So we coasted back down the mountain and turned off the highway into the grassy expanse of the Owens Valley. We parked the bus next to a snaking river and had the whole range of the sierras as our view. Not such a bad detour, all things considered. The folks were suer excited about the bus- what a psychedelic wonder!

The day passed. Nightime arrived and, in the cold wind, James, our repairman, showed back up and went at it on the engine. I fell asleep and, latean the others went and hung out with james, his wife, and some others.

Morning sunrise on the mountains, the grass a golden green, the twisting river a deep blue… Things were progressing along. Brown’s Owen River campground was a sweet stay. While we had intended to be on the playa early, this diversion wasn’t so bad.

And many many thanks to James and co for taking care of us. If you are ever up along the 395 and want a place to camp, stop by: Brown’s Owen River Campground. 760-920-0975. 5 miles east of Hwy395, 5 miles south of the mammoth exit.

Now, with the engine running, we are back on the road, on our way to the burn.

I fell alseep. Oth

This never-ending sketchbook has been carried with me on all journeys, to the most random of situations, and, in the most mundane of places, has opened up spaces in me that I didn’t know were there. It emerges while sitting in a cafe or at a bus stop, riding on a train or a plane, at my desk, waiting in an office, pr pausing during a hike on a mountainside. The images are rarely planned. They ride along a stream of consciousness echoing my emotional and psycho-spiritual state mixed with my general will and momentum. By allowing the drawing its own narrative, the inner visual language expresses itself unhindered. The observant viewer will note the similarities amongst the imagery and different visual symbols and cues that show up over periods of time, again and again.

It just happens. I sit. I observe. I let my eyes relax. I let my mind… I let my mind just be. I set it adrift. I don’t try to force it into anything. I don’t attempt to still it but I don’t attempt to agitate it by thinking such things as  “this had better be good” or “this is going to be a drawing for a painting”. I allow it to be whatever it is: a tidal wave, a simmering fire, a cool breeze, a breath. I notice how I’m sitting. How I’m holding the pen. I do all of these things and, at the same time, none of them: just sit and draw unself-consciously. I allow elements of nearby architecture or the shapes of leaves or roots of trees or a glimpse of a pattern to be points of departure. Our minds are shaped by the world around them as much as by their own preconditions. Why not allow the drawing the same freedom? The surface of the page gives way to a penetrable depth. I allow my instincts and intuitions, however subtle and unknown, to draw me onwards. Everything, however, seeks light for growth. It is nice to allow the drawing the same.

The sketchbook is a meditation tracing mental symbols, stories, and tangents, drawing out underlying connections, seeking, however organically, to find logical conclusions. It has it’s non sequiturs and moments of random association and completely free connectivity. It has moments of clarity, moments of abstraction, moments of pure thought and pure selflessness, and moments of complete, unadulterated, distraction. Then the lines take shape into something that I understand. I could expand on that, I think, I could make a painting out of that.

When I stand in front of my canvas, I flip back through sketchbooks, finding a drawing that speaks to me from a certain place, embodying a direction or vision that I wish to pursue. Only then do the symbols they contain begin to make sense.

Sketchbooks

A selection of drawings from several years worth of sketchbooks. All are drawn with the Pilot V5 pen, a great all-purpose writing instrument. Click the thumbnail to view. Enjoy.

To read more about this gallery, please see this blog post: Sketchbooks

Not too long ago I boarded a very crowded train on its way to San Diego and sat down next to a young woman of 20 or 21 or so. We started talking. She was on her way to meet with her church group and that they would be going to Haiti to help build houses. I had this mental picture of a continually revolving door through which an army of volunteer workers had passed over the past year. Better to build homes than hand out solar-powered bibles (yes… a group did that).

In any case, she asked what I did and I showed her some of my work. Inspired, she steered the conversation towards the obvious spiritual components of the paintings, asking me many pointed questions about my background, my intentions, etc. None of it came off as judgmental – just curious. She was very interested in what seemed to her to be an obvious connection with spirit while not proclaiming any religion system.

Eventually it came around to: “Well, do you believe in heaven? Where do you think we go when we die?”

I thought about it for a moment. I grew up in a very traditional Roman Catholic family. We had a clear direction; the same direction she believed herself to be taking – Heaven, home of God the Father.

