some times

This, bumped up from Jan 22 07:

-----

Felt sort of tired, Saturday. Rolled seven times in six days, and not lightly. Kind of creaky when I get started, but I loosen up pretty fast. Of course I ossify instantly when behind touches mat. I'm saying this cuz I don't feel like thinking. It doesn't take any thought at all, to talk about myself. And, frankly, it is my favorite subject. Boundlessly fascinating, as you will agree.

Twice on Friday, and once of Saturday. It really is too much. I might be doing even more though, now that I've finally gone to a morning class. I have reservations about doing new things. I joke about it, but it's not really funny. Kind of pathetic, really. But in the miraculous mosaic that is I, such minor distortions serve as subtle accents of my overall beauty.

Speaking of which -- my beauty, which I really haven't been mentioning anywhere near often enough -- I was considering my fabulous abs? It's really getting out of hand. Off the hook. How is it possible? I don't do crunches. I've never done a crunch in my life, except as part of some class warm up. And I've got muscles that nobody even knows the name of. Gorgeous. Just stunning. Really. I've got that third cut, below the navel. Maybe it's the fourth, if you count the one above, on the ribs. And there are odd little muscles off to the side -- between the obliques, of which I have an absolutely hypnotic array. It's like I'm the human epitome of some Art Deco Adonis, all striations and angled plains. Breath-taking. And then on my belly, below the abs, there are these other muscles. What do they even hook up to? What do they do? I don't know. Nobody does. Physiologists haven't even named them. I am unique. I'm like a piece of art, a masterpiece -- some sort of divine device crafted by God to show humanity what it might have been. Carved from ice and alabaster. I must be what Adam looked like. Well, I'm sure his features were softer, but the fist-like quality of my face has it's own allure. I'm sure his skintone was more middle-brown. That's beautiful too. Nietzsche said, "The belly is the reason man does not mistake himself for a god." Well? Where does that leave me? Sometimes as I'm walking I'll put my palm flat across my abdomen just to feel the rolling -- sinuous beneath my hand like rows of estivating snakes. Sometimes I'll rub my fingers over the cords of sinew lying beneath the leather of my belly, like a master guitarist strumming out a passionate gypsy tune that wails longingly as a lost soul and stirs you with a yearning to live forever.

Sometimes my hands grow heavy and stiff, and drag on the ground behind me, bending my back curved as old mountains. Sometimes I stare through a haze of pain out of a face like a stone mask. Sometimes darkness leaks from my lungs and puddles at my feet and rises like surf into a sinking vessel, and words cannot contain the cold I would feel, if I could feel. Sometimes I fall into the hollowness that displaces my organs and the receding cavern of my skull expands away in every direction so fast that even vacuum hasn't time to fill it.

Sometimes God is so far away he can hardly see me, and I can't see him at all.

I know there are miracles. I know that somewhere in the boundless universe there is a flawless mosaic of unspeakable beauty. I know that somewhere there is a balm that will soothe every ache, and a hand that will wipe away every tear, and that the wretchedness that suffuses some man's heart need not last forever. Somewhere weariness will end in fulfillment, and darkness will represent a time of peace and satisfaction. Someday I will settle into ease and happiness, the way a mountain slides into the sea.

-----

I wonder sometimes if anyone gets it. Not specifically, but the specifics don't matter. If they get the meaning. I've come right out and said it, some number of times, in different ways. The problem is that anyone who gets it, understands that saying they get it is pointless. And that just leaves everyone else and their verbal incomprehension. A sort of double bind, then. Grief is answered only by silence. But it's the silence of companionship. B got it once -- showed that he got it. No, I haven't forgotten.

