Interlude

Burp after smoked turkey on baguette. Bodies, desire, looking for somebody or something, not satisfied, driven to search, journey in quest of satiation.

Beauty imprint of light, color and form on the mind. Perception and then desire, cruising, appetite, talk, negotiation, check out the vibes, shopping, surprise package, is it what you wanted? The novelty soon wears off and then you're stuck with a relationship. Wake up and wonder: who is that person? You'd like him or her to go away. It felt ok the night before, but not the morning after; like dirty dishes piled up after the party.

Then you're out wandering the street alone again, checking out people and responding to beauty and pleasant mental sensation as beautiful people come and go. I went to a cafe, walked into the quiet dark room adjoining the noisy room, during Saturday afternoon. Take a few pain-killers. Coffee and a glas of water, wet burp reflux acid burn, sweat, drool, water spillage, coffee puddle on the table, one too many coffees stimulant, weird conversation, sweaty feet. Serious young men in puffy hairdos, tight tee shirts, torn jeans talk to bambi women, voices laughing and chatting. Off to one side, middle-aged man watching as young men and women tentacles soft touch rendezvous communication setup for later.

Finish your coffee. Go meet friends. Do a photo session. Write memoirs. Eat some Italian cracker sticks and a wiener. Newspaper headline: wife breaks wind as man blown away by answer.

Get used to free time and energy upsurge. Rules and repression eased off, leaving a field for play, free range. Don't be scared when you lose your job, when structure is removed during a time of free fall, sink or swim, on your own, no reference point. Nobody is looking at you for longer than a second. Nobody cares. You're not that important. Don't be paranoid. Let go of identity, free flow associate.

The Meaning of Meaning

Why is there existence when it would make more sense for there to not be existence? Such a question might happen during a time of leisure. Walk into the cheapest cafe in the neighborhood, where people could hang out. A man at the next table slept, head slumped forward, the whole time I was there. He sat motionless, like a corpse. I looked closely to see if he was breathing.

Walk into the franchise, order a coffee. Sit in a hard plastic chair attached to a hard plastic table. Pull out a book, newspaper, crossword puzzle and mind your own business. Some people, after doing this for a while, reach an advanced level of cafe creativity. There's the man who brings a briefcase, containing a tool kit: screwdriver, plyers, scissors, glue, ruler, compass, pen, pencil, pieces of wire, string, elastics, a jar of keys and a scrap book. Everything one dollar.

I relaxed over a coffee and watched motor vehicles on the freeway and on the freeway service road. Vehicles move like fish in an aquarium. People in vehicles, bodily movement dictated by the machine; the actions of getting in and getting out of the car, truck, van or SUV, the seated position inside the vehicle, body rock, sway and bobbing as the vehicle rolls along. Inside the car, gaze at pedestrians, buildings, soothing motion, the world going by, each neighborhood a new scene in the movie; streets of desolation, streets extending to infinity, huge skies at the edge of the city, after you clear the skyscrapers, tall buildings and residential neighborhoods. Sit in the back seat, lulled, dazed, sound, motion, slight nausea, hypnotized, drowsy, in a dreamlike stupor. Gaze with detachment at people crossing the street as your car waits at a red light. Gaze from far away, as if the people were specimens, or alien creatures. Sit in the omnipotence of the back seat, in a cushy, expensive car and watch the strangers. You could be one of them. The only difference is your economic situation. Strip away a person's job and bank account and then see what's left. Then I become what I scorned and feared.

Ok, I start grumbling. My mind gets negative. I wonder about the meaning of life. Where did the concept of meaning come from? For this to happen, there has to be something else. Who is asking? The quest for meaning maybe started as a person experienced trauma, loss, disappointment, privation, abuse, frustration... If things went smooth, as in Fool's Paradise, maybe the question of meaning would never occur. Suffering, the first noble truth, caused me to stop and wonder why this unpleasant scenario is happening. I have no idea. I'll order another cup of coffee, relax and enjoy the flowers along the way.

