Where is the lesson in this?

Honesty.

I acted wrongly and perpetuated bastard energies. Time has asked me to stop yet now the mess is mercury hot, it begs to be removed from the nearness of the sun.

Run away tiny coyote! How many more forest friends will you consume before you belch the bones of your rancid ways?

Rain dance tonight! Ancient practice revives to cleanse the pollution of clumsy creations!

You say I’m so stubborn and cruel. Well then, I am so pleased to be yours and to have mine, let’s make more things to carry this crooked ship down the depths of uselessness.

But alas! A pirate with a pen, ravaging with words, a sentence he sharpens from the blade forged by many prophesying men: ‘death to things that make us feel weak, small and tired: that keep us on our feet! When what we require is a deep enough sleep, to drum a clear beat so the people can step dangerously in time with the ticking of the tides riding high on the moon’s backside and be free!’

Okay, I’m here. I am here! What spirit has called my attention at this place and at this hour and what must I do to appease your formless brew?

Listen you say, but instead I translate it as a condition of my diminishing physique; I nourish my bones with sweet and saucy, I lick my fingers when I should be licking the soles of Buddha’s feet; “don’t bother me! Pull the reigns of your fiery chariot and pierce your own heart; the arrow draws a string with which to pull the muscle from its nest, leave mine alone!.”

“Shut up and be still, this is why you were called, not for a culinary thrill, silly human.”

‘Okay!’ what now?!?!’ distractions arise from illusive shadows and thoughts generate to flush the intelligence of five senses: I ponder something besides my knowing of this realm. But the channel has been allowed by bundles of sage and narrow icicles of wax that beg for a chance to chase darkness away in a blaze.

Dear Journey,

Don’t write with confusion; write with clarity! Even poetry demands clarity, not in words and how they are presented, but poetry requires clarity of origin: this means not right nor wrong, but that the author is clear in representing confusion, sadness; what does this mean exactly? It means to be fully aware of yourself in the moment you grant for reflection and honesty (don’t worry, no one is watching) and be true to the experience as it is, raw and organic from your center, whatever it may be in the present moment. Be certain of the source and let the words form around them and align naturally in a march of syntax and prose; this is personal poetry, this is your gift, this is what you offer the world and it is beautiful because you made the space for it and it is authentically you.

Once the words are before you, these precious gems of absolute insight and depth, after you read them, separate from them: do not own them. You mustn’t feel responsible for their impact; disassociate from the words and they will inspire you in whatever way they do; your past self intended them as a guide, maybe for you, perhaps for another. The words are not yours; they belong to a greater source when they are born from clarity and consciousness. This way you can witness their power to unite and to change, phenomena which happens when and only when they are released.

You see, words are only sounds, particles, elements: they begin as a thought that forms from ingredients that interact in our minds, we send outward this energy in waves upon which we place words linearly, one word after the other, like our understanding of time, in a sequence like we see our own lives; but round is the actual order of things, infinity is the essence of higher planes of existence; our part is finite so we experience the beginning and the end of form and function, as we ourselves have a birth and death; but circularity is truth though ambiguous within the shallow measure of our immediate awareness.

To travel distances, to be said or written and heard and read, words must hitch a ride upon waves of energy that are continuous and infinite, floating and colliding and stemming from and branching off and bumping into other waves, like cellular waves, microwaves, brain waves, ocean waves, wind waves, emotional waves, static waves: with intention we send outwards our words like a message in a bottle atop a wave of energy that we have harnessed for the moment, attracted to us by the energies we have magnetically pulled and borrowed from this dimension (in conjunction with other dimensions?). The slower the wave the more direct from source, the more rapid the frequency the more momentum and force; these are the ones that require that the borrower use caution; they can cut and slice, they can tear and infiltrate and pass and influence, hurt and harm and devastate and destroy, much like ugly words with claws in waves whispered from the mouth of a conniving magician.

These high pitched waves are coming in at frequencies beyond which we can measure with our primary sense; we can neither see them nor predict them, therefore we can only cancel them by committing to impeccability; whole truths upon which we place words of a positive nature, honest and of the deepest blue; if you don’t make magic then magic is made upon you: saying love once invalidates the perpetuation of historic hatred and restores crystals to beauty and balance. Love yourself, love your energies, love the words as they are sent outwards and beyond the scope of control, let them surf the waves and purify the atmosphere of nonsense, chaos and confusion.

Be honest, source words from source, bow before your own energies, respect divine human potential; this is service of the highest self. Tentacles-waves are like wind; it carries dust that falls onto the lashes dropping center in a tear cried from the eyes of a weeping camel: it will find the earth and one day be carried again to grace the sky with its presence: every thing which is IS something which will connect to something else: nothing is ever truly free from belonging in the sense that it will inevitably serve as an influence or impression in this stage of reality. Even dust has a history, as do we, and so as wind drives sand so must we drive our words in a caravan towards LOVE.

