Disappearing Acts Returning Centered

Clarity eludes me and that's fine. Our lives merge together. The newsreel marches forward. The energy only changes form and once we meet we're never strangers.

The blurred purgatorial yearnings toss and turn around the periphery of inactivity. I'm waiting in a line of my own mind. There's a step to be made. A chess move to be had. While, all the while I continue my expression. All the while I bide my time. All the while I observe and live and love. Everything is here. I'm wrapped in a dark blanket of love. My mornings are beautiful. My days are alive. My nights are magic. You are mine. I am yours. Bursting with life. Overflowing with golden mercury. The people in our lives are reflections of our own eyes.

Exploring caverns of living. Darkness beneath baseball caps. The mystery of others. What's being said in quiet whispers. Life on the fringe. Self-imposed exile from functional sustenance and it's moments of panic. This existence provides with the kindness of others and I know I'll return the favor. So much received. I'm selling myself short. I've given until I've lost myself. There were days when I handed it all over. There were days of pain. There were days of disbelief and futility. There were days when I received parking tickets during tragedies. There were days. There still are. Days split between freedom and fear. Days when I don't know what to do with myself. Days where I throw away meaning for gratitude. Days when I don't give a shit about philosophizing. There are days when I effortlessly create. There are days where I connect to my purpose. There are still days. There are still days. There are still days and somewhere beneath them all is the engrained optimism. The ability to see the fire. The importance it seems is in continuing the exchange. Movement creates more of itself. The rust stays off the kinetic wheel. Be cautious, dowse yourself in paranoia, but let some of it go, there's too much to learn outside of yourself. In a world of sickness, patches of light. In a world of entropy, reservoirs of health. In a savage world, we face bravely. With always something to share, I encounter my excuses, I adjust my perspectives again and again.

Creation

I hope you haven't abandoned me. The beating heart of a dusty impulse. The sun came after my waking. A cricket chirped from between the walls last night. Oblivious to the time of year like all true Californians are, it sang against it's own metronome. A quality we have in common. Like a pencil drawn maze, we retrace our lines over and over until we reach the end. I've been setting my feet onto the same footsteps in the sand for some time now. While time does his best to blow winds across these patterns and for that I'm grateful. It's these altered subtleties of the familiar that help keep my flame alive. This is an understatement of what can quickly become a hurricane. I'm leaving out the storm of conditions and beauties beyond my control. I'm forgetting the endlessly wrapped around infinities of imagination. I'm failing to include the unknown. Dreams both remembered, told, forgotten, and manifested. Then there are the people. The souls. The traces of memories. The hints of actualism. The foreshadowed futures, altered states, activities, meals, loves, and the affluent tide. I also should acknowledge the looming feeling that somewhere-out-there west is a roving magnetic point. Turning back and forth like a prison searchlight. Scanning and affecting the coast. Manipulating the insignificant moving dots as they decorate/desecrate the shores. When my friend and I swam away from the safe beach on that fringe day between summer and fall, we were moving toward this source. Existing beyond the patterns. Defying the same institutions that gave us purpose. There is cemented land, fixed ground, and then the shaky sand that signals the last bit of control we have before entering a larger mercy. It was for this wild element to which we were leaving our feet. There, strongly we swam across an ocean of light navy blue, fading into dark shades of black. Driven by the primal fight and flight mechanism. The same fear of the unknown that lent an urgency to our motions was also the invigorating quality that drove us out into the deep in the first place. Solitary beings encapsulated in a liquid vault. I became alone. I had lived this experience in variations all summer. The panic always had a new face. I swam and swam but the land never moved. And as much as the fear slid across my limbs, the calm was in knowing that the choice was mine. The faith was in avoiding the teeth. The spirit was in the freedom of letting go to the sum. The pride manifested as the strength of my singular. The laughter was in returning to shore. The gratitude in the existence. The growth happening sometime after returning to the sand, maybe later, maybe still.

Surrender fate to another's home, with only the strength of your ever-beating heart as your greatest variable. The rest is left to probabilities, chance, facts, the time of year and just how much you want to live.

