of our police department. They put my extra cash back into my wallet, unholy Jesus, they took the drugs and charged me with high crimes, there was too much just for mere consumption, the daily recommended allowance was zero, anything was too much and all that excess that could not be consumed by me left them no choice but to conclude that I was a dealer, a major distributor perhaps, they were about to bust a major drug ring. Fearing my underworld might they told me not to try to bribe them because it would not work; having overworked their ethical credentials in some strange way they hinted that they were aware that I was, aside from a major drug lord, a decoy to test their ways and actions; which meant that they presumed that as they were preparing to launch the gravitational brunt of the law upon me person, that I would be rescued come the final hour by the officials that had master minded this entire operation. They would at once be commended for serving with such high mindedness. For system people everything is a systematic scheme. Ah but I dared to say nothing to disagree with then, expecting that my none complicity, in the none plot would not be found out but rather that it would aid my way out of the tank. Instead the propensity for high climax heightened the corrupt judge had been warned that I might be an ethical double agent, and so he laid out the law as he thought he knew it well, describing in detail the charges, illegally crossing the street, endangering my life, endangering the community at large, instigating possible manslaughter, drugs were illegal, completely and totally illegal, distributing them more so, he was brief on all that. My inability to cope with my addiction a danger to society, people like me dirtied this town, a town that was willing to eliminate an entire street to clean itself up. The guy was staging to become a member of the supreme court. The law was pronounced to my punishment and from thinking that my crime had been a dull one I turn to the realization that a good citizens arrest mandates such extremes.

From my cell I could see the days drift by and each I won myself a little bit more death.

NOT CLAM CHOWDER

2006-08-31T10:44:00.000-07:00

Seeing a ghost falling from the ground was an up lifting experience; I was walking downtown when I stumble into his misfortune, I walked near him and tried to help him up but this was not a possibility; he did not even seem to bother himself with my assistance, instead against the ground he seemed like a partially squashed multi sermonic monk. I decided to keep on walking attempting to make sense of things. I was tired, I had worked late, having been given a very important project that would prove my worth to the company, diligently working away at it; I thought, just to keep my job, meant long hours of exhaustive work, creating spreadsheets that hurled numbers at the eyes faster than the eyes could keep track of them, I created slides of every imaginable perception, with humor to tease the humorous, with bar, line and pie graphs of arthritic repetition; all a truly uncharted sea of statistical data; simply designed to swamp any manager into analysis paralysis. When bad managers can’t figure your data out they commend you for your good work. Good managers don’t exist because they work for a living. So you can imagine how my being in such an analytical quandary might have made a ghost needing to drown in confusion. I aimed my walk homeward really requiring about as much guidance as a horse doing same.

Horses just take you home; I was using about as many mental resources as a horse, horse power is a good thing, horse mental power is disenchanting, horses that can count even more disenchanting, in my time on earth I have seen shows where they display horses doing low level math, this is of course wrong, horses can’t count; it has been observed by some that the horse trainer can count, this, I admit, might be possible. It is also true that if you wink at a horse it will cause him to tap the ground three or four times, such nervous behavior has also been observed in humans, only nervous humans can file a sexual harassment charge. TV shows that have horses talking sense are nonsense. A horse once tried to kill me by shopping off my head, I was just sitting on it, acting like a city cowboy trying to whip the lazy over ridden stable animal to run the Kentucky Derby, when the damn foundation of a horse decided to take off like a flash of lightning only in a straight line into all the tree branches in the region. Horses are aware that tree branches reach for horsemen, trees occasionally snatch one, “off with his head!” there are girls that like a little leather to the ass this horse was not like that; horsy was getting as close to every tree trunk as he could maintaining his huge neck and head slung low and forward, not for aerodynamic sensibility but rather so as to allow my back to be caressed by each and every tree branch, splattering visions of my face, I over reacted by hugging him tightly, getting a lot closer to his foaming being; and my neck embrace was such that he finally got sick of my licking his sweat, for he came to a most abrupt halt! I jumped off in a frightened hurry. After that horsy took me for a ride I have had the pleasure of eating horse meat, the joy of watching my little puppy dog eat horse meat, and more the exquisite pleasure of watching real cowboys storming riding horses with their testicles rope-tied-tight. After seeing a ghost it is better to head home like a horse.

Only before reaching the safety of my bed and its heavy comforter I found myself in front of a witch, a real witch at that. Throughout my life I had met witches and warlords but I had never actually been completely convinced of their wicked powers. The last time I met a worshiper of the satanic, I was at a coffee shop, minding my own business slowly harvesting my indifference to the world, but there was this man, he kept on looking my way, he was conversing with a few people around him, but he kept his intent to really communicate directed towards me trying to capture my glowing attention. There was nothing about him that intensified my desire to know him or to say “good morning nice day for coffee with a witch.” Please understand that you are listening to a man that speaks and has been possessed by spirits, and is currently involved in a critical discussion with an Omnibeing, a creature that technically does not exist; further I believe in the powers of the supernatural, and more I believe in the powers of the metaphysical, though they are really not powers, they are movements of expression; but I am just pointing this out so that you don’t think I was trying not to acknowledge the presence of this witch in my coffee shop; pointedly I don’t need any more spirit world forces in my life. Specially not satanic which are the provincial energies of the universe. Besides I just simply did not know him to be a witch, and further I had no need to know a witch, and though I believed in witches I had thought them all well dead, having the last four been killed, according to the papers, stabbed to death somewhere in South Africa. The problem for witches is that the people that believe in them, that is believe that they exist, these same people will indeed try to kill them. Vampires suffer the same misfortune, they shouldn’t desire to advertise their existence, “I gotta be me!” no you don’t. Better to remain in the dark of the forest, in the gutters or basements, or cities of the dead, but not upon our civilized humanity.

And yet, this guy finally decides to force an introduction, he wants to know what I am writing. I, having already many people that want me dead or out of the country for my big opinionated mouth, decide to tell him that I am not writing anything special, just scribbling, this may have been a more accurate description of what I was writing anyway. He advantages the vacuum of my actions to introduce himself as a practicing Witch and gives me his name, which he emphasizes is really his name, and I don’t recall it, but it went something like, “Blade of the Snake Tooth.” I did not bother to ask him if he had children nor their possible names, yet I must admit to seeing the creative possibilities as rather amusing. Certainly I was tired of a world that had all those Johns and Peters and Joes, and so few Cains. So Blade of the Snake Tooth had a creative jazz to it, even if the notes fizzled when you met the man. And Tooth of Snake decided to tell me that he was a notable in the circle of witches, something about completing the circle; I don’t get much of this stuff. Witchcraft is a local energy I am into the cosmic in a big way, hard not to be into the cosmic in a big way, but witchcraft is for farmers, for peasants, for those that are still trying to toy with the energies that surround and fuse the universal locality. In their more egregious phantasmagoria witches are mad vegetarians that graduate to become extreme environmentalists. Snake Tooth then makes the assumption that I don’t believe in witches, “You don’t believe!” Ouch, hurt my feeling Mr. Witch. I think more his feelings were hurting because his power rested on my belief, much of the problem for witches today is that so many people do not believe in them, without belief anything is powerless. I believed in spirits so they frequented my person, I did not believe in witches so they had to go out of their way to introduce themselves to me. “Hello I am a witch and my name is Blade of the Snake Tooth.” Nice to meet you Tooth Snake and I am Hamlet maybe you and I can overdose on Ophelia together. I apologize to all the witches in advanced for my lack of belief, I see all those curses a brewing now, horror I truly hate frog legs. I might still warn all the witches out there that I already have a huge curse that was placed on me by some spirit in Colombia when I was but a mere child. The curse has caused me much harm, agony and incessant nightmares and prevents me from returning to my homeland. This curse will be exorcised by me, in a few months, I will return to Bogota to confront it with all the massive movements that I am appropriating from Omnibeing. So I responded to toothless cavity prone man, “It is not that I don’t believe in you witches it is just that I am not a witch myself and whenever I don’t believe I am the thing itself then I don’t believe in the thing itself.” Tooth Snake shrugged his shoulders, hardly becoming of a witch, “What do you mean by that?” I responded in a more down to earth manner, this is the problem with witches they understand simple earthly things, all their ingredients can be found on the earth, there are no exotic minerals or atomic subparticles, they are naturalists, which is not surprising since they are taking advantage of local natural energies, rats, mushrooms, ravens, sticks from naked trees, a cauldron; all reminds me much of Chinese cooking only the Chinese don’t believe that they are brewing a magic formulae, so they don’t get the magic out of it. Not to say that the Chinese are not a magical people, Chinese are massive magical dragons, but that is talking about too many things at once, so back to Tooth Snake. All that magical power and Tooth still had fillings? Strange. Come to think of it all the witches I have ever met had bad teeth, local energies are bad for your hygiene. Satan is not into sterile cleanliness, Witches are dirty by nature, I just happen to have stumbled into Mr. Witch, which just happen to be very well groomed though in possession of numerous filled cavities. So to explicate I went into metaphors, “What I mean to say is that I follow a sort of businessmen attitude to what I believe in and practice.” Obviously this guy was not a businessman so I continued with my explanation, “In the business world they have this saying, “If you can not see yourself at the top then you are in the wrong organization.” And so you see Mr. Snake, when I think of witchcraft I don’t see myself at the top; Satan would not take kindly to me taking over, and I don’t want to be a middle manager; it is precisely why I am not a Christian I just don’t see myself at the top, and so I don’t believe in being second at anything or to anyone. I shall keep on searching for a belief that will have me as its Omnibeing leader.” Mr. Witch did not find the meaningfulness of my statement and retorted instead, “You don’t comprehend the power of witchcraft, we have the capacity to reach every aspect of existence, we harvest the natural power of nature, everything has this power, and it is not about being evil with this power, it is about making one’s life more in harmony with the power of nature so as to use that power to make our desires, through the awareness of the essence of our being. ” Making desires? Was it not bad enough that we were already born with plenty of unsatisfied desires? This witches were going around manufacturing more desire! I am probably not doing Witch Tooth much justice, but that was the just of what he said, further he went on to say, “I teach witchcraft you should come to one of my classes at The University, then you will understand what we are really about.” Religion became atheist because it had no choice but to do so, so as to survive in the rational world, now too witchcraft was trying to rationalize its own existence. Political correctness so as to guarantee believed required that all things be associated with knowledge and goodness. Knowledgeable and wholesome organic witches were the in.

Mr. Tooth started talking intellectual witchcraft jive, and I went out of my way to kindly explain to him that “…if witchcraft can be taught I don’t want to learn it. There is nothing more pedantic than knowledge, anything that can be taught is not worth learning.” Mr. Witch insisted that I at least give it a chance, at which point I noted that my lack of belief was merely based on how powerless witchcraft was over other forces and not based on its reality of existence. I then ended our conversation by saying that I had to leave for an appointment which I did not have but had risen from the necessary moment. He forced his name and address upon me, accentuating all his certified credentials to teach what he preached. Then he shook my hand goodbye, in a very gentle manner, lingering upon the detachment while he transferred some weak negative energy, I walked away feeling the stuff habituating my right palm, it is like a mold, or coral growth that is of course invisible and can not be physically discerned only felt, sort of like a glorified version of athletes foot, only you catch it from a witch; no doctor can cure it and its inoffensive enough that you can host it till you die and it doesn’t change your life. Witches like to transfer this sort of trinket natural energy so that they can go where ever you go, only it is to weak to really inform them of anything, it is a very weak force but they think that because you carry it around for them that they have changed a part of the surrounding environment to their flavor, while the only thing that they have accomplished is to create an obnoxious feeling that for the most part can be tuned out easily enough, so as not to warrant any defensive reaction. Anyway soon after meeting Mr. Tooth Snake, my very dear friend Jill decided to tell me that she too was a Witch and hey I could be a witch too, and she invited me to one of their meetings to which I replied, “No I don’t want to go because I am afraid that they will make me their leader.”

