Bliss

Rose knew it’d be a beautiful decision putting the disability act in their short sweet Ghost Dance - maybe in the rising action leading to an epiphany or in the falling action with heart-breaking catastrophic transformational awareness. Cut. The end. Cue applause.

“How can I know what I think until I see what I say?” said a child with reported speech. Their wheel of life played tag with crazy wisdom.  Mu-shin, their state of “no-mind” blossomed where thought, emotions and expectations did not matter.

Who’s dragging around this bag of bones? Where do I park this empty vehicle? I have poems and stories to finish that I haven’t even started yet.

“To sleep, perchance to dream.”

“A dream is an unfulfilled wish,” said a kid with a Ph.D. in Psychoanalysis from the Jung Institute in Zurich.

“What else did he say?”

“He said, ‘There is no royal road to wisdom. To arrive in the future I must journey to the past. To attain the sanity with the One, I must risk the whirling madness of the possessed. One must confront their shadow or be crushed by it.”

“I like it,” said Rumi. “What else?”

“Well, here’s another cool thing he said. “‘I liken the formation of a character to weaving fabric. You know what happens when you make a mistake? The whole pattern is spoiled. You have a choice. You can finish the garment, however it will always be botched and ugly or you can unravel the weaving back to the mistake and start again. That’s basically what analysis is about. It’s a tedious job. The patient is scared and hostile. The analyst lends patience, honesty and courage.’”

“Excellent,” yelled kids, “here’s to our being patient patients with honesty and courage.”

“Speaking of courage, I’m looking for someone who knows reading and writing,” said Rose.

“I can read and write,” said the children. "We also love drawing, singing and dancing.”

“Reading and writing is power. Dance is life. Perfect. Let’s go together,” said Rose.

Downstairs at Sacred Heart Hospital a translucent mother saw her grief reflected in Beauty’s mirror. “This is my worst nightmare,” whispered her heart-mind.

Rose said, “Afraid to face the truth adults run away. They run away carrying their fear like a heavy bag of bricks. They are afraid to see the beauty, strength and dignity of Death and letting go.”

“Why?” said mother.

“They stay away because they are afraid of saying the wrong thing. The child’s spirit is pure energy. They have the strength to let go. Adults find Death a scary thing so they run away.”

“I see,” said a gardener trimming thorns below a tree house. “I know Death’s beauty and wisdom. Metaphors and mortality exist with initial memories. Memories are figments of our imagination. I am a dreamer in nature, bigger than the universe, in never-never-cuckoo land. I am a witness collecting evidence that tells no lies. The deeper you go the deeper the bliss.”

ART

Magic Story

The tribe dreamed. Wood became ash. Their fire dream consumed itself. Sighing sensations tingled through Raven’s body. Night winds played around her heart. She danced with stars. Diamond crystal swallowtails flew from her hands into silent endless space. Her breath released peace.

She fell awake.

Sunlight streamed through ferns, plants, and roses. A morning breeze delivered rose petals at her feet. She stretched like a solitary snow leopard at 16,000 feet feeling freedom’s wildness. She glanced at the fireplace. Her shattered glass lay on the brick floor near a charred pencil and scraps of paper. She gathered word edges, lines, drawings and blurred prisms of light.

She felt a searing pain in her heart, released the papers and touched her third eye. She went deep inside. A calm feeling blessed her. A warm breeze carried her into the center of a sacred wisdom circle.

Her essence was joy, gratitude, truth and compassion. Pure being.

The world of appearances was heavy, grasping, suffering, desire and illusion.

Discovering her essence her spirit energy breath renewed her heart, her passion and vision with pure luminous light.

People seeking to know their future with wisdom sought her out for guidance. She opened her heart finding solace, peace, strength, and dignity in the sacred flames of regeneration through quiet simplicity.

She kept her own counsel. Others would discover their own way through their personal labyrinth.

Gathering flames she lit a piece of bark in a Paleolithic cave. She lived in 26,000 year-old paintings.

She mixed volcanic ash with water, creating a thick paste of red ocher, a cosmetic balm to gain entry and passage into the spirit world of ancestors.

She walked through fire, dancing in her inner light of pure intention in a magical world realizing childhood’s innocence.

She became an angel of light.

Her Jinn emanated fire, life and consciousness. This fire consumed ignorance, and my memory of her became a meditation on the physical process of identifying with higher energies through form, sensation, perception, sense impressions and consciousness. Her meditation inside the cosmic dance dissolved the self.

Fire became her driver. Sexual kundalini yoga burned soft and hard wood together. The sleeping serpent coiled at the base of her spine ate energetic fires. The Jinn manifested by the fire of the telling.

“Yes," said Omar, “Jinn are summoned through spirit ceremonies. People communicate with music and dance.

“I am a character in my own story,” said Omar, “a hakaawati, a professional Persian storyteller inside the shadow of my imagination. I manifest an oral way of transmitting khurata, fanciful stories, inside the ocean of stories.”

