it's him and i

my doppelganger is driving behind me.  same specs mirrored in the mirror.  and he's not watching hte road and what is he doing is he going to be safe and oh my god he almost hit that other car veered too far into the left lane and took a swerve back into the straight line running.  skipping through dotted lines and feeding off the black tar his car hums along at a speed that's no greater than mine and every turn i take he's there behind me.  what will happen when i stop when i park when i get out of my car?  where will he stop, where will he park, will he get out of his car too?  these are the things I wouldn't think about if I were you.  the bump pump of the break tapping to the ground and now gas pounding to run a hard boiled yellow light but the red comes down and doesn't cut him.  on two wheels he leans through the intersection no slower or faster no further behind. sunlight shields.
but i know it's him and i know it's him and i know he's me.
four turns to go and three turns later.  the first will be quick like a band aid rip to the right.
ten miles maybe four and we're careening to the left.  is he sitting beside me now?
no.  but eight blocks later it's another left and for a second I see through the specs and feel the blink of an eye as I almost slam into the crosswalk painted lines a barrier protecting crossers.
the engine idles as i slide into the drive.
the gas burns as i amble up the way.
and there is my parking space.
keep driving he whispers to me through his windshield, past the wipers, via the back window, around the headrest and into my ear.

dawning

and you thought that eight faces were hard to lead.  imagine the reflection of thousands and the knot in the middle.  the strings pull them in one or tow or three at a time.  conducting the ebb and flow of personalities in the temporal space of being.  and as i pull them in and pull on their masks I am thrown into the world and land splattered across the surface of things.  it would be a mistake to think, it would be an error to assume, it's goggles that I wear.  as if lenses alone could change the texture of care.  it perhaps is also incorrect to call them masks, but no body wants to step into an other's body completely.  we don't want to lose some sense that self isn't important enough to be a least partially permanent.  my legs and arms and core, flesh things that anchor me in space.  but the posture matches the mask, the movements are permeated by the face shaping and no mistake making I am always falling in and out from one to the other.  This is a tangled web I tread that's made of my own devices: contradiction and contingency.

the sideways man.

the sideways man.  looks at you straight on askew.  is always catching catching it peripherally.  speaks naturally out the corner of his mouth.  tries to look around reflections to freeze the world in two dimensions.  slips like a sheet of paper with weight through-dropped down.  but when he's alone he sucks in his cheeks to the bone and wonders whether the pain will leave his neck in public sees out of both eyes exhales out of both nostrils in an attempt to be skinny as possible and when he closes his eyes the negative afterimages come out of darkness and fly away.  it's hard to get help when you're standing at ninety degrees to all appearances.  you're not in line.  running counter would be much easier. to look your foes in the face as they stab your back.  to think against.  to be anti-easy as polar opposites.  the backwards looking man next in line.

the backwards looking man.

the backwards looking man.  falling down softly into a throw back of wasted time spent dizzy.  and the updraft of disappointment buoys and on the regretful, seen.  somewhere there are signs printed on skin and laughter that doesn't end.  listening in a straight line behind the path he least resisted.  and the stench of her perfume is killing flowers invading the cilia state.  stench hangs in midair too.  the future tapped him on the shoulder but only lower body turned eyes glued on eyes, thoughts zipped in an old army jacket.  how robotically we can all step forward on a moving sidewalk standing on the right letting others walk by pulling luggage.  and his future phone is a window to the past.  and forward thinking cannot escape the event horizon. his care is spaghetti strings.  but his frozen gaze was a mask that aligned sometimes with mine even though he did not blink.  i passed on into other phases, returning only when he seemed happier.

Aletheia Gone

Aletheia Gone
my personalities splayed out like water between my fingers the tighter that i tried to hold them together down low.
shattered glass reflecting each other's faces the slipped carelessly to the ground.
only now do I try to get them back to pull them together into a whole puddle that might fill a bowl.
the laughing sad sobbing of a throat that doesn't know if it wants to go up or down and the painful less-ness of crushing
nothing between fingers.  the ground soaks me up, the air dissipates and the water makes me featureless.
out here i am shape and form unfilled working harder and harder without a goal.
what happened to my questioning self? did I slip out first? poked the holes and lead the others through?
they leave me with a thirst to drink the ocean salt and for being-in-the-world

