“What is that novel you’re reading about?”
“Oh this 1 — it’s about a post-apocalyptic world.”
“That sounds really dark and depressing!”
“Not to me — for some reason sometimes I find the traditional morbid or depressing stories to be not depressing at all. They’re kind of comforting when you find that flicker of humanity. It’s those ‘perfect-ending-Barbie-doll-world-stories- that make me sad’.”
“Ha! (A chuckle) I know what you mean. ”
Your lips are chaffed and the cosmic diamond tans your forehead. Through sweat stained eyelids the solar winds and glare rip across the windswept sand revealing nothing. Nothing but the Sun’s gilded eternity upon miles and miles of the horizon. You can’t escape the light it is there even when your eyes are shut. Spinning around like a whirling dervish you keep turning and there’s still nothing but the that bright blue sky above. Stumbling you reach through a haze and find your footsteps. It is only them that gives you a sense of direction. Did you arrive at Mars?Is the sand behind you red and blue because you traveled inter-galactically. No — something tells you you’re still on this planet.
In the distance a pool or puddle of dark water shines deeper and brighter than the sky above. Your eyes iced by salt remain slits and tear up as you strain to see. Could it be? Is it? Is it just an illusion of blue water you wish to see. A roar of the sandstorms is in the distance, droning like blood rushing through your ears. Is it just a mirage? Your eyes tell you that there are ponds and trees and pomegranates and puddles in the distance. Puddles of water. The path in front of you is still long and arduous but you continue charging forward.
After a timeless distance you realize that plot was nothing but a reflection of the sky. But was it? Just beyond your perceived puddle– light refractions un-shadow a crisp land. A land Lush and as colorful as the Garden of Eden and as sensuous as a red rose lain on naked flesh. You’ve not given up yet and you tell yourself to keep on placing 1 foot in front of the other — your land — your place–your puddle is within reach.
The grating sound of metal against sand and pavement melt with red and yellow strobing lights — this synesthesia wakes you abruptly. Looking up snowflakes melt and run down your partition window. Another snowfall — another dream — 1 of those dreams that so real that it feels ‘more real’ than real life (on the complete opposite side of the scale of sureal).
In the depths of winter and in the depths of night you contemplate your desires and living symbols of your dreams. You don’t need a psychoanalysis to interpret this one. It couldn’t be spelled out any clearly. Was that video that you watched before the shade of night a mirage? A signpost of water in your proverbial desert. Maybe you needed a mirage there all along to keep going. Maybe without the Mirage you would not have continued?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMbnkVw-tf4
Could it be that the dark of puddle was a reflection of the divine, the seduction of your mind, that word that we call hope? and you know — it doesn’t matter what you want to call it and go back to sleep comfortably for once and continue the goal of reaching that soul quenching water springing freely from that oasis.
You still have the distance to tread but you know it is now beyond faith–its ‘realer or anti-phantasmagoric’ than ever.
what can I say?
Please sign the petition to beg President Bush not to destroy hope and lives.
A few weeks ago I passed by a refurbished farm with 5 red chimneys, 4 silos bursting with hay, 7 horses munching in a pasture and I couldn’t help but think back to when this small farm had been pretty much a relic only supporting the life of one woman and her 12 cats. The various farmhouses and barns are now painted a warm red and the fields green with life — yet still my eyes filtered it through history and I could see nothing but the old weathered grays, and the sickened hayfields of the past — a heart pump — a realization? — A haunting memory catalyzed by the piping coffee on the dashboard? Whatever it was -it elicited a ghostly flashing through my mind’s landscape.
And I — flashed – back…
It was in the mid-nineteen 90’s when steamed, funny shaped beans brought back smells from the Arabian Sea to Sumatra to Argentina and percolated from coffee pots, tendrilled from coffee cups and lingered in the air in concert with the grunge rock and folk females who were simultaneously chiming from the radio’s speakers. There I was a hot cup coffee in one hand, and leaning my hip against the counter to stretch out and yawn as the lady dressed in all black, my newly anointed manager finished manically giving me a lecture on how to “build a sandwich”.
I yawned again, sarcastically thinking…… “Build a sandwich? You build buildings not sandwiches? Whatever?”
The Lady in Black had beady, black eyes and they twitched back -and-forth spreading her eyeliner into large clumps. She was a large lady and kind who bounced off the cafés counters haphazardly like a dying balloon with her large black dress and jet black hair. I mentioned she was wearing a black, right?