But as if non-belief was not cause enough for me to be left alone I stumbled into this other witch on the way home. Over due for some rest I tried to keep on walking but the damn witch, holding a red cup of soup in her hand, moved into my walking path. I said “Nice nose lady please move out of my way.” To which she replied with intense gray tiny eyes bulging from her wrinkled flesh. “You know that I can not go away, I will stand in your path until you drink this cup of nice soup that I have concocted for you.” This witch had not learnt political correctness, concocted was such an evil term, I awakened more alertness fast. Irritated I abruptly pushed her to the ground and made a fast walk not expecting the old witch to get up any time near soon. But as I was preparing to turn left at the end of the block, witch sprang up from out of nowhere, I held back, she sprung up, I am telling you this as scary truth, sprung up out of nowhere she, and right planted her ugly face near my mind so that I could breath and taste her facial hairs. “Listen to me! you must drink this soup and you must drink it now before it gets too cold!!!” Such concern, the night was not that cold, I did not like soup, even when I worked at the Chinese restaurant, being around all those versions of the same noodle soup, I was not inspired to drink any soup. So I replied.. “Is it Clam Chowder because I really like Clam Chowder?” The nasty bitch could not lie, it is more a rumor that witches are liars, they are instead deceivers, when asked a question directly they have to tell the truth, if they don’t their power is greatly diminished because all power rests on belief and lying implies doubt, lack of faith, it translates to retreating… unlike Tooth Snake witch here was no idiot and responded “You fucker you know damn well this is not Clam Chowder, we witches don’t cook creamy soups, we don’t like creams period, it’s the fucking French that creamy shit on everything!” Ouch! I wanted to take offence on behalf of the French people but I could not think of one good reason why, they do so well by themselves. Besides I truly appreciated her honesty and more I was appreciating her ability to hold on to a hot cup of soup. I shoved her firmly into the ground. She stayed there for three seconds max and then sprung up, on her feet betraying feline gymnastic skills. I complimented her, “Very, very good, must a taken a lot of practice to learn how to hold on to that cup of soup.” And then I burst into hysteric laughter. “Listen to me the Witch you met at the coffee shop placed stolen energies in the palm of your hand for safe keeping, this soup will release them back to their appropriate sorcerers; you must drink this for them, their energies do not give you any power, they are useless with you, Tooth of Snake knew that in your palm they could be hidden indefinitely, he is afraid of the others, he steals their magic energies and hides them through scattering, thus he is able to exceed their powers. Please, I know you don’t seriously believe in our ways, this magic energy is then of no use to you; I implore with all supplications drink this cup of soup.” She was certainly a credible witch, besides I wanted to cure the athletes foot itch that the infernal energies produced upon my palm. I helped her dark highness by reaching for her cupped hands, we jointly held the soup, I drank the bloody lentil flavored soup. She gave me a faint smile, witches don’t smile, they got nothing to smile about, they either laugh hysterically or they are sinisterly serious, she fainted a smile my way.

My right hand begun to glow red, fantastically red, a green moss started to grow from it, green moss, growing like an inflatable glove, the effect grew nicely. Green glows and yellow circles begun to puff curls around my hand, while I held the soup lady with my left hand, as my other hand continued to glow and engulf a huge area around me, I did not feel pain, rather felt a joy, a euphoric lightness overcame my mind, whimsical metaphors were rushing through my inflamed heart, then a slow spiraling sound proposed to hum, then ring, the ringing grew until suddenly there came a giant POP! And all the energies hurriedly dashed into the night, disappearing comet trails everywhere; and the itch did cease so much it stopped. I kissed the pretty witch, planted one big giant kiss upon her thin lips, and she smacked me graciously but hard for it. And I went home to sleep.

BRONZE IS NOT A METAL!

2006-08-31T10:39:00.000-07:00

It was a hotel building sort of, large and square, the dissimilarities between hotels and hospital buildings is insignificant, pack the greatest amount of beds in the most sterile environment; charge as much as possible to reach ninety percent plus occupancy, and keep out those that can’t afford to pay. The building I was in sort of reflected that ambience only more so, to be very frank I have never seen the outside of the building, I have a nice room, a very but I mean very comfortable bed, better than a feathered bed, I have never truly slept on a feathered bed but mine is better than that. The art in my room is trite, a boat house of originality, pastel cubism as expressed by a non follower of the art, a porcelain dog that was chlorine white. I don’t even know what kind of a dog it was, I always had mutts, but somehow whenever they make porcelain animals they have to be the kind that you have to get expensive papers to own them in real life. I once had a friend that operated a forgery ring that sold fake papers to owners that had irrecoverably lost them or simply wanted their, almost not a mutt, dogs to have some dignified title. Racism in most cultures is best expressed in titled dog owners. It is sort of the baby soft side of racism. But titled dog owners also represent the mature side of genetics engineering. Dog breeders and their customers have created such an artificial blood line that they do not have dogs that are real, rather they have dogs that are show dogs. Show dogs are dogs that nature wouldn’t bear, their appearance is noted by characteristics that humans prefer as opposed to characteristics that dogs, evolution or nature would prefer.

As I was saying I had one of these engineered porcelain dogs that was probably bought at an art fair by an artistic soul that thought, that because there was an art fair, there was art in it. Art fairs being those gatherings of community artists and artisans, I think there is a difference between artists and artisans, so I use them as separate terms if they are. This is where the local creative talent is put to good uses and they produce generally what is considered art by an aesthetically impoverish populace. The objective of these art fairs appears to be to imitate, as much as possible, the goings of the art world. So it is not uncommon to find a piece of art that is equally representative of a piece of art at the museum of modern art, or impressionist paintings or whatever art has been accepted by the poor misunderstood artist as original and replicable. When I speak of these art festivals, I actually speak with a learned tongue. I don’t know much about cockroaches, though I know for a fact that a cockroach can live for three days with its head chopped off, and get this it does not die of pain; I am not sure that roaches have the capacity to feel pain, I certainly can feel pain, fact is I have had many pain-deaths, and by a pain-death I don’t mean a long excruciating torture session at the arms of the Grand Inquisitor, or say being mangled to death, rather I mean a pain-death where the heart dies; where you feel that your entire being has died and that you are still alive, so you have no choice but to reconstruct another character self of heart and mind that can sustain you until you do die. A mother losing her child experiences a pain-death, a boy losing his father experiences a pain-death, but a cockroach after three days of being without a head does not die of pain or a pain-death instead it starves to death!

But as I tell you that I speak with a learned tongue when it comes to the subject of art I don’t mean that I am a connoisseur of art nor an art critic; I could say something nasty about art critics but it is gentlemanly to avoid sitting ducks; but I know art and art fairs from personal experience. In all of my lives, the ones that I lived and died, and including this one which I haven’t yet died in, there is even a chance that I won’t die in this one but that is another calculation that we won’t try to make here, but in all those lives I have been to three art fairs. Enough to make an expert out of anyone. All art fairs have two lives in their particular existence; the aesthetically possible and the aesthetically impossible. When a local group of artists, of any town, feels underrepresented in the larger spectrum of the art cosmocosm, they form a little community support group that convinces the local town major to huddle the city council so as to designate a date and place for an Art Festival; up until this very point all art fairs are aesthetically possible, beyond this point they are aesthetically impossible. Of course the participating artists at this point begin making a meager living from the Art Festival so it becomes impossible to convince them that they are being aesthetically impracticable. When an art festival reaches aesthetic impracticality they have to acquire sponsors and to maintain and increase demand, they have to source artists from other towns to feed their local art hungry public, plus the growing number of tourists, which despite being tourists or maybe because of it, are somehow attracted to art expositions. They all attend these so that they can decorate their houses with art that is cheap enough, but yet may be famous someday. Guests artists from all over the country or world fly in, and very soon the art booth is reserved years in advanced, voiding fresh local talent from ripening in, and before you know it all the pottery in the world and all the water and oil paintings, begin to appear similar because the booth globe trotting artists are flying everywhere to meet the demand for their art services. You can travel to Quito Ecuador to pick up some local wool blankets or you can go to your local art festival. It is now a problem to compete with xenophobic neighbors that have never traveled abroad and yet still posses the same collection as the one that you collected in Africa and Asia. You may, if you wish, blame the easing of international restrictions on tariffs for the import and export of art; but the harsh reality is that in this particular category of art, governments have already banned the import or export of art that is real art, so what you get in your living room is really not Italy’s greatest treasures. While price and governments can keep you away from what might be real art, the truth is that art festivals have increasingly grown another objection, that is they have grown expensive. This is the problem with all aesthetically impossible art, is that it is also expensive! The flowering virtuous product of an affordable class of artists, that have become traders in their craft are possibly artists. What most art festival connoisseur consumers feel is art of course is not art! Fortunately they are only punishing themselves, art festival are a sort of sensitivity quotient, in other words when you put two insensitive things together you get an art festival. I had an art festival in my room. I didn’t decorate my room, it had been furnished when I moved in, and I had never seen the exterior of the building though one can construct the externals of a building by feeling its insides, and to be truthful I had never marched beyond my room, I was self contained, I had a shower, never did have the patience for grimy baths. A shower I had, and I had a heater and an air conditioner, but out of my window I did not have three seasons, no severe rain, nor snow, and I don’t ever remember turning anything on or off, maybe it was automatically climatized, regardless I was worry free, which I really was worry free, but you can see how an architect might design the internals of my room much the same as the externals so my not having seen them did not impede my perceiving the exterior, something about the architect, a rather dull unimaginative person from my angle, and something about the inhabitants of the building, which were obviously system people, this was a system owned and operated building.

There was a light gray phone on my night table, I had never used it to call anyone. There was nothing in the room to produce music except my ears, and I had no television, I did not seem to miss these things though at some primitive level I was aware of their existence; maybe a little music would have been good, but I am not even sure about that. Food was provided to me, very bland food, rice, poorly cooked, nothing like Chinese rice, corn yellowed swimming in a sea of sugar, a piece of bread equal to a piece of bread only in looks, much like a certified dog isn’t a dog, and then a piece of meat that tasted refrigerated cold and dank; you walk the earth and cry to yourself when you eat like that, but I did not care about food, it was not something I remembered from a French or Italian perspective, more like a British subject, food is something you eat to stay alive, you can have culture without a cuisine. I didn’t really know if England had culture as much as it had cultures, again I was in this room, this room, that is where I was, maybe you should not take anything I say seriously. And then again maybe I am in this room because I have something serious to say and you are out there because….

