Living the Life Histological: A Sunday Biji

KEEPER OF LIGHT

Columba leaned back against the warmth of rough granite. Eyes closed, knobs of rock gently digging into his back, his sleepy mind wandered through a field of memory. It arrived empty handed.  It was nearly lost to history, the last time a visitor had trod the sand and slate before the keeper’s house. In his head the visit had become myth. So began another sere summer in servitude to the light.

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LIVING IN THE SUMMERWINTER

Heat begets the melancholy. The turning of the seasons has undergone an inversion from the naive days of adolescence into the bittersweet twilights of adulthood. This has never been more apparent than upon being ambushed by three chords in a summer song that the heart would be happy to never hear again. It is not that the song itself is bad, by some measures, but wistfulness and regret ring hard on ears already full of the same.

The full experience of summer brings understanding of the winter. Your heart understands. It knows the singular jolt to the soul induced by spasming with chill while swathed in the swelter of humid sunlight. It seems impossible, illogical, but there it is. The trigger can be a song, a sound, a smell. Any stimuli, almost. What matters is how such things are woven into the soul. Peculiar combinations of memory and emotion combusting into an incandescent fount of reaction.

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LAUGHING AND DRINKING FROM THE CUP

Sitcoms and soccer and a little sun and sand. The order reversed itself from what I thought it would be, to become what it was meant to be. We watched the games, critiqued the teams, and then laughed ourselves silly over sitcoms of which she had seen more than I. Of course, it is I who has seen more of life. It is not untrue to say I wish the situation was reversed.

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TRIPPIN’

No bones were broken during the fall. The same cannot be said of dignity. Dignity shattered like a glass Christmas ornament in the clutches of a deranged house cat. This sort of thing happens when attention lapses, or is allowed to lapse. Not surprising in this era of distractions, digital and otherwise. People convince themselves they can live without situational awareness, but that is the path to perdition. By our lack of care, we may find ourselves in Hell.

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Call You Home

The call is felt in the blood. A tidal surge in the veins that ghosts the heart with gravity. When least expected, the surge will lift the feet off the floor and leave the urge to be out the door. On the road to the water in all its nervous-making grandeur. The heart fears the swell, and needs it to survive. Dreams tell it so.

A maritime song perhaps first heard in the womb. Blood rushing, swirling through the cataract of the umbilical to percuss the nascent tympani of a budding creature. A glorious song shared between the mother and the child. It would be the child’s first experience of the rhythm of the tides as expressed in heartbeats and phases of the moon. It would be fifteen years or more until a day came when the youth stood on the shore, dumbfounded, without understanding why the sight and sound of the waves was bracingly new and shockingly ancient. He felt it without comprehension of the reasons.

It could be that this illumination was the young man’s first real glimpse at the Mystery of life. There could be no forgetting of that energy and electrification in this first experience of synchronization between the heart, blood, and consciousness. The youth could not know then just how similar the feeling would be when, years later, he made love for the first time. The congruency would be sweet and shocking.

But that was in the future. The shore was the Now. Of course, the Future is the Now at some point. This realization came home to roost years later, experiencing the same sensations in different circumstances. It reminded the man of comedian Brother Dave Gardner, heard decades ago on a vinyl record, who quipped that you can’t do the same thing again but “You can do something similar!” Brother Dave was referring to people who had a good time at gatherings, but the sentiment applied still. A beatnik comic channeling the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, as interpreted by a young man who woke up in middle age.

Today that man stood with his toes in the surf and fingertips wet from the sea. The taste of that water lay lightly on his tongue. It was the taste of something similar, a different river, but realized anew in the heart. It tasted like home.

Dawn Creeps In

Soft footpads glide over the forgiving bed of the forest floor. Musky scent of deer and other feed on the hoof floods the flared nostrils, quickens the pulse, and commands the attention. Gold-green eyes stare along the path that glows softly in the light of a waning crescent moon, filtered through the leaves. The jaguar opens its muzzle. Its tongue curls, canines gleam. There is another scent on the wind. One the beast does not quite know what to make of it. Familiar, perhaps, but not sensed in what felt like centuries. The jaguar pauses. It feels something. It moves forward into the silvery black.

Waves hit the shore. Insistent pounding on the sand drums into the cottage. I awake with a start, my legs and arms twitching in the damp cool of the cottage. I had fallen asleep in the rocking chair adjacent to the hearth. The fire was nearly gone. The low smolder of embers glowed dully under a coating of ash. Salty woodsmoke tang hung in the gravid air. My heart beat in a ragged arrangement of jittery blood music as I shook my head clear of the phantom jaguar of which I dreamt. The air held musk, too.

Or perhaps the jaguar dreamt it was me. My jaw ached, hands and feet throbbing with a slow ache. There were scrapes on all of them. Scrapes that had not been there when I had lowered my exhausted body into the chair to watch the sundown shadows creeps down the walls of the cottage. I studied my hands in the nascent glow of the dawn light creeping over the horizon over the sea. The horizon was an indigo terminator cutting off the sky. It fluttered and rolled.

I sat up in the chair. Through casements hazed with salt I watched the muttering sea harangue the shoreline. The breakers carried with them an expectation, a prediction, that today I would have a visitor. The thought unsettled and delighted me. Had it been years since the headland bore witness to the presence of another? My heart felt it so. Rare it was to have strange footprints on the sand around the cottage.

The sky grew brighter. Standing up to stretch I felt my skin tighten where exposed by the falling blanket. Something or someone was on the way. I don’t know how I knew what I knew. I shuffled over to the kettle, setting it up to make tea. A cup or two to push back the chill, as me and the jaguar settled in to await the dawn creeping on on soft, expectant feet.

100 Year Flood

Jaguar sits on the rocks above the man below in the arroyo. Its fur lifts and stands, sensing the cosmic drumming of the approaching storm. Electricity is in the air. A mineral wind gravid with ozone washes over the parched gravel and sand. Jaguar sniffs, a low rumble seeping from his chest. Gates were about to open.

The man removes his hat. From the shadow of the sweat-stained felt, red eyes in a sunbeaten face scan the sky with a cross between fear and hope.