Blow and Morning Brilliance

‘Oh my gato’ how the energies are painted in tiny specks across a spiraling reality: how minuscule the projection appears through my weary lenses looking out from within a  nightlife capsule; the sniffles and sneezes, the dollar-menu gazes and gourmet hollowness of this place is spawned from an oath to commit an act of epic togetherness.

It is this element of absurdity that links the faded frequencies of gone people; we’ve done this before, we do it again, distance is a trophy best honored by recurring sips of powdered air.

There are warts on the morning horizon, craters on the face of dawn pop and leak fluids that unveil a recent history of conscious massacre, one fueled by an overabundance of mind-altering goodies.

‘Quick’, I think. ‘Lets clean it up before the aliens arrive. I don’t want the obvious remnants of an intentional mutilation ceremony to taint the preliminary impressions of my possible saviors’.

Oh well. I shrug my thoughts and lean into myself: an olive tree is pointing a finger at me and I grin: ‘okay, okay, I’ll play my part’, says I in a whine. I collect my frigid form and manifest a smile when all I most easily want is to play with the party people. Regaining a sense of stillness I remember the impermanence of it all and sentence myself to detention, surrendering the responsibility of playing straight.

While life seems to be descending to a fine point for the partakers of illusory escape, I am with absolute presence and awareness, in a dress fit for a clown, laughing at the process and counting the seconds until I can gracefully walk away; I am free to feel the frequencies of a morning sun without the burden of having to pop her pimples.

I gesture to leave my souring nest but pity is a poison best sipped near the entrance of a new day and I ponder my own willingness to stray the comfort of isolation. No. Not today. I can’t go on like this. Ready. Set. Go.

I escape; I scurry into daylight, my shadow trails behind and I find a seat before the sun, beside a tree nestled eloquently in a bed of mulch and stone. I drop down down down to bloody knee: I can’t go on like this. Stop. Breathe. Listen. Screeching tires, busy doors and voices of people pushing sloppy conversations through forked tongues: over it all the piccolos cry, there it is: there it is: one tree in a field of asphalt has the power to pull angels from the sky. Its 10 am, I slowly release the heartbeat that rocked me from the safety of sleep; I undress my armor of emotional impermeability and learn that I am none of the things I call myself. Ready. Set. Go.

Dear Journey,

Confession:

I think maybe I tried too hard to be a hero around this. I dressed in an armor of emotional impermeability one night in the distant past and I neglected to change suits. Today I sat in the sun; I felt small. I miss feeling small. It felt nice. I surrendered the energies to which I have been so attached, the ones inspired by you, ignited by this spontaneous connection-

I write this as the thought of you reading these words makes me feel vulnerable- it is from this source of uncertainty that I trust you, dear Goddess, to provide nourishment for my spirit; music has been a fine dose of encouragement, colors return to grace the buds in beauty’s arms with pink-pointed kisses.

Or maybe its that I hold weakness in the back of my throat and it is now creeping upwards, shorting neural connections and breeding odd ones instead- I don’t know anything, but that this is not an end is something of which I am sure, though it has presented itself as one for some time now. And so I grant it the respect it deserves and I bury it while reading these words; otherwise I might turn my back to catch something shiny and new while this precious gem reluctantly floats out to sea…

Love,

Rasham Writes

-”This is for all them girls who have ever been made to feel ugly by an even uglier man”. – Violet

 I told a man to go fuck himself today; it was after he looked me deep in my eyes and whispered those sweet sweet words. It was after we made love. It was after he revoked the meaning of every meaningful thing he had ever revealed to me. It was after he draped a cloak around his secret vulnerability and reacted like the coward who fires his gun before the bear begins to charge; it was after he looked me deep in my eyes and whispered those nasty, nasty words. Ya’ll know what I mean, no matter the actual content it was the way he said it; I mean, he said a million things and acted a hundred colorful ways but I absorbed only the base line of his poisonous message and it went something like this: “boom boom, I don’t want you in my life, boom boom, I don’t want you in my life, boom boom…”. I felt it. It hurt. I felt ugly. I felt small. I felt like runnin’ and divin’ into the coldest water to freeze the growth of sensitivity and pain, but I didn’t. I just swallowed and smiled and said, “its alright boy. You are the last brother from the tribe of indifferent men that I will ever dance with. I can say a proper goodbye now. Thank you for the challenge mister, now go fuck yourself”.

 This is gon’ be my new way, I think, makin’ it my bus’ness to know where those men come from, and tellin’ ‘em how I truly feel. Ain’t like I’m doing nothin’ wrong, I mean I ain’t hurtin’ nobody really. It ain’t my problem if he takes it personally, right? I’m just livin’ my life is all, and he should know better anyhow. Its like, what do you think is gon’ happen when you wear your selfish expectations as openly as your troubled grin? I ain’t here to please nobody! I ain’t layin’ down the right to bear myself, no way am I gon’ spread my legs kindly so he can have a taste of true power. I ain’t givin’ nothin’ to nobody that ain’t already pourin’ freely from the flow of things; why force myself further? Ain’t enough you’ve got that girl between your legs you wanna sew her up after you done, you wanna brand your name like a pretty little scar that she’ll forever wear as a reminder that she’s a missin’ a piece of her heart to you.