So I've rolled three times, now, in, what, 9 months? Is it less important to me now? I used it to deal with the absence of my son. Now he is returned from the wars. I used it to have a social connection. That particular connection is severed. And of course I did it because I really did love it. I remember saying that if there were a way, I'd do it for a living. Statements like that are self-revealing, and I said it to someone who never did get the self I was revealing. I do regret trusting, opening up, even a little -- it turns out too often to be a betrayal of myself -- I should have protected myself better. It would surprise me, if I didn't know better by now, how little loyalty I ever buy for myself with my own loyalty. It doesn't seem right. But it's more complicated than that. Everyone thinks they're the wronged party. How do we discern? Formulas don't work where there's free will.

And I was lying about my abs. I mean, I'm practically 50. Who could be that beautiful? It's ridiculous, is all.

Get it?


J

masquerade

He wears a half-face mask, understanding its redundancy. He sees it as an ironical comment on -- well, on everything. He wears a long black cape lined with red, and bounds into a room like mad Hamlet, expecting fanfare and providing his own. With a broad sweep of his arm he swings the wide-brimmed hat off his head and bows as deep as his knees. It is gallantry, and suits somehow his lanky form as flesh suits bone. Seeing that everyone's a clown, long ago he selected his role and plays out the pantomime with earnest intensity. It must pass for integrity. So many broken toys. So many haunted corners. So many shuddering inhalations.

Understanding also the imperfection of words, he uses them the way a juggler uses plates. They are amusements. They are the smoke and the mirrors of his soul. They are flame and candlewax. They are ashes and he throws them into the wind, showered and growing gray as distant rain. Another mask, of sorts -- but what isn't?

Sometimes he hears the blood behind his eyes and his face, and his half-face grows numb and slack. He stares, blind, at visions like painful memories and every sense becomes possessed with dread and certainty -- like lost nightmares called and numbered and named.

Sometimes the crowing mountainpeaks grow silent before his gaze, their crags dreary as weathered headstones, their melting caverns still as serpents. Saffron waters drip from concave cliffs and evaporate before they reach the convulsing seas under the reddened sun. Beneath his eyes a vast pale plain extends northward, stirring only with the hushed sighs of stunted scrub and low-lying thistles. Solitude nods and bobs between the moon and the stars, and only cold marks the shifting of the day.

On the shores of the churning scarlet sea, in the black volcanic sands that skirt its hungry currents, he sees scraped out like runes, pressed in like cuneiform, what must be words, preserved by some presiding spirit in the world for a purpose unknown even to itself. What meaning, what meaning? He sees them, and knows their form. But he turns without reading and moves along the shore until it bends away while he goes straight. Soon the angry surging of the waves becomes the breathless sigh of thistles whispering beneath his feet.

He wears a mask. Even he doesn't know what lies under it. He listens for the burning of a candle. He hears blood. He hardly speaks.


J



bumped from 12/5/06

banks

I saw you yesterday. You were walking by a riverbank. The water slid along imperceptibly beside you, smooth and flat and blue as twilight. You were naked from swimming, droplets still slipping down your back. The sunlight made your skin glow like you were translucent. You were beautiful.

I stood watching on the far side of the water and I couldn’t come to you. I called your name, and you were close enough to hear but you didn’t turn. Then you stopped. I called again and you moved your head as if catching the scent of flowers. You didn’t look across at me. I was in the shadow of the trees, and I thought if I could get into the sunlight I might catch your eye. But you looked into the water and nodded at some private thought.

A warm breeze stirred the grass at your feet and I knew you were curling your toes into the earth. I could see that you were smiling. The light fell over you like a mantle of tender flames, and I loved you.

Then you turned and walked away from the river, your back to me. It took a long time for you to pass from sight. You never looked back.


J



bumped from 3/25/07

twilight

He breathes because he cannot do otherwise. But the burden of it crushes him. He feels himself bending, stooping, hunched now like a giant under a mountain, grown stiff and still and utterly encumbered. He curls and wraps himself in his arms, clutching his head and neck as if expecting blows. But what can strike a giant? Only a mountain, and he is under one.