Before I continue telling you about my existence in this room, I must tell you about an artist that I met at an art festival. He had opened his house for the art fair, a very common practice, uncommon here in that the artists would welcome you into their personal museum like homes. I was rather fascinated with this artistic field trip, my friend Monica charted out the course, based on our artistic desires; I made it a point to avoid pottery, its just never been done like the Egyptians did it; but we still went to a few of those. I would tell you about the pottery process because these artisans are technicians, and what they do, spin and bake and color, bake again, that sort of thing, you can make a descent living doing; unfortunately, except for one creative fellow that had a wild peacock living in the area near the baking oven, have to ponder how this potter fellow could resist not throwing the obviously arrogant peacock into the oven, except for that I don’t remember any of how or why anyone would want to work with clay. But what was most interesting about this, visiting of artiste’s homes, is that I was expecting to meet starving artists in dingy homes that would be happy to take twenty dollars from me as the highest payment for their pottery; but instead they all lived in beautiful houses, much better than my own, and not only were they not starving but they were doing craftily very well. The pot that I thought ought be worth twenty dollars and fifteen with my, art admirer discount, was actually two-hundred and twenty-five dollars, certainly forget even asking for a deal, the price was baked on, if I didn’t buy it somebody else surely would.

But my favorite horror house artist on the trip was one belonging to a sculptor who I must hesitantly agree did indeed impress me with only one of his bronze sculpted pieces, and this was the one piece not for sale. He was more of an engineer than an artist, so all of his sculptures were massive, you would need cranes and trucks and more slaves than it took to build the pyramids in order to acquire and secure anything of his. When we first arrived at the retired barn house, we were assaulted by a continuous furnace of riveting operatic music; then this hefty jolly graying character with an incessantly blushing face, rambunctiously steps out to greet us. The first words out of his skinny lips, “Alright who knows which opera that is?” set up for the kill we were sure prey, Monica didn’t motion a reply, I don’t know anything about Opera, I like words that start with the letter O, Ojos, Ohm, Olga, Octagon, but I don’t like Opera. I am told it is the most expensive art form in the world, you don’t write Operas because you are a good story teller you write Operas because you know how to retell the same old story over and over again in just such a flagrantly overdosed of cochina opulence that the who’s who of all societies will fly and drive and overcome all personal obstacles to be enchanted by your version 1098.002 of Carmen. There are, as you must imagine, impossible operas and possible operas. I have very good friends that love Opera and have even gotten to stand on stage in custom, I have friends that have contributed more to Opera than you and I will ever make in our life times, out of respect for their love of this overly masticated art form I shall refrain from further comment.

Enough about art festivals I was telling you that I could not guess the name of the tedious Operatic screeching, I say guess because back in those days, and they are long gone, back in those days whenever I did not know something I took a wild guess and much to my amazement, I was often either right or the only one to have guessed right. There is a difference between being right and guessing right, and it is not to my advantage to explain it now. So Dr. Opera Lover lances the correct answer, thus substantially impressing himself and what is the understanding of operatic drama without the appreciation of fermented mashed grapes; so he, apologetically, offers us some cheap wine; ah back then that was the secret to my heart, wine, cheap or rich I loved it all. I could wine and drive at the same time, I could talk for endless hours into the night with only wine by my side, wine was my perpetual fuel, Dr. Opera hit a chord. We accepted his kind offer. The wine we were offered was cheap. We get beyond the opera and wine, and are then able to begin our review of Dr. Opera’s monolithic sculptures.

Again he was more of an engineer, we are thus assaulted not by heavenly magical sculptures but rather menacing sculptures done in bronze disfigured with tubing and cement and steel cabling and iron spikes and barbed-wire. Just as breathlessly nauseating as it sounds. He was a masculine sculptor, everything was solid and big and a brutal attack on humanity, the cosmic, a sort of harsh implosion of all substance. It either looked like a weapon or something that could chisel-cut your heart out; or something that could equally quarter divide you into four body parts traveling undesirable directions. The bronze, a beautiful and gorgeous and adorable metal by any measure, a metal that does not require molding to be a sculpture, a metal that lingers and rings the soul of the universe, this very bronze was here twisted and molded in just such a spectacularly contrived and coerced manner that it looked piercingly ugly. He had managed an artistic defeat of Bronze! It was to this horror that my eyes fell victim, to the twisted torture of Bronze, moribund frozen in such hideous insular endeavors that my soul was propelled from this place with insurmountable energy; I cringed, fisting my soul, wailing coils within, all the while maintaining congruent ambient appearances. There was enough spectacle here to keep the historians of human atrocities occupied for centuries. Dr. Opera had mangled and paralyzed the most gorgeous metal in the universe, I was spinning mindlessly inside of myself, bathing untamed furies, arduously keeping myself together hearing bloodied sentences such as “…this is how I force this shape into being..” or graphic this one, “…much like the virtues found in artillery equipment you can see the same principles subscribed to here…” and, “functions define the form and harmonizes….” Followed by the fatal pseudo-philosophical stance, “….the appendages of the metal have been harnessed so that the you can see the fundamental art of measure, the art of trajectory, the art…” The art was the art of mutilation and destruction. Call it the Hitler collection. We had managed to avoid Hitler entering his spectacle of horrors into the realm of art, kept instead in the natural horror found in military and political enterprises; but Dr. Opera had gotten through the broken bottles of glass cemented upside down on our souls as our only defense against the sinful wickedness of bondage horror.

And then as I was getting another glass of wine, tumultuously urging the alcohol to seduce me while overtly yet covertly urging that we retreat from this museum of horrors, when I stumbled into this most beautiful and seductive piece that was stupefyingly magnificent, simply magnificent, and my mind went whacked! My soul could not comprehend how this piece of spiritual bounty could be here, in this very place, before me, part of me wanted to weep aloud, part of me wanted to kneel in worship, part of me just wanted to perish everything else, and in violent rage destroy it all! I walked up to this phenomenal monument, and I touched it and I sangre christened it. Bronze on bronze on bronze, about eight feet tall, a wealth of aesthetic dedications composing a sort of guardian essence which I could not discern as related to anything here. Much soul so much soul I had never seen in anything or anyone, even god does not have this much soul! I commenced to babble and compose multiple poetic stances, washing my eyes in the dark tarnished golden black pearl hues, the emotions of these Centurian begun to touch me and caress me and I was trying to deduce for my own discomfort how it was that Dr. Opera could have sculpted this masterpiece? Asked the question he responded: “It is my guardian.” Now I was really more confused, this Bronze on bronze of bronze magnificence did seem like a supra guardian entity, a guardian angel, mind you it did not have the figure of an angel or anything remotely like a person, it was a division of soul and a composition of souls, a sort of grand canyon, reaching extremeness of high and low intensity while simmering a boisterous menace that was soothing to the observer, eight feet tall, no more in varying dimensions than three feet wide and two and a half deep, rounded in parts, gently sharp in others, there were some consistencies, but only if you measure consistency under a dimensional five square inches, once your eyes traveled outside of those five square inches you were in alien territory and if your eyes tried to make the trip back to the previous five square inches the previous conception of that squared area was all gone and once again you would need your cartographic mind to step up the mapping process. Was this a bronze sarcophagus for many dead souls that seemed to inhabit it like a bee hive? Souls from where? Each square five inches a soul chamber for each, and all were so beautifully distinct and yet continual of constitution?

It was while painfully infiltrating with my eyes the sculptor, and triangulating with his scattered spasmodic creations then circling back to Centurian that lucidity gave me a stroke, neurons popped in my head, like electrical wires blasting surrender to their lightning bolt, my amygdala froze me like a deer locks in place when faced with up and coming headlights from a car; play dead and they will just keep going, they do keep going; clash! My neurons were triggering fuses that were set to disconnect should I over extenuate my brain, and while in this stasis of mental paralysis I was able to feel with my gut the concerning triangulation. Dr. Opera had indeed tortured the spirit out of all those bronze boulders; the Bronze had suffered a pain-death here in his torture chamber, playing the opera so loud so as to drown the spiritual agonies cried by all these Bronzes in their insufferable carnage; he had however gradually sculpted over the many years, Centurian. Naming it his personal guardian, so much he felt that this was the case that he refused to sell it, even though I insisted multiple times despite of the exorbitant and unknown, to me, value of bronze; and aside from my typical state of being jobless and broke; he refused to even consider a price for what he called his, “Protector..” I squeezed my nervous fingers dragon’s blood while explaining to him that I was in love with this monumental piece, I noted what an outstanding artist he was for sculpting Centurian; and while his vanity rose with ease to the kiss my ass podium, he persisted in denying me any possibility of possessing Centurian. But the triangulation spoke to me clearly, every soul from the bronze that had been tortured into an arsenic and petrified existence, had quietly migrated and sculpted itself, individually, into Centurian, Dr. Opera had not a thing to do with it; the spirit of Bronze from all the petrified tortured bronzes had sculpted itself, into every chambered squared five inch density of Centurian. Indeed he had been working upon Centurian all of his life, slowly and magnificently through the many Bronzes divined guidance, unknowingly, while endeavoring for his presumed safety, as projected by the divine bronze, so as to save every bronze soul from perdition in those horrid hands. And each aggregate soul grafting itself into the enigmatic magnificence of Centurian, of the Angel, of their bronze Guardian Angel.

A sadist Dr. Opera had no concept of pain, sadist don’t comprehend pain, they don’t truly feel it, which is why they pursue it with such vigor and adoration, what you can not have, what you can not really feel; in so being the Doctor had caused such excruciating dragon pain to the bronze, that this very bronze carved an escape sanctuary for itself. Centurian was where all the bronze had gone in refuge. Using the hands that bronze painfully understood too well, the bronze had sculpted itself a sacred palace.

It was when my amygdala released me back into the torture chamber that I understood why I had been blindly guided to this repulsive menace. I climbed quickly into myself, I went and grabbed the very gas flame thrower that had been used against my bronze, and with flaming torch infested hands I caught Dr. Opera with that kind of fiery phenomena which all drama lovers love; carnally gauzed with my blue spirited flame he rushed away from me, and tellingly not towards Centurian; propelled was he by more fears than I felt possible. I was limited in my liberating reach by a straining red hose, but was able to increase the breathing nozzle fire length by turning a simple valve to maximum, able thus to scorch his flesh where his amygdala felt compelled to freeze him from the global shock, and might I fade away if he played dead; but I was empowered by the agonies of bronze, he could never be so silent and dead that I might not hear such wailing; where upon I danced like a good Indian dancing for rain only spewing out more and more glorious fire. My eyes vivid blue from the gas flame, ah the smell of scorching human flesh, I had felt that smell before in other lives, I didn’t like it then but now I was excited smelling roasted skin, very excited. Dr. Opera became so fusible that he melted away from all his excitement. All that was left of him, that is after I was emptied of gas, was not more than his charcoal soul, I leaned my head to kiss my Centurian friend, who had led me to rescue all of these souls under his guardian essence; I was smiling like a princess by the lake seeing her lover blossom on a gorgeous spring day.