He stands on quivering legs. He stares up at the darkening sky, unaware of the presence behind him. Faint lightning flashing quicksilver through cottony gray haze. The horizon below the clouds is a gauzy smear of rain.

Rain. The man could smell it. His parched throat contracted around the promise and memory of the blessed rain. Kaleidoscopic images spinning through a mind in danger of floating away, tethered to the earth only by a wiry, desiccated body. He recalled the flowers of his youth. Riots of red and white, indigo and yellow, all brought forth by the magic of a rain that had shied away from his earth for centuries.

The line of clouds rolled closer. The wind was picking up. Strands of graying hair swatted about, held briefly in place like spikes. Sweat salt and trail dust made an impromptu pomade the man could feel as he ran a trembling hand over his head. He wondered if he would be presentable when then rains fell and the flowers grew and hope beyond hope she would be there. He missed her.

Jaguar crouches low. The otherworld vibrations coursed through the rock into its haunches. Gold-green eyes, slitted against the fading sun, took in the gauzy lights flickering around the man. Its nostrils flared. It could smell the fear and the longing radiating from the man. There was something else, something deeper. A bolt of lighting touched down at the head of the arroyo. In the flash, jaguar knew. The man was a shaman, degraded and frail in his loss. 

The rain began to fall. Swirls of rock dust and sand kicked up by gusts of wind. The man stood still. He straddled a thin stream running over the bottom of the arroyo. Watching the water rise, he held no fear of flash floods. In the reverse, he welcomed the idea. A wall of water might be the thing he needed to return the ability to travel between worlds. Or at least feel.

Nature granted his wish. The rain was in sheets now, waterfalls from the sky. No arks in sight but a deluge of biblical proportions nonetheless. The stream rose with astonishing speed. The surface of the water became a living thing. The water rose past the man's ankles, his calves. He did not move. The sky was dusty black shot through with silver where the raindrops streaked down from heaven. He smiled. The water was at his waist. Up ahead, a roiling mass of water hurtled down the arroyo. He opened his arms and waited.

Jaguar crouched. It tensed to spring. The wall of water was bearing down fast on the man. The membrane between worlds was dissolving. Jaguar knew now it was the spirit the shaman for which the man mourned. The fur stood up on its back. An involuntary grimace wrinkled its snout. Before it a silver thread swayed in the wind, stretching from beast to man. It would jump. The water was near.

The man raised shaking arms. The water wall bore down on him. He sought nothing but release. His eyes rolled back in his head. A quick gesture to urge the water onward.

Jaguar tensed. The flood was nearly on top of the shaman. Teeth bared, growling to match the deep rumbling  of thunder that was shaking the earth, splitting the sky. Jaguar leapt.

The water wall slammed into the man. He felt himself thrown backward, tumbling head over heels in gritty liquid. A giant's hand pressed his chest forcing him down into the gravel on the arroyo bottom. He could not breathe. He did not care. Another surge of water lifted him up to slam him down again. In the split second between the blow and unconsciousness, the shaman felt something snap, like the breaking of a wire. In that instant, he thought he knew the surcease of pain. The world went black.

Days passed. Or perhaps minutes smeared out into hours by the slowing of time. Heat was all around. Red glow of sunlight seeping through eyes crusted with salt-sweat and sand. The shaman awoke a cell at a time. He felt the rocks digging into his back. It was not pain, so much as a reminder that he was still alive. His heart beat gently in a chest no longer bound by the strictures of loss and fear. All around him, the wind sighed and flowers brushed his cheeks. The bowl of the sky rang out with the peal of a circling hawk.

Perfume filled the shaman's nostrils. The aroma brought a smile to his ragged face. He breathed deep. Once. Twice. Memories come flooding in with odd sensation of being from the future. Without opening his eyes he ran his hands over his cheeks. They were rough with stubble.  He opened his eyes and sat up.

All around were wildflowers. Yellow, blue, red in a riot of rapid growth and bursting of energy from the flood waters. The shaman stared in awe. To be surrounded by such life was the stuff of ancient memories. His heart stirred. The sensation brought his fingertips to his chest as if to reassure himself that the beating was real. The hawk cried out again. It was time to stand.

He pushed himself up on trembling legs. Dizziness swept over him causing a sharp intake of breath. The sky was a dome of azure laced with silvery clouds. Their shadows brushed over the shaman. He felt the feathery touch as a series of ripples over his skin.

No longer in the arroyo, the shaman found himself facing a sea of flowers stretching out before him in a grand carpet before a line of cottonwood trees a short distance away. The flowers swayed in the breeze. A welcome, he thought. A welcome back to the world. It was at that moment that he noticed the tears in his shirt, laced over scratches on his chest.

He looked down. The scratches had the look of having come from the business end of claws. Large claws. The scratches were bleeding slightly but the edges were fresh and pink after the tumbling in the water. He brushed the scratches with raw fingertips. A jolt lanced through his body. He blinked rapidly in a light gone green and gold.

Rustle of petals. Cry of hawk. Motion from the trees caught his eye. Standing straighter while the sun warmed his stiff shoulders, he could see her there at the edge of the cottonwoods. His knees nearly buckled.

She stepped forward in a languid walk through the flowers. He began to move towards her on tottering legs. The flowers seemed to kneel in her presence. She neared him with arms at her side and palms open, as if to say "We are here. This is life."

Beside the shaman the flowers bowed under the weight of invisible treads, paw prints in the petrichorean earth. Two shadows stretched out before the man, limning themselves onto the legs of the woman. They stopped. She smiled. His chest heaved when she opened her arms while beckoning him forward. 

As he moved into her embrace the shadow on the grass disappeared like smoke, slowly dissolving into the shaman's own. The flower perfume thickened into the air, closing about them. The sun slid down the sky. His veins electric with life, she whispered secrets into the growls rumbling up from his soul while the Universe sprang to life around them.