 I’ve been had and I’ve been a means to an end for many a mischievous man but I say enough! They made me, ya know, as a girl comin’ up in this world, tricked by every fake kiss and every false prophecy spoken from the filthy grave of his soiled dreams; I believed that love was when your name felt safe in the mouth of a well-respected man. Uh, uh, no way; and now I’ve paid my dues and I have been God-honored with the authority to love nobody but myself, and if the mosquitoes want a taste of my blood then let them have it; they’ll prick the skin of another man soon, and that will be my victory when the shaft of his cock is swollen with regret of having behaved a devil’s fool; guilt itches, my friend. Itch it long and good, watch how it changes you, I’ll wear a rosy dress to celebrate the rise and fall of your oozing fantasies, ha! I’ll bite harder than any alligator I swear, I’m tired of resting in the swamps next to other second-hand ladies; through rouge and globs of lip paint they slur from too many sips of moonshine while the moonlight shines on their tears that the water beast dries with his yellow eyes.

 I ain’t one them girls who jus’ wanna man, ya hear? I ain’t wanna sit ’round, and sip tea and talk about fancy things with lace, and whisper lyrics and batter my eyes and smell nice things and have nice things: I ain’t lookin’ for nothing from you: not acceptance nor approval, not a warm blanket or a humble bed, not a compliment or a dare, not nothin’ you can do to change me slightly, not no way for you to keep me comin’ round cause I dance to the beat of distant drums, harmonic gifts of direction granted by higher things, higher than the way you feel when you see me smile that smile that ain’t got nothin’ to do with you, not no more; I’m stronger than I seem, grace is not weak but tender like a mother lion with her cubs. Don’t you know boy? When spirits are suppressed, when they are confined, ya see, they revolt to any extreme; the spirit knows only how to be itself and it will do so under any condition, under any circumstance, whether you speak its language or not it will rise within and swell like the tides of the sea when the full moon calls. It’s like, you can take a person and you can train them and mold them and teach them how you want them to be, you can tell them that some things jus’ ain’t right and others are plain wrong, but it ain’t no use; you only gonna make a murderer, or a liar, or a rapist, or a drunk; stiflin’ energies morph and manifest in unwholesome ways when left to rot on the shelves of a restricted heart.

 So, boy, I release myself from the bonds that have held me down; turns out they were of my own makin’; but ya’ll can’t convince me to stitch them again. No way, I have a voice as strong as a million angry bees and though my soul is lyin’ on the side of a road a ruby stone in my chest has been graciously restored. So again, i”ll say it with mighty conviction, those sweet sweet words I’ll whisper in your ear; “go fuck yourself”.

My mood was transformed at the sight of him; his blue eyes were as gentle as the tide in the mist of a morning fog and his composure was reflective of experience and age. I smiled as his mere presence numbed the stinging pain from the wounds I endured on behalf of the unexpected encounter with the beauty. I breathed him in deeply: “what a beautiful offer of company from a beautiful man”, I thought. She faded into the distance and I faded into a romantic fantasy on a random park bench with an absolute stranger.

He was a man from New Orleans who drank red wine for no reason other than he liked the taste, and who played music to the fireflies in the southern darkness between the curls of smoke that seeped from his hand rolled cigarettes. He was easy and wise; none of what he said was shadowed by any attempt to conceal his true colors. Near him I couldn’t hide, nor lie, nor could I even mask the shyness in my own voice.

He asked me about my life, but there wasn’t much to tell: I had lived like the rest of the world up to this very day we shared alone on a park bench in a town without a name. I couldn’t speak, I felt as though I was of lesser importance comparatively because I was poor in terms of places traveled and tales told; I was like a peasant in rags before the prince of a kingdom who was now impressing me with knowledge and wisdom I had only read about in books. And he was charming, a beam of effervescence floated upon the feathers of his wings as he soared throughout the pinkish atmosphere within the outline of our sprouting affections: I accepted his invitation to begin and followed him home.

The night was smudged with uneven patches of charcoal and all around the edges seemed defined by a clear frame; it was as though we were seated on a set of some fabulous production, painted against the canvas of a dark sky. I was slightly nervous and so I denied his offer of a beverage, which in his clear plastic cup moved like the fabric of a maroon satin dress belonging to a girl who was twirling in a field at dusk on the eve of her birthday. He talked and I listened, the two of us staring into each other, neither one of us wanting to be the first to look away. I became flushed when he made mention of the freckles on my face and my eyes darted to watch something familiar, the scattered lines on the palms of my hands folded haphazardly in my lap. I felt his touch upon the fine hairs of my chin; he reacted to my meek gesture of insecurity and was now cradling my face in the warmth of his hand. I was embarrassed, but he didn’t allow me to retreat into thoughtful obscurity. “Let me see you”, he said, and I allowed our eyes to trace an imaginary line across a plane which united us in the spring of our blossoming romance. We stayed for hours until the sky began to boil from the heat of the sun on the morning after. I had fallen asleep atop the breast of his brown corduroy jacket, his arms were wrapped around me and the laces of our shoes were tangled as we lay. I knew that he was the sort of person I would begin to miss before I had even begun to say goodbye.