Monica a once dear friend, one that I had admired with all heart, especially because she was private with her expression of emotions, only to unleash them with her boisterously artistic choice of socks, socks intended to sabotage the system with their blistering brightness or arrogant cuteness, this very Dark Queen of the sock realm, did me very wrong. Monica did not halt to question why I was rescuing these bronze souls; instead she had used her cellular phone to call every police unit in the county that had a license to carry a weapon made of iron and not of bronze, for bronze would never shoot its hero. The blind authorities of course thought I was a nut case, I can’t imagine that the picture of me hugging Centurian while engorging smiles would inspire them to understand what actually took place. A SWAT team sniper, loaded a rifle with a tranquilizer used on lions and tigers and bears and shot me! And a lot of me has been sleeping since that tranquilizer shot splattered in me. You just don’t ever really wake up from that.

Then… what I was I telling you, oh about my room, yea it was a nice room, sort of my award for rescuing all that bronze, everything is simply taken care of for me.

Only just the other day, I was, as was my custom, sleeping quietly, when banging sounds were coming from outside my window. Amygdala paralyzed me with fear on the bed again and then promptly released me. Perhaps Amygdala had memorized that I know very well how to handle myself in stressful situations and indeed released control of my physical anatomy back to me. At which point I got up, wearing my maroon and white pin stripped pajamas, I still felt it necessary to put on my checkered blue and white robe, and went pulled the chord to draw the curtain, oh the sight I caught was of such disproportional grievous horror that my amygdala again grabbed control of my body functions; I tried to fight her but she wouldn’t release me, so I stood there helplessly watching as Dr. Opera, now bold in the head was smashing his cranium right into my window, breaking it with his skull. I was not aware, and apparently neither was he, that for my own security, and maybe more his, my window was not only bullet proof but also crash resistant, and so Dr. Opera kept banging his head uselessly cutting himself up. It was then that it occurred to me that that wasn’t Dr. Opera because I had after all melted him away with that gas gun. My Amygdala, always quick to spy my thoughts, released me again so that I could move, and I did what any sane person would do, I dove into the bed reached for the phone; only there was no tone, and then to my horror there weren’t any number keys to punch! The phone was not a real phone, I hanged up mad! And passed out from pure fury!

Strangely, the following day the curtains were closed; no matter, my breakfast arrived on schedule, I ate my scrambled eggs and an English muffin, I have always loved English muffins they are very comforting. After finishing my decaffeinated coffee, I casually pulled the curtains to see below a severely cracked window smeared with blood. I decided to sleep the rest of the day, dreaming with my truth that Bronze is not a metal.

GOD & OBJECTIVITY AN ADVANCED CASE OF SCHIZOPHRENIA

2006-08-31T10:37:00.000-07:00

The next morning I woke up, having been lifted from energies that were not of me and could not belong to me, hence the itching. When something is not you it starts itching you, discomfort is what you feel when you are out of your natural realm, which is why you can not tickle yourself though it might be a lot of fun; your body knows you so it doesn’t fancy you a stranger, when a stranger tickles you, it tickles not so much because it is enjoyable but mostly because it is strange. If you suffer a tickling fetish, feathers please, if you suffer such it is because you want to be a stranger to yourself. Some people manage to be strangers to themselves, which is to say that they can tickle themselves to death.

When you are a stranger to yourself you think that there is something out there, you hear and feel external entities guiding you with indiscernible whispers, you follow the designated path given to you by these external beings which of course are really only you trying to talk to yourself; only you don’t know this because you don’t recognize yourself so you give meaning to more external voices. And then before you are aware of your own self, you decide that because there are external beings that there are also external symbols, so you start to investigate and categorize the external symbols, which of course don’t really exist, only now you are using them to guide you and to facilitate your path towards the beings which you have identified as your leaders.

But then one day you drink some soup offered to you by a very nice witch and everything changes. A walk in the woods, a letter to your best friend that does not meet with affable correspondence, and the fastidious odor of change, where you know you will not return to your self of minutes pasts, where you will miss some of the pump and nostalgia which you had nurtured, when you could still suffer the sentimentality brought on by tragedy and death, by loss or sour gains, days to be gone behind you now. How or why it was now impossible to sympathize with these sympathies inexplicable. Could you have gone through so much tragedy that your being came numb from it? No, that is too simple, the new found insensibility was not insensible, you could still suffer the idea of each discomfort, you just did not believe in the brutality of each, you could not cause the imaginings to initiate your pain sensors, instead they brought a feeling of awareness of how gentle and fragile existence is, within and without, and one can opt for suffering the fragileness of it all or to enjoy it, you were now enjoying it.

That morning you went to your old favorite hide outs preparing for your departure, a departure that had nothing to do with distance and everything to do with being, you prepared your favorite joints and friends for the departure by throwing them a few of your lines, knowing only well that it would be the last time that they would hear you speak with such wit and intellectual flavor, a gift you had to exorbitance and yet now you were challenging the gift the gods had generously poured your way; now you intended to poured into extinction. Ah such liberty was now within your grasp where to discard your greatest gifts became an obvious necessity, it was not about doing well in the world today, it was about being apart of the world tomorrow. You would miss the hangouts, nurtured for years by your solitude, more so that each Martini would have more in common with you, so that each cup of coffee was kept warmer because the owner would pour another on the house causing you warm smiles; oh those last moments before a magnificent departure, moments that can not envision what lies ahead, where fortune will be discarded, where every advantage given by the external world will be disregarded, so as to live completely another life, within this one existence. And the only comfort zone afforded you was that life is fragile, no grievous error could outlive your mortality, no monstrosity could last more than half of your life, it was all you had left, and maybe even less than half. Maybe less indeed.

But inside all of your being was aware that your discontinuity here was also your continuity here; maybe you could not find enough fears to keep you trapped in this place but frightfully foreboding, your every error could immortalize itself here. Where you might be increasingly less here, yet more here because of it, more here where the present seeks the future, only the failure of your magnificent quest would relegate you to obscurity, where every entrance would become an exit, where every hope could congregate into perdition, where every compromise would surrender everything, and where the determination of your quest could only blind you to the real one. There was nothing to do but to go into it blindfolded, there was not enough evidence in the world to support any of your actions, your belief was all you had in hand, and only with that, you prepare to write the final chapters.

THE RED HOT CHILI PEPPER NECKLACE

2006-08-31T10:35:00.000-07:00

Enter thy sanctuary and you are at life’s trap door.

The car came to a halt, a trailer home enlarged itself before us and we entered. My friend Brian had brought me here, something about Bill the fellow we came to visit, he knew how to make the best Carnitas in the world, everyone was instantly enamoured with him as a person and as a fine chef, so I had come for the privilege treat of consuming, in good company, a delectable dish.

Bill, a tall blond fellow, handsome blue-jean build, white starched shirt, was immediately courteous to our arrival, greeting me with warmth and a surprising immediate hug. Rather admiringly I spoke the first words, “That is a lovely red chili pepper necklace you are wearing.” It was lovely, a long gold strand and hanging from it was this most succulent red hot chili pepper with its green base, just glistening hotness. Bill appreciated the compliment, “Oh yes, had it made when I was in Baja, I was browsing the typical tourist jewelry shop where all merchandise is cheap and fine, but Jose, the owner, a tall husky Mexican with glasses told me that I should instead have a necklace tailored for my character.” Reflexively quixotic I reverberated Bill’s words, “…for your character…” He proceeded to explain, “Yes, Jose told me yeah you can buy jewelry of any kind easily enough but jewelry that matches your character can only be crafted by a jeweler that explores and feels your emotional character; and Jose claimed to be such a jeweler, and if I consented for seventeen dollars, he would take the honor of searching my aura and craft its style into a necklace. At the time I thought it all expensive but different, besides I was in one of those tourist modes in which it is easy to part with money for no satisfaction, and so I agreed. Jose sat me down on a tiny stool that was very uncomfortable, I had to move back and forth to retain my balance, but I was told that while I would be trying to keep my balance it would jostle my aura enough so that he would be able to see what wasn’t my aura from the wave like distortions in my shadowing surroundings. The sun was blaring outside, the heat worked relentlessly, I was perspiring like a fountain, still I kept my obtuse seating position. Jose would look at my eyebrow, move it with his worn fingers, he would touch my palm and firmly run his fingers the length of my arm, pause to feel and then tactile his way through me with his eyes, then he would again pause, and raise his eyes as if he were looking straight into his brow, I again was not in any communal spirit here, I was just buying some jewelry, but it didn’t seem strange what he was doing, I just sort of felt that it was what he needed to do. After about twenty minutes without any conversation, Jose got up and told me to come back in a week and my necklace would be ready, and he used a tone which would discouraged curious probing. I told him I was leaving for America in two days and it would be impossible to return; he seemed unmoved by my dilemma, he took out a cigarette but did not light it, strolled towards the exit door, and repeated yet again that it would take a week. I asked if I could pay in advance and have it shipped; Jose kept staring away at the hot day and said he didn’t mail personal aura jewelry, “too much risk, too much risk, not good, not good if it gets lost” somewhat raising his hands as if questioning my sanity, “You want part of your essence in someone else’s hands?” I don’t know why I did it, it did not even occur to me to ask what the price of my aura necklace would be; I just walked out, not answering of my return.

One week later I was at Jose’s hut again, he took out the necklace and it was just so beautiful, a long golden chain magnifying a very red chili pepper, and it appeared to grow more color while held in my palms, to which Jose replied, “Its your energy that makes it glow more, you radiate with it, more because it is you, there is no resistance between you and the necklace.” Jose let me enjoy my necklace very much, I looked at my mirror image on a dusty scarred mirror, and it was growing joy within me. Jose could tell that I was pleased and, pointing his finger at my mirror image, he said “I see your smiling well.” And not once did he inhibit my luxuriating on the moment, when I finally got more used to it, I asked him how much, he said it would be “$99 dollars.” Ninetynine dollars. I am not even sure if the thing was real gold, or what the red chili pepper was made of, but it was obviously worth more than that to me, I paid him kindly offering him an additional twenty dollars but he refused it, he said, “they are all one ninetynine dollars and you don’t need to over pay.”

“Wow that is quite the tourist shopping story if nothing else.” but Bill ignored my insensitive comment and continued to greet a few others that had arrived. Bill lived in a trailer home, a strange contraption, a skipping stone for the lower classes on their way to a house, a place for senior citizens to hide if they start outliving their pensions, I have just never appreciated these hideous prefabs of fakeness, which I hold, like all other decent human beings, solely responsible for the creation of tornadoes. We were drinking tequila shots and margaritas, margaritas on the rocks never crushed, on the rocks I love Margaritas, with lots of salt around the rim of the glass, refreshing addiction to contradiction. We moved into Bill’s very small and uncomfortable kitchen. He would talk to us as he was cooking. He just flowed with the prepping and cooking process, mincing garlic, not an easy thing yet he flew through that task, chopped cilantro into refined grains of sand, I was in envy, and he smartly diced the onions neatly, without so much as blistering a tear, smiling his young looking handsome face of thirty-six years, green eyes calmly darting through the whole adventure. And I must say that the hanging chili pepper necklace sure fit nicely into his distilled spirit.