Jaguar in Winter

Blood slows after the solstice but does not stop. Sunlight is a precious metal mined from the space between the shadows of the leaves and branches. The dappled chest breathes deep while drawing in the scents of a forest teetering on the dull edge of a chasm called sleep. The price of a full belly rises in proportion to its increased rarity, and occupies a greater volume of the mind behind green-gold eyes on the lookout for any opportunity for satiety. The jaguar, el tigre, knows this as blood-red filigree upon its fangs.

Breath acquires new edges in the blue-tinged light of the turning of the year. It flows against the lips and throat like ice slurry in a freezing river. This is a very different thing that the cottony dampness of summertime air, gravid with the weight of humidity and magnified odors. But those odors are there, if muted. The coding still exists, the minute signals of direction, time, and taste that orient the jaguar in the universe. It knows by dint of experience what will be worth the effort and what will not. Energy is a resource to be nurtured not squandered when the earth is being stingy with its offerings.

Flesh hangs upon bones soaked in magic, enrobed in a glory of rosettes evoking the interweaving of el tigre with the soil and rock upon which it sits. The pads of its paws register the chill seeping up through the earth. The cold itself is another marker, a facet of the medium which delivers the message signified by two hundred pounds of deadly miracle. The jaguar does not think much about the cold. It is acceptance of a rhythm composed eons before the jaguar manifested in this particular set of temporospatial circumstances. It knows that outrunning the cold is foolish and wasteful. It will not bother trying.

Bones hold the flesh in place. Bones are its bulwark against the capriciousness of seasons and the weather. It is perhaps bones more so than belly that have a deeper regard for hunger and the changing of seasons. The belly yawps and whines when it goes unfilled. The bones repose stolidly in the memory of what it means to be truly hollow. The belly may be satisfied with the sucking of an egg, but it takes blood on the fangs to calm the bones. This is wisdom to the jaguar. It will breathe patiently in the wan light of winter, moving carefully, keeping in mind the gift of flesh and blood, and all the glorious power contained within. 

Electric Potsherds, or Fragments of a Mind

This is a story about a...no. No, it isn't. A story has characters and a plot. What do these fragments represent? Characters, surely. But plot? Perhaps about as much plot as plastic shopping bags swirling around in a dust devil. This is what happens when ideas come without focus. 

DIFFRACTIVE ATTENTION
It is a wonder to me how the human race, and in specific the human that is me, manages to survive these days. I have written of this before, many moons ago. Existing in a flurry of information, data, numbers, feeds, stats. How do we keep our eyes on the road when the road is overlaid with avatars and sigils that have no bearing on the task at hand? I ask myself this on a daily basis and give thanks that I have driven many miles without hitting anything or anyone.

FASCINATING FACTS ABOUT A REALLY DEEP HOLE
Kola Superdeep: no, it is not some weird Japanese soft drink. It is a borehole completed by Russian scientists after beginning drilling in 1970, ultimately reaching a depth below the surface of the Earth of 40,230 feet. That is a deep hole, folks. It is called Kola because the Soviets established the drill head on the Kola Peninsula. Some facts:

Latitude and longitude coordinates:  69°23′46.39″N 30°36′31.20″E
Years drilled: 1971 to 1989
Year abandoned: 2006
Depth reached: 40,230 feet (12,262 meters)
Temperature at bottom: 356 °F
Why they did it: Because why not?

FLASH FICTION FOR YOU!
He was imprisoned for the crime of being normal, without formal charges or a lawyer. A rented mule. They beat him like a rented mule. He bore the stripes on his back for decades until one day the scars turned him inside out. It was then that he saw there had been a hole in the bars the entire time of his incarceration. His blood is on the steel to this day.

DAY 18,263 - THEY SUSPECT EVERYTHING
The experiment is not going as hoped. En masse the Others are expressing doubts about Subject's humanity. Trending data suggests that the mask is faulty, or that the laboratory-applied veneer of civilization is sloughing off. If such deterioration does not reverse itself, our attempts at integration will be exposed. This represents a potential setback of years. 

An emergency meeting of the Human Reorganization Committee has been called. We cannot risk the loss of decades of painstaking work.

WE ALL COME FROM DIVORCE
"We all come from divorce!" he says. "This is an age of divorce. Things that belong together have been taken apart. And you can't put it ALL back together again. What you can do, is the only thing you can do. You take two things that ought to be together and you put them together. Two things! Not ALL things."

-Wendell Berry, in The Seer

LOVE IS THE HAMMER POUNDING OUR ANVIL HEARTS
I saw a murmuration of starlings against the sunrise on the morning I sent her home. They fluttered and swirled, living pennant in the hands of a master gymnast. It is not often that the universe stirs the spiritual in the cold stone of my heart, but that morning was different. My regret, beyond the usual, was that it was a machine to which I entrusted the star of my soul and not those starlings. I have no doubt the birds would have cared well for her. The machine I grudgingly trust, a melancholy but necessary trust.

EXUBERANCE!
Wonderful they were, those plump sparrows frolicking in the fountain below the balcony of the inn. How alive they must have been to leap headlong into chilly water on such a crisp fall morning! A New Mexican cerulean sky and argentine light on the Sangre De Cristo implored us to do the same. Briefly a sparrow fluttered in my heart, warmed by sips of tea.

STATISTICALLY SPEAKING, THE UNITED STATES IS EXTREMELY LUCKY
According to a number of sources, there are an estimated 110 million anti-personnel land mines left in the ground around the world. 110 million. That is roughly one mine for every 52 people on Earth. In more colorful parlance, that is a shit-ton of land mines.

It is a safe bet that none of those mines is hidden in American soil.  Think about that the next time you go digging in your yard to plant some flowers or vegetables. Sustenance without fear of getting your legs blown off.

THAT WHICH I HOPE IS TRUE: STARDUST AND ROSE PETALS
Little breathy gulps as the child feeds in your arms. The scent is in the sweat, the taste of it is dark and burnt sweet in the back of your throat. Do not bother coughing, convulsive spasms will not clear it. Not that it should. The one true remedy is to drink deep of this bright matter. Swallow that, earthlings, it is the proof of life. Gazing deep into those eyes of indigo and coal it will be inescapable from you that the child and yourself are made of stardust and rose petals.

