Turn and Face the Strange

I lived in a cave in the Cascades while I was in my forties. If it hadn't been for the alien weeds on the mountainside, I could have survived for years. On my way down the mountain, I took a wrong turn and lost my shoe in the muck south of downtown Tigard. I couldn't stop the weeds there any more than I could on the mountainside. There were too many. The woods of Tigard, though, were much worse. My feet bled and my ankles swelled to the size of softballs.

I was riding with my friend Amit from Eugene to Portland. He was taking me to a clinic to see what they could do for me after the emergency room in Eugene refused to admit me because they didn’t think I was crazy. It was a long drive up I-5 so I appreciated that he was going out of his way to help me.

Until I didn’t appreciate him. Just south of Salem I became convinced that he was taking me to an undisclosed location for nefarious purposes. I kept seeing large black SUVs with blacked out windows. Obviously, military or intelligence agencies making sure Amit didn’t veer from the agreed upon route. I tried to open the car door to escape but the force of the wind from driving 70 mph forced it shut. I gathered myself for a few seconds and prepared to really put my shoulder into it so I could fall out, roll, then get up and make my way to the mountains. I was invincible and didn't trust that Amit was transporting me to a good location.

I figured I could find a good cave in the mountains. I’d already done it. If it wasn’t for those weeds I wouldn’t have even been in this mess. I couldn’t take the chance then, but I had to this time. It's not what I wanted, but what I wanted doesn't matter.

By the time I tried to open the door again, Amit had engaged the child locks. Appropriate. I kept unlocking and he kept locking again. It went on for at least a minute while cars and trucks barreled past us as Amit had inadvertently slowed down while locked into this life-and-death struggle.

I finally gave up and laughed as I remembered that my brother worked for the Air Force. He was undoubtedly higher up than he could allow anyone on the outside to know, even his family—maybe especially his family. I had other friends who worked for the federal government and realized they were likely working clandestinely for one of the intelligence agencies.

My thoughts changed. I realized they weren’t there to catch me and lock me up. Yes, the black SUVs were part of the military and intelligence agencies, but they were there to escort me to safety, maybe even inform me of the details of my mission: to index the Internet for Google while Nike attached nodes to my body to activate my muscles so I could achieve perfect fitness to enable me to work 24 hours a day every day for as long as needed, years or even decades. The fate of the planet depended on it.

But what I really wanted to do and had been trying to do for weeks was to see Karen again. A month earlier at a poetry event called Word Out at Star e Rose café, a woman I didn’t know read a poem about having never fallen in love. We spoke during the intermission. Her eyes were lit like candles, mesmerizing. I said to her, “You sure know a lot about love for someone who’s never been in love.” She sparkled and I marveled. Two weeks later I was living in a cave.

I felt as if we had been intentionally separated for a month. That turned out to be true. Close friends had been trying to isolate me to keep me from being out in public to protect me from the police and the mental health institutions. What were they gonna do? Let me live in a cave, run from alien weeds, jump out of moving cars, and hunt down a woman who probably didn’t even remember who I was? Friends don’t let friends follow their delusions, but they also try to keep them out of the hospital if possible. It’s scarier inside those places than within psychosis.

Simon Says

 

MERRY MONDAY AT THE GAS PUMP OF NOVEMBER

Evil resides in Vallejo, the rotten fruit of California. Condemned as a fool, Simon became the saint of simpletons. Known locally as The Freak, he leapt over chaotic hauntings in need of angels to make bad things go away. This is his story, told by him.

Skinny scarecrow strongmen with straw hands and feather fingernails whispered my name; I fought them off with spaghetti strands. This is me, Simon Keane, antidote supreme. I eat with a fork in each hand and my bottom in the sand. I'm always at least 100 miles from the nearest pickle. Some people ask me, “How did you get out of the microwave?” I tell them that nothing bestializes a being like the taste for eternal happiness. Hey, don’t be slow to judge.

Basket-weaving gerbil breakdancing festivals come and go. There’s a notch on my bedpost next to the whip I use to flog my teddy bear. I bought Valentine’s Day on Columbus Day. Cannibalism, not just for breakfast anymore! There is no pudding in China.

Pterodactyl defense requires strange tattoos, racist language, fake accents, sidewalk assets, and the burden of lifetime commitments. Bleach is unnecessary on the moon. Butter can’t fly. Swarthy men in pickup trucks want to perform elbow porn.

I encountered a wall of jars containing tiny universes and dropped one as an act of divinity. Magnificent ornamentation disguises despair as vacuousness. I found an embroidered tablecloth in an abandoned Queen Ann mansion and left it soaking in a tub of blood for later use at a nearby children’s orphanage. The suspension of the incantation left me in need of intoxication. I miss your hat.

Maria Aceveda, you need to trim your green grass and your brown curls. The squirt gun turned her into melted cheese. That’s when I saw crass bitches from Helvetica creating gumdrop madness, making Maria lick her own nipples. That specimen drives recklessly around town. She ran a stop sign and shattered a porcelain woman. I now have the foundation I need to keep her legs inside her chest. Trying to spice up the sheet shows.

Another moment passes and now becomes then. There were eyeballs everywhere.

My buddy Fred has amnesia. He’s as happy as he’s ever been, as far as he knows. His boiled intestinal fortitude hovered outside when Karl Marx roared down the road, wove into oncoming traffic, and crashed head first into a beer truck. A vehemently justified kickboxing pop warped a demolished moon in a turd-filled room at noon later on Saturday night.

Another friend, Smarmy McShane, he’s a casualty gawker. Watched Karl’s spleen develop superpowers. Said he saw goofs and fluffs pitying sulking junkies, car-counting clerks, and weeping winos.