6th Row Center Court

Very close to me, I'm watching giants weightlessly stampede like blurs. They glide across the court like personified gusts of wind back and forth along a timed continuum and I'm in a daze. Squeaking shoes leave the ground, upward. Acrobats. Humans advanced, handling the ball like an extension of their own dynamic forms. Together moving like one violent organism cutting between liquid and empty space. Buzzing crowd, always buzzing.

This game is a rush.

Whistles blow, timers shriek, and the lady behind us continues to yell "Defense!" in a foreign accent that makes it sound like "Day-fez!". The man next to me quietly reeks of booze. The guy in front keeps bumping my leg as he puts his arm around his small girlfriend's shoulders. All the while, I watch these symbols in the flesh, closer than I've ever been. They're playing a game I knew as basketball, only it's not the basketball I've ever known.

During shoot-around these men never miss. The ball is shot in a looping trajectory and cuts through net again, again, again. The long limbs belonging to these men move fluid and loose as they go though their reps. Some of them work with coaches. Some of them by themselves. The Machine goes through stretching drills with bands wrapped around his arms, legs, and wrists. Even bound, The Machine never wastes a dull moment to scan the crowd for young women. Even during the game, he's always keeping his eyes on the prowl. During the game. During the game, you realize just how quick these men move. Bodies flash and disappear in front of the ball-handler at all times. Everything is coordinated on a higher rhythm, faster than life. A lightning intuitive precision. You have to be immersed in this flow since birth to stand a chance and then you must possess the skill-set to outwit the rapid hurricane.

Watching the small ones thread between moving giants like tornado chasers. The genius knows his limits. He wanders fast and drunkenly amongst the redwoods, with his stringy hair the last thing to catch up to his quick frame. "You have no chance Nash!" another drunk behind us yells. "Lakers are gonna win by twenty. You watch. They're gonna win by twenty," this seemingly useless blob continues repeating.

"No chance at what?" we ask ourselves. Though it's clear this two-time MVP has no chance of holding rapt the imagination when number twenty-four is on the floor in gold. Looking at this man from so close after admiring him for so long, I'm struck by just how made for this game he appears. Everything about him is chiseled to an aerodynamic absolute. His body composition, the shape of his head, his length, his height. When he moves, there is no wasted motion. Everything he does appears driven by purpose. Every step, shudder, look, is to better outwit this game. This game is his opponent and best friend. He does not belong to these other hyper-beings. He's somehow greater than them all. He has forged himself through thousands of meticulous hours of self-scrutiny and advancement. He's isolated and nurtured everything necessary to reach the potentials of his inherent genius. He sees a canvas. He aggressively creates. He effortlessly desires so much more than any man around him. He moves in reverence to this temple. He dedicates. He sweats in worship. He excites. He dazzles. He sees the patterns. He is the game.

Then there is the spectacle. The men bringing their Sunday's finest on their arms. Thousands of eyes rolling side to side watching the players or one another. The witnesses. Each one absorbed in separate lives, coming together, sitting beside strangers, acquaintances, or loved ones, packed to the ceiling, releasing themselves to a greater circus. We cheer is unison, file to the restrooms together at the half, admire what we ourselves can not do. A night at the show.

When it returns, the game moves fast. The rhythms ebb and flow. The known grows. By the fourth, the opposing subs have been sent to play in signal of defeat, like medics sent to sort through the carnage of a futuristic battlefield. The victors rest. Towels around their necks, a days work. It must be quite a way to live a life. Playing this game, because they're the best, because other people want to see them play. Living 82 games on a travelling carnival schedule adhering to an evolved infrastructure. These are dignified performers. The fans pay homage to their ability. They cheer, they follow, they identify, they love. Team colors. Histories. Cinderellas. Players. Personalities. Shots. Impossibilities manifested. Uniforms. Logos. Dunks. Spirits. Cascading leather. White Nets. Wood floors. Motions and boundaries of a higher purpose. Echoes of the basketball punching the ground like heartbeats, dribbled by losers, men, heroes, warriors, idols, caretakers. The ball beats the floor repeatedly, these dark bouncing echoes of sound and vibration are sent like phantoms through the fans ears, skin, minds, hopes, dreams, souls, whatever, you tell me how far it goes.

