From These to That

There is a place here

Meshed lines threaded tightly

Vertically,  our relationship,  from then till now till then

Horizontally,  the influencers

[past relationships,  upbringing,  culture,  biochemistry,  libido,  emotions,  beliefs, obstacles;  Things.]

Things complicate the relationship,  until:

The space where the criss-crossing is noticed.

Millions of spaces,  that are windows to that which all of this is built on:

Awareness.

So now,  instead of pulling Thing threads, which tighten or loosen our Relationship Threads,

I step from space to space to space.

Sometimes I fall through;  you sense it and meet me there

Other times,  there is stasis and entropy as our small s selves circle like vultures over unmet expectations we have of each other.  The Relationship Strands crackle and smell.

I've learned from experience that pulling or pushing doesn't work with you.

So I have chosen to stand back,  watch my emotions and feelings pass by

Float through the awkwardness we both bring to our investment

And live as well as I know how - which is standing in the spaces,  in and as Awareness.

You might respond,  you might not.  My expectations might or might not ever be met

But as Awareness,  those are just more Things anyways.

And while yes,  I wait for you to broach that which I think *should* be important to both of us

I realize that getting from These Things to That

Is simply a process of Standing as That

Being love

And welcoming your embrace or rejection,  contraction or expansion.

Relationship teaches through fire.  I've walked through it,  and now,  I hope for the sublimation of waiting to Being to complete.

Be well,  

Be.

Miss Ova Given's Bridge to Nowhere

Miss Ova Given's Bridge to Nowhere
Grommeted here, I am stretched across the four elements and the two horizons
A translucent whole with a thousand I-holes
Threaded with silk to the bergs below

You are the berg.
And you,
&
That.

Four times two is 10,000
A hoary cartographer's dream

No ordinary mapmaker, or course
Miss Ova Given was the perfect candidate

She found herself pulling the silks one by one
Until I draped across the bergs
Kissed the myth breaker on the cheek and re-remembered no distance between
I, Miss Ova Given,
you,
&
That.

The return path to this bridge to nowhere
Spans the relative and the absolute
Always dropping me - the ink and paper of the picture -
Square in the centerless circle I never left.

The Change and the Changeless Tree

||:  HE asked if I thought I had a choice in the matter, and I said yes.

Which led me to here.

And here is fine,  except that there are decision trees sprouting around me like virile rabbits,  each vying for watering, weeding,  and climbing.

The days where I choose to climb are actually quite fun, and HE is disappointed to hear that.

Lost in the world, lost in thought,  lost in thoughts of the world.  That's what the decision trees are deconstructed to - an ego-gelling gauze between me and IT that prevent me from simply not seeing the whole picture.

At first,  I argue with HIM,  and HE settles back with self satisfied smile - 'You see?  You argue about what is not real to begin with. Duality on duality.  Duality squared.  What does that get you?  Well on your way to 10,000 things.  And the number of lifetimes it will take to find your way back is staggering.'

And yet - they are so beautiful.  One leaf out of the Ground of Being - then another,  then a stalk,  then branches,  then an entire tree,  all from that apparent first single split from what Is.



//Last week,  I climbed the Change Tree:

Could Jesus or the Buddha have been a conservative?  (leaf)

What can a conservative be boiled down to - somebody who doesn't like change (leaf)

Buddha saw that everything WAS change (stalk starting)

Jesus railed against the status quo - he WAS change (stalk growing)

Conclusion - no they couldn't be conservative,  anymore than water could not be wet. (branches growing)

Counter arguments (more branches).

//And,  verily did the Change Tree drop  acorns which formed into the Changeless Tree:

But Jesus and Buddha could not be progressives either (leaf)

They had qualities of progressives,  but labelling them as such pigeon-holed their true essence - that which is without borders (and reaching the top of that tree,  the branches bent over and started dissolving back into the ground).

//which brought me back to seeing that on close examination,  the trees were not separate from the Ground of Being any more than what is aware of these words is separate from the words themselves.

When I got back to the ground,  as always,  I saw the living truth:

The trees were not a deviation from reality,  they were a manifestation of reality.

They sprang from and returned to the ground of being.

Kind of like...