Magpie Tales 298: Dark Star

Image via Magpie Tales

What did we really think, back in the days of gold and glory? That the world would stop spinning at our command, our armor would never tarnish and split, our suns would not go out? Of course we did. Gold plated and bullet proof, we were. Legends in our own minds.

All of us except Ronnie, perhaps. He always seemed a bit wiser than us. No, wiser is perhaps unfair. Who understands wisdom when you never have had the world break your heart? Ronnie was less naive than us. We were unaware that his heart maybe was broken before we had the capacity to understand. Maybe that is why he left to put it back together before we even realized it would happen.

Jimmy died in the war protecting his mates. No surprise, he was always testing his bravery, it's what he wanted to do. I miss him. Caroline wove her way in and out of several time-wasters until she hit it big with writing. Funny how a story about a boy who grew up believing he was Satan could be turned into a living, with six novels and a screenplay under her belt. She deserves the accolades.

Lynn used to be a nurse until one day she decided that acting was better suited to her mindset. A beautiful mindset, it should be said, and after witnessing her perform you could understand the meaning of "doing God's work." I'll bet her patients never forget her, though.  Nathan is a lawyer now. Apparently a life of big suits and small cigars, washing the blood off of the money. Skill in arguing has its own peculiar rewards, I suppose. Too bad I lacked the ambition to follow his lead.

My body is on a river, milky brown like sweet coffee. My mind is somewhere between there and what used to be home. It floats in the gauzy humid air, the gnats flitting about my wet face. A tiny bee sips sweat from the corner of my eye. I hesitate to disturb it, this creature fulfilling its nature. I, too, sip at the sweat of the universe, all these years of searching.

We ease the boat upriver. The liquid swish of the oars ending in muted clacks of wood on wood. The guide murmurs something about stopping soon as nightfall is not that distant. He sounds far away and as if wrapped in cotton. I know we need to stop. But I cannot. The years fall away as layers of the onion. At the center is Ronnie. I haven't heard from him in years, but the quantum waves of his broken heart have disturbed the star in the center of mine.

Gravity. Starlight. A broken heart looking to be repaired in the fixing of others. He left decades ago to do good work, and in the process, broke a little of us. I keep looking, searching, scenting the fading trail laced across this world. He is out there, somewhere in the green hellishness of this life. Yet I think, maybe he is sitting right here in the boat. Maybe his heart is mine, lacerated, shattered, and looking to come home.

Sunday Meditation #44: Interstitial Crisis

I have spent my life making much of the in between. The places no one thinks about, the leftover, the marginal, the edges of the edges. 

I am the interstitial. I am the space between. I am the floor between floors holding things rarely in mind unless they break. The floors that matter only if the power fails or the air conditioning gives up. This is my life, my head space to carry the pipes and the ducts that allow others to do the talking. It is my bed and I must lie in it.

Floor 13-1/2. Duck your head when stepping off the elevator. A condition of existence when one chooses to live in the margins of the book. Is this a cry for pity? No. No pity needed. This path is voluntary, if somewhat regrettable.

The battle cry these days seems to be "No regrets!", but in my mind I think that is just rationalization of emotional laziness, an unwillingness to acknowledge that what we have done may have hurt others. To swallow the pill of No Regrets is to announce to the world that we have not been paying attention to our lives, to living. To live honestly is to experience regret.

A digression, if I may be indulged. To my ears most of those people whom I have heard say "No regrets!", or have it tattooed somewhere on their person, seem to be overbearing types who have made a lot of willful mistakes. Their hoisting of the banner of No Regret is an attempt to disown responsibility, to avoid a reckoning of the emotional damage they may have wrought.

If I were to campaign my life on the platforms of no regrets, it would be from the perspective of not having done or said something regretful in the first place. My life would be lived in such a way as to do the things I want to do the way I want to do them, without hurting others in the process. An ideal, I know. One that is impossible to attain.

Ah, I see this has gone off the rails a bit, has it not? Somehow I drifted from a meditation on living in the in-between to a screed about pretending to live without regrets. How does this happen? A side effect, perhaps, of living life in the interstices, where one thinks too much and maybe really lives not enough. This is what I get for insisting on living at the edges, for making my home in the spaces in between.

Choir in the Saltgrass

The whirring of crickets is a hymn to nostalgia, droning in my ears as counterpoint to the scent of sun-warmed saltgrass buzzing in my nostrils. Warm breezes curled through the windows, bringing with them a gauzy doze. I could sleep here forever, lost, by the sea.

Summer on the headland is ever a surprise, the shock of the familiar after excess time away. Light takes on crystalline edges, burning out details most of the day. Most of the days, that is, when the downy clouds do not pull themselves over the cerulean bed of the sky, the jade sheets of the sea.

I have no reckoning of my daydream time at the windows facing the sea. That time has passed I can ascertain from the lengthening shadow of the lighter propped up on the sill. A small chromed gnomon serving as ad hoc sundial, the sun gleams from its rounded corners.

The lighter is warmed only by the sunlight. I have not touched it in days except to move it about the cottage. The last cigarette was snuffed out near a week gone. Lungs and heart having ganged up on the mind, the push came in the form of the desiccating heat of summer. It was too hot to fill my lungs with the smoke of burning weeds. 

The effort to acquire more tobacco had lately lost its charm, as well. Town was a short drive or a long walk, and I felt no inclination to do either. Such a journey would require the exchange of human currency. The bank of my soul was far too empty to make those transactions on credit. I had no energy for the.

No, far better to save that energy for something vital, like food or perhaps a quart of stout. Beside, there was no rush out here at the edge of the world swaddled in slow time. The larder was full enough. My pens and journals were laid out on the desk under the windows, the ones facing the sea. The cream-colored pages beckoned to me, some already incised with the calligraphy of my thoughts that seeped sporadically from the depths of my mind. Calligraphy, or crow tracks, depending on how one chose to view the words.

Crows. The thought of the wily birds, feet dipped in ink and skittering across the journals, made me smile. Raucous squawks from a pair of gulls down on the shingle broke my reverie. Perhaps they had read my mind and wanted in on the joke. I took the interruption as a sign that I should get back to work.