I rose up from our nest and watched him as he slept on the splinters of the redwood deck; his long blond hair was all about his handsome face. I felt an assortment of unfamiliar emotions which lifted my spirits like the air beneath the arms of a kite, and so many reasons and expectations had melted in spite of him; I thought I was falling in love.

I was gone only a few hours when he called and we held each other for a while as we allowed our bodies to exchange subliminal messages of intimacy and adoration. It happened twice, once while sitting around a dining room table in the fluorescent glow of a home furnishings department, and again while stepping over the chain link divide of a neglected churchyard, that he cradled my face in his hands and said those words ‘let me see you’, though this time each episode was marked with a kiss. I favored his lips to conversation, and we were in bed together in the backseat of his car in a sort of surreal setting of intellectual abandonment, learning only about the sensitivities of our exposed flesh. His touch was so soft, so smooth: the perfect compliment to the savage smoke from the purple-weed we inhaled earlier. The music from the car stereo played something emotionally disturbing, and my eyes became swollen with tears which drizzled from the corners of my eyes as the weight of his body impressed upon mine all the while we made love.

Afterward our sights seemed narrowed and our airways were clear and he reached to cradle my face in his hands; “let me see you”, he whispered, and I smiled for what felt like the first time in my life. That’s when he said “I need to tell you something…”, and I swore I heard the shots of a rifle in the distance and I became supremely defensive, pulling my face from his hands in preparation for some awful news.”I’m leaving tomorrow for New Orleans”. A ringing bell sliced through my fantasy and it shattered like a window at the mercy of a steel metal baseball bat. “Really?” was all I could manage to say through the tepid wind that escaped my deflated lungs.

Like a lost limb in the aftermath of a shark attack I was left minus one important part of myself, to bleed until I retired from grief and exhaustion. Our relationship had expired sooner than the milk I had purchased days before we met. I said goodbye after a night of patient caress and slowly released the idea of him from my imagination, like a child letting go of a balloon. He boarded the craft and as I turned to leave I saw her, the beauty, an attractive presence in an otherwise formidable setting of lingering sadness. She had come to say goodbye too. I felt the cold chill of winter’s approach though the heat of the day was all around me, and my heart began to beat wildly and my chest collapsed: had she meant something to him too?

I was confused, upside down and rationally guarded: I must have exaggerated the details of our indulgence, indeed I was no more special to him than the beauty, and I wanted to be gone from this moment of stark revelation and shrivel against an icy portal of isolation. I calmed myself, refusing the temptation to soak in self pity, and walked quickly to the ladies’ room on the second floor of central station.

I looked at the pathetic reflection of a hopeless romantic in the opaque mirror of the bathroom and cried, my knees bending as I slid my back against a steel door and took a seat upon the colonies of filth forming on the bathroom floor. To have been introduced to love and have her stolen away was devastating: add an ounce of insecurity and a pinch of jealousy on account of the beauty and I was in absolute ruins. I collected myself and walked hurriedly through the crowds and into a place introduced simply by the words from the pen of an Asian artist. I came here because I didn’t know of where else to go where I could escape the tormenting heat and rest without being punished by guilt which would surmount until I gave in and purchased some useless thing which would serve as rent paid for the space I embodied. It seems I wasn’t alone; the population here is a handful of other heartbroken fools, where instead of committing suicide one simply decides it would be easier to make the trip to the local wishing well. I was watching the carousel which was so out of place in the midst of the nightmarish fortune that was unfolding before my tired feet. I sat with a penny in my hand reluctant to release it into the waters and I wondered if it was even worth the effort to make a wish. I opened my hand and the bronze button slid clumsily down the length of my palm and seemed to linger a moment at the edge, hesitating, as if to mirror my disposition on this regrettable day. In a single moment the object spiraled towards its aqueous fate and I imagined that it contained both the power to preserve and destroy me, and I clenched my eyes to avoid witnessing its final descent into the bottom of this artificial pond, to join other decaying hopes and dreams now breathless at the end of this sepulcher for wishes. It’s done, and now it rests in the pit of pale blue, and the process proved as unfulfilling as the day was born, and I turned and walked towards the door.

Before I am able to depart from these afternoon moments of misery and self loathing I am asked by a blinking light to forfeit a quarter and a quarter of my skepticism and stand tall upon a machine no less than half my height. The quarter seemed happy to part from my mess of pathetic personals and slipped down the throat of this steel beast, the clinking and clanging grew soft as it settled amongst the collection of other silver refugees. I awaited the results with a long face and a heavy heart: 123 pounds of me weighing down upon this earth, and a lousy excuse for a daily insight: the machine says ‘love will find you’. How appropriate: the lack of which has brought me to entertain this soulless trap is the very thing which is now promised to me. I sighed and left, into the sunlight, though I thought I was walking into a veil of disgruntled rain clouds on a scorned day.