....HE that questioned,  challenged, and derided me for my enjoyment of This.

And with my recognition of HIM,  we embraced and feel into a deep sleep.

When I awoke,  HE asked me if I thought I had a choice in the matter.  :|| x (infinite number of lifetimes needed for realization, minus 1).

==============

For those not musically inclined,  the ||:  xxxx :|| is a repeat sign.  Everything between the bars is repeated a specified number of times. In this case,  the number of lifetimes it will take me to realize the truth  which is infinite minus 1).

Injo (Aum Sante Maria)

Wine spills from your chalice
Blood red stain upon your robe
The sacraments give comfort
But oh God you're feeling old

Your masters pass the flaming stole
Before their eyes go long
You fade back inside yourself
And listen for the song

(Chorus)
Aum Sante Maria Hallelujah El Shaddai
Broken open koans "I am That" and "I am I"

You start to pace the hallway
Wearing only your remorse
Fully clothed for battle
If they'd only bring your horse

Time and legalese and King James English
Fill your head
The only place your shouting gels
Is lying in your bed

(Chorus)

Grab the scythe or cling to life
Based on the neurons flare
Regardless of your choice the song you heard
Is always there

(Chorus)

Occam's Gestalt

I am living proof that Occam's Razor makes a lot of sense.  But it doesn't mean that there is not a place - and a joy - in complexity as well.

Complication is my modus operandi - and also a signal to noise ratio for how my particular pathologies are raging within the machine on a given day.

Still,  on the relative plane, complication is also a gift.

Complication is embedded in patterns - or maybe the other way around - but without question there is a relationship between Gestalt and Complication.

Complication - at times I have to watch myself:

1000 words instead of 100 to explain something at an emotional or professional level.  Drives others crazy;  eyes roll back in their heads or simply gray out to those fuzzy screens you'd use to get on antenna-ed TV's.

Trying to get ideas across. Often good ideas - but by the time they spider off in lexicological decision trees about how to proceed,  the listener is left with a spaghetti-ed mess of rhetoric that must be abandoned or simply not engaged with from the outset.

Gestalt: at other times,  I just watch 'my' Self:

Spiritually,  patterns within the complicated explanation light up; figure 8's on the spaghetti plate glowing neon bright or muted pastels  circling this way and back and eating their own tailes.*(tales|tails)

Complexity and Gestalt  were birthed from a corn husk last nite.  It flowered and opened like a womb,  and I was ushered into a darkly dimpled Nebraska evening.

Below:  the earth;  verdant,  rich and wet

Above: somebody stringing Christmas lights in figure 8's *exactly* 17 feet above the tallest corn stalk.  On the lights, a race of sort - imps and devas and faeries or god-knows-whats chasing each other towards infinity,  and me,  suddenly on the bench,  begging to join the race.

Be careful what you ask for.

The want, borne from the need,  was fulfilled.  I was in the race,  baton in hand, and the other racers dissolved into me.  ONE,  racing till my heart synced with the light's on-and-offs and the speed dissolved into no-speed and the distance dissolved into no-distance,  and I raced,  one foot *just dragging* in the relative,  with the rest of me forcing myself into

Infinity:

Which planted itself into new stalks,  causal wires criss-crossing into impossible patterns below ground:

Complexity:

Which I was left on waking with trying to decipher, or simply live.

Namaste.

The Key to Graduation

Growing up, I was internal
Hoping, dreaming for the day that others would see me as special
Pain constricted the exterior
But strengthened the interior

The Muse introduced herself early
I wrote and sung and played and imagined
And hoped

And imagined hope

Reaching for The One who would
Accept the exterior
But See the interior
Believe the interior
Share lives in the interior

This many years on
Pattern recognition has improved
I'm still There

Reaching with imagined hope towards
Blinking lights
Which sate and bate in figure eights

I have the toughest teacher in the world
Giving me daily lesson plans

The challenge - can I live from Here without going There.

I'll keep trying
Or simply give up trying
And probably, if the intention in surrender is pure
Be graced by release

And Graduate.

Alphabet Soup

Upward drizzle from the train to the platform to the escalator to the causeway.

The Muse or one of her cellmates has obviously set up shop here:  a causal bunker,  well protected. She's torching passer-bys with creative fire.