I took a few more sips of a cup of Java and listened to her raspy voice inquire.
“What would you think if I told you that I could help you with wealth, health and women?” She squinted curiously at my 15 year old eyes. I paused for a second and swished hot coffee around my mouth.
“I’d say, how could youuuuu help me with any of those things, and what, what would I owe you if you did?” I uttered this back quizzically and turned to watch the coffee maker drop it’s drip by drip into a waiting pot, a motion which never failed to fascinate me. Asking myself “what would a very large, large black dressed, single, lady in her mid-30s be able to help me with?” And answering ‘not much’.
“Alright, Surie what are you thinking?”
“You know that I’m a witch, right?”
“Well, I had my suspicions — maybe that five Star amulet you’re wearing clued me into it.”
“Well yes — the amulet — but I’m a very good witch and I like to make good spells, and I really, want to do good, would you like me to make a spell for you to help with wealth and women?… good spells — good spells only — however, I do know other witches who have performed bad spells, bad, bad, bad spells — but I would never do something like that, it is not like me — it’s nothing that you have to worry or concern yourself with. ”
“Ah– I don’t know — I’m not sure if it’s something I’m interested in.”
“Come on, wouldn’t you want girls fawning over you and more cash in your pocket, I have faith that it could help, think about it–
“All right — why not — make me up one.” I said without thinking — a glorious fantasy had made my mind up for me.
As the weeks went passed Surie got more and more excited about making the potion, caroling with bloodshot eyes that it’s almost ready, ALMOST READY — and muttering esoteric incantations under her breath and repeating over and over ” I’ve got just a few more weeks work to do ”.
I was a professional daydreamer but, I couldn’t help but notice her overly meticulous attitude towards everything in the coffee and bagel shop — how much passion she put into everything — how she cleaned the microwave four times after using it — how every bagel had to be sliced perfectly down the middle — how every cup of coffee had to have the same viscosity, the same shade of brown — how every trash barrel cover had to be as clean as a baking sheet.
Then on a cool morning in March when I was hanging out with a few other employees while some smoked and others munched on old bagels by the loading dock –a few stray dogs came by and for kicks began to toss the overly stale and moldy bagels with great velocity down a hill for the hungry fellas — whipping them as hard as I could with joy when another kid around my age asked me in a low tone voice..
“How would you feel if Surie made a spell for you?”
“Oh yeah — Surie — had mentioned that to me too — a few weeks ago — I kind of forgot about it –. I am havin one made– Why are you having a spell made and for what? “
“Yes, yes — I am — ohhh- for wealth and for women.”
“That’s what she told me too “
“Yeah — I don’t see any harm in it”
“Me neither — hopefully we can reap the bounty“he smiled and we went inside to brew more coffee and take care of customers. During lunch that day, Surie came up me and whispered hotly in my ear.
“I need a lock of your hair. The spell is almost ready.”
In surprise I yelled back “What? A lock of my hair? …Hell no!”
“Well I must — I must — and I’ve been working on your spell every night for hours for the past few weeks — I’ve had to travel to local graveyards for grave dust, I’ve traveled up to Portsmouth New Hampshire for special Chinese herbs, I’ve collected crows feet from a piece of road kill last week, dead spiders and their webs, different crystals…..
“It’s almost ready — it’s almost ready — is almost ready” she continued with great excitement, her eyes gaping and as big as her mouth.
“And you know you must — must — wear a spell on you at all times. It’s a talisman, a little pouch and you can’t take it off — not when you sleep, or go to the bathroom, or take a shower never , for the next month nonstop.”
“Ahhhhh— I’m not sure if this is my thing —- I’m not wearing no bag on myself at all times — or keeping it on me — and giving you a lock of my hair — that’s crazy talk.”
Her beady eyes got darker she boomed with force.
“I’ve been really, really, really working on this and putting lots and lots of time on this. You’re going to wear it.”
“No, I’m not, and I’m NEVER GOING TO give you a lock of my hair – stop the spell or potion or whatever…Now!”
She turned quickly away and all I saw was a huge black void-a streak of black vanish into a hallway. A few more weeks went by, and she began to talk about evil spells, and all the horrible things that can happen to you if one of those spells are released. Every Thursday we closed up shop together, and as soon as she shut the door and I went for my bike and peddled home fast, hoping to peddle away my fears.