Because I want to see people and I want to see life

it was through the ear that the idea came to create and i looked you up and down and couldn't figure out what it was that was different about you.  but there she looked back at me and I couldn't believe it I was amazed.  this isn't the first time that we've thought the same thing at the same time unfortunately far apart from the way that we used to be.
I was a sailing ship's captain on lookout duty I spied it moving over the waves drawing ever closer and smiling with winks up and down below the waves up and down and up and down and below it disappeared but still could feel it rushing towards me and my small boat capsizing
alive.
these were the idiot sounds that i listened to going to an idiot's job.  i stood stupidly among the books wondering at their titles, feeling journals combined into volumes of years.  deaf hands fell on photocopied pages that someone else would eventually make sense of.  If only i stapled them the right way.
Those were also the days of dark boots on city streets, running to catch trains, threading my way through teachers and students.
the past is a metaphor-dead. but
luckily lifetimes were only years ago because we've moved on into the world of
refrigerator cleanouts and
friendly reminders.

this is how the draining of rain sounds

listen to a slow plodding sound.  footsteps on a pine needle forest floor.  sloe gin clouds fuzzing by, blurring the atmosphere with amorphous movement.  it was me pressing through the syrup of days, all dried out and looking. breathing steam rising up hairy.  taste the way that it moves like grass growing down your tongue and through your throat.  but this will never do.

Run. run through the next frame.  Plod no more as you search and search and let it go while your fingers blur and the toes can barely grip a thought before you're landing on the next.  there's a lightness that comes from moving this quickly like an outstripping of the thoughts that hold us down, a blur that others can't pin, a sound that's too loud to hear by those who think rationally.  running quickly and out of control we laugh down the hillside as the ground turns over our heads and the rocks and soil leave their mark on skin that's torn and ragged.  but even though our teeth fall out and our tongues dry up it doesn't matter as our spirit slips free from confinement.

it feels like chocolate chip cookies in here.
and my knee hitches.

No-Where Man

and so it was that he truly was a No-Where Man who didn't have friends to lose or places he recognized.  It had been a long time and the ground had cracked as the weeds tangled with the words withered and died leaving them to bake in the nowhere space that didn't exist unless you found it.  But with these few drops of water seeping down to kiss the legs of plants buried deep in the sand-dust colored life began to seep again.

Trundled through snow into staircases warm with life the No-Where Man stirred up his own emotions.  This was once a place where my shadow chased me down three flights of stairs pursued by me into the lamp light.  This was where the door had slammed in my face when I had made my one attempt to seek human contact, where my attempt had failed, where I'm not even sure if the door had opened since I'm pretty sure that I hadn't knocked.  Shut doors slammed the loudest.

Yes it's happening all over again the rampant overgrowth of the undergrowth swallowing all consciousness and leaving only its form to bear on the wasteland of untraveled distances.  Where thousands of survivors stood up and looked around wondering what had knocked them down, where trees fell into the oblivious.  Will you print this out and frame it on  your wall?  I didn't think so.  Will you take this down and use it for shoes?  Because where will this take you when the leader is led by the fingers in the mud?

Yes it's fitting to end on the questions that so often make their appearance when wandering.  Questions that lead to nowhere.  Questions left behind unanswered like bread crumbs that no bird will eat by the No-Where Man.  Listen, you can hear him tip tapping his way among the lettered.  Remembrances of plastic and the smell of PVC molded into representations.  There's that feeling again as the fuzzy notes trill three times down and up, over and over again.

This was the No-Where Man peeking out through the curtains to make sure that the theater was empty, that the flood lights were off, that the room was cold and bare, removed of seats and rows before making the first leap out onto the stage and dancing his lightest steps in elegance only he could bear.  The applause was felt loudly through the muscles that hadn't exercised in years as every fiber smiled.

Startled Dismay

How is it that we find ourselves separated from beings so throughly that we are wrapped around them again and realize them as beings?  Why is the separation from things necessary to realize that they are things, that they have existence, that they are?  When in normal use and everyday views we do not realize that the keyboard we are typing on exists, that the monitor we view is, that the words that appear on the screen and the letters that make them up are real.  It is a conduit format through which our Beings flow. 

Making sense of the world does not require the analytic objective classification of all things before us.  In fact the opposite is true and holds sway when the world makes the most sense.  Let's take something apart to understand its function that it can no longer do.  This is the insanity of scientists.  Clearly suggesting that the parts exist yet the whole is fractured and meaningless in their hands.  Yet there are times when we are forced into this display of things, and in these moments we are overcome with the fear of losing all around us even though we are getting it all back.