Most of the commuters' suits are unreasonably fire-proof,  but not mine.  I'm burned to ashes and am rising again before I even know what's hit me.  Under my left arm,  The Book.  In my right hand,  a set of golden tongs.  Over my eyes:  nothing.  Everything is shining and new and waiting to be discovered.  Undulating fields of love as I see what everybody else has become,  and what I can do about it.

They're all letters:

Commuters come personalities come images come words come letters.

There's a pattern here,  but it's in the fact that there IS no pattern

The lawyers,  accountants,  programmers,  construction workers,  Baristas,  hangers-on,  applicants,  daycare drop-outs, businesswomen, bankers,  analysts and traders...

...all reduced to a single letter each.  Nothing to do with their profession;  many aren't even english:  Hebrew,  Sanskrit, Greek, Aramaic, French, Spanish, Slang, Graffiti...

my personal Tower of Babel Buffet.

There are no seconds here,  however -  all firsts;   even the same letters shine differently as I pluck them with my trusted tongs and put them into the book.

It's mechanical at first,  I pick and choose who should go in,  then relax into an almost random sweep,  then a  fully fluid pick and grab.

The book flips pages as it fills,  and even seems to be indexing itself.

The Muse is waiting at the exit,  cigarette in hand and absurd pocket watch dangling from her waist jacket pocket.

"You like?"   she seems to ask as she takes the book  opens it *exactly* in the middle,  and watches as a visual cacophony unfolds itself - up into thunderheads,  then splitting and folding and splitting and folding in on itself, then spraying everyone in sight with chains of God,  anchored in the The Book.

With that,  she says a word,  the crowd moves as one,  and she skis through the lobby,  out the door,  and through the downtown streets:

Creativity, pulled by God,  through the noosphere and further.

God bless the Muse, and her Alphabet Soup.

Namaste.

Metta meta Metta

Metta meta Metta.

I stopped at my Muse's tree yesterday,  and spent a considerable amount of time walking in and around the root system.  I'm quite certain it was never intended to be used as a labyrinth, or even labelled Her tree - but the nexus of realities I've been threading myself through have their own set of rules,  and top of list is that they don't give a tinker's damn about how thing's should be.

If they did,  would there be shining galaxies waiting to be plucked as ripe fruit from the branches?  Or light shining from the soil? Or a candied wind that wraps itself around me like a shawl and dances me to new absurdities I missed the first time round?

The last find,  as always,  was the Most interesting:  A living parchment between the second and third branches;  aspen papyrus with three words:  Metta meta Metta.

It was invasive to peel the parchment from the tree, and somehow,  it was redundant to take it anyways.

Sometimes the Muse's embrace is full and sensual; sometimes a  gift basket dropped off in a somnolescent moment during a commute home. And then other times like today,   it's simply a pointer to something that's already been branded in my heart or mind,  needing some attention.

Such was this,  a reminder of my narrative,  for today anyways: Metta meta Metta.

In spite of my brokenness and rusted parts -memory of a goldfish, self confidence up and down like a toilet seat - purpose continually re-imagined, scrubbed,  re-imagined again -  maybe because of them - I am compelled to glory in the grand design, the One-in-All,  the Theory of Everything. And today that is summed up in those three words.

Metta - loving kindness;  compassion,  the sire of grace and intenion:

sandwhiching:

Meta - the story of stories,  the Platonic forms felt if not understood - the arch that connects it all. 
The place where details are abstracted  to a place where memory is not a problem - they *are* the very nature of remembering.

sandwhiched by

Metta - loving kindness; compassion, the sire of grace and intention


When my endless curiosity is lit up by Knowledge then dulled by my limitations, it's important to know what it is to Know:

And for me,  tonite anyways,  it's Metta meta Metta.

