The devils are writing poetry inside my head again. It's 3 a.m. on a sleepless night somewhere at the intersection of Dreaming and time, and not a goddamn thing in all the worlds makes a single lick of sense. A blue scarf on the dresser rests where it was thrown at winter's end, reminding me that it's all just dust in the wind anyway. Folly. Somewhere outside my window, coyotes compose love songs and owls cry funeral dirges, and the whole world is just spinning spinning out of control, little lost marble on the edge of space, filled with teeming organisms struggling to make sense of the senseless, lining up all those unruly ducks just to have them scatter again like sand in a windstorm, wind in a sandstorm, ho hum and there goes any semblance of control right out the dusty window looking out over the invisible abyss that rests between one breath and the next.
Who are we? What am I? Where am I going and who will guide me if not myself, and where or where has my sanity gone, and by what measure do I measure it, if not by the standards of a lunatic population of blind mindless followers looking for the blood of the vampire Jesus to wash all their sins away and carry them safely across the River Styx to their next fix of tee vee or booze or drugs or mechanical sex.
And I want to scream.
"Ain't no salvation, boy! Ain't no fairy tale prince gonna come climbing down off the cross to lift you up over the threshhold of your death and carry you like a lover to your coffin bed!"
Wake up.
Smell the gravedust and damn the roses. Nowhere to go but in circles, and round and round we go again, nowhere and someplace and everywhere in between, and still no real knowing where the journey begins or if it ends or what becomes of the evil queen when the fairy's tale ends.
What does it mean?
Am I breathing still or has my lifeforce stilled? Am I dead or alive or is there really any difference in the grand shebang of things, and why do we so easily accept the reality with which we're presented, when we could just as easily turn the world on its ear and look for leprechauns or lizards with their eyelids sewn shut under don Juan's ramada?
3 a.m.
And I know now that I have to be "the one" because no one else will.
(She laughs at her self-importance.) Is there anyone who is really "the one" or is that just another thread in the tapestry of fantasy? Fists clenching, the baring of fangs into a snarl of contempt that is all at once love of life and the battle with the angel of death, each contained in the finite confines of an infinite drop of blood swelling from a pricked fingertip.
Breathe.
Just remember to breathe.
As if that one more breath separates us from the abyss, as if we suckle breath from the sky like a parasite baby clinging to its mother's withered teat. And the lies we tell ourselves by the star's fires - "It's all for the best. It's all good. Every story has a happy ending somewhere in the making. We live again. We can never die."
Lies.
Beings who are going to die.
Is that a truth or a belief? The cat of all cats died 13 years ago, committed to the desert ground where all that remains are the bare white bones of some memory, nothing that can be touched, and yet, still alive somewhere in time, some otherwhen, back when we were both kittens together in the sanctified womb of the illusion of perpetual youth. I stroke grey fur in a dream and wake with it clinging to my palm, or maybe it's just the cobwebs from the windowsill where I stand at times looking out at the night that never ends, conspiring with the unseen immortals in a plot to overthrow the kingdom of time.
Dead and alive. Schroedinger laughs. Rat bastard.
Such are the machinations of the meditation. One of those middle of the night battles a warrior engages with the windmills in her mind. Have at you, Death, my ever present advisor. Kiss my ass and die. You're starting to remind me of some perverse Sunday School teacher with one of those deceptive religious smiles meant to lure unsuspecting children in to whatever rhetoric you're selling.
I will not lie down for you.
Not even sure I believe in you. Not at all sure why I should, when you are the shadow's shadow, after all, the mirror reflecting itself in the endless hall of mirrors. Nothing real there. Just another illusion. The quantum paradox cancelling itself out. Antimatter dictator.
And then I am breathing again, back in the world of matter and men. 3 a.m. My eyes open and instead it's barely midnight, and I find myself sitting up in bed, talking to Wendy about my petty humanform frustrations, hearing the prattle in my voice even as I recite the well-worn inventory of observations on the dark subject of our programming which runs so deep it convinces us we are this way or that way and no other way.
"I will not lie down for you."
I say the words out loud, mantra of the living driven like a blade into the cold left eye of Death.
That's when I see it. Up near the ceiling, just above the door. Only way to describe it would be as a congregation of light. Not diffused light like some wayward beam shining in through the window. Not like that. Points of light. Orbs, if you will. Probably 5 or 6 of them, varying size, but all of them white.
Can I explain it? Of course not. Do I need to? Not in the least.
It came like a validation and that is how I am choosing to interpret it. "They" stayed there in the corner of the bedroom for about 15-20 seconds, and then just blinked out. Reminded me of the famous Marfa Lights I witnessed a few years back. The Marfa lights who, when asked, "What are you?" replied... "I am a singularity of consciousness."
I did not sleep last night.
The lights did not come back, though I looked for them for a long, long time - amused at myself for my desire to see them again, while at the same time experiencing a profound sense of gratitude for having seen them at all.