I love this game.

Walking Through Doorways

I sit in the sun. The night was cold. I have to engage the world. That came after you asked questions. Small steps turn to leaps of faith. Handshakes turn to doorways. Capability has never been the issue. It's been a matter of confidence. It's been a matter of confronting the inevitable.

The Noble Confrontation

A boxer sits in his corner. Soaking sweat. Nirvana is a lactic delirium. Deliverance. Awakening. Free of empathy. There are no hoops or helmets for passive-aggression. There is only an understanding: Two beating hearts encased in well-trained flesh, looking to pump more blood to faithful conditioning and unseen variables while seeking destruction in the opponent. Concentric and eccentric movements demonstrating force into the nervous system of someone else. Sharing something. Handing over ownership of painful energy. Freeing aggression into a physically violent truth. Three minute spells of survival. If you could hear the ringing bell, you're still alive to fight again. There's always another fight. A night watchman with an eye peeled on the rising sun. A flash of fury. Results of practice and endless days filled with repeated loss of sweat/blood. The sacrifice of comfort in quest for higher identity. The training becomes the purpose. The theoretical punches for battles yet to come. The summation of which arrives in the form of a bout. The fighter's life exchanged for this liberation. There, the clanging bell.

Touched gloves. Dance. Chess game of feet. Timing of punches. Knuckles meeting inertia. Velocity and strength formulating applied impetus. Seeking weakness. The eyes of the crowd gauging intangibles. No one knows what feats can rise from the ashes, confusion, unconscious desperation to live. Genius can spring reality, annihilating talk of reach or records. Electric charge can spark a fire inside the muscle fibers. Conditioned instincts can rapidly change moments. In a flash too fast for your eyes, something occurs. Most of the exchange is guesswork by each viewer's own magician brain. While the next frame watches the other soul already floating along gravity's merry way. Slamming down on thinly veiled wood. Shattering the tender balance of bipedalism. The body laying on the blood spattered canvas.

From high above it must look like framed art.

The referee counts while the crowd screams and yells. The man who also came to destroy is now seeing only black. A dark and honorable black that fades in and out with a skewed sense of time. Do you hear me son? He listens to one consistent buzzing in his ears and nothing else.

The one still standing feels equally the pain he distributed, for it's energy had once belonged to him. But now he's a winner by KO.

This Time

I survive by the decadence of my imagination. The confines of the Earth zoom in, zoom in, zoom in. A precious gemstone becomes a symbol for transfixed eyes. The journey is an inner one. I claim this land. I fight for heaven's sake.

The men working in mines were metaphors for forgotten souls. The worker soaked in oil field sludge would later shower away this liquid wealth to reveal his wage appropriate skin. The rows of factory workers were tangible symbols of the uninspired anonymity that drowns so many. We breathed above water as we looked down at the photos. Our eyes fulfilled the still-frame purpose. These images do shape humanity.

When bombarded with published inspiration, I'm a broomstick of jealousy. My urge to create sears holes in my skin. This is a good thing. Contemplative. Then there is a calm. I wander down what used to be lonely aisles of a tomb and arrive at your presence, resting on the floor, turning large pages. The reality changes.

The silence denotes strength. The beauty is a revival. The sweat is the greatest reminder. We're moving. "Movement is medicine." I heard a man shout in a youtube video.

Literature will die by the hands of pop culture references.

I once used an instrument like a helicopter propellor to break up caked shit in a septic tank belonging to an upscale rehab facility in the hills above the sea. My plumbing partner and I laughed about it as the excrement flew into our goggles like bugs onto speeding windshields.

Which reminds me of the Arizona butterfly migration.

Bec and I drove through the desert while yellow butterflies created splash art against the car windshield. Maybe I was a murderer and her my accomplice, those delicate butterflies, victims, in a greater debate. And we were bandits taking out all in our path. I know that we laughed after each speeding bullet met it's demise. These light-hearted angels crossing deserts to find love, only to become obliterated by a greater indifference. Perhaps we were the butterflies.

Then.