Listening with the I's

A Z of city blocks away from the other nexus that draws strange carnates

I saw you shoveling

Black on white

Balaclava'd, scarved, hooded

Hidden in plain site

I was following the safety line

Anchored in the yesterdays collected and dropped like seeds

from the mountain to the tower

But you

You interrupted the assumptions and currents

Charged with my safe and unchallenged arrival

At the stale-idea exchange

With a glance that wouldn't register until Otis delivered me through the corporate womb:

The snow arced its delivery and landing

Stretched back to the shovel and naked hands

Misted out, ridiculing space's conventions

Becoming a 70's icon

Flew into a gray cotton morning

Thick gathering over a lonely looking sky

Revealing the miracle

for all willing to listen

with their I's

Living Meditation

I have no idea
But wonder how long this can last
Just answered myself
...and started the engine again

I have no idea
*And* wonder how long this can last
Just answered myself
...and started the engine again

There is no idea
Wonder at this
Answer myself?
started the engine again

no idea
wonder
myself
started the engine again

no idea
no myself
wonder
engine in neutral

Wonder
engine stalled

I am

Terror-Firma

Grizzled cheek in hand
Eyes caught between a gaze and fixation
Analysis floating just above fear's cold fingers
I see you.

One became two by four
Lumbered bread of relationship
Building material that could be held
*and* checked for faults

Wood cannot build itself
So I step back

I can stack and add
But the cutting is beyond me.

Still, I try

With the grain;
Against the vein

My sap hot and dripping
Congealing into flumes and parapets
That naked feet crush
and are cut by

Blood and sap and sawdust
Hardened resined mosaic that I pick up
And fashion into a broach for the three of you

Wondering if it will light up with your heart;
Or ice over with rejection
or, worst of wall-
Sit unchanged

I sit cross legged and try to connect

with terror-firma.

Non local

Reeks in here, and whatever magic I once associated with the coin operated bandito seems destined to a short shelf-life.

Until I make the call.

Micro-macro trickle down economics here, chitlins - moose head silver slivers the box and starts a mechanical supply and demand chain reaction from deep within. Metal to metal to electric signal to the switching station to point B and now as I hear her answer

I see four ladders stretching out from each side of the phone booth, right-angling up and converging like a great french braid; exploding in fanning filaments and

she's sending signals back now, signals *within* the signals; emotion through the electrical and

the filaments are awake and searching, spiralling upwards, sensing her movement

which is coming from letters now, ascii ghosts dancing the periphery between the physical and the sensed

And outward, looking down, it is a web now; filaments and letters entangled in an impossible wireframework; two lovers connected and the filaments are lit and there is ecstasy and mystery not bound by space or time but by

the click of a receiver and a port sealing itself from the world.

tee-ha!

Our Little Corner of the Kosmos

Curtain's pulled round

But the light bleeds out through the thin spots
Savage primal angst
Wearing bedclothes, looking for an audience

But the audience is one:
It's you, your capacity open and yes,
Ministrating to _my_ needs tonite

So I can go back, not take it so seriously again
And stir up the color you so like
In our little corner
of the Kosmos.

Kosmos Exhales

Long slow hike through waist high bloodgrass. Weimerammer-grey sheen lighting everything up in the closest you can get to light-shadow; that is, shadow made up of light.

Sun is constantly at 1:00 pm, up and behind my head. Turning up and around to try to trick it into an ocular appearance is fruitless.

Shimmer in the air; clearly summer.

Yet as soon as I make the mental pronouncement, snow falls from the cloudless sky. And as soon as THAT observation is made, the sky is an object without boundaries; solid...but not solid and

shit, too much.

I stop labelling and simply look, and this psychic sudoku stabilizes enough to give me a couple of choices. Three, as it turns out - in the form of handles coming out of the ground - one straight ahead, one to the left, one to the right.

No thought; that's important here; as soon as I gain focus, the world loses its, handles become more of the weimerammer grey and all mists up, ready to collapse into...

First lever down.

Aha, this is interesting.

Scene is there, but the Boundaries are gone. Like a giant canvas, where everything is reachable by the observer, but the observer has somehow been pulled into the canvas itself. Without boundaries, there is no subject and object. Without subject and object, there is no here and there. Without here and there there is no distance, and without distance, there is no time.

Lever up. That was fucked up. Beautiful, but fucked up.

Second lever.

Scene is there, boundaries are gone, but I'm outside the scene. I can see the no-time, no-space, no-boundary paradox splashed oil on cloth, but I'm separate from it. The inhabitants are trying to lookup, but there is no up. They consider reaching out, but there is no out. Nothing to do, nowhere to be. No experience, just Is, and me.