I replied, in so many words:

The truth is, no one really knows what comes after we die. We have many people who have told us many stories and those stories are all based on that particular cultures value systems and the perspective of the storyteller. We don’t have any actual tangible proof one way or another. It’s all part of our glorious imagination. People have these near death experiences – who is to say if it is fact or fiction? Imagination or concrete truth? I have had dreams that were so incredibly real and yet have also believed myself to be remembering something that didn’t happen as I remembered it. So It’s hard to say what is actually real.

It’s best, I think, to start from the here and now. Essentially, everyone just wants to be happy, healthy, maintain a sense of freedom. So hopefully we do things with our lives that nourish that in ourselves as well as others. You know: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That sort of thing. In doing so, we create a certain momentum with our lives and our mental states.

Now, all of reality is perceived by our five senses in a certain way. We perceive a slice of it that our eyes and ears and tongues and so on all lock into place because that is the aspect that we experience and our brain, our conscious and subconscious mind, makes up stories around it. It’s the very visceral human experience. Of this vast sea of energy that exists around us, we perceive a very specific layer of it that we interact with. Our bodies too are a part of that perception. When we follow down the smaller and smaller workings of everything it is all very intricate and amazing. But we will always ever find the part that our senses and the extensions of those senses, can perceive. Everything else is supposition, story, extrapolation.

So there is this sea of energy and we are passing through it, from moment to moment, with a certain driving momentum. For some it is greed. For some it is lust. For some it is love. For some it is to see how much they can give. For some it is simply an ever changing state of happiness. And then, at some point, our physical body is snuffed out.

I really do believe there is a “spirit” of some sort or another – something that continues on after the physical body dies. It is whatever exists outside of – like an extension of – the physical body that we perceive. It is the momentum of our mortal life that propels this “spirit” onwards. The mental state of hell (and it exists most certainly) will propel one onwards into deeper layers of “hell” – whether it be flaming demons or reincarnations or levels of the underworld or whatever. It just continues. The same goes for the mental state of heaven. Then there is another mental state: just being, dissolving, continuously.

However, everyone, after death, I think, dissolved back into this ocean, moving along on their currents according to their momentum and, maybe, at some point, these currents surface again as bodies somewhere in some state of being, in this ocean of energy, should that momentum continue to propel it, like some current in the ocean.

So, she said to me when I was finished, do you believe in God?

I replied: If I were to call something “god”, I would call that vast ocean of energy “God”.

She thought about that for a moment and suggested that God was a specific being, somewhere, somehow, looking out for us.

But, I posited, that is to create separation. I am here, he is there. That sort of thing. There is just one vast ocean of energy that has neither beginning nor end. In the Gospel of Thomas (and I shared a bit about the Council of Nicea and how a specific story was desired to be told and other gospels were abandoned) Jesus is quoted as saying “Raise the stone and there you will find me; cleave the wood and there I am.” Link which is to say: God is in all things. God is in me. God is in you. God is in your finger. God is your fingernail. God is the dirt under it. God is everything. So, yes, you could say that I believe in “God”, that I believe in “Heaven” and that I believe in “Hell”. But I also believe that they are all constructs of our very vivid human imaginations and our somewhat more nebulous subconsciousness as it strives to create a sense of safety and identity.

The best thing to do, time and again, is to go back to that golden truth: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. All beings simply desire to be happy. So the very best we can do is to help ourselves (since we would like that as well) and others to experience that. And the best way to do that is to continually examine our motives, our methods, our means, and push ourselves and our egos and our hearts and our minds in whatever method or way  presents itself towards further growth and ego-disolusionment.

Here is the poster that will be printed for the Sound Tribe Sector Nine shows this coming August in Chicago. The image is a detail of  the painting entitled “Gratitude” which can be seen here.

While we’re at it, here is a poster I made for them for an event just about a year previous… at least, according to the dates on both posters. This one was made for the August 2009 STS9 shows in Georgia. This one used the painting “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants” from the Evolution Series

• Easy gallery management, with varying templates for types of galleries that would seamlessly replace my current gallery layout
• Fully integrated ecommerce solution
• Easier ’sharing’ capabilities.
• All the usual perks that come with database driven websites.
• I also had the intention of paring down and focusing the site, removing what I felt was ultimately auxiliary information that detracted from the focus of the artwork.

To accomplish this I kept the general design the same, although many aspects received subtle improvements for readability and ease of use, and I focused on tweaking some main plugins and adapting my site design to the theme-based template system of Wordpress. After my theme was created, with appropriate sidebars, specific page templates, some nifty jquery stuff, etc, I utilized the following plugins. Some of these have fairly poor documentation, tho I don’t fault their creators. It just takes a bit of searching and experimenting to get it to do what you want.