The irresistible time for cooking the carnitas arrived, as you are fully aware of my sanguinary love of food I was ready to take notes. Throughout my history I had sautéd, boiled, fried, broiled and baked carnitas hundreds of times, adding condiments of every variety, and my phenomenal inconsistency only yielded esoteric satisfaction. Feeding disappointments to my beloved Domaine, a true connoisseur of carnitas, every time that I failed her audience brought me dim joy; but she loved me too much to utter discontent, neither did her honesty allow her to applaud and fake a cheer. It came to be that the task of cooking carnitas became very painful to perform, I suffered anxiety attacks, I started to fry my brain trying to calculate all the possible things that I was doing wrong, I went on carnitas eating binges where I would hunt and visit restaurants that would make them, and eat them slowly trying to backwards reengineer the cooking process, and it was not a few times that I was told, by the cocineros de carnitas, that the recipe was a trade secret.

Bill moved some pans around, and I started to make my way closer to him so as to observe, securing a place by his side by offering to help, and he was most willing to teach; but then lively, happy, overly confident, jokester Brian enters the picture and commences to clamor for my attention, I was somewhat trying to avoid him, but then Mr. Attention Spam lover goes on to imply that he might as well have come to the party by himself. I liked Brian he was charming, a conglomeration of laughter, joy and life drama, he was a gay porn star that had much to tell about the business of making movies. I appreciated such life affirming information as “did you know that you can not film violence and sex at the same time, if the violence starts the sex has to cease, and vice versa; a gun for instance can not be used in a threatening manner during the sexually spasmodic encounter…” that sort of quotable stuff sounded to me as if we had never grown out of watching cartoons. I mean the correlation to cartoons is here immense, in cartoons you are not allowed to kill your characters, they are not allowed to have sex either, both porn and cartoons are based on fantasy, you watch both cartoons and porn knowing that you will never do what they do, but you wish that you could do it, but you know people would laugh and ridicule you if you tried it; more you sense that any attempt at mimicking this apparently superficial actions might fatally injure your moral fiber. Still the separation of sex and violence seems odd, after all sex is necessarily a violent act. Sex is mutually consented rape.

We were all sort of laughing at the hysterical irony implied by all this, when Bill yelled out for all to hear the “carnitas are ready!” A roaring approval came back from the gang but not from me. I went into a deep silence, inward refraction, my soul spiraling all into my toes, despondently I uttered this words to Bill, “How did you cook them?.” He quickly replied “Oh I just boiled them, there is nothing else to do, the pig provides all of the flavoring.” I repeated the words to myself, barely moving my lips, “the pig provides all of the flavoring.” Brian had as usual gotten all of my attention and I had missed it all. I had told Domaine that I would be coming back home with an award winning carnitas recipe; how could I, not being French, complicate or make sound special, “Oh I just boiled them…” Well if it was just so, I had picked all the wrong pigs at the wrong butcher shop, maybe I was being sold some other kind of meat by my butcher, maybe he was feeding me left over lamb or some part of shark meat that tasted like pork but wasn’t pig! That could be it, my butcher was suffering financial woes, he had spent all his retirement money on a butcher shop but people were just “not buying meat,” or so he complained to me. Only now I knew what he meant by “no one was buying meat!”

We voraciously consumed the carnitas bamboozling our bodies not to over react to the Tequila, but more because they were so delicious, every bite my tongue tasted the fatty pig essence rippling into me, into my sangre flesh, blessed all in a holy pool of avocado, tomato, cilantro, and chili pepper pecadillo. The night gathered in plenty of ridicule and obscenity rituals where some times I felt we were crossing social barriers only to find that we would retreat in laughter as soon as it came to breaking out of our middle class hives. As the night drew to a close and only five of us remained, presumably Bill’s dearest of friends, some smart ass proposed that we toast to our gracious host; where all immediately clamored to the idea, sparkling Tequila shots raised high to celebrate the fine man, and smart ass shouted, “for our revered Bill that makes young men meet their dia de los muertos!” Brindis! Shot glasses crashing into each other. I shot my tequila straight into my gutter, performing the complimentary accompanying faces of disgust; turning then to ask of Brian, “What does he mean by saying that Bill makes young men meet their dia de los muertos?” Brian seemed uncomfortable having to respond to my question, he ignored it and asked instead, “I am ready to go home let us say our goodnights.” “Wait Brian you are not answering my question.” Brian got ire eyes and said you shouldn’t want to inquire about this and I shouldn’t be the one to answer here but I’ve got too much alcohol in my veins for protocol; Bill is an assassin with a serial record of killings, and he only murders young men.” My body playing back eons of stalagmite frozen in silent caverns; Brian fashioned a brusque bodily gesture implying that I might not have the ability to understand what was going on here, or why it was not a bad thing, without waiting to comfort my incomprehensibility he shouted, “I am getting out of here, find your own way home.” I sat on an old raggedy granny chair near a fake fire place that was fired up by furnished gas; fake translucent logs hiding the counterfeited flame, I sat there, beer evaporating in my sweating palm, gazing at the fire and searching to feel what all this meant, why I had felt such an attraction to this man, why was I in his trailer home, enjoying such a now perplexing evening; and what did it mean to me that he was a murderer, and stranger yet that his closest friends new his profession and yet seemed so comfortable with him. It was his job, it was what he did, we all had jobs we didn’t like. There, while under such hypnotic trance, Bill came near and noted, “Well, I guess we are all alone now.”

I instantly raised to my feet, I moved into the kitchen area, a trailer home is really one large room with partitions which never really separate any point of space from another point in space, it was the kitchen that had the closest exit. I stood by the stove, and Bill went around me to lean back into the white wall next to the door. He was calm, rested, content with the evening; it had been a dear gathering of friends; and more Bill seemed pleased that I had come. He gave me his boyish young smile saying, “You look a bit stiff?” Needing not to hear such comment, I glanced at him, constricting my hands in my pockets, sort of not wanting to look straight into his eyes, and desiring to avoid conversation of any kind, “Your carnitas were delicious, and all you do is boil them?” Well yes I just boil them, but it is not the boiling process that gives them the flavor, it is more how much you are there with them when you are cooking. The more you are Near with your carnitas the better they will taste, they respond well to attention, everything responds well to attention.” “But I have given my carnitas lots of attention and yet they never really turn out like yours.” “No, you are not from here really are you? You sort of are here but you really can’t give your attentions to things Near for too long because something from afar keeps on tugging at you; almost making it impossible for you to be near, here.” I don’t know why what he said made instant sense to me, I did not need him to explain it much, it was clear to me that I had always sort of not been all here, in the near, and that it required a lot of concentration to remain here; while I had always wanted to be earthbound with common truths and absolutism I had always felt a greater tug by a metaphysical sense of being.

It also became clear to me that he knew me and that he loved me and that he had expected us to meet at some point in this existence. And today the marriage feast carnitas had turned out specially well. Feeling the self to its inner most glares its essence upon the world, where it beckons tangling connections weaving into the dangling stream of likes, it was our sameness that made our conversation superfluous to the underlying rivers of suppositions, interminably exchanging and tangling us into Gordian knots. Two lovers talking their millennium long honeymoon in their trailer home. Seemingly opposites a perfect match, I had trouble killing a fly; and spiders operated a reign of terror in my apartment; he was a murderer of innocence. I was convinced that he was somehow aware that I knew he was a murderer. Without waiting for my uneasy disposition to secure the question, he promoted himself to comfort me by answering the unquestioned.

“I murder men because I have desired to be near your essence, it is through the killing of others that I draw their innocent energies into me thus avoiding the contamination of maturity; and thus becoming more a Near, a being that refreshes primarily the present. It is difficult to gather life energy when we are Fars, killers are the most dead, we barely can get enough of ourselves into existence, we kill to stay alive, we kill to repeat to ourselves our existence; true beggars needing constant Near nourishment from what is most supremely alive because we are the most dead. Somehow I was aware that by being more here I would find your essence, and that you would find my constructed near self, all I had to do was just to keep on murdering, enlarging myself in the present.” A grande lump in my throat the size of a chiquita banana, “So you have gone around being a serial killer so you could draw me to you?” A silent responding essence, petrified innocence leaning into the kitchen wall next to a white door, a window on it allowed me to see the banishing sun, a distant melting “…yes” His body sinking and permeating into white wall, his blue-jeans bleaching into the white, his white starched shirt so much now this wall that all I could see was the red chili pepper necklace; while his young boyish immaculate essence all quicksand into a white wall, lingering a drowning “…yes”, I stood tall and derisive, “how could you think that?” whispering howls, “You are a bad carnitas cook because you are not all here, your always readjusting to remain here. The act of “thinking” is tampering with your Far. Your essence is a pure Far ever refreshing infinite generalities, always you will be just an image here. You have now been drawn to me because hitherto I was formidably here, near everything that is earth, solid, pure material essence, each boy I killed made me more here, each murder drew me more solid, each essence from each body that escaped into me narrowed the essence of my being into rock formations; a certainty that I was nowhere else. I felt that you, though I could not tell how you would be, one merely searches for an ambiguous essence, one does not guess appearance or character, an essence equals anything, but I felt that you were out there. You being from afar where inconsistency abounds would find it alluring to feel and inspect certainty, and the more near focused I, the more you would be drawn to me, yet I a Far myself, in love with your Far, have made myself near to be loved by your denial of self.”

I felt my irritated flesh a protruding topsy-turvy cotton sweater, uncomfortably I moved inside of myself; tears began to dance out of his grass eyes, echoing “…I made myself a Near because you would not acknowledge Far…” I closed my eyes and searched within myself, my stethoscopic ears hearing his heart crying palpitations of devotion towards me, melting me, adding smoothness and comforts to the distance I felt between the world and myself, emotional paths ripening spiraling crumble zones, dispersing the irrational weight of our emotions. Awareness awakens, he was my twin, a twin that had murdered his sameness to mine because I had denied it and he most wanted to remain with me. I was in love with an opposite essence, a negation of myself. Red Hot Chili Pepper was really not all the lust and zest and vibrancy of a Near, druid to his loving heart he reached out for my love and ended up solidifying into rational earth consequences, he diced too many tomatoes, he destroyed to much in his path towards me; yet never reached near enough to cry while stabbing onions; we were both strangers here, but at least I was still my unresolved self, while he had had to zigzag around inconsistencies so as to avoid contingencies, I still had every doubt and faith in uncertainty, I could go anywhere from irrational. While where ever he could move he had to logic the certain knowledge of his deeds and their consequences. I walked towards his sinking essence, crying himself abysmally into the deeper wall, slowly I carved a pilgrimage approaching his praying wall and gave it a bleeding kiss.

Regaining my bearing on the near, it was now four and seven minutes in the morning, I picked up the abandoned Red Hot Chili Pepper necklace and went home to my beloved Domaine, who was not uncommonly upset at my lateness home; after accepting the necessary chastising I kissed her and placed the red hot chili pepper necklace around her long slender neck, that very day, I cooked her the best carnitas she had ever tasted; she even cheered and applauded, and gave me a big fat wet kiss, while pushing me on top of the dining table, not many carnitas left, demanding with her luscious sensations that I tell her where I got the recipe, her depravation our raw joy.