Third lever.

One more mirror in the mirror, there's a transition ~ where the 'space' that contains I watching Is in the canvas shimmers and dissolves

nothing left to say or do. No experience, no I, no Is, no no.

Collapsed into a pointless center that is everywhere; not finite

whisper sigh

throughout the Kosmos.

Alpine Queen

While the Alpine Queen found it disquieting, there was nothing that could be pointed to that was quintessentially 'wrong', so she continued on her way - which was nothing more than staying put. Being a particularly large and volume-displacing sea-going vessel, this was entirely appropriate.

I, on the other hand, was not ship like, and _also_ noted a disquietude in the air. She was gone and forgotten quickly, apart from the tracer association lay quietly in my neural network.

The rest of the inlet commute was forgettable; docked and hopped ashore with little fanfare, and walked into the terminbus quickly to get out of the cold.

Second tracer: the termnibus was all but empty. Unusual, given the commuting day of Monday, the day where chiseled intellects and egos streaked through leaving their pyschic scents like an updated version of Hansel's bread crumbs through the labyrithine passageways that connected them to their burrows which brought them home to work.

I stepped aside from myself for a moment, getting as close the nonlocal as was possible - there was a need to think here, and while surrender would have been pleasing, it was not practical at this point. The main point pressing on the pineal was whether or not this was a dream, and the answer was not as straightforward as it seemed.

There was the no-people thing, which was freaking me out a little; this would be hard to explain outside the context of a dream. And there was this ability pull myself into different parts of the termnibus with nothing but eye contact and a little will. Still, there was a subtle sheath here, a _something_ that was containing the freedom I knew from lucid dreaming.

Tracer three: The ability to sit stand half in and out of the nonlocal; felt like the point where lightness and darkness met on the moon. From here, I was able to point, pinch, and grab parts of the scene before me and move them like a magic nine squre sliding puzzle. Surely a dream!

But no, this toffee reality had smudges and blurs that were clearly attached to the sheath, there was no breaking through to another plane.

I moved up through my head, careful to latch my toes on the front of my crown center - gods knew where I would end up if I slipped up and out. I wasn't sure that this place was even on the gods' roadmap.

Final tracer as my head popped through the sheath and looked around at ... the not finite. Sparkler connectors bounced the protganists out away from the gelatinous bubble like bait on god's fishing rod, attracting others who were connected to their own rods into their own bubbles.

A strange bearded fellow bounced happily from orb to orb, latching my eye contact, pulling me with him; out of the crown and spread eagled into the not-finite;

which became the Alpine Queen

which was outside the train

where it all began.

Tracers path registered, and the day

continued

The Want's Needs

Different, this time.

I had grown to the size of the mountains, crouched down with river systems tickling the bottom of my feet and was generally in a pretty good mood, apart from the yearning.

Yearning is distance - from This to That. Distance implies difference - between This and That. Distance and difference can both be reduced into a a spiritual roux, that when ingested and eliminated lets us focus on what IS.

Knowing this, on one level, I was fine.

On another level, I just wanted to get high.

Really high.

Flipped the switch from rational to the space between not-rational and rational, a desert zone whose bereft-ness was perfectly suited to these times; when the animal yearning howled like a wolf, piercing the ear drums and bringing a razor sharp focus to the Want.

Knees popped as I pressed myself up to standing and breathed deep.

My vision was a sharp as my size was enlogated, and as I took two thunderous steps (which skewed geological data right down into Washington state where several plateless tremors were registered and puzzled over), I was hooked.

The want was there before me in sharded beauty. Sun had bested the clouds and was illuminating the water east to west, and the carpeted universe of life running through it took my breath away. The bigger creatures - only a couple here this morning - killer whales out for a foray - stood out, but the rest just formed a massive, seething underwater community - a net of life that could never be captured, or even cognized, but could be breathed and, well, I thought, smoked.

Four steps down to where the inlet narrowed, and I was ready to begin on the Want's needs. Clouds had come over the sun a bit, and I lost a bit of depth perspective (literally). Easily rectified - I reached up and plucked the sun between my first finger and thumb and brought it close to the surface of the water which allowed me to see everything.