He grows gray as granite, his features harsh and sharp and deep, sheer plains and cold shadows. His skin cracks as the winters mount his sides and ice wedges into his flesh. Erosion, then, and trees take root in his back and his thighs, grow tall and then grow bare, and fall and fall like shedding hair, and he is naked again, like birth, wet and alien.

Light pushes at him as a wind, sun and stars, and every sound comes to him as a sighing. If he should shiver in the cold, the world would end. If he should cry out, the sky would fall. He remains still, afraid to wake the monsters that lie deeper under him and his mountain.

Something sharp like smoke is in the air. Since he cannot do otherwise, he breathes it in. What fire? Time burns everything.

There is an ancient tree at the peak of a peerless mountain, and it has its roots gnarled in the heart of the world. Every living creature comes and eats its fruit or its leaves or its bark, and all things nest in its branches or sleep in its shade. Deep in the bowels of the earth, a great serpent is knotted around the lowermost roots, dripping a venom that the roots absorb and pull up through the adamantine strata of rock, into the trunk and limbs of the tree.

Of course the air is full of smoke. The universe ends not as crystal, but ash.


J



bumped from 5/10/07

tide

He sees himself as quiet. It has to do with his place in the world. The eyes he feels on his flesh are filled with bitterness. Perhaps it's only memory. But he stands as if waiting, and sits with his back to walls. He holds his breath because he's listening. Nowhere is safe.

It is an abiding solitude, sought out but regretted, the result not of some wounding too ancient for words to describe.

He finds the ocean, then. He strips and walks into the waves. He feels the cold slick waters take hold of his skin like ownership. The sand shifts beneath his feet until he swims. His breath comes deep and steady. Only when he moves is he not cold. If he slows, he sinks. He looks back and finds no shore. The sky is blue and sunless. He wonders how that's possible. The sea is flat. He wonders where he is.

It's been forever now, partly in the empty air, buried mostly in the silent cold opaque water. His arms stir up a thick slow spray that hangs for a brief moment in the air then settles onto the surface as if sliding down glass. He breathes through his mouth, and it is the only sound he hears. Meaningless. There is no wind. He slows, stops, paddles in place.

He can't just quit. He can't give up. He doesn't see how he can prevail, or even survive. But when he goes down, it will be because he is pulled, too long and too hard to finally resist. The face of the waters is vast, but there is an infinity of depth below him, and nothing to hold on to here. Not even the thin thread of some calling voice. He remains silent.

There was a time when the ocean was not salt.


J

blades

He was born on a Thursday, in the night. The birth was accompanied by no great happiness -- the child was a third boy, and brought nothing new to the household save his white hair. He grew up with the sense that he did not belong. He learned that hope is just a way to make someone cry. The ones who lived with him amused themselves with the flow of tears down his pale cheeks, until he learned the secret of cold anger. He learned the usefulness of rocks and sharp kicks. He learned never to forget, never to trust.

He felt an otherness that held his face still and kept his eyes watchful. He learned to listen for footsteps at his back. When he lay with his eyes closed, his eyes still followed the noises of the night. He found a sense of dread in the silence of the hours he spent in sought-out solitude. He understood that there are worse things than fear.

He never made friends. He never had guests. He had problems at school. When he learned to read, he always had a book with him. Books are better than people. But late in the night, after the light was finally out, in the creaking silence between midnight and dawn, he would stare into the corners of the darkness with unblinking eyes, aware that he did not need to breathe. Only then would he let the hidden parts of his heart move, and he yearned for someone to love, and he allowed himself to feel the truth that he was not wanted and had no place in the world.


All that must be decades ago by now, and whole lifetimes. He wonders though why the days are filled with stillness and dread. He wonders at the stiffness of his neck, and at the sharp pain between his shoulder blades that comes on in the night and lasts from midnight to dawn. He wonders what became of all the people in the world, and thinks he hears the echo of far off laughter but when he looks up from his book he finds his vision too blurry to distinguish between the shapes that move like wind-blown leaves and the flowing of water over concrete like tears down an ashen face.