…

In Simon’s world, stark lifetimes pass away like sonnets from the lips of a forgotten jester. Gilded honey lips of fashioned mollusks kiss orangutan plums with dappled viridians pleading for jaded relinquishment. Guanine flinches spackle the day with care. Frivolously manufactured lily pads reward the patchy fracas. The fad of grape-colored electric sockets sting zaps in hands reaching in the zone of traps. Grandfather’s garden quail arrowed a clit to lip. Disturbing qualia arises when those who follow believe what they follow. A rotting apricot in a dry wash met a face full of melting structures and jagged lines. Things touch and fringes intermingle. The proximal distal, the crystal maze, and the handheld digital are on a pedestal of blame.

The Ward

I wandered the common area knowing it was the common area. Nurses in their blues. I'd traveled back in time after being far in the future in a distant galaxy. I had to come back for myself because I'd left myself behind. The earth had not done well without me. There had been no climate change, no Hitler gassing Jews, and no Scientology for Tom Cruise. He was Episcopalian. So, very bleak, indeed.

Traveling back, though, the mind goes haywire. I started square hopping and speaking to those posing as patients in Blang before finishing my midday cycle with some chips. A happy space (now that I’m here). I saw public celebrations and cute, blue-smocked baristas jumbling fumbles and gumming bubbles. The buzzing gall of it all!

But I was much the same. I remembered everything, even that which hadn't happened originally. I seemed to have two sets of memories, one for that version and one for this. I could access each of them with equal ease. I came back two weeks later than when I'd left on August 2nd. I'd followed the advice of angels and faked a seizure in the pharmacy of a grocery store. I was all there and talking with Christ in the back of the ambulance while the paramedics took my pulse and gave me oxygen and all that jazz.

That was when the entire Divine Family descended to be with me in the back of the paramedics van. We caught up as I had been blinded to who I was by being in human form. I was, after all, God. But it wasn't what people think of as the Christian God. A capital letter, yes, but not Muslim or Jew, either. I was the Original God, and yet I had a Heavenly Father who was also The Creator, though the title wasn't permanent. Sort of like winning the Tour de France one year; you won that year, not all years. The Heavenly Father created this universe, but I was also The Creator for I was in the process of creating what would happen next. 

We teleported and time traveled from where and when we were, a room in a hospital. But I realized we needed a time loop. Why? Because Halley and her laughter! No one in any universe laughs like Halley. She wasn't even a star, really, not like the rest of us, but she made herself into a minor god and then a god and, on that day, we made her into a God. From human to comet to minor to major to the Real Thing. I needed a loop to be able to get back to that moment. I had no idea I’d get lost in it for billions of years.

I found the coordinates and made it back; I remembered everything, traveling back to the same time I left, within a day. That took some work. But Halley wasn’t there. Neither was the Divine Family. I was only a shadow of myself so not myself, though it felt very real. I was simply human. My being as it was had disappeared. Worst still, trapped in a psych ward with vicious nurses in blue telling me what to do. 

Regret? Of course, but I had to take the risk because Halley is that special. I may never find her, certainly not as a human. 

But I remembered who I had been as a human and what I’d done in my ancient life: indexing, marriage, starship captain, the Original God. Knowledge pressures freedom. It was possible I might come back for myself in this form again as my actuality may have still been in the time loop. In that moment of realization, though, I wanted can puffs, abstracts, existentialism, galleries of fine specs, literature, question-and-answer periods, Henry Rollins, and to irk the smallest creatures. I wanted to go outside, too, gulping air, swallowing weather, the warm tangibility of sunshine during the day.

They didn't allow any of it. Philistines.

The Earth Moved

"Knitting is not a conformist position," said Jane. It is not for the meek or timid." Bob, a weekend woodcutter, was busy chiseling a nativity scene he planned to deliver to the yard of a well-known atheist.

The earth moved and their vision became jagged; there was something in the air. "Did I tell you I caught Ishmael staring absently at his mother's vulva?" asked Bob. Jane retorted, "I saw Mariac Aceveda licking her own nipples." Bob shook his head in disgust. "Really? This close to Christmas?" Jane casually remarked, "In my mother's family, the holidays were a time for viewing meta-epistemic art."

Bob busily carved the baby Jesus. Absentmindedly, he said, "Mustard seeds contain more snot than you'd imagine." Jane continued knitting, her vision still jagged. "I can't see anything but my other hand." Bob shot back, "No one ever said life would be breathtaking," then added more trivia, "Huge vats of fat were used to make the first atomic bomb." Jane replied vigorously, "I did not know that!"

Bob looked at the clock. "It's getting late, Jane. Don't you think it's time to wash your armpits with vinegar and salt?" Jane snorted and said, "Take a crap on yourself the next time you think of it." Bob, in a reverie, replied, "Bold colors make me want to wear diapers." Jane continued, "While I'm thinking of it, go next door and ask Betty if you can borrow a few pounds of onions before you go to bed."

Bob got up, putting the Christ child aside, and left to to borrow onions. Jane, meanwhile, went to the kitchen and grabbed a gallon of milk. She went outside into the backyard. As she poured milk down the side of the fence, Jane realized she was standing on a platform of doubt. She began weeping. As Bob approached with a sack of onions in his hand, he saw Jane was upset. In an attempt to cheer her up, he offered more trivia, "Did you know Abraham Lincoln once remarked that he couldn't tell the difference between snow and rain?" He paused then added, "Nine times is the most you can hope to try that sort of thing. With the milk, I mean."

Jane's tears dried as the last of of the milk spilled out. She reflected and said, "My brother John found paradise while looking for a hot dog bun. You know, I don't think I'll attend the coven's potluck tomorrow. And for the record, I never said I wanted to witness a parking exhibition."

Bob, feeling a little hurt, reminded Jane, "Didn't I soak up your nocturnal bleeding with a bowl of corn flakes last night?" Steaming a bit, he continued, "And the next time you see Dora, don't put the candy wrapper in the baby's mouth." Like a magician, Bob farted and jumped into a hat.

