Stop staring at the screen and open the window: theworld is changing. We are here and there. Launch yourself upon the sea and throw away your paddle. You will find your way home without it.
You can do it and be a monk with your hair shirt on and the sacred texts before you, but there are other kinds of saints that walk the land, halt the sun just to keep the wine shop open and penetrate nether mandalas.
You can’t take your books and diagrams with you – they are only approximations anyway. Leave them behind if you want to travel there. When you come back, write your own book.
There are fish but don’t forget to eat. See the bluefish and follow them there. Over your left shoulder is where they died in ascending wheels of fire – you pressed your nose against the glass and then walked out into the night. How close would you have gone if not for the heat? In the morning your father took you round and you were there when the rock turned into a white skull with black empty pits for eyes. Nobody ever told you why the other skulls were carbon black with white teeth and red-black flaking stumps instead of forearms and shins. We all burn differently, apparently.
You can smell that sick sweet smell if you think about it, it hung there long enough. The charcoal is still in the sand anyway. Fresh wood, new glass, window seats and white columns can’t cover up the gaping hole. They won’t last anyway.
If they chop down your favorite tree, there will be another. The world is full of favorite trees. Find another one to love; they will appreciate your affection.
Where is it coming from? It is in the air, a message from Dida’s Cuckooland, from a lost closet, or maybe over the speakers…the language is English but they are calling flight numbers and destinations from six years ago. Mechanical time progresses in a linear flow, but life does not and memory keeps on warping the floor – some days the table isn’t sitting straight but it doesn’t tell you why, there is no why, everything just is. You could wedge something under the leg if you wanted, and you could then pretend that the earth didn’t shift under your feet.
But it did.
If you are offered a joint on the beach, take it! Never turn down an invitation, unless it is to do something barbarous, unless you want to be barbarous. Can we give them truth serum and just ask them who they are? You would pay to see that and so would I. It is not connected but it is going down the stream anyway. Just relax and watch it swim by. You can cast for it if you like, but this one is traveling fast. If you wait, I promise more will come. They always do.
Just because it is flowing down doesn’t mean you have to go with the flow. Upstream is correct too. There are many ways to travel in the flow.
Today I float downstream, on my back, looking up.
Then I was an atom swimmer, blue and white, thrumming over the waves and washing in the white water, dreaming stop and go swishing blue dreams night after night until you were the only thing that mattered and then you disappeared and I was alone on top seeking purchase against the power and was slowly drawn down and in and tumbled in the frothy whiteness while new blues and greens and yellows and reds shimmered in the purple overhead on the day without airplanes and don’t forget the purple it was a sky a sign a day a feeling it was the dust of dreams painting the new beginning.
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