I flicked the sun into a long arc back up onto it's perch, cracked my knuckles, and started to roll the inlet up into the largest fatty unimaginable. Brought it to my lips and inhaled and then

The desert flooded, the Want was sated, but the Want and the desert and all the gaps between this and that were flooded with life, but beyond life,

Everything, was flooded by

Everything

And I looked down and saw myself become a reverse tsumani, body becoming self becoming water; me becoming everything flooding everything, into and of the wild as

swoosh

one.

Between the Keys

Bflat triangle, that's what it feels like in my head before it makes it to my fingers, where it holds fairly true, but a little SOLIDER that what was upstairs.

As it should.

F/A - connected but a tetris left to right shape, not much translation and then down onto the keyboard.

C&/Bflat - like an isosceles triangle on its side, left to right almost like you can close your eyes and slide down the side and

plunk

In between the keys.

It's a little Rick Moranis-like to start, looking up at the towering ivy on both sides of me and then like some huge terrible beautiful Khumba icefall - the tower to the left comes down. But it's a shearing, not a tumbling, and though I can't see the finger I know it's there. Way up in the sky I can see the eyes, mostly closed in concentration or joy, but the rest of the form fades as it comes down to the ivories and then

I realize what's coming and I start to think quick. Real quick.

The mechanics are straightforward - pressure on the ivory or ebony, key comes down, counter-levers a hammer which hits a string which vibrates at a particular rate; particular enough to send compensatory or complimentary shivers up and down it's bloodline.

It's the timing of the mechanics that has me wondering here. I suspect that I'm close to the timeless place here - music does that doesn't it - connects the divine space with the subtle with the gross - but time is still an engineer in my fate, and I really wonder how long I have before the hammer literally falls.

The tower to my left - and I suspect a key over to my right aw well - is still moving downwards but I can see where it will hit bottom and I think STOP and to my surprise

it does.

Not exactly a full stop, but slowed significantly, enough to give me a fighting chance and I run down the length of the hammer cantilever and stare up at the hammer, which is almost imperceptibly pulling away from the string, distance greater now, and greater and farther and the tension -

The tension between the notes between the keys is almost unbearable. Gravity, telos, sex and magick as the chord teeters from its context over its future and looks at it dead on and then

It splits. Moving closer to the subtle now, visions are sprouting seedlings and seedlings upon seedlings into a full carpet of magentas and yellows - so many yellows - an impossible number of shades of yellows. And the cat in the box, keeping the isotope company and reminding me that

...in the gross /subtle world, the futures are splitting faster and faster, Mickey's buckets of water borne by broomstick faster and faster and more and more uncontrollable and now

The Vision of visions is putting its screen up behind it all; but its solidity is temporary, it particles and splits and tears (always in one piece though) forward and back until the visions are encompassed by the vision, everything is surrounded and underscored and now it's moved from a visual to a ...

feeling

and the Feeling is the ride of where the next notes will land. Odd, because these haven't landed yet, but before they can they must know where they're going

And the gravity is delicious, I AM the screen now, and the screen is an ocean powered by love, shimmered and shadowed by the little things as it moves towards the surface and breaks and when it breaks

Opalescent Moon! As bright and pure as imagination, shining over the strings and I am reminded that with the decision made the hammer is going to fall and fall it does but instead of sound it's just

vibration

and the stamping of the moon in my throat center and I'm

Back looking down at the keys, throat on fire with love and other layers, and now it's time

For the next chord.

Rich Paulsy is a Coward

Cold morning. Rain sheeting the windshield, but the ignition is off now. Just the radio and the fan to keep the steam off the inside of the windows while I wait for my train.

Early? No - false alarm, that's just a freight that rides a parallel line with mine.

They can be noisy bastards - come and watch the platform and see how many people have their hands over their ears as the screech of metal on metal gives the second and final notice that the train is HERE, get ready, all aboard kids.

But when they keep moving, all good, just a thumble runder of wheels on steel, load shifting as one two ten 100 cars go past, metal snake making its way left to right past to present to future. Lot of writing on the side, me thinks as I watch the beast trundle by.