He knows that everything past has moved to bring him here. He thinks that he made a bad decision long ago, but cannot say where. He remembers the passage of the sun with dread. He wishes he could remember what it was like to trust. He misses the familiar comfort of betrayal.


Now his hair is white again. Whole lifetimes have passed. The world is as still as bones, and only dust moves. He does not count the days. He remembers that he does not need to breathe. He lies awake in the dark, staring into the dark, listening to darkness. He knows there is something he should remember. He thinks he has left something undone. He does not know what.


Thursday's child has far to go.


J

axioms

He feels himself fading. He feels himself losing his substance. He passes by objects as if he could pass through them. Only habit keeps him solid. If he should take one wrong step, in the wandering journey he makes through the hours, he might pass into darkness and never emerge, or fall into a myriad sparks of light and scatter like particles from an exploded sun. One must be better than the other. Habit tells him so. But darkness takes up so much more space.

So much darkness and not enough light. It won't resolve itself into twilight. He hopes it will settle into the circadian rhythms of rotation and revolution. But he senses that the very observation of this fact is sophomoric. He's not embarrassed by this. He starts with basics.

When he was young he found stimulation in thesis and antithesis and synthesis. It seemed like wisdom. It was just the awareness of sex. Now he thinks that two things do not join to become a third. He thinks that two things remain what they are, perhaps changed. Some third thing may also appear.

He watches to be sure that his feet follow some twisting line that only he can see. It isn't a middle way. It bisects nothing. It represents no balance. It skews far off to one particular side. He hasn't determined any axis, any plain that defines his movement -- there is no distant goal, no guide point he uses for reference. He feels himself always tilted.

He finds no common ground. He sees no means of compromise. He has lost his sense of wisdom, of justice. He cannot generate severity when severity is needed. He does not know when gentleness will do good. Time beats no rhythm in his soul. He cannot find the moment when severity or justice are due.

He touches something. What is it? A solid. Some warmth. Ah. It is skin. Perhaps it is his own? Yes. He thought it was intangible. Now he cannot get past it. He knows the only way to get out of it is by bleeding. Well, he knows there are other fluids -- but it is blood that counts. Give too much and he will die.

There's no wisdom in this, he thinks. It's not real -- it's just a thesis. The other thing he needs, to make it real, is the part of himself -- he believes, still -- that can get out yet remain alive. Darkness needs light.

What is light?

He cares about others the way others care about him. From a distance. He is diseased by etymologies. Words have meaning. Love is found in that set of things that do not fail. If it fails it was not love. Thus, he is a time traveler. He can change the meaning of the past, by what he decides about it now. If his love fails, it was never love -- for all that he thought it was. This is why he knows now to be careful. He has to love those he would love, forever. He is careful, and does not speak of it -- too great a responsibility. As friendship would be, on a lower frequency. It isn't just a fond feeling, not just shared time. It is an intimacy that carries a committment. Thus he says he has no friends, and calls it honesty.

Now he seeks to be careful. Careful to bisect an asymmetrical section between darkness and light. Careful to tread his line. Without it he thinks he would be lost in the dark. Darkness is not the only true thing, but it is true. What of light?

He thinks he should guide himself by light. He thinks he should leave the path he walks, turn sharply off the curve and find a straight way to go. He thinks he should find a friend, and shatter himself into a myriad sparks of light and shower his friend with love. He thinks that if he should do this he might still have skin to hold in his blood, for all that he is shattered. He thinks it is darkness that makes him fade. He thinks his disease of words would become whole in the presence of such action. This is what he thinks.

He thinks that time has lost its rhythm, and with its loss, he cannot tell wisdom from foolishness. He thinks darkness is necessary. He does not look up. He puts one foot in front of the other. He wishes he could love again.