And to my dismay there she was, it seems as though I cannot escape her. I recall the image of his Hollywood smile, and in betrayal of my self confidence a portrait is displayed before my mind’s eye of him and of her laughing at the world through a crystal ball. I approached her, did I have a choice? Suddenly she became the object of my affection because she was the bearer of great emotional power; within me she had conjured a royal fermentation of evil prophecy fit for the last meal of a wizard’s king. I had to get close to her, to understand her; if she was worthy of his affection she would be worthy of mine. I drank my tears and decided that I would invite her to begin.

“Hi”, I said, feigning a regal composure. In an instant that seemed as rapid as the flash from a Polaroid camera she was beside me and we were no longer enemies. Rather we were bonded; our curiosities outweighed our hormonal response to such a messy circumstance. She was an adventurer and was older than her appearance portrayed though younger than me. I was a bit more reserved but I accepted her invitation to begin and followed her home.

We shared about our time with the boy, both having suffered upon hearing the plans of his sudden departure, the boy who held our faces in his hands and whispered with a rosy hint of eternal affection “let me see you”. It was by nature of having been recognized so tenderly by the boy that we were now inseparable. We discovered that it wasn’t worth our efforts to be bitter towards one another: he proved to be the catalyst for our blossoming romance.

We moved into a cottage by the pond behind the busy streets of an empty neighborhood. We had a bedroom window that never quite closed and a bathtub that would forever own the stains of the red wine she had spilled while bathing. In my arms she was always welcome, always loved, and always adored. I never forgot those precious moments when the cruelty of the world would invade her heart, and her green eyes would weep the sorrowful harmonies of a harpooned whale, and she would become limp like a child in my possession. Her coffee brown hair I would brush against the length of her moist lashes, and I would hold her face in my hands as delicately as the petals of a garden flower. Her smile would rise up from behind sheets of tears and to witness this would leave me without a voice and I would drink her in.

There was nothing strange about the two of us: we forged at a unique point in our lives because of the boy from New Orleans.

There was nothing exceptional about the two of us: we lived like the rest of the world, enchanted yet directionless, a shoulder to cry on, a reason to survive, one phone call away from the grave; she pulled me exponentially closer to love. Neither of us ever heard from the boy from New Orleans, and we never spoke of him really. We dreamed of what it would be like to see him again, by the edge of the water in the wishing well. She laughed when we made mention of it, but I often wondered if he would come to know the weight of his lighthearted actions, and if perhaps he would hold both our faces in his hands and say softly those words that stirred the swelling tides of our noble hearts; “let me see you”. I shrugged the thought away, and looked over to see Ash, a silver emblem in the shape of a star glazed the skin beneath her emerald eye and her hands were cupped, a bronze button resting within like a baby in a bassinet. It caught the shine from the midday sun as it slipped down the length of her palm, and she wore a slight smirk as it dove into the waters of the well, though this time the penny had only the power to preserve; I no longer had any use for destruction.

From ‘Love and Furlough’

The old man was sixty-five, barely energetic and hardly capable of a laugh. He had worked his entire life at a job he only slightly enjoyed and beyond this fact of him I knew little, except that he was well respected by his peers and community. They didn’t see him through the looking glass as I did now and had for many years. As I watched the grumpy old man pout in his night gown I had only a desire to reach him: in my mind this happened as sort of a horrific ordeal where nothing made a sound and he was crippled so that I could hold his wrinkling face firmly between my trembling hands. I would have him focused and ready to listen to me when I said all those things you want to say to an abusive, manipulative, ego driven power maniac. I wanted to extract the insanity from his glazed eyes and manifest his holy disposition into righteous fear. How else do you tell a man that he isn’t the most important person in the world?

He was still slicing tomatoes, still engaged in prayer, and I was still watching. Here before me was the conclusion of a regrettable tale about the poisonous potentials of an unhealthy marriage, though the life of this souring professional  still had time to reach an even more distasteful end. He was always obsessed with money and possession, he wanted, and earned, and loathed, and desired, and craved, and achieved: for what? A house with a swimming pool, surmountable debt and a handful of children with hearts full of hatred.

Here comes mother bear, timid and glued to the easy life the marriage afforded. Unwilling to leave the comfort of nice things made by nice companies which furnished her nice home, she too was beginning to succumb to the virus that was this old man, her pulse was fading; she was like a patient before a doctor who had exhausted all possibilities before considering a plan B, though both characters existed in her mind. I loved her so; to me she was as defenseless as a calico fantail in a sea of sharks, having been conditioned to life as the smallest organism in her unfortunate reality.