Falling into the world is normal and true and should not be reviled and derrided as it so often is.  Once again, no matter which stance we adopt, we find ourselves again in the circular contradiction.

and it felt good to follow an ever changing path that never changed my mood

I was going to write something here about something, but interestingly enough that something came and changed what I was going to write about into something else.  And the format as well went from something to nothing, a loosely linked collaboration of words working together to express some idea that isn't thought out.  Let's journey together. 

Are the emotions meaning giving?  If so what role does Contingency play in giving meaning?  Let's say that I'm feeling one way one moment and in the next something has happened to make me feel differently, that gives new meaning to the rest of the day, that colors my mood and the world around me.  Suddenly something that might have had no meaning gains a weight that it shouldn't(?) have. 

So where do I focus this point of attack?  On emotion or Contingency?  It would seem that focusing on one or the other is a turning away from their combination.  Often times I find myself ruminating on Contingency and I wonder if this is a distancing?  An effort to push aside the emotions that the contingent brought forth or cut down.  An effort to extract Being from meaning, a refusal of the everydayness of Being.  What are the value of our ideals and ideas?  What is the idea without emotion, without meaning? 

Certainly ideas are not created in a vacuum of emotion, the idea brings forth and springs from moods and emotions, our environment, our Situation.  After all we are not mechanical thinking machines.  And here, this thought pathway was cut not with the dull blade of logic, but rather the searing moment of the Contingent.  But how do I feel?  What is the meaning?  Is it impossible to assign meaning without feeling?  Is it possible to maintain feeling past the contingent?  How could that be?  How can I hold on to a feeling though the world changes around me?  Is not this the same as holding on to the ever changing and sacrificing the emotion?  What is the meaning involved in always being happy?  What is the meaning involved in witnessing the delicate hanging together of life's precious permanence? 

Is meaning the contradiction that holds together two sides of nothingness?

Even what we know for fact

Even what we know for fact is contingent, our ownmost possibility.  Our guaranteed possibility.  Strange that the only thing we know for sure is not known (cannot be known by Being) and contingent (could arrive at any moment).  How contradictory are Death and Being.
The I, Being, cannot know it's death.  Death as a state of non-being, cannot exist at the same time as Being.  Nothingness cannot exist with something, however, we carry nothingness inside of us as a possibility, as the possibility that cuts off all possibility of Being.
The unknowing, in terms of time, is curious and displays the contingency of our own possibility.  Will I die tomorrow, today, a year from now?  I do not know.  Will I die?  Yes.  I know for certain a future possibility that will come to pass, and yet have no idea about it at all.  The Contradiction of Being.  Perhaps even the most contradictory.
We know all about death, from watching others pass away, and yet we know nothing of Death.  What does it mean to not-be?  Even our Being-at-death cannot answer.  Instead we lay plans for the future ignoring that those plans can be severed, we lay tracks of permanence that go in the opposite direction of permanence, and we ride both ways.

My tuatological Being is contradictory.

The illusion of time as a linear-line works well when it's not broken.  However, Beings are in-the-past, in-the-future, are the-present.  Events in the past and future are alive and meaningful for us today, and they are always changing their Meaning.  If we were involved in a series of now, neither past or future, would hold anything for us.  What do our Illusions do for us but strip meaning away?  Meaning seems to come in through the cracks, to be an ever-present pressure, Meaning waits patiently, Meaning Cares, but Meaning doesn't care.

Illusions separate things into black and white.  Meaning joins separation, unites seeming opposites, is the line that connects.  Black and white are both colors, both things, scientifically barren objects to be measured.  Black is not the opposite of white, black as a color has nothing to do with white, other than colorness (and I suppose that the scientist could further argue that even this is not true, as one is the absence of color and one contains all colors). 

When the idea is introduced that black and white are opposites, somehow warring parties opposed to each other, trying hard to get as far away from the other, Meaning comes in and grabs hold of two concepts, and in the hands of Meaning these concepts are not only unified, but separated!  Meaning holds apart these colors to make them opposites, and holds them together in the strength of Contradiction.

What is contradictory is often the same, if not always the same.  Life and death, something and nothing, yes and no, they are the same in that meaning is joining them by holding them apart.  By pushing dualities to opposite ends of the spectrum, by making things into a contradiction, Meaning holds them together.  Where are we on the line between life and death?  Why is there something instead of nothing?  By saying no, what am I saying yes to?