The notion of spells, and her potions and her weird black eyes had w/in days vanished out of my thoughts until one day I was sitting in English class. I hadn’t read any of the assigned Shakespeare, it wasn’t my thing and I had happily traded a few hours of struggling through Macbeth, for a few more hours tossing a frizzbee around and reading Cliff’s Notes.
It was Just another BORING English class — having to listen to the whiny, mousey, teacher babble on and on about how wonderful Shakespeare was, how he was /is amazing author, and how there would never be anyone quite like him again, and how every word was perfect, and how each line fit in perfectly and on and on and on.
With great passion she started to blast out certain lines and all I could think was. “Man, this teacher really gets into this shit and is starting to get on my nerves” Her tiny beady eyes twitched like the witch, and she had a similar cackle. She read rapturously–
“In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.”
“Yikes!” Purple, Strange feelings began to bubble and burn and I couldn’t help but think why I even said “yes” to a spell in the first place — maybe it was my crush on a girl Mary whose long curly hair always caught my lust driven eye or maybe it was a dream of buying a convertible or Jeep at 16??.
Horror and confusion began to speak to me: “Man, These witches are mad weird — wait – there were the witches in the nearby town of Salem — right? — but that was folklore stuff- I thought the witches were just young girls who had eaten a bad batch of rye bread that had been contaminated with strange mold — an ergot which had given them a similar bad LSD like trips and driven many crazy — how were all these things connected to? –Surie? Salem witches? Macbeth? LSD? Spells? — Hold on — then there’s that show Bewitched — and Samantha seemed rather nice and rather cute — what is this whole witch thing? ”
Not more than another week had passed and I began to ask my fellow coworker whether he had given up a lock of his hair. I soon learned he had given her one and was looking forward to his spell with great anticipation. I began to feel uneasy again about not choosing to have that spell finished. My uneasiness intensified a week later when Surie was fired.
Rumors floated around the coffee café like electrified bubbles — why was she fired? How was she fired? How had the owner found her? What seedy activities was she involved in? some said that she was found at midnight wearing only her black dress cleaning the white bricks with a toothbrush, others said that she was found passed out with her face smothered and powdered with lines of coke or methamphetamine, others said that she was naked performing weird rituals, the truth was shrouded in fantastic mystery. I entertained a few of the various scenarios in my mind — and none of the images painted a pretty picture.
I was glad she was gone, gone back to living in that decrepit barn with her 12 cats. Yet — I was still remain nervous about the spell — had she put a spell on me, I knew she was angry and had continued to cast a diabolical look every time she saw me after my lock of hair denial. Did the spell work for my coworker? There was no conclusion and she vanished like black magic.
My friendly coworker had given up on believing the spell would work, he didn’t seem to think that it brought him any wealth and women, but he had kept it on his body for those weeks and had gone through with the prescribed treatment.
But by far the most frightening and numinous feeling about “the spell” was attached to the fate of my coworker. He was an incredibly gentle and caring guy and I wholeheartedly wish this part of the story was false or made-up.
I’ve no concrete reasons to believe that “the spell” had anything to do with it — but I learned four years later that he decided on his own terms to pass into the other world … not too far from that old barn where she had once resided. His self chosen fate caused me to wonder — was it really a self chosen fate?
The flashbacks ceased — I was now passing the old barn from my wheelchairs view — the van’s glass windshield pulsing and throbbing concentric circles — a dizzying spider web of thought — a drop in blood pressure. Looking down towards the book on my lap — I immediately knocked on it — knock on wood they say — knock on the door of the tree spirits for luck right? — why not?
Questioning — was I a victim of Surie evil spell? Had I kept that spell on me would I even be alive today?
No — no — you’re just a victim of your imagination — you’re not in a wheelchair because of some whacked out women. And you remember the words of another mystical woman who you had met on later on in your life’s journey who it said:
“Chaz, it is only us who can imprison ourselves mentally, with our faiths, with our beliefs, with our illusions and our own limitations. The mind is a dynamic instrument and only it can create your reality — any curse or spell works for those who believe in its power whether it is good or bad.” And she comforted me by saying “that type of magic is sympathetic magic, it only works if you have sympathy — beliefs are made of air and can be changed as easy as the wind blows”
Everything came back into focus — she was not a magician — not a witch – Surie was just a mad charlatan — but spooky enough to play with my preconceived notions of death and black magic to give me the willies.