I was only mildly remorseful: the archaic beginnings of this husband and wife had its roots in religious tradition, whereby a woman is wed to a man purely on account of familial negotiation. They hated each other:  to one another they were nasty, brutish, and rude, and to outsiders they were unnecessarily miserable. Here they are now, twenty-six years of life in a cactus bowl and the old man is chanting a prayer and mother bear is prancing around as if she deserves his attention (and my pity).

I walked out of the scene and into the sun, and I thought of how sad it made me to love these two characters of life. It pained me to stay, it pained me to leave; I was caught in the sticky residue of an insect trap, only able to move my neck so that I could alter my visual perspective of this environment; the same image in a different piece of broken glass. He disliked me because I hadn’t achieved anything beyond mediocre. She disliked me because I failed to support her placid existence. It is true: I hadn’t achieved anything one would call ’success’, and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my condition for moral support of a life I viewed as a boring road to a catastrophic end, where the old man either shoots his old lady or dies alone with homicidal intentions.

I myself was born with an abundance of creative energy but it usually manifested in some useless form deemed irrelevant by my peers. It didn’t matter: in the shallow hold of my nervous hands was the idea of simplicity, an idea lost in the minds of some and refuted in the minds of others. All I really was trying to accomplish was survival, and how it happened was a phenomenon I left to be determined by the slow progression of time.

I was sitting under the maple tree when she walked out, perhaps to make sure I hadn’t gone far without my shoes, perhaps to make sure I hadn’t gone far without my brain.

“Come inside, dinner’s ready”, she said.

“No thanks, I’m not hungry,” I remarked. I hadn’t the appetite to feed after father had declared us all filthy fools. I watched her return to the house and felt my heart burn for this woman who still cooked meals for her grown children long after their appetite for homemade supper had faded.

I began walking up the street, then down the street, across the street, and onto another street which I crossed once more. I had a few dollars in my pocket and was interested to see what poison at the local mart I could cheaply afford. All around the sky had dulled to an ugly shade of rotten blue and the lanky lights from overhead revealed every imperfection on my face. The store appeared deserted, but as I approached, a man with a rough appearance emerged from within a cloud of smoke.

“Hello”, he said, and followed me from behind as I dragged my feet through the doors.

“Hi”, I said roughly; I had no desire to encourage conversation with a mini-mart manager.

I noticed an air of discomfort but did nothing, I said, “a pack of Marlboro lights,” and reached to pull the cash from my pocket when the presence of another man rattled my feigned sense of security. I could see him from the edge of my vision; I was attempting to both complete the transaction and monitor the sketchy intruder. I was handed my cigarettes and this caused a premature wave of calm, but as I awaited my change the sketchy intruder shifted and I spun around in defense only to catch the butt of his pistol. I heard the mini-mart manager laugh; I felt my mother’s ring around my finger followed by the relief of solid ground which felt as smooth as ice beneath my limp body. My last thought before the rush of colorful darkness was “maybe this will make them happy.” I felt my pants being tugged from around my waste and heard the door through which I had just passed close and welcomed death: I didn’t want to be around for my final moments on Earth for they were surely not worth living at the mercy of the mini-mart manager and the suspect behind.

“Ma’am? Your change…ma’am?”

I awoke from my nightmare and accepted the change. The intruder behind wasn’t interested in me at all save that he was growing impatient on account of my mental pause. I turned to face the door and walked into the night, drifting into a random hole of society, partially doomed to live in fear of an end such as the one I imagined in the presence of the mini-mart manager and the suspect behind, partially doomed to live in fear of an end such as the one which was the fate of the old man and his wife.

I fled the basement, then the ballroom of convenience store items and onto the sidewalk where I discovered myself sliding in a strangely romantic momentum into the arms of the city. I felt the filth of her skirt my ankles and imagined it was a kiss. Steam hissed from the narrow-toothed mouths in the trampled pavement and I imagined it was the nonsensical whispers of love. Instead of the symphony of taxi car horns I heard the harmonies of a French quartet and it filled my heart as I began to walk alongside the wildly enamored crowds, glancing upwards at the violet shadings which like a cape draped the backsides of her magnificent structures.

I relished, rambled, reacted like a puppy to his master’s touch. I was weak at the knees, kind of awkwardly smiling with a strange glimmer of satisfaction in the mirrors of my eyes. Like 400 years of history in 40 pages of words the whole world was in motion though my existence remained as a footnote in my own thoughtful assumptions of this city.

I remembered my life before in the tame valleys of the immature coastline, nestled within the breasts of the earth, quiet and obscured. I would see only the world through the skin of my television set which usually spoke of some wild occurrence, leading me to believe that the rest of the world was dying. Whole continents were vanishing from my vocabulary, I wasn’t so certain regarding the existence of other places. I thought the evil empires had swallowed the seven wonders in an explosive rage, that history was lost in fire and elsewhere lives were reduced to feather light grains of silver ash. I sometimes feared any proof of life in the distance beyond my bedroom window, I hated the taste of conflict and wished it all to manifest gently into the space between the moonlight and my skin. No voices, no noise, no worries, no harm.