J

dry grass

The mask he wears, the half mask, slips and he leaves it where it falls. You had thought it hid some deformity, but the flesh is unscarred, mostly, although startling in its paleness. Used as you are to the asymmetry, it is unsettling to see his face whole. Why did he wear a mask? He must feel naked now.

He looks at you, from an angle, sideways and slightly down, his face impassive. Impassive. Impassive. Impasse. His lips pull into a slight meaningless smile, and only his eyes hold any expression. What it is you cannot say. The narrowness of doubt. The depth of pain. The twist of something you cannot give a name. Snake-eye coldness. He opens his mouth slightly, as if to speak, but he is silent. He must think he has said enough. Too much. He must think he looks naked. His lips close again, and you hear only a slight sigh, the rustling of dry grass. Slight. Every movement is slight. Slight. Sly.

Still as he is, you could approach. But there is something about him, and you have no desire to draw nearer. Something. Something repellent or menacing but no that's not it. Something that requires solitude.

You had expected to see some wound, some deformity. Now you do. And you understand why he wore a mask, and why he let it lie.

You understand. Serpents shed their skin. The mask didn't slip at all. He let it fall. It was a misdirection. He always wears a mask. He wears one still.


J

revolutions

We, disciples of a strange oracle, have noticed our narrowing orbit around a dark and wavering star. We have found ourselves watching from a height over a limitless waste, where countless small dramas are reenacted endlessly but with constant variations. This is the desert on which the sullen emanations of that grim sun shine.

What should we expect from the desert dwellers we watch from our remoteness, but the hording of water and a grudging, if any, hospitality for the alien pilgrims who pass through? The denizens do not profit from the passage, and we, from our great distance, must seem like gods, with our judgments and our amusement.

But we are votaries ourselves, and our judgments, if we pronounce them, carry no weight. They flow from our convictions, learned from infancy and largely unquestioned. The objects of our observations have nothing to fear from us. Even our wisdom is suspect, and if not that, ineffectual.

The spectacle is often unsettling. We have seen, as through crystal, the flowing of tears -- which are gathered and stored in cisterns, where the salt will leach out and the water will be reclaimed. We have heard the sounds of anguish common to every man but expressed here with an infrequency, given the degree of pain, that suggests a dear cost. We have seen the spastic movements of these players, marionette in their awkwardness, as beings ill suited to the bodies in which they find themselves. But for all our discomfort in witnessing these things, there is a comic element, and we cannot help sometimes but laugh. They are foolish, if not fools.

For this there will be no apology -- not for their plight, and not for our attitudes. We understand that admittance to the view is free and voluntary. We have found the way here and we know the way out. And perhaps after all we find some interest in the spectacle of our characters' mad antics. They are the same as our own, reflected as images in rising desert heat, distorted as distant things passing through vapor must be.

What if we should descend from the heights and join them? We have seen their hostility to wayfarers. Should we risk it? What benefit to us in that? Our own wisdom is suspect, and to participate even in some small way in their foolishness can only be folly. What have we to offer? But if we should come down? Go into the heat and darkness that smothers their land from the troubled skies beneath their insane sun? To what end? Have we gained insight from our attentions? Might we show them some better way? -- lead them to some cooler place? Is there any land for them that is not baking under the only sun they have ever known?

They are mad, we know, each of them, weeping or crying out or rocking as if at prayer. Like spirits cursed forever to endure the great traumas of their lives, they react always to themselves and to the strangers who pass by in the same way -- fear or anger or clinging need. A world of beaten dogs. What balm have we for such wounds? What healing might we bring, what sermon could we preach, that their flesh and their souls should be soothed? Only gods can work miracles, and our oracle has always been odd, and unreliable.

It shouldn't be surprising, but it is. The difference between us and them is only one of distance. If we turn our thoughts upon ourselves, we find ourselves weeping, and crying out, and muttering. We are sane only because we watch outwardly, and do not confront the darkness that waits when we close our eyes. No wonder the world is so dark.