Jane sighed deeply. "The modern is replaced by the moment. Incoherence may illuminate reality in ways coherence can not." She turned to the hat. "Will you come out of there. This is not the same as living inside an octopus." Bob, still in the hat, replied, "Ghana never became a nation officially; instead, it became a lamb."

Jane threw the milk jug over the fence into the neighbor's yard and said, "Fuck this shit."

The Last God

My dance is over; I'm circling on the inside. My mind has waves, turns when I see her; she’s as real to me as you are to yourself. No more judgment, no more trying to figure it all out. Randy noises, sudden shocks, a man in blue scrubs ready to scrub me out of existence. His mind is made of contrary objectives. “We can work together,” he says. Neither of us believe that, though. I just want a kiss, but not from him; from Halley, however far from me she is now, wherever she streaks tonight. Do they think I want to be here, that this is all I am, all I can do? Am I really a danger to myself and others? Who made that judgment? They could have told me before jackbooting me into this cell.

There was an event in which I encountered a wall of jars containing tiny universes. Dropping one would have been an act of divinity.

Mounting a singular strand of beef, Halley emerges into a hazy reality despite my rising awareness. She is delving deep into obsession to repress my fear. Her comprehension of paralysis is miles away from tantalizing recoiling shooting. My pain elongates her pursuit of twisting, sucking cheeks.

Jut the chest out further with miniscule immense effort. I’m sweating profusely, blinking rolls of breathing control weakening temporary furrowing movements. Her gyrating desperation looks grotesque and surreal. Prop my hips into my torso by mashing a dormant smuggler with contraband, the right type of stuff, knock out the staff, steal a tray, make it to the door, phase through it, and catch a comet with Halley. She’s spewing tensely and wincing blurbs of blood spill crazy angst swells contorting her body into a seizure position. Eyebrow forehead furrows ceaselessly, she writhes in perpetual motion with a widening tongue slithering and roiling out of her gaping mouth; I have to go because of the corkscrew frenzy. Call the police.

Eye lasers were coming at me as I hopped. My skull, my brain: fizzle. The cacophony of internal fracturing was full attitude. An aggressive violent burst glass front doors shattered, bleeding from the face and arms, screeching demonic harpy, employees and customers in alternative routes of gape and shock at the beast’s raging. Fearful scampered from the apewoman, my love, Halley, thinking outside the box, shelving cereal while winging soup cans at the manager. Her chest heaved over his head when he leapt over the counter, calling 911. I struck back, jumped the counter, knocked over the cigarette rack, said, “Choke blood, motherfucker.”

I felt the muscle of my neck connected to my lungs with the full weight of his force lunging disoriented groggy sprawls with his forearms forcing my chin into a punctured lung. His throat reached my chest and I trapped his nauseating gurgling noises into the desperation of my breathing. I was turning blue and with decreased oxygen flow, the situation was worsening to a pathetic terror as he seesawed himself into a struggle with panicked gravity. It was dizzying lying still and claustrophobic moving around.

We got out, but then we were coping with panic freak outs, shocking chaos scrambling into shrieking flailings of oncoming traffic. “Get out of the way!” I spread out my arms and dared a semi to run me over. I knew he wouldn’t. I wasn’t going to move; I was God and he would see it. He already knew it in his heart, he just refused to believe … until he finally swerved into the other lane, his horn blaring, I turned to him as he passed me; he was angry, but I opened my mouth, my eyes wide and wild, and forced all the air out of my lungs into his mind. His anger turned to fright, and I screamed at him as he passed, “I am the Lord thy God, and you will obey me!”

Busking on the right night means loud music, lively conversation, raunchy humor, ample spray paint. People payin’. I painted dark purple and burnt umber, an abstract that suggested it was best to keep walking. I switched to brush and canvas for a friend to create the right wedding present. Then I unlocked my bike and rode it through the breakthrough which is what I needed to do. I had been writing about being poor on a fixed income with housing limitations, catatonic in a state mental health facility, and a decade earlier, a travel book on how to live well abroad.

The latter I named Adventures in Subtlety. The book was to be an appetizer to attract amenable tourists to help them transform into travelers or, better yet, wanderers. I casually mentioned the title to two Australians who worked in tech and design. Big mistake. The guy, testosterone turned up to 11, said, "No, no, it has to be one word, man, two syllables at most. Apple, Google, Twitter." The woman chimed, "Best to make it a word that doesn't mean anything in any language, like Cisco." They cycled through more names, but I wasn't interested in starting a search engine or a social media company. Until we're grunting our conversations, I want access to a multitude of syllables. 

I wanted to attract an audience that didn't give a shit about one-word two-syllable names of tech or design companies. I wanted people who wanted to leave that world behind to escape trends and discover a world not shaped by algorithms. To these tech hipsters, though, I explained no more. They were enmeshed in hyper-marketing as a social pastime.  They were kind enough to remind me why I usually avoided expat bars. I should have known when I entered the bar. Its name was Lime yet an orange color scheme assaulted me. Irony, maybe? I decided I needed something more.

Lord knows, half the others there were picking up the pieces while genuinely grinning over their shared time. That was not weak. A strength in the flowers buzzed brightly. A bad omen appeared: diamond cutters with too much hay receiving breakdancing upvotes for styles they didn’t invent or perform. I hardly heard a howl from them. The pieces were up for sale, once upon a time, though tonight they were leasing.

I stumbled outside, the colors starting to shimmer and my heart fluttering. I picked up the pieces on the side of the road and put them up for sale. My meal ticket flew out of my hand and in through a window. I declared, “All the skeletons are in jail,” and knew I was in for a disaster or a really great time.

It was getting late, and my senses were gone. I should give myself a call; let those concerns swirl down the drain. I invited a man getting sick in a gutter over for dinner; see how long until he complains. “Do what you please, Jack.” Wasn’t his language. I saw titanium free hairlocks turn pink with ease. “Getting late,” I said, and I wasn't joking. I needed to move to where there was something to kill.