I used to sway to the lullabies of the pacific breeze in pleasant solitude. Now I was humbled by the unexpected company of all the universe colliding in a single moment on a crooked sidewalk of New York City. I was falling in love with her, and couldn’t dream of returning to the desolate grounds of the wooded suburbs I called home. Life occupied a different capacity here, everything seemed to not only breath but to breathe deeply, energy absorbed, recycled and expelled at a rate only measurable by the comparative speed of shuffling feet and shifting lights. A seat with a view of the end of the world and how I could I go back to beginnings?

It was as though there was charge, a slow pull which could not be challenged, and I first surrendered myself to her in the sanctuary of a Catholic church with doors wide open, where I sat and wept in the presence of statues for whom in the language of pure sadness the tears of an entire city had been spilled, the tears of the great and the powerful in tragic instances of self realization and need.

Again she called to me as I skated along the water’s edge and took a moment to look in her direction and into an abandoned lot with many pillars set like pawns in a line of defense ahead of the weathered ticket booth. It wasn’t significant, no historical markers labeled this warehouse as worthy of pondering but it was fascinating nonetheless. Perhaps if I stood here a hundred years’ past it wouldn’t seem so barren and alone. Something happened here long ago, and in the songs of the pigeons at my feet I recognized the sweet melody of a carnival tune once performed by the clowns at the gatherings in this seaside courtyard. The life of this place hadn’t died; it had only diminished so that it could still be perceived in the imaginations of idealistic tourists searching for love in the ruins of a city.

I thought it was unfair that time had forbidden me the opportunity to see her irrepressibly alive, but I had long ago realized the absoluteness of my contemporary birth and subsequent modern survival. I thought that perhaps I had been here before in some other manifestation of myself, that perhaps I was so intensely attracted to this dilapidated scene because some memory fond surfaced in my core, and the city wasn’t inclined to allow me to pass without proper recognition of what could very well have been the place of some noteworthy event in a past life, like my first kiss or broken heart. I chuckled slightly under my breath and in a fog of silliness I airily pranced along, not a single expectation or destination in mind, on a first date with New York City.

I noticed him from the edge of my vision as he brought the cigarette to meet his toothless grin and sipped, exciting the ember glow which was the only sight about him that seemed to resemble life. I approached; he saw me and said, “Wow. Lets get married”, to which I allowed a half smile to garnish my expression though I walked past him without a break in pace. “You smiling though, right? Ahhhh…” said the toothless man from behind. I was amused, perhaps enchanted: I had never before been in receipt of a marriage proposal, and though it had been produced by a sewer bum as substantial as the dirt wedged between his bare toes he was in this moment the most valuable person in my life having caused me such delight, and I secretly accepted his offer as if it had been the entire state of New York on bended knee.

The air was spiced with fumes of seared flesh leaking from holes where chefs were busy with the orders of a ravenous city. My appetite began to flourish and so I turned abruptly to face the entrance of a café. I violated its boundaries by peeling aside the veil of beads and crossed over into a Mediterranean oasis. Oh the sounds were luring, the voice of a thousand winds to the beat of a hand drum and I was off my feet and onto the embroidered fabric of a pillow upon the floor.

The radiance of the candle in the middle of the mosaic countertop was masked by curls of fog from the snouts of intoxicated smokers: from bubbling fountains at the base of the huge glass pipe to the fire pit at its peak, sweet tobacco was inhaled through the mouth of the hose and released. My inhibitions too are clouded in a haze and I put the piece between my lips and filled my lungs with the scents of moist apple. I let it all go, every bit of anxiety and nervousness escapes, and I am afraid to feel my pulse because it is dangerously low. I am in the company of a beautiful woman from Spain whose lips are stained red from the wine in the gauntlet she is flirtatiously fondling with her fingers. Her long blond hair blankets the bare skin of her backside, and her moves are as seductive as the length of her dress: she has the savage attention of every male in the room. She stood up to dance and before my eyes she transformed into an Arabian gypsy; her body mimicked the sultry energy of the den and behaved as chaotically as the wisps of smoke.

I sunk like a ball in a glove, slipping towards the floor all the while nursing the argeela like a child at her mother’s tit. I recanted the validity of the knowledge I had thus far held timidly in my mind, and suddenly the course of my life seemed to have been at the mercy of a map reader’s mistake all along. A vivid premonition fabricated by the allure of the Spanish dancer showed me that indeed my life, however small, however useless, however mundane, was changing. The beautiful mirage of sequential encounters with New York City on this arbitrary day forewarned of a love so great it could only spawn glorious triumph, or worse; supreme devastation.

I thought of never returning home. I thought that I would stand center stage on a patch of stone in a city square and dramatically declare my intentions to abandon my origin and live like a renegade on the run from a past less desired. I thought I would forgive myself of all the remedial attempts at a praiseworthy life, and like the carcass of a shorebird being dragged out to sea, let myself go limp while she carried me into the abyss of her cosmopolitan junkyard.