“Wonderful," said Jamie. “I like the part about the sacred wisdom circle. It’s a magic story. Reminds me of a woman talking about her Ghost Dance. In her wishes, lies, dreams, memories and reflections she is a Wovoka, a Paiute weather doctor with power over rain and earthquakes. Her Ghost Dance magic is destined to return souls of those who have died. Is it my turn?”

“Sure Jamie, just keep it shorter than life because a reader doesn’t want to struggle if the narration is hard to follow.”

“Yeah," said a kid. “This Zen tale may be too much for some readers to wrap their head around. You become the thing you fight the most. Let’s see all the beauty and ugliness without hope or fear.”

“Ain’t that truth? What is the sound of one hand laughing?”

Someone in the tribe asked Other to tell them about the beginning of his wandering ways.

Omar wrote it down and translated it into unspoken languages.

Weaving A Life (V1)

world dust

I’m broiling on the balcony of my Tacoma tree house. Getting down and dirty after years away from the typewriter.

Covered in world dust and needing oil it’s a small portable dangerous machine.  It transforms life energies by weaving adventures. Threads follow needle.

I am a peripatetic traveler and literary outlaw.

I’m lucky to get it down now and make sense of it later.

I’m a mirror in the mandala of my labyrinth. I am Labrys, from the Greek for a two-headed axe. I write with passion and vision. Short fast and deadly.

My mirror reflects everything. It absorbs desire, anger, ignorance, passion and suffering.

Beauty has no tongue.

I’m confident and self-reliant exploring the human condition. Human energies, frequencies and vibrations reflect languages, lives and attitudes. Dreams dance reflections.

Mirror reveals emotional trust, wisdom, peace and love with truth and compassion.

Meditate on the process of your death.

Suffering is an illusion.

Your mask eats your face.

My mirror is dust free.

Creativity dances in language.

Language is oral, gestures and graphic.

Oral and gestures dissipate.

Symbolic graphic is constant.

This awareness enlightens you after years of wandering. I have been here for 1,000 years so I can only imagine what they are going through.

Everything you know is a lie.

Keep a diamond in your mind.

To feel better, clean my heart, purge old fears and improve the quality of life I climbed down to donate a pint at The Blood Bank. Good old hemoglobin.

Suffering from cancer, a hospitalized child I will never meet, know, or love needs platelets more than I do. It’s been sixty-four clicks of Earth’s rotation between donations. It’s the best re-cycling program on the planet.

Give the gift of life that keeps on giving.

My calmness meets a scared mother pacing sterile emergency rooms at Sacred Heart Hospital wondering if her daughter will receive essential ingredients in time. 

A solemn-faced, stressed out cardiovascular lab tech with his personal set of challenges and opportunities, said to her, “At this moment we have no matching donors. We’ve released a global search engine to see what’s available on the market. People are selling short to cut their losses. It’s all about supply, demand and the fear of poverty. Scarcity. There are indications of further interest rate cuts to stimulate consumer confidence. We have no immediate indication of a stimulus. We will keep you informed.”

The mother doesn’t need to hear this prattle from a white lab coat.

Fingering her bone prayer beads, skeleton heads shake, rattle and roll. Fingers caress thorns. Everything happens by accident on purpose in her life, speaking of destiny, fate and chance. Life for her and millions in the land of the free, home of the brave and broke is free will versus random chance.

Everything’s already happened. People need to experience it while confronting their shadow and alienation, loneliness and loving community in a corrupt, cynical, hysterical greed-based world where people try to Control their fear.

Write FEAR & ANGER on a paper napkin.

Burn it.

Let go.

Citizen sheep believed in fear and unsustainable consumption because they were afraid of being lonely and poor.

Happiness is a myth. The wish of desire said so.

Humans were willing victims of their fear, healthy uncertainty, and doubt. Their amygdala, a small almond shaped brain structure creating fear and emotional response fired up. Fight or flight?

Are you the hunter or the prey?

ART

Louis The Hero

“Books are an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us.” - Franz Kafka

*

King Louis, a free slave riding a white stallion roared into Bursa from a Turkish dessert. Waving a jeweled sword he scrambled onto a world stage facing ninety million screaming bloodthirsty catatonic maniacs.

“Live and let live. I am a hero. I’ve returned from the mother of all battles. We defeated fear and ignorance. As a bonus we slew greed. We are victorious. We’ve been killing humans for 4,000 years and still no one knows who the king is. See what I brought you,” gesturing past a gateless gate. Red rolling dust clouds obscured chained destitute slaves.

“Oh, shit,” said his twin brother, a shackled slave and former Freon-free refrigerator shyster from Polo Alto singing soprano, “looks like it’s sheer linen damask lace curtains for us.”