Cursed? Maybe? But surely not by her.
President Bush will soon dip his pen in blood and once again veto THE STEM CELL ENHANCEMENT ACT. Currently, the Senate is only one vote away from an override, and this one vote hinges on Senator Sununu from New Hampshire. Please call today and asked him to support stem cell research for your friend, your next-door neighbor, your long-lost relative, your future granddaughter and for me. Thanks,
chaz
Senator Sununu 202-224-2841
Cynicism and great doubt has controlled and narrowed your lens on reality lately. It could be from a change in blood circulation as the result of a broken foot- just another shattered bone on your long list of broken pieces, another accident -yet it confines you even more- not allowing you to stand with your standing frame or use your electric bicycle to get your endorphins running, your blood pumping, your lungs enlarging. It could also be from your recalcitrant and devious laptop (your imagination says it is alive with diabolical spirits) which continues to overheat and not allow you more than an hour or so before you need to put into a deep hibernation.
It could also be from this age that you’re living in, an age of imperialism where those in control are in constant manipulation and destruction of the truth. An epoch where we as a nation are appearing to cannibalize ourselves and fiend for the realities of the past, this age which feels as if you’re supposed to hide your true feelings, when you’re supposed to be content feeding yourself a scrapbook of life from television, or tasting a hyper-reality from cyberspace. This age of doubt where you doubt everything and even doubt, doubt
And sometimes you just want anything and everything painted a liquid night and you do so with your eyes. You want it painted Black because you want to save things from destruction. You want to hide your treasures — hide your thoughts — hide your mysteries — protect them from that world that produces only to consume and mass manufactures everything in hyper-speed to feed hyper-activity and hyper-patience (if that’s even a word). And to meet your rage with action you sing alone to the Rolling Stones song.
I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colors anymore I want them to turn black….
I wanna see it painted, painted black
Black as night, black as coal
I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it painted, painted, painted, painted black
You want everything painted black because of your cynicism, but also because of that black little alter table which stands proudly below your window sill. The traveler who traded it to you — traded it with a story. The little table came from the land of snow called Tibet and the lil’ table stands about 1 foot high with three sides. A folding table — that spent the majority of the past 200 years in the possession of a high priest (lama), who traveled with the little table on horseback from place to place performing ceremonies on it. He would sit on a cushion behind the naked side hiding various accessories and ornaments and performed mystery.
The little table was carved ornately and exhibits the eight auspicious deities — lotus flowers — dragons — phoenixes — floral designs — and Sanskrit mantras… but only if you look close enough. From far away it just is a black, scarred, little table. But beneath the blackness, are glorious colors– crimson and burnt sienna and mustards — but now all black. “Black as night black as coal”
The only reason the table is here because it was painted black. Painted black to hide its beauty — to hide symbols — to hide its glory from the Chinese occupation when every little bit of furniture that contain any semblance of the Buddhist religion was burnt and smashed violently into pieces.
And you sit there and stare at it and you want everything — painted black. Your frustrations and your never-ending demons want everything black — but underneath it all there is still color. You type up this little section about blackness — and think about putting it online — you think does any of us even make sense? you doubt yourself — you doubt, doubt.
You and your frustrations and your black world and your black chair, and your black hair and your broken foot go outside into the world of color for some fresh air and you’ve steal a silly poem from a bee. You type it up without thinking — realizing its juvenile, it rhymes and you don’t like to rhyme — you want your words painted black — instead you press a few Black Keys and go back to your black world where you feel safe.
Honeybee ‘ode
The black trees shadow
an Amber crystalline exoskeleton
which lands on
my broken foot
the little being get stuck
clawing furiously
it drags a broken black leg
it struggles
it fights
it’s upside down
oh bee why me?
Only I would get a broken bee
on my broken foot
on a broken day
I lament for the bee
realizing quickly
I’m lamenting for me
Oh! self-pitee!