There was a woman. There’s always a woman, isn’t there? She had been in Lime, and she thought she knew me. Maybe she did, I couldn’t tell. She was blathering in that late-night happy voice drunken expats use. I said to her, “Once you're old enough to drink, you let your life drift away. Given a garbage head, you chose to put on a crown.”

She didn’t like where this was going, but I couldn’t stop. “I can tell you're hypersexual; there are no more guys around town. I mean, drinking everything, the last thing you need is another round. No more parties, no more lusting, that's what you need to say. We know better because we're sentient, but you want nothing but foie gras.” She turned and walked back toward the bar. If she’d had a drink in her hand, it would have been in my face.

I stumbled over a bridge and said aloud to myself, “‘How are you doing?’” I ask myself in the morning every day. There’s no tomorrow, no yesterday, so where the hell is today? “You've gotten lazy, full of yourself.” I saw another woman with a gleaming diamond on her finger and shouted, “That ring, you can't handle it now.”

I needed an ice vein sandwich, a Coca-Cola, something to wash everything away. This monster growing inside me, blurting out cruelty and lies. If this was Venus, I'd carry water, perhaps for a hospice to pay. Losing my mind is just part of the scene, make sure to take pictures along the way. We like your photos, the stars say. They’re calling me home. “Send a vessel!” If I could, I'd be sure to go away.

How many have held my head in a toilet? More than I'd like to count. They rushed in and out, too many for my crown. Someone else knows, triggering my nightmare, organized as it is. Some type of behavior, comfy cozy, something I seek. Where am I? It's not a dirt farm, but it’s not the city, either. Kindness, I flubbed that one, fast and furious. Tunnels ahead, maybe of love, but I don't mean what I mean. How often can I be wrong turning to the right?

On the corner were forgers making billing configurations. They could have been buzzing light switches. Switches, that's just a word. My mind has completely oriented itself to insanity. Blinking infinitely, how many more times until I come out of this phase? I see everything everywhere. There is nothing I can do to stop everything I encounter from happening exactly the way it is happening. Nothing’s idle; nothing willing to practice the word “stop.” Just more and more and more, not until, but endlessly. Infinity and the Grand Unifying Theory of Everything, that's who I am now, who I always am.

I've crossed over, like my mind is made of candlelight DMT. It's necessary to be welcomed home. Slowly slipping into a new illusion, a mirage of angel nurses who give and give and give in entirely sexual ways. And then there’s Halley, committed to being the monogamous Queen Lover of the Last God, the Overarching One, the Eternal and Infinite, the Forever and Forever More. Me. Myself. I Am.

I shouldn't say anything as I’ve declared my role as The Writer of the Divinity of English. One mistake and, well, it's all written in Divine Stone. My Family—the Divine Family—arrived in phases, in different bodies, through channels which ... which. They were sobbing, beautifully, these three-dimensional manifestations; I, with hand on heart, gave the final wording: “I'm happy you're with me.”

If only life ended then …

Fuck, I’m in a fucking hospital. Again. What the fuck? If I’m God, I’m gonna need someone else to open the door.

Double Scoop

What do you want?

I'll have a double scoop of planetary bliss, please.

Which planet?

I suppose Saturn, sir.

Saturn? You just get one scoop with Saturn. Neptune, Venus, and Jupiter you can get a double scoop.

Oh, golly. I did not expect that answer. I was really looking forward to a Saturn but even more to a double scoop. I suppose Jupiter would be okay, but I'm not sure I have the stomach for it.

Look, kid, have a Neptune. It's close in size to Saturn, as far as I can tell, and the scoops are blue.

See, I rather thought one orange and one red. They really seem to be the kind I'd like the most.

At that moment, a dark and slinky bulge approached the shore from the sea. An empty ship? No, no masts or sails. Might it be a whale? The boy was not the only one who noticed as other children from all around were sprinting to see what the large lump was.

The boy was just about to run to join them, but the man shoved his hand outright with a double scoop of Neptune bliss. The boy shook his head, "Sorry, sir, but I did not place the order. I hope you enjoy it." And with that he ran as fast as he could to the beach to gawk at the hump the other kids were now climbing upon while removing clumps of seaweed, jellyfish tentacles, kelp, and the remains of flotsam.

The first shriek was one of delight. The lumpy hump was a man, a drowned man at that. They played with him all afternoon, burying him in the sand and digging him up again. When the adults spotted them, they were frightened and spread the alarm.

The alarm was not heard by the gentle boy on the other side of the hill who had trodden over to look for landscapes to paint for his sick grandmother who lie in bed at home with a stubborn head cold. The boy became ill at the sight of a maiden not in distress but in success. Not for nothing did the boy tie a hoe to his garden greens, for such an encounter he was prepared.

It was while walking with his hydration map that he had understood what to do in cases of distress that were his and not that of another. He set his tools down and began building crafts that could come in handy if he needed to call for a witch to cleanse the valley of all sensuality as the maiden was a ripe bit nasty in his mind if not in actuality.

When the maiden saw the boy she thought, "A relaxing hug is what he needs." With that, she galloped toward him like a mare in need, a mare indeed. This did not sit well with the boy as he was barely untying the twine he planned to use to create a tether to tie the maiden to his spirit rock. Urgently he unspun his twine, but she was on him in no time.

She sang quickly to him, seeing he was stressed. "Smiling sleep, sickly sweet, I travel to massage. My prayer is primed for positivity. No phone calls offer emotional identification. Remember, karate kicks out Tai Chi reflexive incantation."

The boy, recognizing the song his mother sang to him at bedtime, breathed in easily her earthy spirituality. He thought to himself, "I Can Do This!" and responded in kind, "Tai chi emails on karate reflect our commonality. The contemplation of musical visualization gives us cozy comfort. Stuffed animals share our feelings for needs fulfillment."