NextGen-Gallery by Alex Rabe for the gallery system. While I use Wordpress’ media library for general blog or page images, this plugin is essential for creating an easily managed gallery system. I tweaked it in many aspects to work and display as I wanted it to, doing my best to trim extra code off along the way. I also integrated the NextGen Custom Fields plugin for extra info with some of the images. However, this, along with the templates, allows for all of the image galleries – fine art, murals, design – to function cleanly and independently of each other.

WP e-Commerce from GetShopped.com is a great plugin for ecommerce with a semi-intuitive backend. It took a bit to figure it all out but such is the nature of code. I then did my best to integrate it into the site. One nice feature it the sidebar widget shopping cart. Someone adds an item from the store, then goes and looks elesewhere on the site, and the widget gets displayed with the item in the cart. The user has the option of emptying the cart, at which point the widget disappears. So, I don’t know, buy something and let me know that it works ok.

cFormsII is just a great – and possibly the best – form management plugin. I’ve used it with many clients – even making huge fifteen page multi-part forms – and it never fails to impress me with it’s ease (although that fifteen pager got tedious). I highly recommend it. It, like most plugins, is also fairly easy to customize and tweak. Pretty soon spam comments will start flooding in because I didn’t set up the whole isHuman part, something that is essential for any blog. I used it on my old blog though and it worked perfectly.

From there, I also use the following plugins:

• All-in-One SEO pack which just works great for SEO stuff.
• WP-Minify nicely packs JS and CSS files to reduce load time
• WP-Cache also helps increase load time. This and Minify should be turned off tho if you are editing the site.

In the admin area:

• Fluency Admin – this is just a really nice admin skin. Easy to look at. Well organized.
• My Page Order – drag and drop page ordering that ought to be standard in the next version of WP
• TinyMCE Advanced - TinyMCE editor with better options, tho I still prefer just writing things in raw HTML.
• Exclude Pages – small plugin that allows you to keep pages out of the main navigation. Very useful.

I’ve yet to add a “Links” page. If i do, I’ll use My Link Order – another drag and drop ordering system. I’ve yet to go in and write descriptions for my Blog Categories. But now the site is underway.

O yeah: I also added some new paintings. Or new Old paintings. In any case – there is new work here and there on the site.

Sardines in an artichoke and baby portabella-laden red sauce, simmering upon the stove turned into a dinner of rich worth with greetings from the depths and counterpoints. The gradations of reds that twisted in and out of the dappled oil bits of artichoke mushroom roasted red pepper layered over slices of golden polenta all sank into my mouth and over my tongue in a daring dance of making-my-eyes-roll-into-the-back-of-my-head yumminess. That was a beginning.

Sometime around 11pm the next day, after love, laughter, light, and dark, I went to bed.

Upon the altar, a wood shelf of relatively classic lines sticking out from the wall about five or six inches and not more than two feet wide, above my desk, this wide oak drafting table from which I look upon my world and see, mostly, when I look up, a wall not three feet from my face with this altar, is a large amethyst chunk, given to me by a dear friend. It sparkles in purple mathematical crystalline reflection. The friend who gave it to me, as a birthday gift I think, tends to traverse the same purple wavelengths that one might imagine the amethyst travels and when I think of her, it’s not hard to imagine amethyst. Around the half inch thick piece of calcite the amethyst sits upon, are a handful of double terminated quartz crystals, given to me at the wedding of two other friends. To either side of these are two small figures.

On the left is the Buddha. This Buddha, carved from some dark wood, is the Thai Theravada-style buddha with long narrow arms and a thin face in calm repose, watching the breath, symbolizes the calm and graceful unfolding slowly from within doing the same dance he has always done. This buddha was given to me by another dear friend. This person lives in the land from whence this buddha came, exploring just what it means to be truly happy. True happiness is not an easy thing to come by and, at the same time, is the easiest thing in the world. This friend, he seems to be doing a fine job of it.

To the other side of the amethyst, almost equidistance as the Buddha, is Sparkles Brown, a small figure made from sparkly fimo. He is about three and a half inches high, has creamy white sparkly pants, gold sparkly shoes that match his gold sparkly hat in the shape of a small morning glory perched delicately upon his head and, upon his brown shirt, a gold star. His two gold dots of eyes and one thin golden smile look at me with the kind of simple happiness and love that is devoid all the stories as to why we love. He too was given to me by a dear friend. This dear friend made him for me just before she left to visit a friend of her own with whom she shares a deep connection. This friend who gave me Sparkles Brown also happens to be my wife.