BETWEEN THE SELF AND THE SELF IS MARGARET

2006-08-31T10:34:00.000-07:00

If you have access to an Omnibeing it does not hurt you to take advantage of it by asking for some guidance. Wisely this is precisely why I encouraged every encounter with this strange being that seemed to mean so much and yet offered very little concrete material to work with. I felt the need for his opinions, it seem that even he thought of his truths as mere opinions, and that he was flexible in letting them move out of the way and perish if they could not support themselves on their own. That kind of wisdom is very difficult to grasp. How can one be strong of will and character if one does not insist on believing in something? Omnibeing’s willingness to surrender without struggle on any concern contradicted my ideas of existence, especially because, here on earth, one had to really believe in existence in order to toil to accomplish just the basic necessities of survival. Life was not easy, it was belief and a willingness not to compromise that made it survive and outlive other less fanatic species. Anyways all the while that Omnibeing seemed to believe in nothing he still seemed to be speaking with the authority of a universal master, hard to contradict, and yet what was most incredible was that he was not only not asking me to believe anything told to me, but more even if I had opted to believe in any of it, action seemed impossible, his comments could not be constructed as words for action, rather than feel how the world might be a better place if it worked based on Omnibeing’s premises, rather than fancying that it was incredulous to even imagine that the world ever could work in such manner. The world was not like that, Omnibeing was not from here, he was not telling me how things worked here, he was telling me how the universe imagines itself to be, and he was willing to relinquish those beliefs if they bothered me in any way, it hurt him nothing, it hurt the universe nothing.

Don’t follow me unless you are a leader, don’t follow me if you are not a believer, don’t follow me if your inner being does not lead you where I am going, don’t follow me because you don’t know yourself, don’t follow me if you can not lead me. Just don’t follow me. Everything he said was detached but not neutral, it had repercussions, impossible repercussions because I could not even do anything his words might suggest; you don’t converse with Omnibeings because you get something out of it, you do it because you are crazy, they don’t care, they will talk tall to you, they just don’t care.

A thousand years in the hole and all we have left are the charred carcasses in the closet of existence. Omnibeing new what I was asking, instantly aware of it, and so he continued as if we had never cease our earlier conversation.

“It is not about the mission, it is not an act to live, it is more a matter of letting existence happen to your being. You are this essence which you are, actions driven by your external feedback can only contradict the conditions of your being, you must rest back and let your sails catch the winds they will, you must lean back into yourself, rest within the confines of your being and then let the bottle rockets explode all around you if they so will, but don’t you try to infest your being by correcting the path of your ways and your travels with the external stimuli that always calls us to action and mandates from another and another and none really. Settle into yourself, settle into your heart of being, trust that inner being to sail well wherever its currents might cruise. The trick of existence is to lean into the self; the world has long been busy trying to connect to that impossibility by external means, it has largely failed because what matters is what is at the core, it is the core that holds all the externals together, you see the attachments, but all the attachments are somehow connected to the core that drives them to clamp structure into existence, the core is savage, it is raw, it is pure nasty energy, fall into your core and you will bathe in savage plasma, you will grow from your self imposed cannibalism, eat and consume your being, live because you consume your being, allow that blind consumption to become the concern of the external world and let it adapt to it, if they can’t adapt they will try to kill you, if they succeed your death will liberate you.”

The guy is obviously a fanatic, acting wise but truly a fanatic, to believe so much in the essence of self without taking your environment into consideration was just the kind of extreme that would get me killed. And I am told that death will liberate me if they are able to kill me, what a truly caring Omnibeing, liberation via death just seems like the wrong road to travel, that again requires more faith than I have on the continuity of self or even in the perdition of self, people die all the time, and they seem to intuitively avoid it. Omnibeing interrupts my maliciously grievous state of thought, “Why do people die avoiding death? The most common thing is death, at any given time in the universe more things are dead or dying than are alive or being born, the ratio is catastrophic, a million killion dead things make the most observable part of the universe, what you can see is what is usually most dead or closest to death, things slow down when they are preparing to die, beings get to know themselves when they are close to death, because everything starts stopping and their energyless comet tail trail catches up to them, if you have found yourself you are most closest to this death thing, and you must move beyond that, the boredom of awareness kills, but attempt to avoid death and you will find that in so trying to kill death you have killed life first, the only way to kill death is to kill life first! More horrid what you guard against is what you see, you are reacting to what is dead or dying in the universe. What you can know is what you don’t need to know. The observable world is what is most dead.”

Umm… there was a brilliant statement what I can know I don’t need to know and what I can not know is what I need to know. You know I have never minded irrational being but rationality can not be all bad, there must be something good to be said for it, and this whole thing about being aware of that which I can trust to be the core self and yet not have an inkling as to what it is, maddening to imagine it. I was not a lover of the rational world, surely I could blame the devil for it, the devil was really a very rational being that surrendered to everything that was immediately within his pleasure grasp, a hedonist that enjoyed the moment and forgot to listen to the core of his being, the devil falls in love with everything that is mostly dead or truly dead. And Omnibeing wanted me to love something that I can not see nor feel nor experiment with, but just to believe that there was some internal dynamic that was crashing upon me from the inner whatever and propelling me dimensionally and exponentially, really Margaret can this be true? I decided to start calling Omnibeing Margaret, it seemed like the perfect name for a butterfly essence, a perfect name for a being that believed that externals and the visible world were really the wrong path towards existence. Margaret responded. Indignantly “My name is not Margaret!” I, with tender kindness, “Who cares what your name is, you have no name, you haven’t introduced yourself, you will not meet my readers so as to prove to them that I am not some kind of a nut, so don’t tell me your name is not Margaret, not only is your name not Margaret but the name Margaret is dead what do you care about something that is dead, my dear Margaret!” A severe emphasis needed to be made by me, Omnibeing was taking too many simple pleasures toying with simplicity in my complex life, I had to bite back or remain a victim of his arrogant indifference. “Ok Margaret actually sounds good, I think I could like the name, better yet I think I already like it, “Margaret” Yes indeed it is a very nice name has kind of a severe strongness to it, it could be the center of something, or even the murderer of something, almost makes me concrete real, almost makes me stand still, almost makes me old and aware of myself, almost kills me, I think I understand why you intuitively baptize me with such a name, I deign then that from here on I shall be called Margaret not only here but everywhere, Margaret, yes Margaret.” I humbly responded to his gusto bravado, “Margaret I am glad you like it, sounds kind of like a sad name, maybe it even cries a lot, yeah it sounds like a wailing storm of tears. Margaret might even be a kind of mud puddle for suffering, Margaret yea sounds like a mud puddle of devastating unhappiness. Margaret.” Omnibeing just stretched upon the last comment, went into a kind of personal massage, where it seemed that his entire essence had disappeared from our mutual presence. Then he came back laughing, and then seemingly screaming with joy, his obsidian coral arms reaching exultation into the infinity “My name is Margaret!”

“Sometimes it just takes a little time to get used to a name.” I remarked candidly and frankly a bit frustrated by Margaret’s ability to adapt. Margaret replied not to ease my perturbations, “When I came to your audience, I wanted to reach you and answer your calling questions but to reach you required that I take the longest route, for though I am no different than thyself, we are all individuals; it is merely the path we travel that makes us unique, I knew to reach you would require me to travel the route that you had traveled away from yourself, and then imposed myself upon you there. And hence that read that thee has traveled away from thyself is also the least possible distance which you can acquire between the universe and your soul, then though I traveled the longest route to you, I have dutifully and equally traveled the shortest. And now imposed upon by the measure of your imaginary creations, I have taken longer than ought be necessary to accept the name of Margaret that thou imposes upon me and yet it imposes nothing so that for me to negate it is to negate nothing.” I sneezed, it was an attempt at emptiness within my constipated lungs; Margaret paused only long enough to ignore the sneezing, “and all just to tell you that you are not here to reproduce what has already been done, that it is not about doing with what you have on hand but with what you don’t have in hand. Everything else is impossible with what you have on hand, everything else!” Long pause, slight burp and breath and… “It is about doing what has not been done.” Arching his large magnificent hands above his head Margaret pronounced a sweet melody, pronged and universal dancing a sweetening spiral across the room and back towards me. “It is about knowing how to dance and swing with yourself, about sharing your lips with spiraling Earth, where every kiss encounters your saliva, where in their green eyes are your green eyes; where you have feared to thread within yourself, and travel the shortest distance in the universe, which is between the self and the self, the subjective self, the narrowest point in the universe, the smallest most individual entity, and we are all individuals but for the paths we travel; YES! I am Margaret, I love Margaret, she is a sweet bitch, and I like her red dress, I love her red dress, which is now my red dress!” Best I could tell Omnibeing was happy to be Margaret.

I was smiling from the wild commentary, the proposition was certainly interesting, ingesting the knowledge that the world offers might not be conducive to the self. The consumption of knowledge merely induces the excretion of an external world and this mierda is inevitably going to attack you. The self could certainly be the shortest distance between two points, and once one pivots on one’s gyroscopic self, every point in space ought be equal distance from there, creating a personal symmetry, but instead we travel through knowledge. Only if knowledge was the answer we would have found it already. In pursuit of knowledge I had traveled away from my gyroscopic stabilizing self, off kilter left to struggle against my own soul which unfortunately does not fight back through proxy, this soul of mine always storming its end-user, and no one else; because my soul doesn’t care about the external world. It all made sense to me now. So far had I made Margaret travel so that she could reach my heart. I was so externally defined that everything that made me fought everything I was with the fatal courage of fear. Locked in a stasis of ideas, laboring on behalf of my own deception that there might be such a thing as a real world. Surely there are indeed worlds that are necessary, but that will not make them any more true.

Hello my dear reader, my name is Margaret I am and have been your protagonist and the scribe of these pages. May I be allowed a pardon for having digested Omnibeing and found myself in the middle of these pages? Undoubtedly the book is doomed, so is all objectivity, having I now no other point of reference but myself, which was probably true all along, only now it is actually truer. To escape the self is only a torture that makes for good books, sadly for this one, having narrowed all my personalities into an absurd singularity you will now have but me to contend with. Oh but do not despair, there is still the curse that I picked up as a child in Colombia with any luck that ought help us or keep us entertained till the end of the book. And not to leave the jitterbug out of the picture, “Music Maestro!”

Music halts.

Oh the passions and secrets that a woman possesses are so great and enigmatic that even she does not know of them. Hear me out now that I can speak from her heart! Hear me now.

A woman will never be with a man that is less intelligent than she is, since this equals all men a man can only be with a woman if he can fool her. Man looks for a woman that he has a firm grasp of, someone that to great extent he can control and deceive, a woman inversely searches for a man that she can’t figure out and often finds the one that can fool her.

Ha! I am now one of them, possessor of the great energies that harness life.