In another life I surfed alone. I wandered along freshwater creeks. Stole watermelons from nearby farms. Ate the ripe fruits underneath shady oak trees. Juices dripping from my mouth down my chin. I slept until my limbs felt rested. I woke up and stretched in the warm afternoon. I continued wandering in circles of karma.

In another life I was an Indian brave. I recognized the Earth. I lived my life hypnotized by nature's song.

There was a time on a boat in the Marina. I got drunk, spun around, took some pictures, and tried again. There was a time alone, purgatory grew familiar, until I couldn't recognize the greater alternative. I fused with my lonely ghost. I caressed depths. I almost lost myself. Then I did lose myself. Like most things, it took sunshine to defrost spiritual isolation. It took gloved hands to tear away the piles of debris covering my heart. It took tears to reduce the banter to truth.

Sometimes.

I dream of childhood friends. I dream ashamed. I dream satisfied. I wake up and still dream some more, in my better times. Wade across dark pools of silent water and arrive.

Mourn the past, lose a minute, get it back right now.

Monsters of Folk - Temazcal

A Constellation of Thoughts

It's interesting what inspires the individual when major conflicts fade into past obscurities.

Once intense feelings deteriorate into pale abstractions. What's left after the wreckage is a wide open terrain. How it's explored rests entirely on the courage of the individual. Scarred, shattered, bruised, the human walks forward, continuing a moment in a wildly new context.

It's no coincidence that people stumble into and back out of our lives at specific times while we inhabit various forms of energy. You certainly can use the people you're drawn to, and who are drawn to you, in a given time, as reflections of your own current state.

Sometimes these same human interactions and transactions can feel not just attracted by our personal climate but by time-cyclical, like they're set off by unknown alarm clocks.

Whether randomly or magnetically we all become symbols in one another's lives and for better or worse we can ignore the impact we make and the times we share or we can understand them to better grasp this continually changing road map that is the journey of life in this current form.

I believe we can create our own chaos or aspire to nothing. Today I read a quote "A life lived full of mistakes is better than a boring life, lived from fear" loosely translated as all of my quotes are, I painfully enjoy this outlook. Painfully, because mistakes normally are, but once again it's always in the outlook because some will tell you that there "are no mistakes, only lessons." I'd like to contribute the idea that beyond the learned lessons, we find our freedoms, passions, loves.

Sometimes beautiful mistakes occur. Sometimes a guy can consume too many intoxicants and find himself leaning against a pillar in a two-story sports bar. Sometimes he can reach out his empty beer pitcher, cheers the first young woman that walks by him, and sometimes lightning strikes. Actions create the imprints on our lives. Even inactions are actions. Everything is a choice. Even physically bound, our minds can choose our reactions. The energy and outlook we bring to these chosen motions are what determine the results, whether tangible or perceptive.

We are not lost. We are questioning. Exploring, we are rapidly gaining ground on our next greater purpose, we can coax it's arrival by being receptive to our delightfully present and meticulously, sometimes painfully, created intuition. We build and nurture ourselves, move toward our visions, breathe in the moments, stay aware, lose ourselves, recreate, learn from mistakes or otherwise, and we feel something powerful growing, then lightning strikes.