Moving out to either side of the altar: crystals, gifts of stones from the universe and friends, a scorpion suspended in acrylic, a half geode found on the shore of a lake in Kentucky while canoeing, three thin golden snail shells in descending size from pet aquarium snails, shells with noteworthy lines found on a sea shore, other bits of sacred detritus, and, finally, two small framed photos, flanking the altar.

On the one side, the right side where Sparkles Brown keeps watch, is a small easel, a very small easel, upon which is a little glass frame and in the little glass frame is a picture of me at, maybe, age 2. I am a chubby little boy sitting on a swing set and the picture has that yellowed slightly faded look of the mid 1970’s. I am sitting there in my diaper, laughing and squinting, eyes half-closed in the daytime sun: half closed because my smile is so large. The smile would come and go and come again, as smiles do, but I’ve never quite stopped squinting.

On the left side of the altar is another picture – this one framed vertically and there I am again, squinting, holding my wife from behind her with my hands wrapped onto her belly, smiling and bright eyed and the two of us tan and in sleeveless white satins and silks, bejeweled, on our wedding day, happy, blissed, exhausted.

All of these things represent bits and pieces of who I am, and of some of the gems of friends who come and go through my life.

In the center of the altar, resting on the double terminated quartzes, is a small skull of perhaps a mouse. It was found in some encrusted owl poop on the land of another beautiful friend. It was carefully cleaned and painted and placed here. We could all be snatched up, devoured, and pooped out at any given moment. The entire universe is consuming itself all the time, continuously dying and being reborn and growing and changing and dying again. How many of those lifetimes of moments do we relive the same pattern? How many do we shift direction all of a sudden, consciously choosing a new path?

Directly below the altar there are two more small pictures. On the left, underneath the wedding picture is a small, neatly cropped photo of my grandparents on my mothers side. I was always very close to them. They are very happy in the picture, retired and on a vacation in Spain, the same place Violet and I took our honeymoon. My grandfather, a jovially loving Italian who would have loved my wife, has passed away since then. My grandmother, 84, is as chipper and fastidious as she has ever been. This is a bit of where I have come from. They too are smiling wide. Their eyes squint in the Mediterranean sun.

On the right side is another picture, this one of my Dad and I. It is our birthday – his birthday is a day before my own, on Aug. 25. My birthday is the 26th. We are smiling as well. I think I was turning seventeen in that picture. In the picture I have a goatee, a baseball cap. I am wearing a white t-shirt with a small design I made of a person standing on the edge of a building, about to step off, his back to the viewer, maybe he’ll fall, maybe he’ll fly, who knows, and below it a caption reads “This time I was standing on the edge of the world”. It was always regarded as a bit of artsy daydreaming, never a consideration that I might consider jumping. My dad – his smile makes his eyes squint shut. Look, I come from a long line of squinters. Me, I am looking off to the left and, from where I sit right now, my eyes look a tad bloodshot but I wouldn’t be surprised – I had a lifestyle then of perpetual blanketing my mental landscape – always throwing another mattress upon the pea that was making me feel uncomfortable. And, at the same time, I was just doing my best to make sense of the unfolding life around me, chilling, living, teetering on the edge, waiting for my chance to take a leap and stretch my wings and soar with the occasional heart-wrenching plummet.

In between these two photos, taped in the middle, laminated, is a Chinese fortune from a cookie eaten who knows when.

It reads: “Among the lucky, you are the chosen one.”

Coupled with the grace, a dash of skill maybe, and fair bit of false starts, there has always been that “luck”, if that is what one wants to call it. When I look at this chain of a life that is  laid out here – from my grandparents to the chunk of amethyst – I love it.

As the music dipped softly sublime
in implications
of deeper intonations
her body, against the wall and
under the jacket
imperceptibly
shimmied.

as if her soul
fluttered
in the love making

And, in what I can only blame upon
my curious artist eye,
and a penchant for the edge,
I stepped closer for her eyes
were closed and mine,
mine were as open as I could see.

I moved closer til
a mischievous smile
alighted upon my eye
and I took a slight step back
lest I peck her
upon
the nose

In that pause I looked.

I looked at finely etched lines
And deep dark curving lips
A broad nose
and eyes
still, in
repose
imperceptibly
someone i’ve known my whole life
the oldest woman i’d met in years
laughing into the deepest memories
of both of our anguishes
and all of our fears.