“Well you’re welcome here”
I said to the bee
the bee buzzing freely
in a foreign bee language
the drags it’s broken black leg
it struggles
it fights
it’s upside down
the wings sputter
it dangles in the wind
its wings are charged
and it flying into the days eternity
smiling I think
your free bee
that’s your destiny
5/29/07
The top scientists in the world now agree that a cure for paralysis is not only possible but on the verge of a breakthrough. They say they’re on the threshold to a doorway and just need to step over yet, in order to step over they need funding. Without adequate funding, without the dollar signs, without that sparkle of gold it could be decades, it could never happen–
You feel like you are in an ironclad prison, you have friends in the cell with you, you have some supporters on the outside, but the bars are still in front. You know that you can sit there and hope all you want, hope yourself to death, but without trying to do something your view and your time will be little but the shadows the bars cast on the cement floor.
Your cell mates are friendly and supportive, but they can only be optimistic for so long before they get tired or angry or agitated or just damn lazy and give in. Yet, there is a key. The key is just a few feet from your bars and you try to squeeze through the bars with all your might, you throw your arms to the bars to reach it, but you can’t, you think mind control could work and try to lift the key into the air make it hover and fly toward you — but that doesn’t work either.
The only thing that’s going to get you that golden key is going to be enough voices on the outside screaming, hollering and making noise so that devil incarnate who holds the key will weaken because of pressure and you will be free.
It’s not so much the evilness that bothers you anymore; it’s the fact that many good people do nothing and it is this that allows the evilness to persist.
On an unseasonably warm Monday afternoon a man and his father board a plane for Washington, DC. They went down looking for key.
While the young man was present physically, he wasn’t always completely there. He was there for a purpose, but also to travel spirits and cities. It wasn’t easy on him but he felt free for moments. He wrote poems in his head — he read poems on his lap — he gets full on intoxicated by poetry. Although he struggles on being one - he still tries:
How to fly—
Close your eyes
Listen to the engine, & Jets fans start to spin
Allow the planes wheels jumps and bounces to become part of you
Sink deep into your seat become the plane
You are not separate anymore
As you feel the force and the speed put your body deeper into your seat
Feel the power — become the propeller
You’re weightless now
Let it go
Suspended in air relax into the dizziness
Feeling the gliding over the air
You’re that steel bird
A bird of prey swooping
Over the solid world
Push yourself into the city of clouds
Let the wet white serpents curl
Embrace the turbulence of your mind
Look into the bleeding blues
The abstract agricultural geometry
Below
You are just
A pixel in a great universe
C.C.S April 2007
Ronald Reagan Airport is a metropolis of lights, great curve steel beams create patterns of light and space on shiny floors as the young man his father look and decide what Metro stop to pick. It’s around four o’clock in the afternoon, and they go over to a café for some refreshments.
The young man in the wheelchair sipped some coffee and read a few lines of some great Spanish poet. But this time it’s not the lines it holds his attention it’s a thin and pale calf a lady wearing a European leather boot with a silver spaded clasp. The boot sways back and forth slowly. It is all he can see of her for a table blinds him. He doesn’t want to see anymore — the image gives a more of a beautiful daydream than he knows reality would paint.
They finish their coffee and go to board a Metro rail station. This is the first time the man in the chair has been on any sort of train since he became the man in the chair. He’s delighted –
They let the first train pass by listening to its breaks, marking its speed, and noting how much of a gap is between the trains and where it meets the loading area. He sizes it up well — he’s ready. The next train comes –swwwwoooooshhhhhhh a gale of warm air cascades over his hair and he chases down the train and boards.
7 stops later — they’re off — it’s possible that the man in the chair can get around in this area. A part of his soul feels free. In his hometown there’s no way or even a thought that he could travel this way. A clear glass Elevator ride — he joins a 16-year-old with pink dreadlocks pushing a baby carriage, on the next elevator up — a young pudgy girl holds the hand of a five-year-old boy with large almond eyes that peer into his and tell him more about life in the world than any of his poetry books.
The Young girl and boy clung to buildings as they head up the block. The Young man wonders why then looks left and sees a gang of men spitting and drinking in the middle of the street which is flanked by orange brick tenement housing whose decks hang like a beaten dogs tongue.
They take a right towards their hotel. For the first time in a long while, the man in the chair can keep up with his father walking, he can’t do this in his own city. In his city there are puzzles of uneven bricks lining the sidewalks — rocks, often ice and snow — puddles which just sometimes are not just puddles but large holes to who knows where, cobblestones that when he rolls over them caused his muscles to spasm-and him lose control of his electric device. He feels free just to be able to keep up with his father.