“You can say shit again,” sang Leo, an exhausted Chinese prisoner practicing free speech in Braille, a foreign language and Omar’s specialty.

Leo’s memory remembered hauling buckets of night shit to fields near his straw and mud Gobi hovel. It was the price he’d paid for questioning Authority at Beijing Normal U.

- Why do we have to read Mao’s little red book? It’s mush for pigs, he’d asked Authority.

- Because you are a tool of the state, said Authority.

- This shit stinks.

- Here, said Authority, Carry some more.

After that melancholy loss Leo didn’t take shit from anybody. Living in exile with silence and cunning he burned through levels of existence.

A stream-winner, he slept with Ratanakiri shamans in animist cemeteries. He exchanged stories about becoming with Rita, his friend and author of Ice Girl in Banlung.

Using sustainable dry yak-yak manure Leo discovered fire by rubbing precious stones together. Impressed, his tribe anointed him Chief of Cannibals.

He wore an alarm clock around his neck demonstrating Power, Prestige, Status & Esoteric Arcane Prescient Wisdom.

On stage raising his ruby, emerald and diamond mind sword Louis the crime smelter hero approached a line of wage slaves, Soma miners, shrouded widows, seventy imprisoned journalists and cheap coal powered grieving families. “Bend over. Stick your neck out. It’s not about justice. It’s about procedure.”

“Not me! Why Me?” exclaimed millions.

He brought justice down. He decapitated a screaming target. “Take that, idiot.” Heads rolled.

Revenge. Vengeance. Swift. Sweet. Complete.

A clear cheer erupted from Turkish sheep waving ticket stubs.

Louis turned to the masses. “Step right up ladies and gentlemen to The Greatest Show on Earth. Miracles revealed. Have your immediate future told,” he repeated with reported speech.

Slaves with a top secret security clearance in deep shadows played espionage chess in the middle game. They focused on position and material.

Your move, said Death, Be mindful.

The Language Company

Martha Ann

After Nam I spent a month with my family, did the DOD School and went to Germany to finish my military time.

My sister, Martha Ann, 13, developed a cold that winter. My father wrote letters about her condition. Her energy dropped. She became weak. He took her to doctors for a diagnosis.

She had a rare form of AML leukemia and started chemotherapy. She needed bone marrow transplants in her short future. The prognosis was maybe five years for a complete remission.

She prospered in school and Girl Scouts with a positive mental attitude.

Neighbors had horses and she formed a loving relationship with them.

Her long blond hair flies in wind. She embodies a strong discipline in the saddle. Her back is straight. Approaching a jump over an abyss, fear is defeated by her courage.

She leaves the stable leading a Palomino. She wears tall black boots, riding pants, and a stiff white shirt buttoned at her frail neck. Only I know she is sick and dying. It is our secret. She smiles at me.

She whispers magic words and you know by the animal’s response they love and trust each other. She rides in green pastures under a bright blue sky. Her face is serene.

Her sickness was a long slow meandering journey. She maintained her optimism, smiling, laughing, and doing excellent in school. She knew she was sick. She was a warrior girl child.

Horses gave her freedom and passion. She rode every day after school. Weekends were cleaning, grooming, laughing and loving her relationships.

Her spirit is clear. She has no fear.

Her pain was a sickness leaving her fragile body.

Doctors tried every experimental drug on the market. Drugs made her long blond hair fall out. She wore a wig. She tolerated inane questions and insinuative cruel bullying from classmates. She maintained her dignity and integrity.

“Dad, what happens when they run out of experimental drugs?” she asked at dinner. He had no answer.

The broken-hearted man brought his daughter home from Children’s Hospital in Denver for her last Christmas. She enjoyed snow, a warm fire, magic tree, cats, presents and love.

Her heart gave out three days after Christmas, 1972.

I received the expected phone call at the Kassel Field Station.

“Martha is gone,” said my father’s cracking voice.

“What happened?”

“I went to the hospital on my lunch hour and she was lying there and she looked so beautiful yet so weak and she said, ‘Dad, hold me, I’m going to faint,’ and I did and then her heart stopped. It just wore her out.”

I cried, “I’m so sorry dad. I’ll get a flight out.”

“You will always remember her as a happy little girl.”

Angels and peace welcomed Martha Ann. She never saw fourteen of anything. She never went to high school or college, fell in love, worked, lived, laughed, traveled, explored future worlds or experienced a longer life with her vibrant trembling spirit. Her existence was all wrapped up in one tight package with an expiration date.

Cold winter was her refuge and now.

Her childlike joy and spirit energies soared away from her labyrinth. She evolved on her path of light, love, and perfection. No longer a human on a spiritual path she was a spiritual being on a human path.

On her brief sojourn before crossing time’s river she demonstrated tolerance, integrity, kindness, tranquility, dignity, empathy and truth. Martha Ann validated her authenticity. She hurled her thunderbolt.

ART