It took my breath away for a moment
and i bowed deeply from within if not,
and just as seemingly
imperceptibly,
from without.

what worlds there are.
what worlds are there.

I recently had the good fortune of attending and displaying artwork at the MAPS Psychedelic Science in the 21 Century Conference, held in San Jose, CA. MAPS (Multidiciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) is “a membership-based, IRS-approved 501 (c) (3) non-profit research and educational organization. [They] assist scientists to design, fund, obtain approval for and report on studies into the risks and benefits of MDMA, psychedelic drugs and marijuana. MAPS’ mission is to sponsor scientific research designed to develop psychedelics and marijuana into FDA-approved prescription medicines, and to educate the public honestly about the risks and benefits of these drugs.”

The conference was a meeting of many brilliant minds including Sasha Shulgin, discoverer of MDMA, Dr. Stanislav Grof, founder of transpersonal psychology and an early pioneer in LSD psychotherapy, Dr. Ralph Metzner, artists Alex and Allyson Grey, Dr. Andrew Weil and many others. I met some really wonderful and inspiring people and listened to some rather insightful talks regarding the conscious use of psychedelics for the purpose of healing and growth.

For more on the conference and to see some of the truly positive things that the media has had to say on this, check out some of the links below.

http://www.nationalpost.com/life/health/story.html?id=6c2cdc9c-2654-4061-8b4f-aede99ad4534
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life/health-fitness/health/Ecstasy-could-help-ease-trauma-long-term/articleshow/5824715.cms
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=123823&sectionid=3510208
http://news.santacruz.com/2010/04/19/psychedelic_conference_a_hit
http://www.metroactive.com/features/psychedelics.html
http://muslims.net/news/newsfull.php?newid=358897
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36645291/from/ET
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=mdma-drug-ptsd-trauma-psychedelic
http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/health/2010/0/21/cb.psychedelic.drugs.for.health.cnn?iref=allsearch
http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2010/04/20/simon.psychedlic.drugs.cnn?iref=allsearch
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100416/full/news.2010.188.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100419/hl_nm/us_ecstasy_ptsd

A Different Bus (11.13.08)

Some dreams begin with a sense of what is missing. This dream begins with an open agreement.

In the middle of the Great Leap of Faith, I found life to be quite ready to make a deal. Let’s do this thing together, it suggested. I’ll trust you. You trust me. Let’s make a deal. We’ll arrange better terms, make installments. We’ll get you a nice car, a lovely house, a pool, a yard. Tell you what, we’ll find a way to go about this thing you seek – this deeper meaning – this open sense of being – we’ll do this thing together. Let’s read some books. There are dusty symbols with your name on them hidden in their golden leafed spines. I know a guru, a teacher, a path through the mountains if you’ll just settle down. Tell you what – I know this guy that’ll make you famous. Tell you what – tell you what – tell you what – let’s establish some trust in one another, maybe a compromise, a secret handshake that only you and I know – no more hiding things from each other behind locked doors in a pile on the floor – no more borders between mine and yours. And it handed me the pen.

But a leap of faith does not end with signing a contract. The hand was there, ready to sign. A table appeared in a barren room, two chairs and a dotted line. We faced each other, myself and everything else and that sense of separateness, even though it tried to negotiate a belief of togetherness sat there across from me, nibbling at my confidence, tugging at my sleeve, whispering ‘gotcha’ in my ear.

I paused my breath and the moment passed, the offer a flock of birds disturbed by the churning of swamp grasses as I trudged through the muck, encountering lifetime after lifetime of swamp monster identity. I lay on a log in exhaustion. I fingered a reed and, in my dream, turned it into a lovely raft. I took time with my craft, using the process of salvation creation as a sort of building meditation. I knit a shawl from their tufts and tossed it over my shoulders and pushed myself off from the shore setting out for a destination somewhere across the oceans.

Hark! I cried. Alas! I shouted. Ta-Ta! I declared.

I sang sea shanty dirges under the light of the moon, drinking purified fish tears and eating the leavings of the dew. The days and nights passed til they blended together as one motionless wave and the currents forgave my lack of direction because they appreciated my willful intention.

I worked myself to the bone. I found that sometimes I wished never endingly that I could have a space to call my own but the fire inside me pushed on and I kept moving a little further forwards, a little deeper into that empty void of destination.

I rolled the die, advanced my player by two and was granted a free turn.

I looked up at my negotiator and threw down the pen. If this was my move then I was determined to take it to it’s furthest end. Drop your weapons, I demanded and let me see your reasons.