Work, such as it is. I turned to adjust the casement. The breeze was softer and slower. I heard the crickets whirr again in a melodic bleat that went on longer than usual. In that short span of seconds I found myself in the backyard of my youth. The sun was high, filtering through the lacy skein of leaves over my head. I was on a blanket. A book lay on my chest, my left thumb somehow acting as bookmark. I was perhaps twelve years old, a book worm, with no idea of the world that lay ahead of me. I drifted back into a cottony nap.

Another squawk from the gulls. A resounding boom and hiss as what must have been a seventh wave pummeled the shore. My feet tingled from a deep vibration that worked its way up through the sand below the plank floor of the cottage. I sat up straight, intensely aware of the afternoon slipping away. Fingers curled reflexively as if to strike the lighter.

"There is no past, there is no future, there is only this now," I muttered to the salt air. The gulls struck out over the deepening green of the waves as I picked up a pen. My hand trembled slightly as I bent my head to write. Sunlight sparkled off the lighter, while below in the saltgrass the crickets sang to me of youth and wisdom.

Blackbird

God and the aspens alone knew how many winters the derelict building had seen, Tadhg reckoned. Where once were windows, bits of rotted wooden frames clinging to lichen-furred stone. The blank openings held the memory of glass, but no traces of the panes could be seen in the grasses nudging the slumping sides of the building. To his eyes, the ruin looked like it had been poured into place rather than by stacking stone upon stone. 

He wondered for what the building had been designed. Living hut? Chapel? The structure sat mute, giving few clues in its architecture. Small square openings up near the eaves gave Tadhg the feeling it had been used for something other than worship, but surely this must be the shrine for which he had so long been searching. He stood still in the morning light, shallow breath and pounding heart as his eyes searched for anything that would confirm his hopes.

He saw it then. In the lichen covered carvings above the doorway there was the softened outline of a man, arm outstretched, with a bird perched on his palm. At its feet was carved a tangle of sticks that Tadhg thought to be a nest. Tears of joy sprang from his dry eyes. St. Kevin and the blackbird, he was sure of it.

The small front door, or what was left of it, stood beckoning. Its opening was a pointed arch, inky black in shadows beyond. Tiny chunks of wood clung to the stonework. There had been a frame there, once and long ago, but the doors now existed only in piles of pale splinters mounded over the threshold. The jamb stones were mottled by little blooms of rust, florets telling of hinges long corroded away. Tadhg spotted a lump that he guessed used to be a beaten iron rivet. It bore more than a passing resemblance to the small russet-orange mushrooms that flecked the woods surrounding the building. 

The pilgrim carefully stepped over the threshold. Inside, the cool air filled his nostrils with the redolence of musky damp and cool stone. He breathed deep, amazed at the silence and the chill of the air. Translucent obsidian shadows were pierced by argentine shafts of light that coruscated through the windows and holes in the roof. Along the walls were carved stone shelves, dusted with the remains of objects long decayed.

At the rear of the space, Tadhg saw what could have been a stone shelf. An urn sat on it, both carved of the same greenish-black rock. He moved towards the back to get a closer look. The shelf was a thick, long slab of stone corbeled into the wall. It showed signs of wear, the edges worn smooth by the passage of hands and legs. Centered in the wall above the ledge was a small opening in the wall. Light streamed in. A soft breeze carried with it the liquid songs of birds laced with the scent of sun-warmed grass. A patch of azure sky could be glimpsed through the window.

Tadhg hoisted himself up onto the ledge. He found that he could not stand fully upright without scraping his head on the underside of the rough rafters and stone roof tiles. He knelt down, resting his arms on the sill of the window. He leaned forward to get a better view. 

The hut was surrounded by trees forming a glade around the structure. Aspens, birch, maples, perhaps. The sound of birds had grown louder. Tadhg could see their numbers flitting through the leaves, an avian susurrus washing him in song. Straight ahead through a gap in the trees could be spied a far-off mountain. Its sides were furred with green, deep green, so green the pilgrim felt himself begin to swoon.

"Such beauty here",  he whispered. His heart filled with a longing that threaten to burst him wide open. His vision swam with tears. Faintness overtook him, reminding him that he had not eaten properly in days. Now he felt he could not leave, the ache inside transforming into peace. Tadhg thrust his arm out the window to grasp desperately at the mountain as if it were closer. The tears welled into outright sobbing.

The sun felt so warm on his upturned palm. The hollow filled with liquid gold light. Tadhg knelt, trembling and praying. A sudden flurry of motion surprised him but he did not flinch as the light in his palm was replaced by a bird. A blackbird carrying a small bundle of grass in its beak. It eyed the pilgrim calmly, head cocking up and down.

Tadhg froze. The ache in his knees subsided, the weariness in his body drained away. In its place he could feel warmth spreading throughout, as if the earth itself were granting him peace. His legs and back thrummed with the seismic energies of the rock on which he knelt. He felt the blood in his veins as the trees feel their sap. The stuff of rivers flowed in his heart.

The blackbird ruffled its wings. With the skill of a tailor, it began to weave the grasses into a little bowl in Tadhg's palm, which trembled slightly at the end of his tired, sun-brown arm. The blackbird flitted away, returning shortly thereafter with another bundle of grass. The was a tiny leaf caught up in the green strands. These were swiftly knitted into the   grasses already there. The blackbird flew away, returned, flew away, returned.

The clouds rolled by. The sun arced slowly down the sky. The blackbird continued its trips back and forth across the glade. Tadhg watched in silent awe as the nest took shape in his hand. The blackbird completed it in the russet-gold light of the afternoon, settling down into a basket if its own creation. 

A trance deepened upon the pilgrim. He knew then that he would not move until the eggs were laid, the birds grown and flying on their own journeys beneath the sun. He would not move until the task was complete. Until he was complete. 

Night fell. Crystalline stars wheeled across the sky as the blackbird murmured to Tadhg of its dreams of Creation and fulfillment. The pilgrim, waiting patiently, felt the stirrings of love in his stony heart.