And THAT's when the strange shite starts. Rich Paulsy is a coward. Straight and narrow script, stick letters, and as it moves from my present to the future (to my left, in front of me, to my right). And out of the periphery of my vision -(you know the space where ghosts and intuition tease you and flirt with each other) I see movement. Careful now so as not to derail the happenings - no pun intended. Peripheral vision happenings are very cat like - you know, the little feline coming down the hall, you approach with clippers and intent, and if that intent is borne of your headlight vision preceding you, the cat will pick up on it and take off. Same with the peripheral vision - if the happenings in that space even suspect you are about to focus full attention front and center on them, well, they just return to form and the shows over.

So I'm careful. Mood supports my intention, grace I guess, you can't control these things - sometimes it either works or it doesn't - but out of the side of my vision I can see the words start to peel off the side of the train - like one of those kids tattoos coming off of its backing and now its completely off, fluttering like a leaf towards than away from me and now

I can't help it, I've got to have me a look-see. And what I see is the words wrapping themselves into a running form - not exactly human, but close to, and running. Full out sprint now and I've been made. Rich Paulsy is a Coward makes eye contact with me (it's two 'i's lighting up and tracking me like a laser pointer) then disconnect and it runs as fast and as hard as it can into a building and

fuka

It's now up there. Same script, different location.

Train hasn't stopped moving throughout this whole event, I squint to see the container car it came from and it looks like the writing is gone there...

But this is one of those things that lives in the spaces, that can only be acknowledged by grace or luck (maybe luck IS just grace) and doesn't need to be quantified or verified - I just KNOW.

But, as if to underscore it, there's another performance. And another.

Letters are flying off of the train now, Heisenberg's graffiti cleaning service front and center and now they don't seem to give a rats ass if I watch or not.

It's a strange dance now, kids. The alphabet is out in front of me in a tornado whirl, a carnival merry go round of fantastic proportions, words forming and dissolving, a linguistic trinity creating sustaining and destroying (but never really destroyed, just back in the soup) and the colours are there, and the Sounds. The sounds of the mechanics of creation, a deep hum that is marching band and solitary voice and terrible thunder and falsetto cry of a bird on the wind all threaded together in a fantastic cacophony that finally

Explodes

And the letters with it. They DO know they've been made. By me and a couple of others with the i's to see. They explode and cascade down in the city, splattering against building sides and sidewalks and bins and cars.

I close my eyes to hold the vision and the bright burning after image is collapsing on itself into a single three lettered word that ties the city together north to south east to west

aum.

Just a Spoon Full of Toxins

Nice hat.

I look at the raven sticking out of my chest and push him back.

He's hungry this morning, and I know what THAT means. Lot's of colour commentary. Well, more like grayscale commentary, it's all black or shades of black.

I have a feeling I know who's holding his leash, but maybe I'll have a look anyways

Nice driving. Nice makeup. Nice attitude.

He's pulled out of my chest further this time, trying to pull his wing out, stuck like he's exiting an aberrant birth canal. So I reach down and pull him out - awareness is supposed to dissolve his kind, but I have the distinct feeling that today might be one of those exception days.

Not even grateful as I pull him free, just looks at me with jaundiced fire-eyes, unashamedly takes a chunk of flesh from my arm (subtle body, but the bleeding that's left there is almost worse than what a 'real' pound of flesh would be), cacks something up that crawls up to my mouth and is swallowed before I can see what it is.

But I can feel what it is. It's the leash. Ego's got this little fucker on a leash. And I have Ego on a leash, so theoretically, I can reign in Ego, and judgment will be caged as the little shitty song-bird it is but

Oh that's nice. Cut me off. Learn how to drive, fucker

but it looks like Carlos is off and at 'em. Maybe I'll just listen for a while.

But Carlos's words are becoming context now, or better put they are FILLING context around me like a jaundiced yellow pudding. It's pulling at my legs now, plugging my ears and gumming up my eyes. Every pure input I have is now subject to this, and it's a nasty plague kids. Even as I clear the sense canals out, it's STILL there, a curtain in front of perception and perspective.