My mind turned on me and fell to the floor. And I, I left it for dead.

Now I am a missing piece – this patchwork outline of me has fallen into space like a brick dropped from the Babylon tower by some freemason giving the secret hand handshake and the Eye to his comrade in the stars.

I am a man in blue, a man in red, a man in yellow or green.
I am waiting here for you. I am not wearing any disguises.

My time has come and my bus has arrived and I am one of the masses flowing through an endless river transcribed with shallow meanings – a pallor cast over it in a language always yearning for a deeper mode of expression C’mon buddy, says the driver, yer holdin’ up the works.

Yanked out of oblivion stare, I pay the dime nickel and quarter and am sitting two rows back further than I need to be and floating three inches above my seat, watching this rhythmic sea of heads bob up and down to hydraulic pumping of bus brake bumping. Business suits seamlessly pressed topped by eyes staring into certain futures based precisely and with great accuracy on affirmed notions of financial acuity – futures in securities and soaring prices of flesh in the basement bathroom – dirty underpinnings of a glorious kingdom – little children pumping away the pistons to pay for John Q. Public’s home in the Hamptons.

Hovelled in between the clear successes, a homeless man with a squadron of lice doing maneuvers upon his crown smiles a toothless grin spelling out how he giveth himself into temptation.

Next to me, an old wise woman whose wisdom is held in her ears by the lifetimes of cotton ball build up, dampening all sense of sensation purses her lips with a sense of impunity, rising above all open seas to a God whose arms know no color and sings great hosannas in the highest but she can’t feel much anymore of the tips of her fingers and that sensation stretches all the way up to the middle of her brain where cotton seeds planted there when she was a wee one have taken root and grown thick with cotton balls clouding up and confounding the works.

What am I doing here in this mess? I ask the man in the toothpaste ad who grins down from above me while a little girl plays his ivory white. I am getting off this bus.

What am I talking about, I am not going anywhere. I am still on the bus. I am going further.

I rise in a fury and crash my way to the front: Watch out driver, I’m taking the wheel! I am driving off the pier and into the ocean and the other passengers are floating away in the bubbles of their mental activities. I am swimming with fishes, concrete blocks slipping away from my chest exposing my still beating heart. It grows in size and sighs a sigh of relief – my heart – loosening and lightening in the situation like a summer storm across an open divide- my hair stands on end down here – equipped with special fluidic static electricity while the tactile futility of my mind washes up upon the beach like a thousand rippling carcasses of drowned sailor men whispering soft secrets of the sea to those who care to stoop closer to listen.

And I stoop there and listen to their seductively shallow tales about women in bars sitting upon tall stools drinking messy beers talking to tattoos on the arms of their attendant evils. I am transported upon their salty breath.

Would you like another, asks the skull-faced man bringing an ill, a derision, a misplaced emoticon.

Simply put, the drink taken from the waiting waiter is sipped slowly with red lips that leave stains on the rim of the glass, like the kiss of a rose leaving pieces of it’s petals for future detectives to ferret out.

I walk past them all.

The detectives holding magnifying glasses using tweezers to carefully extract faint wisps of the remaining roses to drop in their manila files stare into my slit eyed gaze and wonder to themselves if this man is from round these parts.

Ocean water slops from my shoes and seaweed dangles detachedly at my wrists and my heart is an exposed and beating mass of muscles but I have no fears there, I am done defending it. My stride is not misstepped and my steps are not misplaced and my direction is clear and certain making the detectives feel less at home in their own bodies than I am in mine. Such confidence is contagious unless one is inoculated at a young age, growing old and immune to things like wisdom and learning and tall stepping vision.

You will know me when you see me, said the prophet to the masses. And sure enough, they did, whispers the old man in his sleep while the lice on his crown bow in homage to the fly who has accomplished a landing upon the lobe of the left ear.

Escape fantasies bring me back to present.
I should have taken a different bus.
But I didn’t.
I linger onwards and the bus belches forwards, heaving and yawning into the future.

A cloud of crumble ramshackles is punching ice skate cutting in a stormy black weather system hovering over me, blowing me forwards – through otherwise blocked doorways.

If I were in charge, I would walk through a different door. I would have taken a different route.

But I don’t. I didn’t. This system is a mess with schedules bleeding desire for change. Their motorcade is split in two and they follow us with a distracted air –always there, always reaching for our truths while their horses do the math, adding it up, adding it up, better accountants than financiers.