Every Day I Am Schrödinger's Cat

Red eyes flickering

Fever state of life or death,

Which will I awake? 

Jaguar Heart

Godl sits in the forest, quiet, dappled with gold light seeping between the leaves. Half-hearted rumbles vibrate the bones of his deep chest. The jaguar would weep if he could. A jaguar on the verge of weeping signals the end of the world.  Do humans know this?

The jaguar does not. Hot breath swirls over bared fangs as it wonders why it cannot howl out the loneliness in the core of its heart. 

On the Unaccountable Sadness of Orchestral Maneuvers in the Morning (Sunday Meditation #39)

I find sometimes that a familiar song played solely on violins and such often leaves me with a desire to weep. A curious phenomenon that is not conducive to the conduct of business in the public sphere. While not given to frequent weeping, I am not a man that is afraid to let it vent if circumstances dictate.

Still, it is troublesome. Not the sort of thing that should occur on an otherwise ordinary Thursday morning. Sweeping the floor, tending the shop: the retail equivalent of the Buddhist practice to chop wood, carry water. Music played and the tune was familiar, although I could not recall its name. An instrumental version heavy on violins and cellos. I paused while leaning on the broom. A lump formed in my throat. There called a low voice in my head, asking why this must be so.

I had no answer to this homesickness. Perhaps it is the vestige of the little boy in me, or the mercurial passions of the Irish poet I hope lives on my heart. Maybe there is no difference between the two. All I know is that in chords I cannot name I felt a pull between those things I left behind and those things towards which I travel.

The song ended. I swept the floor, greeted the customers. The lump I swallowed along with the tears that never reached my eyes. There was new music in my head, it was good, I kept moving towards the light.

Magpie Tale 213: His Other Life

Image via Magpie Tales

Shaking hand opened the drawer

Wormy chestnut, waxy blackened 

angsty scrawls of sun-faded youth 

Burden of years constricts the heart

that sees the tarot of inks it never wore 

Never will, not in this life, nevermore,

Change has come, blood spilled

in a different river from passion's run

Magpie Tales 209: Our Lady of the Spirit Road

The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897, by Henry Rousseau via Magpie Tales

I cherish the memory of her breath. The roughness of strong tea and fried ramps is no ordinary aphrodisiac but it haunts me still. Travelers when we met, travelers when we parted long ago under a hunter's moon, I do not believe I can gaze on a sky such as that without weeping at the loss.

To live in the verge is no simple thing, but possible. More of us do it than one might consider. Magadalena certainly did. I was one of them for however brief. Chasing my spirit animal over hill and sward had become my life's work. She had already accomplished hers when I crested the rise and saw her tending a small fire under a nearby tree. She looked at me with eyes of sunlit ice. 

I stood on the shoulder of the road. My hands fidgeted nervously with my hat. I hadn't know I had taken it off, I was so mesmerized by those eyes. A smile broke the road-weary map of her face. She raised a dusky hand and bade me join her at the kettle. I sat. We talked of warm sun and cold hearts. She gave me tea. We became lovers at that moment, though we knew it not.

The day we parted began in an unsettled dawn. Road weary from several days of hard walking, we had come to a fork in the road the night before. There was a clear stream, with fish, and soft grass in which to sleep. Dreams kept me in motion much of the night. Shadows. Beasts that bared fangs at me across strangely colored campfires. I ran through forest and field in argentine moonlight, wondering if I was pursued or pursuer. In my last dream I stumbled over a log and woke up confused and breathless.

The light was submarine. Faint rosiness on the horizon and a barely smoldering fire. I raised my head, bleary eyed to squint over at her. The breath seized in my throat. 

She lay asleep. There was a smile on her face and her right hand was trembling, fluttering. In the dim light and thready smoke I saw what I thought was a beast standing over her, shaggy maned and bright-eyed. Magdalena appeared to be reaching out to it.

In my confusion, I thought she was being attacked. I bolted upright and shouted, waving my arms at the apparition. The beast dissolved, or so I thought. She jerked awake with a loud gasp, blinking at me with those glacial eyes. The look of concern and fright sent a pang through my heart. Taking my hands, we talked of what I had seen. She grew solemn as we made tea.

The fork in the road lay before us. Magdalena had quietly told me that we had different paths now. Mine was not hers, and the creature I sought abided in a different realm. We talked long, and deeply. My heart broke, as did hers, I think, but knew she spoke the truth. After moonrise, we split apart. 

Forks in my roads ever give me pause, nowadays. On nights of the hunter's moon, I walk from moonrise to moonset, looking for Magdalena in the thickness of shadows. Sometimes, I do not weep.

Area 51

Last week I stood on the rim of a desert mountain valley, tanning myself in the ultraviolet radiance of a salt lake pan, the existence of which I had allowed myself the luxury of forgetting. This forgetting is either conceit or folly, I know not which for certain. Perhaps the surprise its discovery creates is a product of willfulness, slag and dross generated by a desire to avoid the unknown irrational roots that anchor a soul to the world.

Queries will be met with neither-confirm-nor-deny. Yes, it is there, people know it by its present absence. This is how I myself know it. Explanation is futile. How does the heart describe the strange machines seen at distance, the enigmatic materials moving under darkness, dissections of mythical extraterrestrials? Who would believe it? Who wants to try, for fear of being branded a flake at best?

I cannot answer in confidence. I look at the dry lake in my heart and marvel at its strangeness. My mouth strains towards words to vocalize what my inward eyes are seeing. My hands trace glyphs in the air and I interrogate myself in my sleep. The dreams. I want to understand why I dream what I dream. There is this underlying belief that my dreams would make sense if only my heart had the vocabulary to parse them.

It does not. Not yet, or perhaps more accurately, my mind does not yet understand the language being spoken. So I wander. No, damn it, not I, it is my mind that wanders. The trail it breaks veers from pampas to forest to lush jungles, yet is always taken aback by the sudden bursting into the arid flatness of a lake gone dry so long ago that the vanishing is lost from memory.