The maiden was no maiden as she said to the boy, "A princess I shall be. Please, ask me, what am I in store for thee?"

"Deep breathing cats!" the boy blurted. He began crying and asking for help. "Please, I have positive qualities I'm trying to develop." He quoted his father's production of stories about nature appreciation and told of his grandfather's piano paintings inspired by cartoon drawings on Anti-Dada. "Writing about photography is supposed to clean and organize plans for achieving goals."

The princess giggled and ruffled the boy's hair. "It is a choice to decide to list thank you notes in letter writing for invalids."

Back on the beach, the body of the drowned man had been taken away. The man was huge and becoming larger by the minute. "Maybe some drowned men keep growing after they die," said a villager.

"Nonsense!" shouted Magwolie, the town freshener. "Dead men don't grow because they've drowned. They grow because they've got shark's blood in their teeth." Ah, yes, everyone mumbled, not sure if it was true, but not wanting to question the man who rid their huts and houses of bad smells during the Wicking times when the weather was wild and wooly.

The man was a stranger, not from their parts. There were only two dozen families in the area and none looked remotely like this man who had deeply green skin and was three sizes larger than the largest of them. That and no one had reported themselves missing for over a year.

"It's time to get back to sea," said the man who might have been mayor had they had such a designation.

"Why not hide in the forest instead?" asked a woman who knew a thing or two.

"The mighty green forest," asked Magwolie. "I hear a voice in the chorus and a choice for the porous. Why not spare a buffalo while we're at it?" It was a question without an answer, one everyone present had heard previously, knowing it marked the end of the discussion.

That was when the boy and the princess happened upon them.

"Ah, a maiden come to claim her dead husband, yes?"

The princess answered, "No, I'm here to align Jupiter with its twin, also known as Jupiter. And I'm a princess, not a maiden, though it seems to be a common mistake in these parts."

Uggle the Bug Eater said, "Two strangers in one day. One, a man; the other, a woman."

Hashfastfrash added, "One dead, one alive."

The gentle boy who'd come with the maiden recognized his twin brother and asked him why he hadn't gotten a double scoop. "No Saturn, only Neptune, Venus, and Jupiter." The princess shrieked, "Jupiter! Yes, it is you, gentle boy, and you, double scoop, you're the twins aligning! Jupiter and Jupiter."

"But are names are Stupider and Stupider," said double scoop. Magwolie confirmed it with a grunt.

The princess protested, "It's not true. On a broken wing, a name will be seized, but utterly confused. It'll be given twice, as it should. The true name, though, will come when a drowned man grows in front of their eyes." And the drowned man did grow and keep growing, so much so that they hacked him to pieces and fed him to the Worm Eater under the Bridge for Fools.

The two boys smiled and the villagers applauded. A silence followed until Jestin Thyme asked, "Now what?"

The princess sighed and said, "Well, nothing so much here, though the boys have better names and I should think that plenty. Perhaps Jupiter will shine on his namesakes? But for me, I now can marry Sir Givesalot and live with the dairy queen under a grate moat built to prevent cow slippage."

Everyone agreed popsicles are super cool.

Bottles and Cans

Jazz or Bach tonight? Anxiety suggests Bach. 

Is there a purpose to anything we do? Van Gogh questioned how to act freely without offending God while having no knowledge of the mind of God. There's something mystical in asking questions without answers. It's maddening, the beginning of madness. Pollock went another route, painting anger, resentment, frustration, impatience, and rudeness. Colors change, credit card bills remain. 

Bottles and cans, bottles and cans. 

I perspired while moving a couch against a wall in a failed feng shui attempt. A struggling couch controls the combustion chamber. Did I mention that I was stranded in Utah until a man from San Francisco told me about a woman in Seattle? Turns out, the stranger leads in a new city. Everywhere I went there were churches and bars, bottles and cans, bartenders on adventures looking for gear-shifting blue eyes, exhibitions of innovative contraptions, a naive street buzz about the posterity of mayonnaise, a homeless woman being gingerly lifted inside a paper clip, fire-breathers jousting on tall bikes taking out a row of nude cyclists performing optical illusions, and air-fencing duels witnessed only by the participants. 

I suppose the audience played the role of The Other? We were seeing flashes of white inside a glass mind welcoming us to crystallize the universe into being. An absolutely mesmerizing greenhouse of serene purchase compelled us to move. Hey, good for you. Did you know body movement creates mood? Neuroscience says, "Keep those hips swaying." Also, cobras make poor backyard pets.

Perhaps the introduction of a well-defined regularity could help us here. Is that a suggestion for a mixture of archaism and bold conjecture? My intuition and blindness proceed irregularly with regularity, but I surmise you mean something more rigid, a sort of simplicity or a stacking of bricks, if you will.

Nothing quite so staid, but you're on the mark. Your distortions make it heavy to glean proper meanings or accessible forms of clarity. Too bad. My presentations of discoveries are not at the mercy of chance. Both errors and truths make their way within words, borrowing from old traditions and genuine discoveries into a certain code of order, a system of knowledge. 

Point is, I had a good day of it, all told, although my friend, Jan, had a humiliating experience involving widowers while sitting in a rocking chair. Good news is he's got his business up and running: Nostalgia for Escorts. It's based on the Philosophy of The Loop. Do you have photos? Of Jan? Jan has a professionalism of spirit. Makes his ass shimmer and shake and, I swear, everyone wants to touch it for at least half a minute. He's always been less conspicuous, what with his Hawaiian looks, but he always laughs while making sneaky assessments. He believes in God.

Grant us a peaceful night and a perfect end.

I was a monk, God of Eternal Light, and an aardvark in my past three lives according to an existentialist palm reader. She spoke gibberish to tourists, but she also talked with the dead. When predicting the future she levitated, gyrated, and translocated while whispering, screaming, and squirming after crawling, feasting, and sleeping. She pawed at strangers while making roaring noises. The wickedness of her sexuality was masked by perfume. Last time I saw her, my face was so flush I offered her a mood lightener and an eye softener. Our fun was sweet.