Once I was a banister, helping people along, a support for their troubled hands when the climb became just a little too long. Countless hands would run along my smooth wood grain leaving a dull waxy polish, soft to the touch yet supportive and, seemingly, forgiving. But those who fell, reaching out for my support yet missing it, found my forgiveness to be a myth and, with their heads hitting hard upon the curving wooden rail of my balustrade, their feet slipping out from beneath them, they would find that I stood tall and did not care if they walked or climbed, crumbled or fell.

So now, on the other side of that equation, understanding what makes this system tick, I find my way up the stairs – one by glorious one – step by beautiful step – relying on internal gyroscopic grace and not crutches that take it’s place.

In a half forgotten dream, on a landing between flights, I stare at a movie poster of a flick that’ll never be made with a hero chin courting a damsel in distress. To tell you the honest injun truth: I won’t miss it. Unmade movies are thoughts and what-ifs, hypothetical solutions to cliff hanger strategies – with nails bitten to the wick and hairs dancing on end, I can’t stand that kind of stress, so I back down to where I feel I belong, in the trough, in the valley, with the big wheels that keep on turning and a mind that keeps on churning out this drivel of poetry, this line by line symphony of melancholic lifetime after lifetime drudgery.

I am a juke box of memories – a thousand stanzas and refrains from FM radio days replayed over and over and over again til they have carved their own pathways through my synaptic systems, standing the test of time. I try to carve out better habits from the bramble of memories but the refrain of just another old-fashioned love song is easier to travel down than hacking out a new habitual direction. The call to action is like mother calling me for dinner but this time I don’t answer, this time, I go all the way.

Some would find my disjointedness charming but they never had any spine to begin with.

This is my stop and I am getting off..

We are going to start over. We are going to start again. With our feet crushing the pavement and our backs to the wind. We are going to leap the sun. We are going to move the mountains. We are going to drink it in. We are going to ride this route to the end.

And I am getting back on

How I can’t stand this overcoat of emotions. It weighs me down to no end. I wish it had come with instructions. That would have helped to make it all clear. A legend or a map – a cheat sheet telling me that the lizard will appear sixteen times and the woman only twice so that I could give up hope and live instead on expectation, setting my traps wisely with a more refined meditation. Instead I am lost in embroidered patterns spelling out lineages of family history intricately woven into eons of genetic imprinting – penguin apples dancing mice laughter like lizard tails flicking in and out of women whose legs spread to give birth to buffalo bottle stoppers, cork screws opening up another vintage, ice clinking in cocktail glasses, gentle laughter patchwork fading to ragged ends of rope and choking on my own tongue, waking again in a start, a sweat, and rolling over to sleep it off.

How many times did I need to relive the hem of my coat, wear my lifetime on my sleeve, finding my next chapter in a secret pocket sewn inside the lining?

I wish this coat had come with instructions. I would have left it on the bus had it not been sewn to my own mandibles, burrowing under my skin, into my beating heart and my veins – had I not opened it and found little old women knitting, each breath deflating my heart little by little to the rhythm of crochet hooks click clat clicking in rhythmic succession, one sleeve unraveling to be knit into the other, caught in my own personal feedback loop.

A circus barker on a corner is crying out: the wheel it spins round and round – where it stops YOU can’t be found – if the devil calls your name – you – are – OUT –

Little old ladies look up at me, glint in the eye, wrinkled wide smile wise to ages of curiosity: “Don’t mind us, we’re only dreaming.”

For some reason I am assured and you’d think I’d feel relief as I close the coat and look around the bus or the bar or the stairwell but no one notices the universe beneath my cloak where a thousand spiral galaxies are spinning their way to oblivion, planets and worlds live out countless lifetimes of hurt anger oppression and aggression – enlightenment enjoyment ecstatic devotion – stars exploding into implosions of emptiness – a vast and empty blackness – all of it tucked into a pocket, a seam, a hem. But out here on the edge, two rows back further than I need to be, I only get caught in blank stares gazing half way between here and nowhere making sure not to catch me in their mediocre tunnel vision monotony.

I open the neck and peek inside again and find worlds unfolding before my eyes – great undulating starry arms and points of light colliding without a sound – massive polarizations of male female intensities – grandiosity and miniaturizations – fascinating scenes of purple and green – pictures of bleached white sheets on a line – memories of lying on the grass outside – a sunrise – open eyes – a universe unraveling from the center of my mind.