Yet, it is there. It is in the diamond core of my heart, like the grain of sand in the center of a pearl. It is good fortune to laminate life with the bright and the shiny. Mirrors and polish presented to the world in the hope that there will be no misunderstanding or misinterpretation by the world around us. By world, read those we love and humanity in general.

But that is the ideal. Too many strange things happen in this heart-that-is-and-is-not. Phenomena occur that I cannot explain to myself, much less to those around me. It becomes a race between what my heart shows to the world and what the world, in its information vacuum, makes up about my heart. Whispers behind hands, looks of concern or affectionate bemusement, irritated impatience: these are the usual currency of emotional trade when discussing my own personal theater of classified operations.

So last week, I stood once again on the shore of that dry lake bed, the one in my heart, and baked in the sun. Black machines moved in the shimmer, far away across the plain. I wondered if there might be aliens here. I pondered the existence of emotional programs so secret that even my own mind would be at a loss to explain why they are or what they do. Officially, this place doesn't exist.

Unofficially, it does. It is vital to my existence, even if there is no way to describe why. I do not ask questions of it as much as in the past, and that is a good thing, I think. The heart has to learn to accept its own terrain even if that spot on the map is marked 'Unknown', and trust the things that spring from it.

On the Cliff, By the Iron Sea

He usually only became aware of how long he had been running when the sun was high and the wind brisk off the water. His consciousness came into focus like a bubble popping, breath ragged between his lips. It was at those moments the runner would ask himself "How many years, Lord and Father, how many shall I carry you?"

The path led, as it seemed to always, along the edge of high cliffs. Green sod feathered itself out over hard lines of green-black basalt, the fractured planes of which slid sharp into the heaving sea. Slat spray and gulls engaged in a whirling dance of which the runner never tired. He looked forward to them when the sun would rise over the hills and plains after long nights of black and silver stars.

The cries of the gulls were as choirs to ears burned by wind and sun, years upon years of ceaseless motion with the relics upon his callused back. It had been so long since the stone cross in its thick ox-leather bag had been roped on to his back that he had no real memory of the occurence.

The sting of the whip across his calves he had never forgotten. The scars were still there, knurled ridges bulging from legs that resembled stones. The scars ached often, mostly at night when the runner entertained fantasies of walking, or heaven forbid, stopping to lay on the ground. He dreamed of it in his staggering sleep. The desire made him weep when it overtook him.

He cried less now. It attracted beasts in the night and made it difficult to breathe. Outrunning the one and overcoming the other were luxuries he could no longer afford. He grew terrified at the prospect of not making it to the mount, where he had been told he could lay down his burden forever. But the mount seemed no closer than the day his trial had begun.

He saw it now and then. Mostly in dreams. It was there shrouded in mist, far away along a curve in the coast. On this day, he saw it so clearly jutting up from a headland like a giant's fist. A fist that shook itself in his weary face.

"But why, Lord, does it grow no closer? I've run so long, endured so much, yet you offer no solace!" he yelped, wheezing. He was seized by a pang of regret soaked in fear, thinking he might be struck down for such impertinence. The cross in its leather sack hammered the knobs of his spine. He groaned and spat.

The wind continued its low moan over the grass. The sea mumbled and groaned on the rocks below. Neither offered comfort or counsel. The runner's feet continued their slow shambling run along the cliff. He did not hold his breath waiting for a sign.

The sun slid a few minutes of arc down the dome of the sky. The runner looked up as a passing shadow glissaded across his path, tracking over the shiny grime of his face. It was a gull, huge and gray, flying in a slow figure eight pattern just overhead. It seemed to be watching the runner. Its eyes luminous in the afternoon light remained fixed on him.

The runner grunted, shifted the weight of the leather bag so the straps would not dig in so deep. Off in the distance the mount was slowly fading into a mist rolling in off the ocean. The runner grunted, an idea taking shape in his head.

He watched the mist, waiting for it to swallow up the mount whole. His pace remained constant, but somehow he felt lighter on his feet. He felt the fear lifting from his belly and his heart. He raised his sunburned hands up to grasp the straps of the sack. Thumbs under the stiff rawhide, he waited still. The mount was nearly gone, only the tip showing up above the cloud bank. The runner allowed himself a faint smile.

The gull swooped lazily back and forth, eyes intent on the runner. The setting sun flashed on the tip of the mount, then it was gone, swathed in the thickening mist. The runner smiled openly. He lifted the sack off of his shoulders, veering closer to the edge of the cliff. Below he could see a cove where the water seemed deeply blue-green where it met the slick basalt knifing down in to it. Perhaps it was deeper there, he thought. 

The sack slid off his back, dangling by a strap in his hand. He ran faster, feeling lighter, and began to slowly whirl the sack in a windmill arc. Faster, faster, it spun, the sweat-stained leather looking like a giant heart in the blood light of the waning sun. The runner roared, a bell toll of pent-up anguish, and flung the sack over the cliff. He stopped, suddenly, almost falling over with dizziness after years of running.

The sack pinwheeled its way down to land with a subdued splash, sucked under by a huge wave that had come crashing out of the far sea. The gull shrieked and spiraled over the head of the runner, who hunched over panting with fear and relief. His legs trembled, as did his hands, but he had never felt so free as he did then.

The gull landed on the path some yard away in the direction of the mount. The runner turned to look. He saw that the mist was approaching them even now, dimming the sun and muffling the wind and sea. The mount was invisible.

The runner straightened up. He stretched, the lack of weight on his back novel but welcome. He waved to the gull, who then launched itself into the air with a squawk. It circled twice, then headed off into the mist towards the mount.

The runner grinned. He took the gull's flight as a sign, and began walking to follow the bird. Walking, he told himself. Walking. After all these years, he would walk to his meeting with Lord, and carry upon himself no burdens cast upon him by anyone but himself.

His heart began to slow. Peace was upon him, even as the sun slid below the edge of the sea.

 

The Dish Eaten Banishes the Eater

8:31 PM. Twilight deepens, the air tinged that shade of nickel-silver so lovely I wish I was a metalsmith. But I am not. I am many things, I do not know what I am right here, right now, except sated.