Magnolia blossoms hanging in the wind like butterflies, the cherry trees look like they’ve been pulled from some mystical land, they arrive. There they are greeted by warm faces and others in wheelchairs. One man is smoking a cigarette by holding a fork; another is coordinating a protest and smiling in the Sun. The man soon learns that the some of these folks and their wheelchairs are going to protest in front of the devil incarnate’s White House –hold signs — to ask for support — to scream — to ask for that key. It’s a long trek down to that White House — the man wants to make it — but he’s exhausted from the flight and knows that if he doesn’t get something to eat soon he won’t be able to speak clearly and have the energy to get back. He heads into the hotel lobby bar. There he meets others that are sitting in that cell. All friendly faces, all colorful–one is a soft-spoken lady from San Francisco, another is a wise man from Oregon, another speaks English in a way he hasn’t heard in a while, and he is wearing a large brimmed hat, likes to drink beer and says the word ‘blokes’ often.
The next morning the man and his father are off the same way they came, back into that seedy part of town, down two elevators, change to trains, and navigate the green landscape into the place where a large platform holds people — screaming people. Good people doing something.
There’s a large united effort of these people, they’re all in the cell, but they are all positive, they all have the look in their eye like they want life and are not going to accept anything else… People speak onstage with courage and passion, people dance, people sing. People take pictures. People are supported by many who want to get them out of jail — and it makes them happy to know that. Flashes of light –
They all split into little groups to go off to meet those who they elected to represent them. The Young man and his father are joined by a few others, they going to the Senate office building, they see the Senator that represents them pass them by quickly — they hope to see him later but instead speak with a very articulate aid of his.
They want three things.
1. Increased funding of the National Institute of health to offset the cuts for the past five years.
2. Passage of the Christopher in Dana Reeve Paralysis Act –
3. Passage of the Stem Cell Enhancement Act.
They leave the meeting get lunch and go on to another. They travel through hordes of tourists snapping shutters capturing images of famous statues of famous people, they see one of MLK. They too have a dream.
Their representative John Tierney meets with them in the busy Promenade. People move around them like worker ants around a hive. The representative is strong, articulate, listens to each of their voices, and says that he will fight for them. The Young man and his father feel really good after speaking with him. They have someone that’s going to scream from the outside. But they also learn that the devil incarnate can’t be stopped for another year and a half. They sigh-
They get a quick tour of the capital, but the young man’s wheelchair battery is dying. It starts blinking, soon he will lose mobility, and so they need to find electricity — he thinks he has enough left for the trip to the train station where he can fuel up. Off they go –
It’s all down hill, the man in front puts his arms out as his chair glides down the hill and he looks like he’s flying. They’re almost there and his chair is going slower and slower. Will they make it?
The sound — the crumbling of stones — a train? — no — it’s a gigantic man. Could easily be 6 foot seven if he wasn’t in a wheelchair. The one tooth man wearing shorts but no calves or feet or shoes hollers “hey– hey — do you want to race?”
At first frightened then young man replies “sorry, man my battery is low I’ll be lucky if I can make it to that station across the highway there.” Large man in the chair begins to circle the other man and do wheelies with his wheelchair. The man and his father and his friend take off towards the train station.
The One tooth man follows them, grunting and talking about how a lost friend of his invented a suit with electricity that helps people walk again, modeled by the late singer-songwriter Harry Chapin. He said that would help both of us walk — – you’d walk like this and to add emphasis he gesticulates his remaining limbs wildly as it electrocuted by high voltage. The man in the chair rolls his eyes.
Then the one tooth man gets behind the young man with his battery now near death, and begins to push his chair. They’re almost at the train station — they’re almost free of the one tooth man — but the young man thinks this strange parade is turning into a vaudeville act. He hopes to get away from the one tooth man — but his friend comes to the rescue.
“Hey man, where did your legs go?” The one tooth man seemed shocked — mumble something, groans and garbles — totally taken off guard. It was something someone in a wheelchair could only say to another one in a wheelchair.
They made it into the large train station that is long enough and wide enough to engulf the whole Washington Monument in its bubble, a train station where the large vaulted ceilings have the company of finely chiseled Greek god statues and Roman columns.
The Young man and his father and his friend go and hide from the one tooth. They find a café in an empty electrical socket; have a few drinks and juice up the wheelchair for the rest of the trip.
One tooth flies around the train cavern with his dirty white T-shirt, and manic eyes looking everywhere but can’t find anyone and takes off into the hot tulip day.