I asked her about herbs, tinctures, and other magical beans that could grow a stalk into the clouds. She seemed agelessly ageless. When she flashed her icy blue eyes I felt the cold. Quizzical. She revealed her soul to be shriveled, like the consciousness of a weed. Hmmm, maybe holistic medicine isn't for me. "Ah," sensei said, "what is it to be healthy of mind and body if one cannot eat dead cow flesh? A generous spirit attracts monkeys and dogs." I couldn't argue with that. Not effectively, anyway.

My self-conception is flawed. No shit. Whose isn't? I spiral indecipherably through uniquely rumbling undulations. Duty salutes and obligation is at ease. There are kiosks, maps, and pointing in my direction. The severity of my recognition is imaginably worse than changing minds. A blessing of bottles and cans, bottles and cans.

I ate a hearty salad, cut a lemon in half, spelled four hash. Preparing the chants, I spilled pineapple juice to create a liquid sensation. Relaxing muscles, stretching nervously, eating randomly. Sternness followed by endearing storytelling for brightness. Intelligence, sure, but laughter? Facial muscles tightening, ten drop fifty, then picking up the floor boards. Shaken, nervous, and insecure, shy enough to be apprehensive, it's time to unwind. Shivering for blocks down the road, my love of canals overcomes me. She looks young and beautiful in the dawn light: "I'm fit and agile; I can do tricks with my toes." Hands and arms, guns and knives.

North Dakota farm people were kicking thirty yard field goals. Arenas full of farmers yelling, "Come on, make a bet!" Dusty Vegas they called it. The guzzling goodness of guanine and taurine. Energy drinks, a sort of legalized meth, encouraged by the Man: "Get that work done, son!" Merchandise: smart phones, laptops, tablets, sparkling water, dog food. Formulas for urban layouts. A gray-green sky suggested diminishing returns. The dimming light turned to darkness as the ash was blown into the acid rain and corrosive mist. Movies and fashion shows loudly announced that the beautiful people had arrived with promises of eternal youth only to be followed by untimely deaths. Bottles and cans, bottles and cans. 

I spread out to stay put. Wandering streets and minds, thinking forests, and learning rivers gurgling, all horrifying and great. The wisdom of consciousness, blathering and honking, sinking deep into the quicksand. Ambiguity's shackles floated through the vagaries of moving water. The conveyance of facsimiles of death laughed at anything alive. It made no sense, but what's the matter with that? 

No one was happy.

High Functioning

They say I'm "high functioning." I respond, "The possibility of truth is nil. Belief in the 'order of things' shifts radically if a change in perspective opens up the undeniability of uncertainty despite limiting representational explanations such as causation or determinism." My discomfort tangles the spiraling coil of my emotional experience. They can see my chest expanding and contracting, I'm sure of that much. The doctor whispers, "He's not making any sense. Increase his dosage of Seroquel." The golden rule of psychiatric medicine: If a dosage isn't producing the desired outcome, double it.

While I can still think, I try to create neural pathways shaped like pi. I say to them, "While physically fixed in place, my location is random. I'm perceptually mundane yet entirely unpredictable to you. Can you describe me? The devil of categorization will betray you." The same thing happens over and over even as something else is happening anew and anew. Participating while observing myself participating, a perspective loop for the alleviation of loneliness. 

A therapist asks about a memory. I say, "The chaos of memory hides oneself from oneself. I neither begin nor end; I am." When asked about right and wrong? "Morality is the story we tell ourselves to escape emotional difficulty. Ethical principles are crucibles for suffering needlessly. Meanwhile, uncertainty, from a distance, seems enticingly possible."

I tried to explain to her that everything external is internalized, but she was having none of it. So I said, "You dedicated yourself to helping others, right? How's that working out for you?" That got her attention. To someone on the outside, it might seem cruel to say such a thing. But she and the others were holding me hostage and calling it "help" so I figured, hey, fair game.

When she left, I swiveled to the ground, my ass on my feet and my arms intertwined. After a few moments, I untwirled and rose to my feet, my arms dangling at my sides. Then I swiveled back down. Dozens of times. Strange to be able to move effortlessly in a manner so foreign and previously unknown to me. The woman's voice returned; it spoke and sat still. I slunk lower and lower until I was lying prone. The sensations fascinated me, but I was equally intrigued by the strangeness of being able to move in this "new" new way. Half floor, half man. 

She came back and wanted me to get up. I said, "No, first pour water down my throat. I need hydration." My body ached and I wanted to move, but to give her what she wanted seemed rude. She wasn't aware of what she was doing, after all; she still thought she was helping. When she pleaded, she sounded like a swan having a heart attack. Made me laugh, but I stifled it for her sake. After all, I had dedicated my life to helping others. Chance responsibilities; unaccounted accountabilities. A chuckle and then--

Emerging merging emerging; eternal eruption of an outward manifestation of silent laughter. Disquieting disintegration. Inhale exhale inhale. Audible crackling, liquid moments. Vortex. I felt static in stereo and heard the hum of vacuum cleaners. As I wafted toward my room, I asked anyone listening, "What would you prefer? Humility? Respect?" 

I spied a younger one also being held against her will. She was looking at me with saucer-wide eyes. High cheekbones, straight nose. Heavy breathing; pacing in place. Untethered inside; externally attached. "Good, good. I can see you understand that you have to venture outside the mind to find out what is within." She nodded, grinning like the Grand Canyon before walking away to something that interested her.

I knew things were going south, though. The pills they forced me to take. They gave me one I called Gumdrop LSD. I swallowed and within twenty minutes I was swaying in the wind, blowing a nurse a kiss filled with love. I watched the patients and staff move about the common area.