Grasping hands
We were straining vein blossoming obsidian hands in dimensional sleeps
He recumbent dying
I recumbent consummating desires
Sharing metallic shivering darkness
Slivering atmospheres purging our nostrils
He grieving snail pain
I terminal rapture
Our obsidian blossoming veins sweating antipodean sufferings
Torrents of death
Torturous ecstasy
I never felt him die
I am still grasping his hand…

I am Margaret, I can love another woman. Never shall I dare envision loving the frustrated energies of a man, the angst ridden soul of mortal man is not for my red blistering lips to kiss, I shall seek the loves of women; digging into the emotional torrents of my kind, refreshing within me what feels the feelings that are felt, and is those very feelings. Margaret that is ME. It is so true indeed that none of you will dare scream it not, though you know it all that we have all, from little boy to tall man king, from darling little baby girl to mother wife and dame, that we are all obsessed upon the feminine. All our male or female voyeurism’s are to envy, lust and surmount our feminine essence. Ah hack to death you will the Wicked Queen Witch that enviously poisons beauties, but she is all each and everyone of us sisters; Wicked Queen Witch Syndromes wrestling for the right to hoard the treasure chest of all desire! Man may hoard power and wealth but we hoard all desire. And why we wear makeup if not to deceive each other’s cosmic temperament? Most will think it that it is because we are accentuating lines of beauty or hiding wrinkling or ugliness, or hiding ourselves; but it is none of these I say! We women wear makeup because we see the ghosting world of our inner being, because we are trying to color our soul, it has little of touch with this world, we add lipstick, eyeliner and blush to filter out the ghosting aura. No one else can see it, a woman sees these things she can not say she sees; she can not describe them to herself but with feeling washing tears. Makeup is a physical here and now reaction to our supernatural. YES I am now one my sisters and I will not shame from darting them with my eyes and dining them with my lust; and what none of you are aware of, which now I will willfully practice, is that to be the erotic woman that loves a woman is to be the ultimate feminine. The Wicked Queen Witch was in love with Snow White but could not tell herself this thing. To love a man one has to be a little less woman and more a feminine act. A woman that loves man is partially, oh yes partially a transvestite. A woman that loves a man is, I shall say it, sacrificial! True love and true femininity is lesbian at heart. “Common girls, loser plays the man!”

JEALOUSY ON THE PROWL

2006-08-31T10:32:00.000-07:00

Eyes squinting to clarify the distant threat; neck 180 degrees and turning; nipples, emerald peaks, drilling through unseen walls of air, clash without measure; pitted against the doubting inner soul, hostilities unearthing internal ghosts, extricating and mortifying all visible objects, the archenemy advancing Horizon.

If Jealousy sees you she will find you blameworthy and shoot you on sight. Before you have a chance to be guilty her illusions will consume you Horizon. Hide for she is on the prowl armed with all of her inner fears, her telemetry calibrated to identify you as all her innards, vanish Horizon! Safely keep your distance.

She wants you to take possession of all her inner fears, she wants to attack you with her frighten heart because she believes that your distance and indifference will rise to destroy her. Horizon, she despises your indifference, she wants you to feel her innards incessant anguish, flashed and lashed before you, she, devises all her internal monsters; please supplicating she, “Beat them up!” “mutilate them,” she can’t sustain all those parasitic snakes within hand’s grasp, desperation wriggling sweat from all her pores, irises washing away in plural salty mists; kill the dungeon queen, that inner voice that lashes out rancor to all who dare appear; rescue her inner voice from her inner voice, rescue her before Jealousy preys upon thee; don’t run away from her ghosts, oh banishing Horizon distance is ghastly imposed upon thee.

Horizon you are safe, it is Jealousy that perils labyrinths abyss, you are safe. More and more precipitously she falls engaging inner ghosts, ghosts that can not be rivaled without murdering a lovable notion of herself. Gashing gnarling she bedevils and swallows whole all that dare come near. A lump in the throat bedevils apparitions. If she strangles you she will choke on your death.

Jealousy measured herself against Horizon and her innards trapezoidaled.

PASSION ALERT

2006-08-31T10:30:00.000-07:00

Let me go to Horizon and say that Mrs. Puritan woman is actually castrating males with her morality, married eight moths before necessity, she has an ugly duckling complex hence her minimalist exorbitance.

Imagine with me that she is cornering male desires at their weakest point of attack. Men are lust creatures, to accuse us of lust is like accusing a black male of rape, so easy to do so difficult to disprove; we are guilty because the entire world perceives it as endemic to our nature. But imagine denying desire, dangerous to our inner being to want to disprove that! If we don’t lust after women what are we? Mrs. Puritan builds the immediate barricade to protect herself against the onslaught of sperm that is frantically trying to get to her egg basket. Barricades to protect that delicate aesthetic soul of hers that is fragile and precariously close to her eggs, giving her little option but to sink into a depression or to retaliate.

From men she feels assaults instead of desires, she feels that men will not love her soul, her aesthetic is an alien here, she erects walls to safe herself; but puritan expressions are too pure to construct formidable barriers against the world, finding herself defenseless she takes the offensive. I will castrate your desires at infancy; all alert bells go off rumbling war sounds within every tremor, paranoid but alerted by her frantic orthodoxy she orders all the boys to be morally slaughtered. Decrying, “You are a man, you want me, you better want me! Otherwise I am wrong and I am not wrong! I don’t want you to want me, stay away from me you creep! Whew, I am safe from you now, my morally devout husband is my only owner…”

Holding plenty of moral shackles and leg irons …searching to arrest flights of fancy… trapping lovers for her church of discipline… egg seekers exposed to the candor of her Roseless Bush …her sanguinary magical love disappearing, caught by her thorns hummingbird failing pinching her with his desire.

Frantic little girl running into the public square screaming: “Rape! Rape!” And this in days they did not posses medical expertise to prove her lily lies. Every male and every sentiment is suspect, every male is partially guilty; none of this would be imaginable if it wasn’t because men are men and they are attracted to beautiful women, they are even attracted to women at large, and despicably not just to her. Men can’t control themselves without her moral leash.

And there is the best of it, beautiful women, men are thoughtless in front of them, men don’t see the higher beauty, the essence, they fall for those superficial bitchess that so effortlessly lure them into passion traps and soulless desires. Now there is true power; Mrs. Puritan’s emasculated lily eyes darting as a gorgeous woman dances into the room; Mrs. Puritan grows uglier because she feels threaten! And uglier because she sees love with exclusivity! And uglier yet because we only observe her menacing guardian angel keeping her essence safe from our perversions. She is behind the lines of the masculine feminine line of fire, she has to use telescopes to see the battle of the sexes. Officers come to her tent but her directive poise is absolute, “Do not desire me!”

Desire! There is the power surge that mandates all that protection, if you destroy desire from both ends of the burning candle, then you get to keep the wax body, and that is solid and true, as long as you don’t let it heat and burst into sapphire flames; you got a work to keep it away from blazing, and our world is combustible, there are a thousand million sparkling nitroglycerin attractions.

Desire, the magic of playing with that, it is not a sandpit, it is a furnace of tingling sensations sprouting everywhere, flesh on fire, attention! Flesh on fire, to us it smells sweet to others it is a stench; corpses burning is carnal, flesh burning is passion; all those open doors, all those bellybutton ladders unfolding alluring heights.

The apocryphal eleventh commandment: “Never shall you love someone that can not deceive you!” Dare immerse your flesh within the tensions of glory amplifying desires; bodies ecstasy lollipops everywhere, and only one tongue and only so much saliva and only….. ahhahahhaahhha…. Where is my master alienator blisteerrrrriiiing biblical extinguisher of all desire!!!

Passion Alert!
Repeat
Passion Alert!
This is not a drill.
I repeat…
This is not a drill.

Judgmental, how is it that you reproduce without inspiring desire?
Asexually.
Judgmental, how do you pass judgment when no one tells you the truth?
Squalid valor.

LOVE ALWAYS MARGARET

2006-08-31T10:27:00.000-07:00

Eight into the infinity, I had always been bad with math and with numbers, if I had it in me to master numbers I would have easily been a genius, but without numbers it is really difficult to prove anything, statistically speaking I could not prove that I was a genius. There are many people out there, and you may know or even be one of them, that can statistically prove they are geniuses, some of these people are only statistically so.

Math why would anyone want to invent something so damn complicated and yet so simple. I never made it beyond subtraction, I know how to minus and minus so well that I could have minored in minus, but I didn’t because I am not very good at carrying over. If I have to carry over more than once, my mind begins to tell me that I am trying to do something with nothing and I hate doing nothing on purpose. I don’t carry over well, I begin to doubt the numbers and logically that adds to my doubts and I blackout, start with a clean blackboard.

Fractions, ¼, 1/3, 1/8, where you have a pie and then you start slicing it into this and into that is not possible for me to comprehend. For me a pie or a people divided into fractions is something that you can eat. You chop things up into divisional fractions either whole or in part and you can gobble them up, I don’t think it good nourishment to eat that which is not complete within itself, division divides, and fractions fraction, this is namely explicitly disturbing.

Once you get beyond fractions and division, that is if you can get past that without breaking yourself up into many different parts I think you get into geometry; I like geometry, it is about curves and straight lines, it is about shape, it is about dimension, I can understand how important geometry is to the Pyramids, I am not sure that the same is true for atomic particles, I don’t think atomic particles care about geometry, “Hey look at me, I am here, no I am over here,” … “see me now I am a wave, no see really I am a particle,” … “no, no, you really can’t see me for what I am because you are looking at me,” these are obviously human mind games, but that is presumably how atomic particles talk to us, I doubt it but proven mathematical geniuses have told us that. Regardless I like geometry but I believe that the most beautiful geometry is not geometrical at all, a woman for instance is the least geometrical attraction on the earth, ambiguously indiscernible desirable, a man can not see what he wants. While man is geometrically fixed, discernable, don’t doubt that a woman can see what she wants. The most beautiful of things lose us, the most gorgeous forgets us. Math is certain ugliness.

With math you can know precisely how smart you are, I don’t think that knowing precisely how smart you are is a very smart thing to do. By the way I am not going in order here, then there is calculus and algebra, I think you have to know both in order to know either, I don’t know either. I can speculate their particular speculations, I think both calculus and algebra are just ignorant math capitalizing on what is already well known, more of the same; the reality is that once you cover subtraction, addition and fractions, you have covered the entire finite spectrum of mathematics. There is nothing new and wonderful beyond subtraction, addition and fractions. Division is nothing more that fast fractionating, multiplication is fast addition. Whatever algebra and calculus tell you is nothing more than what you already know only mystified. Algebra takes numbers and turns them into phantom letters, “G” and “Z” and “Y”, using letters to represent numbers but all they are really doing is +, -, /, that is all. You can’t add or divide “Y”, you can’t touch it until you turn it into a number, and so you have to figure out what number “Y” is, and guess the only way you are going to do that is to do regular math in your head so that no one knows that you are doing basic math, and then you say, “The value of “Y” is equal to 998,677,000.345. If you have the results and go backwards to figure out the formula that gave you those results you have done algebra. But why ask a question that you already have the answer for? Gymnastics.

Calculus is not different than algebra, but it is a little more interesting, calculus is math doing math, inside of math. In other words by the time you get to calculus you have done so much math that you can’t see the world outside so your observable environment and point of reference is purely mathematical; and since math can not stand still, in order to get math you have to add, subtract or divide, all the walls around you are changing numbers, and so in order to be able to comprehend where you are standing and where you are going to be standing in this highly volatile calculus equation is to subtract and add and multiply and divide in relationship to the floating point, and that will give you a quantification of what is accurately happening that is not going to be happening for long. Calculus is fixed perdition.