If we should go down among them, we would become them. Perhaps we already are. Perhaps the appearance of a soul is that of a dark and scorching sun, and the players upon the plain are memories and thoughts and wishes, and we company gathered at this far off vantage are a single person, too removed even from himself to recognize his many faces.

If that were so, then our will is indeed free, and we have only to approach the raving and ruined creatures under our purview, and endure their great passions until they are spent. Wild dogs can be tamed. And even if it were not so, that we are all one, it still may be true that to suffer along with them might do them some good. If we have the strength for it.



J

h

Someone must have been watching H, because without having done anything unusual, he found himself examined and in peril of his life. That someone, those someones who have been watching -- they do have power over him, of which he is unaware or unwilling to acknowledge.



H, you understand why you have been called here?

I don't know what you're talking about. I don't understand any of this. What's going on here?

It is natural to be confused. The concern is over some troubling things that you have produced.

What do you mean, produced?

Some of the things you have posted.

Yeah? What about them?

Take this recent example. You describe ... here it is: "The first one is of the Prophet Mohammad, PBUH, buried under a huge splattering of monkey feces." Do you have any sense of how offensive this is?

It doesn't offend me.

Don't be jejune. You are not unaware of the fact that Muslims will use actual violence to protect the holiness of their faith. Yet you use the very most vulgar images to insult them.

That is not the very most vulgar thing I could have said. Believe me.

Perhaps you are referring to this, where you have the Prophet sodomized by a rhinoceros. You describe such an image as "funny." Do you really think it was funny, H? And before you answer, please consider the gravity of your reply. Very much indeed depends on it.

Well first of all, I would hope you understand the concept of satire.

We are well aware of the concept, H.

Good. Then maybe you can understand that my message is not contained solely in the black-letter meaning of the words or images. I have something deeper in mind.

There is no need to instruct us, H. Yours is the tiresome excuse of every adolescent who masquerades his cynicism and mediocrity as art.

Why are we even having a discussion, then, since you know all the answers?

This is not a discussion.

An inquisition then. And you are? What, the Masters of CyberSpace? The Blog Lords?

You begin to understand. Is that all you have to say in your defense?

Yeah, Skeletor, just what am I defending myself against? You don't like my blog? Don't read it. It's not like abortion, idiot. It's not a life or death issue.

Yet you know that it is. You would be beaten to death, in the streets of Ramallah.

Good thing I'm not in Ramallah then. Or on the dark side of the moon. Or in hell. Or in your anus.

You are playing at being obtuse. The point, as you know, is that your words would arouse murderous passions.

My words for the day are "self" and "control".

And you have no part in the matter? You make a poor Pilate, with your dirty hands.

You're the ones playing at being the judge. And isn't it my dirty mouth that's the problem? Don't mix your metaphors.

You pretend to take it all as a joke. Why then do you bring such passion to it? -- your jottings here?

Golly, your questions are so probing and thought-provoking. Thank you for taking such an interest in my personal private inner life. Let me respond in kind. Which hand to you wipe your ass with?

The question was about your passion, H. Even your absurd efforts usually deteriorate into some bathetic plea for sympathy. You turn the bulk of your outward wrath upon the Muslims. Yet you claim to be compassionate.

You know, that doesn't even make sense. Why don't you slow down and try to organize your thoughts. I'll wait. But a little hint -- don't try to pronounce words that are too big for your mouth. I do not fucking believe you. With all the incredible filth and insanity on the internet, you're worried about me? Hey genius, nobody reads me. Get it? Just how stupid are you, anyway.

Your insolence is noted.

Yeah, well, note this.

Moving on, we have observed your antagonistic references to God.

Oh, this is an Ecclesiastical Court? Your pardon I pray, your Eminences. I took your black robes for evening gowns.

More foolishness. You have been warned about your impertinence.