Geometric dancing in the colorful cosmos. Pink, rose, fuchsia, hazel, platinum, chartreuse, vermillion ... or golden sunshine and green girls? I stumbled into the intimidation of color diversity. Art and artists, always work to be done. 

Thought has variations, varieties perhaps, maybe even species. The woman in the white coat, there she is! A slice of experience, retelling a specific happening in the brain; memory. Specific perceptions, incomprehensible. Now, past, future. Ability to string together moments into coherence. Self-awareness. Darkness outside, an unfamiliar face. Checkered blouse mopping the floor; white apron. "I have no memories I want to share." Ridiculous, the ideas presented to me as intelligible. Conceptions fostered by lonely souls with frightened minds.

Silence now; no longer hypnotized. Instead, umbers of stone consumed by a volcano. Leaves were dying, but free of pots. A whisper: "The room is alive." Colors swirled, jumped, and hissed. So many ears and cheekbones. Bottles and cans, bottles and cans. Yellowstone excursion. Empty glasses, burnt-out kitchen. An engulfing surge looking at me with concentrations of inhalations. Soft glow lighting in what they believe is a redemptive living space. Walking lamps with large leaves growing out of the shades, unusually pleasing to the eye. Shadows couch-walled the plants for several minutes. 

Static staring before pausing; well to do, well to do. Enlightened hoke smoke. Thirsty relaxation among jumbles of oblong bicycles; pedals and wheels, pedals and wheels. Go on holiday! Rachel? Yes, that was her name. She was pulling me to her room and I was letting her. Was no one there any more? "Relax, have fun." Go inside, lie down, maybe a kiss. "I want you to be happy." Handlebars and gears, handlebars and gears. Tender and romantic to my lips then passionate awkwardness. 

She slid on top of me, but I couldn't be in there. "There are cowboys, way too many!" She was a crimson-skinned woman with no fingernails or clothing. She backed me into a corner. I saw flashes of light and the silhouette of glass images playing rope tricks eating raw chicken livers. The Octopus Woman said, "I hurt you, but I don't love you." Soft skin, cold heart. A telepathic trilling, social distortion. 

Index finger to lips. "We have to be quiet." Ah, yes, the perilousness of whispered autonomy. Life itself, a beautiful nightmare. Audaciousness dripping from the sun into the mind of a courageous fool dying in a dream where acts of love were sprinkled among latent manipulations. Watching auburn hair swishing in slow motion: curly, long, almost bushy. I feel her beaming, but not love beams. I was rendered hopeless. We were all muscles and joints, bodies and sexes. You hadn't expected her, with her ticklish leggings and nonjudgmental coal-black eyes. Her caring must have developed over months. 

And yet ... tandem inadequacy with open-mouthed smiling can be humiliating. 

Into space I leapt to catch a falling star. "Am I God?" I asked innocently. "Everything is happening!" Books falling from ceilings. "You're the book." I'm the Bible; I'm Green Eggs and Ham. I declare, "You're an audience of figurines," and hear the whistling songs of acrobats role-playing cosmic relays of dazzling visions made by the Holy Terror of glazed confusion within a supra-conscious fog. Unintentional chanting unpredictably wiggled my tailbone. 

Neckless giraffes succumbing to waves of thought in the form of waves of thought. Beach bottoms moved empty as fresh white clouds passed overhead. Ohm, the unmoving moving line pushing the endless horizon, perhaps a signpost I could wave at without moving my hands. Swallowed whole by the Contained Shattered, the tentacles gave off a peculiar scent. Incense burning over cliffs of daggers beneath the prism of memories: childhood, marriage, college, divorce, cities, family, friends, backyards, sand, dirt, apple giggles, tomato hiccups, peppermint thumps, chocolate screeches, fingertip sandwiches, hair without scalps, curved lines, wish-wash hearts, waves crashing, physics without vectors, pulsation, and barking lamps. 

Someone remembered removing a dish from a table.

...

The play of rediscovering self may end with sorrow losing out to numbness and depression. 

when someone leaves

When someone leaves you, you're never the same. No more making "we" memories. No it's just making memories of the ebullience of a place that was magical even on uneven days. We'd have coffee in the mornings with newspapers waiting on a table in a place we both knew would be gone before too long. 

So you think you can tell blue skies from pain? She'll be gone before too long. The places she takes from me! I can't be in the wrong place before too long. Surrounded by cold steel rails, don't leave me in the wrong place for too long. Those I love! Loved ones. Memories, just memories of looking at photos of something that happened when I wasn't there. Can you tell a smile from a veil?

"What you want right now?" Do you think you can tell? She looked at me, puzzled. I took the glasses to the bathroom to fill them with water. I returned and gave her one. She gulped it down in a few swallows. I held out the other and she took just one drink before handing it back to me. I put the glass down and looked at her. Her eyes were misty as she looked up at me. "Why you ask that? Why you want know?" I felt sad, ashamed. 

Braving the rain on a gray day. Loneliness was giving way to despair as my awareness of an impending loss grew. How do you add? Anticipatory grieving. A nice phrase, user friendly. Means I know shit is about to suck. Before too long.

Are friendships a salve for pain? Yes, if they're worth anything at all. Laugh and smile more often than not? That's a friend. Preferable to isolation. You'd think I was talking about COVID. Maybe it's the same. What happens if I say, "I love myself"? Not much. As a mantra? I'll let you know in three years, once the chanting finally takes hold. Ain't no quick fixes.

Her beauty was different now. Soulful and mature. She'd endured a hell I couldn't imagine; I felt impotent. She pulled up next to me, put an arm around my shoulders, and pulled her head down to my shoulder. Her left hand rested on my thigh. We sat like that for a long time until I began sobbing. She held me then rose up and walked to the bathroom. 

She was smiling when she returned. A relaxed smile, the smile of a young woman who knew who she was and what she wanted. She had earned all of her confidence, the hard way. Now she could thrive. She was a survivor, a person deserving of a special type of respect, a respect reserved for anyone who's suffered too much indignity while somehow maintaining dignity in forms that are otherworldly.