Is this Meaning just another Illusion too?  If things are really not opposite, is it not an illusion to posit them as enemies?  Is there no Meaning and merely meaning?  The answer to this is of course contradictory: yes and no.  Meaning is annihilated and born in the same breath.  What is the Meaning of Illusion?  If illusion is bad, that is its Meaning.  If the glasses of Illusion are done away with, and this is deemed to be good, then once again Meaning, and Illusion, sneak back in.  After all Meaning and Illusion are opposites, contradictions, one carries weight and one is a sham...how are these opposites held together?  What is the third other trying to hold onto both while pushing them away?  Being. 

Being gives objectivity and subjectivity, things and together-things, something and nothing, meaning and meaningless, black and white yes and no right and wrong up and down there and here past and future life and death, contradiction and tautology.  and gives them all via Meaning.

Your chaos theroy is my meaningless Contingency

Chaos theory is a fun thing to say, a scientific idea that carries the weight of mystery in the word Chaos.  It implicitly sounds dangerous, but what is it really?  What are all the interactions that cannot be mapped out ahead of time because they're so numerous?  Your chaos theory is my meaningless Contingency.

When science steps in and with its all knowing glance takes a look at Contingency and removes meaning by making all things objective and equal it computes chaos theory.  A theory that seems to be limitless and unable to be calculated merely because of the not-knowing of all the factors that could and will and do apply to a single event.  Still there is no anxiety in science, science is not worried about the not-knowing, it is less of an issue than one would think when postulating a great all knowing theory.  When the all knowing sweeps aside the not-knowing in order to know, we do not have a scientific problem (for science has never cared for what it did not know, only for what it does not-yet know), but we have a problem for Being.

Contingency is chaos theory with the full not-knowing included.  The not-knowing is what gives meaning to Contingency.  I do not know what will happen to me tomorrow...on the way home tonight...this afternoon...or in the next ten seconds.  Like science Being also tries to do away with the not-knowing, and therefore render the power of Contingency impotent.  The grand idea is Illusion.  Illusion is what allows us to not-know, and not-care.  Illusion strips meaning of Contingency, and Illusion's power is so great that it only fails at the greatest, seemingly most powerful, moments of Contingency.

When I am in a car accident on the way home from a boring day at work, a boring day in which I only wished to go home and relax and all day I saw myself sitting on my couch at home and watching 'Dancing with the Stars', suddenly Illusion is rendered powerless as it shatters the World around us and Being is confronted with its Contingent existence.  When Illusion falls away, its most powerful falling-away is when it is quick, like a mirror breaking in front of us.  It is still powerful, yet less noticeable, when it melts away like a fading photograph, for we are given time to build up new Illusions while the old one is melting away, and by the time the old one is gone we have completed construction on its replacement that it simply fades away into.  When we are not prepared with an Illusion-at-hand for the destruction of out current Illusion, then Contingency and its meanings are laid bare, ugly, anxious and deathly....but also full of meaning giving Being.

from up here I can see NOTHING!!!!

Let us discuss the power of a powerful thinker. One who lays out a plan , who builds a structure, that tells you how to climb from here to there, with the top always having a better view than the bottom. What is up there, and why is it inherently better? Are we always obsessed with the higest, with elevation, with rising above the mere mortals? What is so great about rarified air? One climbs everest and one is alone. One rockets to the moon and one is totally removed, unable to step outside the vessel that brought them to such heights. One needs protection, removal, cannot let their humanity come in contact with what they find up there.
So how about those systems of thought? What do they optain in their confines, and how does it, how could it, apply to humanity? To those of us left stuck on the ground.
Shout down from the mountain and we hear nothing.
And you are too weak to carry us up there with you. No you tell us it's a journey that every man must make on his own, but why? So that you're less lonely? But if someone stood beside you you would find the means to climb even higher still, or destroy the rock on which we both stood.
These systems all rely on the ground on which they are built, even everest would be nothing were it not for the greater Earth below it.
Evil we are built on to reach the angels. The dead we bury, the end is underground.

and here it is setforth in plain english what is otherwise set forth in metaphor. thus is the meaning. i.e. the reson. i.e. the existence.

in other places we referred to God as being the abuser, the step father that moves in and has his way with his new twelve yearold step daughter who's just starting to look like mily cyrus.
the best and the brightest are the ones that God wants.
and the fools who follow him are the dumbest and slowest. the human tomatoes of the world whose candles have burned out long before they were ever born.

It was dark and I was shivering and trying to make myself smaller. I huddled into the corner tyring to pull the shadows down to close their eyelids incase they looked up. I felt that I was infringing, but they were infringing on me. I felt that I was commiting them some wrong, like I shouldn't have been up here, that I shouldn't have been out here seeing them and looking down on them and wanting them to go away or to never have come at all. And yet it was they that were pushing me back, they that were holding me down with my own free will, they that sent me packing the moment that I knew that the car lights that were heading towards me were theirs, that the car lights would sweep to the right as they pulled to the curb, that the car door would open showing a worn paperbag face with eyes that could see me, and thoughts that could judge me.