They all smile — thankful they escaped him. They stay for a while, have dinner, and the chair is now ready for the rest of the trip.
They talked for a while with a few other souls in prison — free souls — 1 an ex-Learjet pilot — who wants to take off again. The young man is confident he one day will. The air is clear, the large catacomb of the station holds many conversations, and something tells the young man that he very well will get that key one day- but he doesn’t know what spoke.
Looking up to the sparkling celestial eternity and below to the galaxy of city lights — the man leans his face against his palm, ruminating and he feels that the future could be as bright as the cities above or in the cities below he just needs to make sure that *more* good people do something.
The Boston airport is as silent as a graveyard at midnight and young man looks to the clock — he has only been gone for 30 hours.
The long, long, long winter gave you a mean cabin fever that made you want to eat fire for warmth and drink stars for thirst. By nature you’re an adventurer, you like to go places, you want see different things, different people, it’s what you live for. It’s what you want to live for and why you want to live.
You know that these are desperate and trying times, a sort of sea sickness in history, with the dizzying change and unpredictable fate. Sometimes your * so* sick of society’s vertigo that you want to throw up its arrogance, it’s apathic chunks, it’s green goo of injustice. It was Just a few days ago when your father came across a hidden cardboard box of old photos, one where you’re chubby cheeked and wearing a straw hat and in corduroy overalls and you’re climbing up a mountain of Golden pumpkins with purpose and curiosity. It’s around this same time that you’ve picked up Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and are reminded that the small indivisible drop of your soul still craves travel and adventure.
You long for solo ski trips, to go camping under the spring stars or paddle a canoe, but you know it’s not available. At least not right now. Yet — There’s another adventure. But this one is not easy, not romantic, but one that could allow you to get one step closer towards going on those adventures you desperately desire. It is not an adventure of faintly lit broken down steamships, or uncovering a hidden trove of Golden treasures or listening to foreign tongues whispering in ancient streets or laying in hot white beach sands — it’s an adventure to the heart of the country. And right now you don’t consider the heart of the country to be running warm, but rather arctic and needing life like a naked asteroid.
It’s an adventure you did two years before. A mission that you thought was going to be accomplished yet — was dismissed and killed despite your best efforts. And so you’re going to be off soon– or so you hope if your body heals enough from a recent burn. This time your trips shorter — you’ll be in the air – you’ll only be in that city for one day — and you’re better prepared — you know your facts and you think back to the person two years ago knowing how naive he was — nonetheless you’re proud of him for even tryin.
You’ve been welded to a roller coaster of hope and despair, it’s one you know only too well and you want victory. You believe in victory you believe in justice and mostly all you believe that THIS adventure will lead to more adventures. Often times your so incredibly angry, angry at the world angry at yourself and most of all angry at your government. Sometimes your anger consumes you — and you let it because if you didn’t you just sit there and do nothin about it. It’s that flame under your ass that never seems to run out of kindling. You can not just sit there and watch adventures n life flow by – and you’re just too damn angry and too damn stubborn too much of a person not ready to listen to authority or one person’s word over your own and so you’re off.
And as much you want to be Huckleberry Finn with rolled up pants barefoot rafting on the Mississippi, or Jack Kerouac with a half bottle in one arm and a girl in the other traveling on the road or a 19th-century French poet getting drunk on wine, virtue or a poem — or even Don Quixote chasing monstrous windmills whose arms knock him off his meager horse — you’re not — yet a little bit of each is in you.
You believe in a dream — but, you’re not Martin Luther King. You believe in love– but you’re not Jesus. You believe in hope but you’re not always hopeful. You believe in the power of the mind, but you’re no Buddha. You believe in yourself only if yourself believes in you. You believe that you’ll be on your feet again but only people help you up.
You’ve read and written about all the reasons why are angry and you rightfully should be — and you know others can read it , but do the numbers really matter if it is not their number who is affected by those numbers? and you post your writings below just because you wrote them for a class assignment and you might as well share them with the Web. why not you say these are the facts?
and off u go——-
The reddened inscribed floral design flowed ornately over the cover and wrapped around the gilded spine which lay at his fingertips. He could not turn the pages easily for his hands were frozen yet; he delicately turned each page with patience. The old hardcover had arrived in a cold and wet mailbox — and the age of the book was unexpected. He tends to order old hardcovers online because they a’re easy to turn, and doesn’t mind if their tattered. He actually likes them old and vintaged, even if they’ve got a little mold.