When we were young, we were led to places we understood would be gone. Too many places. Sights to see. Experiences to have. Photos to take. Goodbye Mary, goodbye Jane. Braved the rain on the grayest of days. When does loneliness cross over to despair? "I love myself." Before too long. Does it feel different to love oneself in paradise instead of a dumpster? Shall I accept hot ashes for trees. 

I was invited to a chanting meditation in an upstairs room at a Thai restaurant. A tentative engagement, to be sure. I had to buy mangoes. I nodded to the stairs in a prayer pose as I didn't know the owners. An elderly woman tilted her head that way then went back to cleaning. Shouts of "Krishna!" followed by what I presume were Hindi prayers. A man in front was playing bongo drums. I saw Anna. Straight-backed, cross-legged, hands on knees, broad smile, euphoric eyes. Among the thirty or so people crammed into the room I appeared to be the only white male middle-class American. I was crazy so I figured that might give me some credibility in this place. 

I remembered being at Gard du Nord, watching the departure sign clickety-clack different destinations leaving different tracks at different times. Like being Santa Claus instead of just having him visit. The world, my fingertips. One connection here another there then it's Berlin, Prague, Barcelona, Rome, Budapest, ... It was disappointing to choose one destination at a time and have to go just one way yet again once there. To go anywhere at any time is not enough; I want to be anyone I want to be.

Incense was strong. Normally I would say too much, but there were many who seemed to have shunned bathing and there were several naked bodies in states of grace. Couples and throuples were making out. The space was tight. In addition to incense, I inhaled the occasional waft of cannabis. And a half hour earlier I'd eaten a dose of shrooms. Some guy handed me a Hindi version of a hymnal which was in either Hindi or Sanskrit; impossible for me to know. Could have been Arabic or Aramaic. I just followed the sounds and made my own sounds about a beat later than everyone else. 

"You do not belong here!" Very well, sir. Euros. Several Euros. Jagging with the chauffer on the hood, loud-barking death threat orders on fictional animated characters. Made me say, "I belong here, motherfucker. Ten times twenty roll a hundred, unpack, and shave something. Or get a tattoo." Your name is Delilah? Or Missy? Do you name your lingerie? Has your partner named it? Will someone name them in the future?

As good a question as it was, what does it say about me if I lose someone's heart through no fault of my own? Isolation station. Confidence shattered. Hey, remember yourself at your heights: painting, researching, traveling, hiking, dancing, Tai Chi, contemplation, meditation, and expanded awareness. And as you rose back from the depths: greeter, short-order cook, mining, agricultural migrant worker. And the depths: being kidnapped, homelessness, psychosis, involuntary commitment, isolation room without light, catatonia.

As I looked up and down two streets, I realized I was looking at a sign clickety-clacking. I decided to stand there and just look, holding my decision back so I could savor the moment of choice. Oh, my head would turn. 

Slight cough. Facemask on. Black fishnet stocking still sexy. Shimmering blackness, sight of sights. Gripping lobby fur while registering to voyage to the elevator before realizing the gravity of the situation. The interesting thing to me, besides my deteriorating hand writing, was that that is a similar version of what I might write in a sober and matter-of-fact fashion while in the midst of what they call mania. I start thinking, though, of binary oppositions as ordered into the hierarchy of the collective unconscious perhaps in search of a latent archetype or dialogism.

Roman Jakobson lobbed a tomato that got blistered down the third-base line. Defamiliarize yourself with that. 

As I was chanting, I noticed the mixture of dreads and shaved heads, the robes and the quasi-hippie gear. Some wore saris and some were shirtless. Abundant smiles and spontaneous laughter. Eyes were skyward in reverie; others closed in contemplation or deep prayer. Lovingness was outwardly manifest. There were breakouts of group love. As the shrooms took hold, I felt the electricity within my body and wiggled to get it out. I could do anything and it would look like a prayer to everyone else. And as I thought about it, isn't everything I do a prayer? Yes.

That sparkle in your eyes

keeps me alive when I'm homeless

ooh, my back would burn. 

Passionate kisses, clenched embraces; energy healings and massages. Anna left after what might have been an hour. Two? I tried harder and harder to find the "I love myself" mantra, but it was not working. Something about Anna's presence? Something about the shrooms? The incense? I left then and there.

I sat on a bench looking at what might have been stars, but unlikely with the dense cloud cover. Embracing group prayer while watching group love making is ... I didn't know how to understand it let alone describe it. Moments of self-love and self-discovery? A distraction from the emotional roil of love lost. Maybe a blessing. Is empathy the expansion of self engulfing the experience of another or the expansion of the other into the experience of oneself? I didn't like what I was feeling.

The world

The world and the world

Oh, the world would turn.

Benedictine Hours

VIGILS
When I wake I am still with You.
I think of you on my bed, and meditate on You in the watches of the night.
I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night, also, my heart instructs me.

LAUDS
O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; I plead my case to you and watch.
This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.

PRIME

To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in You I trust ... make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation, for you I wait all day long.

TERCE

We do our work for Jesus, with Jesus, to Jesus. And that's what keeps it simple (Mother Theresa)

Breathe on me, breath of God, fill me with life anew (Edwin Hatch)

SEXT

He gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

NONE

Therefore, let nothing hinder us, nothing separate us, nothing come between us. Wherever we are, in every place, at every hour, at every moment of the day, everyday and continually, let all of us ... hold in our heart and love, honor, adore, serve, praise, and bless, glorify and exalt, magnify and give thanks (Francis of Assisi)

VESPERS

My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

COMPLINE

The Lord Almighty grant us a peaceful night and a perfect end. 

May God support us all day long until the shadows lengthen and the busy world is hushed and the fever of life is done. Then, in God's mercy, may God grant us safe lodging, a holy rest, and peace at last.