Prejudgement that was my flaw wasn't it? All these years I had overlooked it, seen only the results but had no idea how I had gotten there, recieved the truth of my giving mind. In my prejudgements I was the one with the power, but what I weilded put no handcuffs on others, didn't turn a key to keep you in when we ran away all those years ago. I'm sorry that I didn't go with you, and you knew that I would be. I'm sorry that I didn't take your hand as you reached out to pull me along with you, because you knew what was better for me eventhough I had no idea.
We left late in the night and late in the year. The dead leaves would give us away, but their sounds couldn't be followed like snow tracks, and you said that the time was right, that it was now or forever.
I made it as far as the road, far enough to not be seen by the houselights that looked out the windows into the prairie-dark. Panting you looked back at me and you were smiling, but I knew from the look in your face that I was not. I was worried, worried about taking another step as if the road were a rushing river of gravel and dirt that would take me powerless against its twists and turns.

and there were times when he wanted to be angry to yell listen up and shut up, but nothing was inspiring enough. a lethargy of energy and an emptiness inside kept him from shouting anything or saying nothing. Let's small talk and coddle, let's remark on the, and prattle about the, and not listen to each other as we pass the time away. the best way to suffer is not in silence but by sharing the unnecessary. let's face it our attention spans were too short for each other don't you think? I mean what's the maximum amount of time that you can listen to me carry on about my miserable years serving food and driving people to movie stars' homes? If you can hang in there with me, if you can come with me, if you can talk back to me then I give you more credit than I'm worth.

Hey listen let's get into this car and kept driving until we run out of things to talk about, I'll drop you off at the corner. Better yet let's fill this balloon with the hot air of our heads and float away. because it's so easy to look pretty and smile you just have to be hard on yourself all the time. That's it, just be hard on yourself all the time

so it was that we walked hand and hand through poppy fields full of purple. and it wasn't the desert that we thought that it would be, no it was simply a field. simply a small hut that we had left behind early in the morning not wanting to be caught, and so we skipped high and so we ran slow, and so we held hands as we brushed past the flowers that never seemed to refuse to bloom. and without looking back we had fun, and without out a care we shook our heads from side to side, and the mist, the dust, it all blended in our nostrils as one. and my right hip started to hurt from all the joy. tired hands in danger of head falling to sleep. but we wanted to and we wished to and we wouldn't let our selves rest for more than a day. And when it came down to me it was too much to take, because they were Nazis.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

sabado y domingo

The idols were stacked up outside the door. Haphazardly like Russian Nesting dolls. The two men, old enough to remember when the idols were new, sat at the bare table on simple chairs turned towards the open door, their backs hunched under their matching black overcoats, their sparse gray hair barely supporting the hats on their heads.
Outside the door, one of them thought, it's nice eventhough the weather is gray and old, there have been worse days when the alley way was covered in rain, when the sun was so hot it twice backed the bricks holding back the weight of the earth that framed the pathway to the coast.
I can hear it more than I can see it, always the waves continue to crash, but it takes a clear day to see over the hill at the end of the row and make out the seafoam spray.
The floor was swept clean by the constant breeze, the only light peered through the door and it lost all energy after dimly lighting the table.
I hate these bugs that gather about the door and won't come in any closer. Spain has never been the same, never regained what it was that we lost. Now there's just the dry heat or the overcast days, the music that never stops, and the ocean that never sleeps.
The fought against the heat in their black clothes their longsleeves and ties, their hats that seemed to heat their heads and cook their brains that never saw the light of the sun. They watched the world go by through an open slit forever never turning to face each other even thought their laments were the same.
A Tuesday was an infinity, the next week an infinity-plus-one. How many had they sat through? And how many more would come before they reached the bottom of the void?

Portable Creativity

I hope hat this is the start of a new era in creativity when there's no excuse, no special place to go, no cell to cloister away in in order to create. Creating on the go, creating in space, creating when the need to create comes to me. It is when it is best in the moment in the time of inspiration in the not caring of the other people thinking. This is when it comes out and pours out and leaves words on an empty space. Creating in the any-place and not needing to go to my space. The universe doesn't end, didn't start in a place fit for it and made for it and holding it in. This feels good, it feels sustained and able to be done.