The older the printing , the more his fascination and he has found that the older the book the more care that was put into its printing, the more lively and abundant the illustrations, the more delicate the binding, the more intricate the font style, and he decides that there is more spirit in the pages. He often looks at the pages rounded by time and gravity wondering whose hands these were in. What shelf where they were on? Did they have a nice view? Who were they sitting by?
As he becomes more vintaged, he reads at a steadier pace and the old paper and ink pile up around him in surreal skyscrapers, they sometimes warm his thoughts when he is cold, they add life to his mind when he is dead, they give him adventures when he is bored and maybe more than anything they teach him how to be alone. But the book he is holding on to this rainy evening in April is almost a warning. Or is it?
The illuminated illustration on page 3 of a tall thin man with wild eyes laying back in a warm room with books surrounding him remind him that fantasy and reverie and memory all become stirred up in a bubbling melting pot. And that he must sip each spoonful of this pot carefully and slowly so he doesn’t end up like the great knight pictured in the illustration. The great and heroic Don Quixote who got so confused between chivalry, possibility, and dignity and maybe even ate peyote and possibly became crazeeeeee and lost realateeee- Because “his imagination ran full with everything he had read”
“With our thoughts, we make the world.” –Buddha
I don’t usually riff off quotes, but I’ve had this one tacked on my corkboard the past year — and it’s time for some change…. and thus a stream of consciousness rumination resulted from a thought before the sun tanned paper found its way into a round plastic mold – someones’ thought — a waste paper basket.
It has been said that the wise make the complicated, simple. I am not wise so I can freely make the simple, complicated — and why not? Here I sit and look around. There is an oak veneer desk, a framed screen of light, a computer, a lime green sage candle, an African drum, music climbing around the walls and enormous steel beasts trampling with amber eyes along a well-worn striped line paved path excreting carbon –all beside my Window to World. Here are all these things — human things — all made from the same spot. All made by some neurons firing, some chemical reaction at some finite point in time, possibly even intermingling with a spiritual conception — and then it becomes….AN IDEA. (picture lightbulb icon)
Well — everything except for the organic world of moss and trees and yesterday’s snowflakes — and who knows whose thoughts those might have been? Above the bright blue sky the universe spins in heat which could have been one giant thought by some great creature — but for this rumination’s purpose, those evolutionary/creationist thoughts are excluded… omitted…ha HA!
So — Someone thought about making square keys (why not circular?) putting symbols on them, wiring them to some sort of computer chip, connecting everything with electricity and fiber-optic cables and then with other computers and other brain chemical reactions — all powered by some sort of hot energy, maybe nuclear fission in an giant cement dome or possibly given from a panoply of agitated water molecules waiting for release at a Hydro dam in Canada. All Ideas!. Everything around me -was out of someone’s mind.
Out of someone’s mind and into mine. And now mine into yours —
Buddha was on, – before the world of square computer keys and nuclear fission. I’m surrounded by a world of thoughts, a giant electric chessboard — ranging from some carpenters simple thought like ‘let’s cut this pine board an eighth of an inch less so it fits snug against the trim board’ to Jerry Garcia’s reedy voice jumping out of some plastic CD hidden in the cavern of my computers tray, which reads out those oh so important ‘zeros and ones’ encoded in that disc pumped through an amplifier to my mind, and causes my dogs ear to c0ck off to the right.
All these thoughts –all these thoughts intermingling, and nesting, and meeting and circulating in this ever spinning, windblown world, which seems to be reaching dizzying speeds at this point in time. A world created by thoughts.!.!
Now I can make my own little microcosm and start my own little world by taking little quotes like this and putting them on my cork board, deciding what to think of them, or write about them or let them end up again in that black plastic wasteland. My room is my little world – born and bred from my thoughts and choices — which are as random as the decapitated gingerbread Man by my cup of coffee to a jazz drummer’s Indian ink vooduuuu sketch. It’s my world — But as soon as I step out of my little world and to the world of many…. things change, I grow, the world grows, you grow — everything *grows faster (or decays).
Housed in this world of thoughts, which is so often colorful and sometimes so damn macabre…it can be exciting and depressing and chaotic and disciplined and it all depends on how you think of it.
What do you think about that?