It is curious to me, this tightrope tension cable that is my core. It has returned after a longish hiatus. It is back with purpose, a wild beast that has tunneled into my spine and wrapped itself around by brain stem. The claws I can feel digging into my belly. It breathes on my neck while I sleep. It sits beside me in the car as I drive about running errands and pursuing the elusive dollar. Its eyes, I fancy, are a deep green-gold. I must kill it.

Failing that, I must at least put it back in the wilds from whence it sprung. This will be a difficult but necessary undertaking. Both the beast and the need to banish it are unavoidable facts of my existence.

I can imagine this notion may disturb some folks. It disturbs me, too. But before anyone gets too worried I can say this: I have ideas. Notions. Things what give me reasons to be cheerful and know that there is a big difference between what I worry is in the dark and what is actually in the dark.

You see, I have my own personal beast-killer. Night-banisher. The heart's fire to the mind's Shere Khan. I call it...dinner.

Tonight's dinner, anyway. It was an impromptu affair, which many of my solitary dinners at home tend to be. I surprised myself by taking on the beast at the root of its lair. I say surprised because it had been a long, busy day. That cable was wound up. I had works to do and my companions had departed for a weekend road trip that I was unable to join.

I sat in front of the computer, tending the machine and marking off tasks. The prospect of eating alone underwhelmed me, especially in light of contemplating yet another sandwich grabbed on the run. The resignation welled up inside, and I told myself to accept things, to stop thinking.

I stepped into the kitchen for a small snack. The machine hummed softly, files spilling in, folders filling up. I nibbled a tortilla chip. Pouring a cup of tea, I absentmindedly opened the fridge, expecting nothing but cold air and dashed hopes.

What I discovered was promise. Antidotes. Balm for the belly. I found peppers and onion and salmon. My mind perked up. Opening the pantry I found a can of whole tomatoes, and some dried pepper flakes. Behind me on the counter, a jar of rice. Saffron in the cupboard. Garlic. And down low, a small jar of saffron-laced curry powder. I had ideas, and a small smile.

Clicks and clanks, a turning of cogs, the cable began to slacken. The beast began to back away. I left the machine to its own infernal devices and gave my obeisances to the cutting board and the stove. I had no clear idea of what I was making, only that I believed it would be good. I believed it would force the beast to let go.

I chopped. I stirred. I cooked rice, simmered tomatoes and other good things. The beast moved to the edge of the clearing, growling in a way I found comical rather than frightening. When I took the lids off the pans, the beast stood and turned as if to leave. When I plated my creation, inhaling the aroma and eying the colors with delight, the beast slowly walked away.

I took my plate outside to the table on the patio. The sun was going down in a warm breeze. I sat down, fork and spoon in hand. I watched the beast slowly padding away into the bushes behind the corner shed. It did not turn to see me salute its retreat with raised utensils, but its tail twitched wickedly. I think it knew it was whipped, this time. It may have been the wind, but I swore I heard the leaves rustle as the beast cleared the fence.

I chewed my creation slowly. The tension in my spine and belly drained away, leaving me in a state of soft grace. The plate opened up, the red and gold disappearing spoonful by forkful. The beast will probably be back, I reckon. But tonight, here and now, it is outside the fence and I am inside, where it is peaceful.

Taking Fire

Winter light of lapis and polished sterling flooded the room through the paired windows. The stone around the openings flared outward into the room, magnifying the illumination to make the infirmary cell much brighter than Rāhula would have imagined. He was grateful, prayers of thanks going up every morning when the sun slipped into his room.

The old monk lay still, his eyes tracking the progress of snow finches across the flagstone patio outside the window. His bed had been pushed close to the window to afford a view out. The weight of the blankets and bandages served as warm anchors. But it was the pain in his skin that acted as biggest shackle. Rāhula's eyes twitched in time with the hopping birds, his racing mind considering that the pain was simply another attachment. The task, he thought, was to consume the horrible ache before it consumed him.

The smell of gasoline lingered as a phantom haunt in his nostrils. Blinding sunlight and the horrified screams of passers-by kaleidoscoped across his memory. He gritted his teeth. Tears surged, searing his dry eyes. Rapid blinks cleared his vision. The snow finches snapped into sharp focus.

Rāhula smiled, a reflex action at odds with his will, but felt good. Watching the finches peck at the black scatterings of nyjer seeds on the snow, Rāhula decided then that he would never again set himself afire for anyone. Not the government, not the news, not even himself.

Tide

The old soul wearing a middle ground body sat in preternatural calm, on warm rocks with the cold sea lapping at his feet. He thought of currents, the Gulf Stream and Humboldts of the world caressing his legs with soft whispers of presences in the deep. His jeans were three shade of indigo dissolving into the restless water. There were barnacles, scratchy.

For the first time in his life the gelatinous fingers of seaweed entwined about his toes failed to make him shudder. This was new. Perhaps a sign of new things to come. A sea change, he thought. The idea brought a smile to his sunburned cheeks.

Sea change. Yes. The old soul reached up to adjust the salt-rimed hat that crowned his head. The hat was old, its fabric soaked with memory, and with pretensions to being green. He snugged it down, and pulled his windbreaker a little closer in. The argentine sun was high up in a sky that defined cerulean yet it offered little real warmth. Wind and water saw to that.

Still, he kept his feet where the breakers could touch them. The water was cold, but felt good. In its own aqueous way it felt like a blanket the old soul used to have, back when he was a boy and the world was new. The water rose and fell, inducing the tide in his veins that swelled to spring tide in his heart.

He sighed. waves gurgled and hissed among the rocks. The leading edge of the water slowly edged backwards away from him, and quiet fell along the shore. The old soul looked up. He expected that seventh wave to come roaring out of the sea, and if his eyes didn't deceive him, there was a big swell eating the horizon. His teeth flashed in the sun. Salt air filled his lungs, and he knew.

Sea change, yes. It was there. It was coming. As a younger man, the sight of such a swell would have sent him running up the beach. But not now. He laid his hands in his lap, mind filling with nothing, waiting to embrace the wave that would surely sweep him off the rocks.