And I look over at him, perched on my shoulder, expecting to be assaulted by small words of attack, but it's WAY beyond that. He's got a fire hydrant stream of yellow ghoulash coming up and he's directing it everywhere I look, everywhere I listen from.

Ego's laughing his wiry little ass off.

Interesting, that. Ego normally presents as a bloated pig, stewing in his own juices and whatever he pulls down from Id World, but today's he's all but naked. And not a pretty sight. But what's interesting is that it takes a LOT of effort for him to keep Carlos dancing like a kite at the end of the string. Lot of energy to keep the ...

Separation

up.

And with this insight, Carlos turns and looks at me, a little chagrined, but more than that, a little

worried?

About his survival. And with THAT observation, he's vacuumed back through the chest cavity, Ego fattens up, and I'm back in control again, thank the g...

Nice Hat.

shuka sha.

The Place Between

Mechanical beast is ahead of me now, eye contact made, commitment in place.

Decisions line up like toy soldiers and are summarily dismissed with orders. It feels like the car is being driven by intuition, but that same intuition tells me that there is more going on than meets the I.

Coordinates are punched, fluids placed, eyes relaxed and ready and

shah!

We're off.

The first 30 seconds - the first of the first - is easy, tinged with a bit of hard. System is acclimatizing here, blood flowing from the torso cavity to the legs, light burn and lungs starting to heat up. The second 30 is a little bit more edge and then

huzzah

Onto the second minute, which is OK. A relief. 10 or 11 seconds to edge o'er the painful spot, then 20 seconds of inner repair work, then the rest to rest. A few seconds before that second minute is up and I'm ready to go again.

Edge that fucker a little higher this time, maybe a lot higher, pulse goes from 129 to 143..44.47.. and hovers in there.

shuka

The first 15 seconds are fine, then it starts to hurt, and when I start to look for toolsets.

Figure eights of breath winding from my navel to my head; rough sheaths going up and down the airway and

tik

I'm back. What did that take care of? Shit. 7 seconds. Close the lids halfway and look through a moonscape; internal / external, field of vision narrowing and expanding at the same time and I've forgotten about the pain for a minute ... a minute?

Shook!

Back and looking at the time. Still have almost 30 seconds left. Pulse is maintaining at a mid-high speed, aches settling in the legs, fear -white energy - coming up from the feet and

tik

I'm back again. 15 seconds left. I can hold this, stare down the numbers and just BE as the clock winds down.

Maybe not.

I close my eyes, hands out to hold onto the rails, open my eyes

close

open

close

and finally it's over. Button down, shitcakes, we're moving into slower gear now, hear?

sir yes sir

and we're 13.5 12 11 10 7 6 5.5

Ahhhh 5.5

Takes a few seconds for it to kick in but I'm not going anywhere. Decision made quickly that the minute of rest doesn't start up until the whole system is back down to a steady 5.5 Probably about

15 seconds

shah!

And we're on.

And the cycle repeats.

A lot like playing Centurion. The initial gap between the first shot of beer and the second seems interminably long, the second the same, the third a little less...and as the alcohol hits the central nervous system, the innerverse becomes an expression of a physicist's wet dream - time expands and contracts like a rubber ban. This, friends, is repeatable, falsifiable experience. Inner proof of the flexibility of time.

But the edge is lost in Centurion quickly. The innerverse on the machine or on the track, on the other hand, is white fire and electric blues as the system is brought to Tilt then pulled back and caressed into recovery and readiness again.

It's duality merging here, under the auspices of physical exertion and the clock. The merge point starts with white hot suffering, taking me to the end of an inner yuga and presenting me slobbering, hot, hurting but standing to the rest period. But it is not an in door / out door. It is 10 or fifteen seconds where I transition from hurt to not-hurt. Not fully recovered, just not-hurt.

Even the 10 or fifteen seconds can be deconstructed into quantities that themselves can be deconstructed. We get to the 3:30 am point - not quite night, not quite morning, and yet somehow both. It's the place between.

And this is timelessness in a way. Not arrived to as gently as a soft perspective change or shift, not simply getting in the gap or sitting in Big Mind, more like a violent fuck into the space. Which makes it the same but different. Gap with an edge, a white hot blue edge around it that burns itself into memory, so it can be recounted, in places like This.