Boolean is a two digit, zeros and ones, ones and zeros, reign of terror against all other numbers, any proposition has a yes or no answer, the world however operates on maybes.

I can’t say that I know what kind of math comes after these monsters of math, maybe its the new math, I don’t know what new math is, until they create another digit they aren’t going to get my attention. But no in depth discussion of math would be complete without talking about the square root of pie and statistics. Both of these are very treasured pleasures of the modern world. Spreadsheets would not be possible without statistics, and the square root of pie is something that does not add up, don’t ask me why. I think it is because they can’t round it off, rounding off is what you do when you make things even, statisticians round off a lot, it is a way to reduce the effects of an uneven situation, humans don’t like odd things, so if you have 9,999.99, you can round it off to 10,000.00, some one out there will have a problem with how liberal of a round off that was and for them, and them alone I offer 9,999.00 as a conservative alternative example. Bottom line is rounding off is a problem for the square root of pie, however at some point in the linear infinity of math, the square root of pie squares off, only we don’t posses computers that can do math that far into the infinity. Besides if there was such a computer that could map out closer to the mathematical infinity it would shrink the infinity, it would make it present in the here and now, the end of math is obtainable unless they keep on moving the objective.

And they ought not muddle the objective, you see it is all about squaring, being even, settling the score, being accountable, fixing the infinity, mathematics is about precision, it is about knowing how fat or stupid you really are, it is about knowing exactly precisely how far away you are from your honey or Andromeda. You of course are fully aware of how far you are from your honey both in heart distance and in kilometers, and as for how far Andromeda is, well billions of people have lived and died without knowing where or how far Andromeda is, fact is more have known your honey.

Love always Margaret

PS

2006-08-31T10:26:00.000-07:00

My head is in the dirt now
My head is in the dirt now
And I am all naked now
My body fully exposed
While my head fixes in the mud
flags my body for the world to flog
Exposed to the curriculum
Cornered into reality
I hide my head in shame
I hide my head to hide
Exposed and naked and anchored
Hiding in dissolution
My head is in the dirt
For you to spank and mash
Welcome all
My name is Margaret
Please serve yourselves

PSS

2006-08-31T10:25:00.000-07:00

I used to be a neutrino
Before this lead bath dirt
A subatomic particle
The puzzled enigma of the scientific community
I used to be a neutrino
A tiny thing by human measure
Yet I had traveled all of the universe
Had the energy to keep up with photons
So fast was I that I aborted time
Scientists would say that I was in two places all at once
And not have traveled in between
Where I might have been standing still
Violating laws of physics I did not know
But I tell you now it is not so
In the dirt a mask of clay my face
Let me tell you now what you will not believe you little thing
Neutrinos are not small we are hugely-large
Imagine yourself small instead, a tear drop
And look you for details
And find you coming from all sides these human thing above
Browsing you while seeming to be everywhere
But yet can only see apart of them
So that they seem to be everywhere at once
And all do look like twins
Though never have you fared further than a fraction of a single whole
My Name IS MARGARET!
Hello
Hello

RESURRECTION

2006-08-31T10:23:00.000-07:00

Dad and I with some of his buddies had gone camping, it had been a long and harsh climb, I whined every ounce we marched. Part of me did not want to get dirty, step on the puddles, dad was consternated by my lack of manliness, he would jump into the mud puddle and urge me not to be afraid to jump in, his perception of danger and excitement were like mine, warped by size, but mine more by a fidelity to my inner being, I was immaculate, I was a virgin boy, I was a child fit for a satanic altar, dad was trying to make a man out of me, and all of that contradicted my aesthetic sensibilities; I was a child of the universe, a magnificent being born from many lives into this linearity, I had done a little more than jump into puddles, the little boy rejected the puddles and rough play because I was made of the cosmic fiber. A mirage ought not be splashed with dirt because its unreality will become visible. Hiking and fishing were contemplative manifestations of only this world, and for my own sake, for the sake of his ancestors, dad wanted to make this boy a tough and disciplined man.

Dad too was Shaman from another place, he too had traveled the metaphysical sensitivities of the universe, he had many hearts, and one giant one on earth, so large a heart that he did not have himself the capacity to suffer, his heart had to be tough so that others might not suffer his frailties; dad discipline and corrugated himself, locked his immense emotions up, so that he would not emotionally fall apart, so as not to burden us all. He was eliminating weakness from the fragile earth, dad had conquered himself. And this giant heart of sensitivity wanted me to be tough so that I would not suffer, he wanted me to get dirty and dig into the earth like the worms so as to give this life the oxygen it needed to stay alive.

But I was afraid of touching worms, I was afraid of fish, I was afraid of the night, I had never grown accustomed to earthiness, I kept myself all locked up too, only not to live here but in the clouds, on top of mandarin gardens, I had discussions with angels, I used to stay in my mind and occupy as little earth space as possible, earth life for me was like going to the zoo to see a tiger. You stuck your hand in the cage to feel brave but only dared so when the tiger was sleeping on the other side. A snore from tiger would make me pull my hand out so hastily that I would always hurt it during the retreat; and still I blamed the tiger for insensitivity. A fish bleeds pain, wriggling dangling pain, spastic alterations in the air that vent the mind agitating nerves, wriggling from a hook that would have to be surgically removed from your ear, a hook that is so real that it just won’t let go, a hook that never questions its existence or its right to prove it at the expense of the fishes in the sea. And the net, what a contraption of manifest nothing, swim into me and I will show you how the suppressed air will suffocate; gills, you should have never needed gills, you should have adapted entirely to live without air! The fishes failed at being true underwater creatures, somehow they failed to forget all of their history, and they failed to move onto land, and now the land creatures scale them, rasp! Rasp! Rasp!

During the hike, I went to rest my tired legs and I almost sat on a banana slug; the big yellow ugly thing scared itself an etching into my irises, insignificant no more, I avoided sitting on her because Dad’s friend cautioned me of her existence, and to be a tough guy I sat next to this banana slug though every part of me wanted to get away from it; I had never had nightmares with banana slugs infesting my every crevice, but in life everything and everyone is always trying to penetrate you, I was aware of that as a child, and I was still a virgin, meaning I had not learned the art of jousting, I had not the awareness that I was here to penetrate something, to get into some hole and to make something come out of it. I was not aware that there was a need for me to have a desire to bugger so that the buggering that would be perpetrated upon me would suffer at least a shared experienced.

We paused further along the hike so as to pause to drink some cerveza and to eat some rice with peas and pork, the rice was delicious, the sun was hot, dad gave me my first taste of beer, I was eight years old and it did not taste like mother’s milk, it tasted repugnant, something about the taste said, don’t taste me, don’t drink me, and it was that denial which would eventually lure me to alcohol; not just a cure for manic depressions but more proof positive that I could overcome the denials offered to me by beer, by vodka martinis. And hot sauce, red hot chili peppers poisoning themselves so that I would not eat them, only like my Latin roots, I understood the desire for pain, here I am pull my heart out with a knife, it would be a dishonor not to feel the absolute pain of life, green chili peppers, hot chili peppers parallel this agony, only it is self induced, like the pain of a knife through the heart, self induced by my will. Dad had self induced his own pain, he did not need red hot chili peppers, my dad had maxed out on pain, they had abused him as a child but he would not allow them to break him! He had desensitized himself so much that he had refrigerated the world, and deep inside of him was all the furnace passionate pain, incubating itself, a willed contained chain reaction. Dad had ingratiated himself to absolute pain. And with his giant incubating heart he did not want me to feel the cold world; he knew that I was a mirror, he did not want to look in the mirror.

As I got really tired of the hike, and my weakness in the act grown me a smaller man than all the rest; one of dad’s kind friends offered to carry me in his jacket pocket. Only they soon forgot I was there, and I suffocated.

TIGHT LUST

2006-08-31T10:22:00.000-07:00

Two denim women, lovers of each other, had jet black curly hair both, one more so than the other; white freckled flesh that Sun refused to tan but not to burn and turned red face by torch. The curly hair was natural, and naturally moisturized by lack of bathing; a musty oily odor reached me from them but while savage in its taste not terribly unpleasant; there was something nice about it like essence of bears or kangaroos, and I might climb into their paunches, or on top of hairy bellies and lick their hide into orations. Clammy moisture, fungi essence like that found in the tropics where mold builds a vivid green cushion for the eyes but is no comfort for the body.

I was bald, I must admit, had cut my hair all off.

These two earthly wenches were jealous of my virginity and so wanted to spoil it. I could do nothing else but start running my polka-dotted red dress flaring into the air displaying amply my cotton white panties, my red shoes dashing forwards fast, my feet accommodated through the run by short white socks, my hairy legs running me like a clumsy beast of prey in the reverse flight of fear. I ran the grass down, breaking twigs and mutilating nests occupied with eggs, crushed as they met me in my scratchy path. The two wenches were not far behind, they seemed to keep up with an ease expected of their masculine engender; and with them came rocks that were hurdled fast and with such force that they surpassed my path of flight and overshot, plummeting into the dirt beneath, where I had to at once in flight to duck and zigzag. Meanwhile my eardrums not trained in the art of preference, absorbed their belligerent screams and laughter. “Don’t run away you bitch!” “Come back here our swelling little darling, you look so cute in that lovely polka-dotted red dress.” Flanged, a rock darting past me graced my shoulder caused an ache a mile high, I could not however let the blistering pain distract me, because the irritating yelling dished from their thick tongues kept on hankering and banging into my ears. “You must let us barrow it some time, the dress we mean!” Wicked laughter following, I kept running to my flight, ignoring all the cries for sharing, their hairy armpits vivid explanations that they had not placed their stone age weapons down! I made the distance grow so much that they finally tired and disappeared from existence; I made my way from all exhaustion into a cave hosted around huge and wrinkled devil boulders, where I sat, legs extended into anti-ethical horizons and there bled my first period without regard for sanitation.

CLIMAX IS DESIRE

2006-08-31T10:18:00.000-07:00

Luna must have caught the night all for her own admiration, I fell into a ravine sleep, I was a child again, my parents were driving us, in our new rugged but gentle vehicle, through some sightseeing paradise. Rivers forging deep and verging wide, lusting green forest seemingly void of large beast of prey; I was still wearing my polka-dotted red dress, and my little brother and I were eating berries, big dark succulent berries, sweet to the tongue, berries just want to be eaten, and eaten they were, we were kids, we were not aware that such perfect ripening was unusual, we were not sensitive to the bitter sweetness pleasures, we were not aware that berry trees want the birds to eat them; now it was us eating them and we were going to flush them through the sewage into the sea; these seeds had fallen on ill hands and unappreciative stomachs. We were laughing, giggling, mom and dad were desperately trying to shut us up, and in a moment of full exhilaration my little brother took two hands full of berries, and squashed fed them into his mouth, his cheeks blossoming bulging red and then he blasted them out of his mouth into the surrounding beige leathered upholstery; our parents were busying arguing navigation. Exhaustingly happy little girl me could resist not imitating my little brother’s act. I squashed hands full of berries into my mouth and then helped them to explode into the air freshly sprinkling the upholstery. Our children’s bodies riddle with excitement skipping laughter into the surroundings.

El Fin