Night Window

Inside of a raindrop exists Heisenberg's Uncertainty. The apt pupil capable of outdoing all of his previous mistakes. Don't save it for the damned. Drink up. Swallow the medicine. Leave for awhile. The strings that held us together are severed. Enter the cave, turn left, burn. Tie one on, savor the falling leaves, bathe in the purple jacaranda flowers as they fall. Send in the Coast Guard for a raft that was abandoned a long time ago. The experiment takes a sudden turn. The race car obliterates the mind of the driver as they're thrown full speed into a lonely wall. No witnesses please. Shed your skin, expose flesh and bone to the elements, suffer gangrene, die on Kilimanjaro just like that asshole writer. You two would make a good pair of removed melodramatics. A curled message. A desperate uniformity. The transformation of a garden from good to evil. A succulent soil. Drained septic tank. Recycled trash heaps. Carbon fuel. Misunderstood messages. Darlings. Honeymoons. Maladaptive memories. Carry-on baggage. Wanton lust. The rest is poison. I'll spare you. A bed made in the morning. It's patient, I'll give it that. It mocks me. The sponge. The collector of fluids. The heathen. The phone booth. Organic matter. Opulent oranges. Orgasmic earthquakes beginning from the toes and ending in the darkest night. Organ players. Questions of a child. Disappointing answers of a conditioned mind. The death of trust. The waking of complications. Inherent beauties swept away by external realities. Chance occurrences. Boredom. Deaths. Circus tents. Bears riding motorcycles. Beasts of Burden. Quiet minds. Burger Kings. Archangels. Diabetic shock. Heaping spoonfuls of bullshit. Misconceptions, humbling experiences of purity. What we can do. What we can do. what we can do. What we can do. What we can do. What we can do. This is not a message in self-loathing. This is a wandering stardust. This is a mercurial chasm of failing matter. This is a pointless remake of a classic. A candle dying. A bike lock stolen. A piece of wedding cake smushed into the groom's face. Vanilla sex. Chocolate lullabies. Forgotten tears. Downtrodden posturing. Loving embraces. Drifting tides. Burning bridges, Mood rings. Past lovers. Alternative lifestyles. Hands covering faces. Chance occurrences. Sweltering heat and humidity. Drawers containing wisdom teeth. Drawers containing notebooks. Drawers containing beating hearts. Old journals. Ghosts of product. Stoned children's stories. Failed mechanisms. Destitute prostitutes. Poorly drawn conclusions. Insensitive remarks to feelings told. Apologies. Elder statesmen. it's the bad dreams. It's all the shit that flew through my brain when you were in bed next to me. It's born-again fragments. It's feelings that lay dormant but never die. It's the puncturing in an attempt to bleed my horrors out. It's the fact that you made life better. A canopy strung between the moon and some stars. A corner bar where I used to sit alone. A passive pursuit. A scared child. A revolving journey like a vortex. A bed in a Hollywood living room. Two birds outside a window. A bad idea. Always a bad idea, hanging artwork, parked cars, inhaling together, always a bad idea. Never talk and drive. Never leave undecided. Never begin a sentence with and. And always use a bookmark that doesn't drive you crazy at the sight of it. Nobody knows anything. Somebody knows something. Everybody knows everything. I'll ask you to dance in a faraway bar and it'll be perfect because I always told you I didn't move like that. I'll surprise you one day with my sense of adventure. I'll return a better man. I'll wake up. I'll change more. More. More. I'll evolve and it won't be subtle. I'll pinpoint my feelings. I'll carry myself relaxed. I'll charge full speed ahead like a victory cry. The mornings will start slow. The sunrise will greet us with a smile. The universe will shake hands and ask us to tea. The present will dazzle. The moments will grow infinite. The laughter will explode involuntarily and shatter human shells. The world will begin again.

What You Missed

I had become so sick of my music until you came back.

An ant crawls vertical up my blinds. Faraway clouds puff around the sky. Dark brown shingles decay on a roof in front of my window.

Trav said something very important to me last night. "You've got to be oblivious to the results."

The famous director told me I was moving around too much and that I should act almost as if I was underwater. I tried. I fake yawned and rubbed my eyes. The ad execs sat on their couches entirely disinterested. I was the last one that day. He made a joke about taking the prop pretzels home and I made one about contracting the flu. He laughed and told me to get out of there. I left cursing and swearing under my breath at another missed opportunity.

Into my car.

Circled around the grocery store. Beer, pumpkin pie, whipped cream, milk, eggs, mouthwash, and a new toothbrush. I muttered to myself down the aisles in excited disappointment, trying to work reverse psychology on the universe or my self-esteem, I'm not sure which one. I paid at a self check-out terminal and left.

Then I went home, sat on the couch exhausted. Feeling, even through the let down, that I had really lived that day. Trav ordered pizza and said something very important to me and we watched South Park. I texted you and then you called me and I was tired. I felt sorry. I was so tired.

I used my new toothbrush, then the generic mouthwash, and I fell asleep.

I dreamt uncomfortable dreams and woke up early. It's a new day and I have to make sure that I don't go around kicking myself in the ass. It's another opportunity to be alive. It's another. You're here. We're all here. Oblivious to the results.