I dig around in there for the book, a manual or at least a how-to guide – something to tell me what to do with the endless vision – but I find the movie instead. I put it on and find they’ve cut my scenes and the lead doesn’t look a thing like me. Myself, I am lying somewhere on an editing room floor making love to the bottom of a shoe grinding me into the linoleum, passing me up for a greater monumental conclusion as I become another memory not god enough to make the final cut. What did I do wrong or what did this guy do right?

Now the story has all changed and while the nuanced grace of the kangaroo kazoo leaves me somewhat speechless still I wonder how it could have come to this. When did I let go and leave another director in charge. When did the feeling of not holding on set in. It’s a dream of events, missing sequences and missives in the night – did they see me? Did I get there? Did it all happen on time?

The movie has teeth and it’s latched on to my sleeve. The glint in its eye, the snarl in it’s lips – it makes me pause to consider. It’s a lifetime conclusion, a source of confusion, a means to an end.

I intend to take a different bus. I get off at the next stop and this time I stay off. Dusty corners with dim lit waterfalls and highways gnashing at the bit. The circus barker looks up at me from his corner of the world, shrugs his shoulders and writes another line. He’ll have his epic; we’ll all have our day.

I enter the library. Rows and rows of books covered in dust. No one reads any more; all they really do is stare while the soft dust of centuries settles upon their lids. We are all made of stars and the dust is our leavings. I breathe in deep and taste a little bit of everyone, a little bit of everything. I am looking for something – the transliteration, the news or information, some useful bit of education. It’s in here somewhere. The gorgeous lead, the damsel in distress – the Asian girl with the beautiful eyes and alive wide smile – the old cotton eared woman who was once a little girl with dreams. Every lifetime passing means another chapter written on this long and winding narrative. Maybe in the footnotes there will be some mention of me. Maybe in a liner note or a bit part in an appendix of some forgotten journal will be my bit part in infinity.

I have my thumb marking a chapter of a hefty tome, another hand scans a table of contents while my tongue leafs through the pages of trees whose roots dig deep into the ground tracing back centuries of meaning and, while language is a changeling, passing through filters of sentimentally charged semantics, pages with folded corners highlight a phrase that now stands lost to meaning, the depth of the matter is not so timeless after all. But I still cannot find one bit of me or life or what it means and how to lead.

A how-to manual – that is all I seek.

Insert Part A into Hole B. A good start but it goes in so many directions from there.

In all of these nameless volumes, all of them brimming with caveats and empty missions – masturbatory fantasies encased in a writers grandiose visions – we climb a stairway up several flights of mental aptitude or high dive from cliffs whose faces read out the way to freeing ourselves from mental servitude but it goes by so quickly that the momentary lapse of thinking sits in the corner of a bar, drinking. I look over at her and I think – is she winking?

So I join her and we sit and talk for six drinks time. All hers, none mine, and I hope in her babbling about the wisdom of ancients and compassion never ending that there might be some seed of nourishment – something to plant in my garden but there is not one useful bit of instruction. She tells me I could take a bus but I could also ride a train. I could sit in a bar and drink drinks with a stranger while she sits in the corner, talking to the sunset in the wood grain. She tells me to swim to the bottom of the ocean and dig up an empty bucket, climb the corporate ladder, stepping on heads and climbing atop shoulders, just so I can see what the view is like from way up there. There is great joy, she tells me, in seeing further than the sights of others.

I could be all of this, she offers. All of it and, of course, more.

I could be everything. I could hope and pray for a sign. I could practice my prostrations with mantras bubbling from my lips and rosary beads at my fingertips. I could be sitting in a home for special folk dribbling tonight’s dinner onto my chest. I could be all of this but I am more than this. How long will I wait for a sign?

The room is lit then in a menagerie of red and white and with the sudden flashing lights of a passing ambulance, I understand. I see in the back of that speeding van a sputtering candle hooked to monitors and heart respirators and a soul flying close behind – screaming out: I’M NOT DONE YET – I didn’t even begin… How long will I wait?

My pause sits across from me and winks, takes a sip of her drink and throws it in the corner to the sound of shattering ice and crackling glass. Her lime leers its green-toothed grin and wanders into the forest of my meanderings.

Life is sudden and then it’s passed, it whispers from the trees, it’s tail flicking and disappearing. There is no decipherable code – no decoder ring to eke out a hidden message – no symbols that have esoteric meaning, in fact – the whole menagerie of hallucinations – all of them sending only one message – ego leaves no instructions for it’s own dissolution.

There will be no light to lead the way.

I stand from the table and approach the edge of my cliff.
Hang on! I cry and take the leap.
Hang. The Fuck. On.
(if you want to stick around)