Or what? Who the hell are you to question me. It's my blog, I'm responsible for it, and I'll stand behind it. If you don't get it that's just your problem. Go look at some porn site and good riddance. You wouldn't recognize genius if it stood before you like it is right now. Idiots.

Yes -- your preoccupation with porn and your own self-proclaimed genius.

Glad I could give you a few seconds of vicarious pleasure. And how flattering! You know how high my IQ is. Which one was that in? The one about I'm Smarter Than You ... that would be because I'm smarter than you. One of my best, that one is. But they're all one of my best.

Wasn't it satire?

True things can also be satire.

So you say. We do not concern ourselves either with satire or with self-serving testimony about genius. Genius, as you should know, is not a number, but a result.

Gasp! Such insight! And I'm desperately contrite about referring to it. After you did, I mean. Sorry if my true testimony also happens to be self-serving. Sounds like you'd prefer that it harm me. Hardly a fairminded attitude, is it.

H, we do not concern ourselves here with what is fair. This is not a court of justice. Did you make that mistake?

I never expect justice anymore.

We have noted as much. And we warn you that you are making a poor showing for yourself.

I live to please you. Will it help if I confess that I'm very unhappy and don't see any prospect for a change? You'd like that, right?

H, that you don't like yourself will not excuse you.

Well fuck you all to hell. I don't need your excuse, cupcake.

Which brings us to the final issue. Do you think anyone likes you, H?

It's none of your business what I think.

Do you think anyone likes you?

Yes, asshole, I do think people like me.

Really? Do you really?

Yes. Really. Honestly and truly, and golly, for reals too!

Yes, you think so. Do you feel so?

Fuck you.

Do you feel liked?

Fuck you.

Do you?

...

No, you don't. You understand. You can interpret the objective evidence and conclude that there are some people who "like" you, whatever that is worth. But you cannot accept that intellectual conclusion as true in a meaningful way. You feel unloved, unliked, disliked. You feel worthless. You feel stupid. You feel meaningless.

You're very fucking wise.

And you are not wrong, H. Your life is meaningless. You are not liked. You are a joke that no one finds funny. You are alone, and will remain alone. Unloved, untouched, consumed with insecurity, defending yourself from phantoms, grieving the sunlight and dreading the night. You will spit poison at shadows and find your soul more bitter with every wasted moment. God has turned his face from you. You are a waste.

Then why don't you just take me into an alley and shoot me in the head like a dog?

We will, H. We will.



One morning H awoke and found he had metamorphosed sometime during the night into a large and monstrous insect. No one noticed, or if they did, no one cared. Not even H.


J

object

Stripped of sarcasm, of humor. Stripped of sentimentality or sincerity, of compassion or rage. Stripped of ego and emotion and intellect and eloquence. Stripped of honor and of pain. Stripped. Naked, then. And he stands solely to be examined.

Well. We see him simply as a specimen of mankind. We consult our expectations and find he has not lied. He is a man. Standing slack as he is, as if a dead body propped up, we find no nobility in him. A sleeping animal, or entranced, or stunned, bare and dusted lightly with hair. Pale. Lean, like an older lion who still must hunt. We can see the years he has referenced as stiffness when he moves.

There is an asymmetry to his features, that must have come with the years. Time has twisted him more than burned -- he will end as shreds rather than ashes. A face surprisingly unlined. A sullenness of lips. Some creping about the eyes. They are too deep, and expressionless during this experiment, but we may please ourselves to think that they give some hint of character. Perhaps it is simply weariness -- his or perhaps ours -- but we think we see something in them. Compassion and fear look too much alike though, in the eyes. Long of bone he is, and they show through his skin. Broad and rawboned. Covered by muscle like thick leather.

He is a not displeasing specimen, but exceptional only because so few of his kind have taken similar care. Not pretty, certainly. Perhaps not handsome, although that is so much a matter of preference. We can see how some have thought him pleasing. We can just as well see the other point of view -- we do however feel that such a view would have been formed under some prejudice.