I thought of never returning home, but in a small cubby of the world events were forming that would influence my life in ways I had yet to experience. Sitting somber on a craft bound for disaster I had only the look of a corpse bound for a muddy retreat, and I blankly stared at the couple who stood before me now as they always had: the old man chanting prayer, and mother bear prancing around as if she deserved his attention (and my pity).

-’Twenty Something: The Chronicles of Ham’

My first thought: ‘how long has it been there (my boob)?’ For twenty six years I have had this body, though not really. Me and my body go way back, though how far back I cannot remember, for it has changed and I have changed, like with the addition of boobs (and my mental adaptation to the inevitable addition of boobs). I wonder about my relationship with my body, and I notice that I am separating the idea of ‘me’ with the concrete existence of ‘my body’. Glancing down at freckles (right boob named for wounds incurred while surfing plus one bikini minus one rash guard) I think of how little attention I give to the physical ‘me’, how I assume its tangibility and mobility, though never really granting it any responsibility of personal identity. It’s all there: freckles, the other one and all the rest of my body, my instrument, my tool, my home really.

Mind and body: two separate things? Yes. Without a shadow of a doubt. How else can I account for my strange relationship with this, this thing? I am my head, my thoughts, my mind, my emotion, my soul, my ability, my desires, my passion. My body is simply the means for utilizing, expressing, achieving, surviving these things. In our first years on earth we are born into our bodies and (because of a lack of better option) we struggle to learn the limits of our operating mechanism, sometimes painfully (we cry when we fall down go boom) sometimes with great happiness and success (our first ride on a bike with training wheels off).

However we sometimes think we are our faces, our outfits and the length of our legs. We are identified based upon these facets of ourselves by our governments, institutions, and societies. So be it: to all the world I am a face and a name, to transportation security the information on my ID card, to the police the black and grey mug shot complimented by the description of my physicality: ‘no tattoos, with piercings’. These are but shallow observations which only serve to best expedite the process of cataloging a dangerously overpopulated planet. Thus body becomes identity, mind becomes obsessed with image, and body rules the mind. Umm, would you care for another non-fat-half-decaf-mocha frap-no-whip with your copy of ‘how do I look’ magazine?

Not that taking care of your casing shouldn’t be important: it needs attention, and it is designed to remind us of that natural fact (it emits foul odors reminding us to bathe, pains our guts when we deprive it of nutrition, chokes our throats when we have ignored the need for water). Our bodies are the only way we are allowed to survive, given to us by the mysterious Gods or the basic truth of evolution (and the passions of our parents): our brain needed a vat, and it was given a whole human body. How about that?

Some people say that indeed the mind and the body are so connected in every respect that the one is a cause for the other, and vice versa, (this is a theory called ‘Monism’ in the language of philosophy). They are those that say that we have reactions in our brains which cause such and such chemical firings which lead to such and such reactions which influence our fragile balance which cause manifested physical actions. So these things like love and anger and passion and desire become attributed to the physical tangible nature of our bodies and have nothing to do with an abstract non-physical concept ‘mind’, therefore shunning the notion that mind and body are isolated. Our minds, they say, are formed by the experiences of our bodies. Our actions, they say, are influenced by the cellular and genetic make-up of our bodies. Thus our bodies rule like kings over our minds, because there is only one reality, and everything can be reduced to matter.

But put yourself in a dark closet: power off your body, if you will. No sight, no senses, no smell, no touch, nada. Just you, your mind is all you discover, your thoughts which are uninhibited by the limitations you have placed upon your body. Tie me up and sew my mouth shut and I still exist, I still have thought: I am my mind and my mind will adapt despite the condition of my body, whether it be mutilated, severed, restricted, confined, overweight or under dressed.

Mind is mind, body is body. Mind tries to understand body and in doing so confuses the two. If mind and body are truly equal, if it is the case that I cant have mind without body and body without mind then why does my brain challenge the existence of my body? Why does the brain which discovered science isolate itself from the body and then propose the truth that they are not separate? My body never challenged the existence of my mind. It can’t. It’s subordinate. It’s at the mercy of me, my mind (insert evil laugh here).

This topic is one of pure mental masturbation, I know (one way mind and body are the same). I have always seen the human race as a lot of intricately designed puppets controlled by the hands of a mini-person sitting comfortably within the essence of the body, the identity, the personality, the character, the brain; how so ever you wish to understand it. Glancing down at my own body I was suddenly aware of how isolated I can sometimes become from my appearance, and I cannot say that this is true for everyone, but how amazing a picture of the world when we imagine that we have the power of action, that we do not attribute love and rage and hate and depression to molecular happenings said by science to be largely predetermined at birth and outside the scope of mental control? How awkward a thought of the world where instead of people we imagine the human body as a vehicle and the mind the cockpit, possessing the ability to move the earthbound matter in accordance with one’s values and will?

I am dangerously close to having to assess the topic of reincarnation, so I’ll tuck my boob back in my shirt and enjoy the rest of the flight.