Night in Limbo

Sitting, cold feet, on the edge of the bed and wondering what the future will bring, half awake, half asleep, a night in limbo, a little insomnia won't hurt anybody.

Unable to silence that part of the mind not satisfied with what you were supposed to believe, the reality peddled in school, the funded version, the other version was suppressed, policed, ridiculed or ignored, the shadow that's been there since the beginning of beginingless time. No amount of righteous indignation will remove the bristles from a porcupine, or stop the drool of a cow. The tea party is subject to variable cloudiness and unexpected rain.

Bloated belly, puffy guts, putrefaction, gaseous lumpkin lying in bed, tossing and turning, some kind of maina throughout the night, fall asleep at sunrise. Turn on the radio. Talk show: void hot words into airwaves, undulating flatulent know it all hum and haw, laughing and gurgling in smug self-satisfaction, but irritated underneath to know that nobody buys the scam, except other lonely Lohbados willing to form a club in order to have a shoulder to lean on or an ear to cry into, an ear to hear the murmuring moan of self-pity and resentment, because life didn't give you what you felt you deserved. Hopefully one could get old and get over it. It's all too easy to turn into a dried out grasshopper body that lost its hop, an old grandfather cabinet body with a key around the miser's neck as death approaches.

The Chapel of Original Sin

Whipping from the Reverend Woodlot Stumps Wood-church of leather in the forest, paper birch, spruce, fir, white pine, jack pine, tamarack, prickly needles, trembling aspen leaves, a congregation of trees gathered to witness the wriggling wigglement of original sin. Permit me to show you where Adam went wrong and how Eve did not fully exploit the possibilities of that juicy forbidden fruit.

Leaving Cain, and his dark cloud, cursed, feeling of being rejected while your brother wins favor, aside for a moment, we could do a signalment into his torture, inquisition, secrecy, initiation, inner sanctuary, holy of holies approach to child rearing. However, my mind was easily led astray by wandering daffodil poet ting ting abbey. Oogah!

Devalued, rejected, expelled, excommunicated, sit hungry outside as the feast goes on inside; they might throw you a crumb. Trickle down effect doesn't work. Rich hold it in, swell up, no limit to the size of ego. Satan led the frustrated man-woman to lash out in frustration and powerlessness. Shouting makes no difference.

The door is unlocked. You can set your burden down. No need to stay in the tool shed, toast and coffee breath, mildew rot, perfume, wet dog fur, damp newspapers and kitty litter. Reverend B. Goat wanted to call a spade a spade. Reality can't be shovelled.

the letter A

A ball or flash of light, the luminous letter A, in a jet plane as I took a photo of myself in a mirror, above the steel sink, where it’s important to wash your hands. A natural kind of Orgone accumulator, in a jet plane, I bring my camera with me at all times, after narrowly losing it in January. I had set the camera down on a seat in the airport and went for lunch. When I got back, a friend had the camera. I was really lucky she found it; otherwise it could have been stolen.

Absent minded, so many things to keep track of, it’s easier to keep the camera strapped to the body at all times, a fourth eye. The third eye opened between my eyes during a wilderness retreat on a thin, sweet little piece of land extending between Lake Huron and Georgian Bay, not far from where I was born. I’ll write about that another time.

As the letter A appeared in the mirror, I broke into a sweat and started shaking. It was like I became the jet plane and the jet plane became me, pieces of metal riveted into the form of a bird roaring through space at top speed, erasing all sense of location, impossible to pin point a body in motion, other than to set approximate parameters. That’s just one of the freaky ways reality breaks down into the huge mystery of why the letter A.

A little pop, a ball of light, fireworks in the mirror next to my head, the letter A emerging and swirling around, like dots, luminous letter A, like when you see stars after standing up too fast. The pop, flash of light and letter A in the steel water closet, just large enough for toilet, sink, soap dispenser and trash bins, happened in the snap of a finger. In the blink of an eye, it happened, one world over, the end. Another world begins, unknown. What happens will depend on state of mind.