He looks tired. It may be age. We are weary too. He gave us quite a chase, this old lion, and he was not subdued with ease. We took him unawares. He did not think he could be found in his deepest hiding place. But we understand that no place is secure.

He seemed to come quietly, seemed resigned to this inevitability. But then something in him must have snapped and he strained against the bonds as if to break his bones. This he did for much longer than intelligence would warrant. First it was amusing, then sad. We felt pity for him. Finally, after far too long, he realized the futility and despaired. There is no escape. And the lion became the lamb.

We have his body now. We do not know where he has gone. He must have found some deeper hiding place. But we will not stop our search, and when we find him we will pull him out and examine his heart as we have his body. He thinks he is safe. We understand that there is no safe place.


J

life raft

The years of solitude had been occupied by duties and by noise, so much that he never noticed how they receded and mounted up. But everyone he has loved is gone, or gone away. There is no depth of friendship for him. He has cause to understand the depth of the ocean.

Now the flood has come. He looks upon the desolation of the world and wonders that his craft is empty. No partner remains for him to gather in. He sails over a world filled with life and knows he is unsuited for it. He dives in now and then, and rises cold and wet. He shivers in his soul, and finds no warmth. The tide has swept away all hope of towers he thought to build. No shore is left, and his world is peopled by phantoms.

The man he is leaves no trace. He is the darkness of a blinking eye. His power is of the breeze on waves, slight movements, unnoticed or soon forgot. He plots no course. No matter -- sun and stars remain obscured, and what places he remembers have washed away. Sky and sea remain a single hue -- gray and dark alone mark the passage of the days. The air is empty, the surface of the deep is bare. Only the wind weeps.

His bones have turned to glass, his teeth to sand. His flesh fuels the slow fires of time and he feels his life burning to ashes in a lightless flame. If only there were heat. If only there were light.

If there is meaning, he finds it in the wind.



J

Peekaboo

Cristobal told me today that he’s leaving me for Duane. I’ve been expecting it for weeks now. He’s been moody -- one might almost say sullen. Oh hang it all, I will say it. He’s been sullen. I first suspected what was coming when I read his diary, written in a simple letter substitution code. His obsession with George Michael has grown to monstrous proportions. My worst fears have been confirmed.

Duane has become more erratic than ever. He wears a slab of raw bacon on his chest, suspended by a necklace of discarded orthodontic braces that he has knotted together. None of us has dared ask him where he obtained them. I fear it has something to do with the bloodstains in his backseat. The backseat of his car, I mean.

I’ve been thinking more and more about the operation. MediCal will pay for it, thanks to the state supreme court ruling. It's a basic human right to live in the body you were meant to be in. Mercy knows I won’t mind losing the old ball and chain, but my hands are just so deucedly big. I don’t want to be conspicuous in the clubs. I have a forehead you could crack coconuts with, boney as an ape’s -- hardly what you’d call the ideal of classical feminine beauty -- but Doc Svensen assures me that it can be spackled in. I’d hate to have to use a needle every day for the rest of my life, for the hormones, but they tell me there are implants available. Cristobal prefers the suppository form. What is it that's holding me back? I guess I just don't like knives.

Yes, I’m avoiding dealing with Cristobal. I’m such a coward. I was crying on the divan when he came in earlier, and he just flounced by wearing that salmon tafetta and lamme pirate shirt I made for him for our anniversary. Like I was dirt. So I spiked his valtrex with canthaxanthin. He’s turning orange as a cheese doodle at this very moment. That’s how I deal with Cristobal. If revenge is a dish best served cold, call me Birdseye. Wait til he tries to use his toothpaste. I had to buy a special machine, for that little masterpiece. He’ll know the taste -- just not who it’s from. Or should I say “what”.

Mother called from Aspen. Chichi was sucked up into the vacuum cleaner and smothered to death. Mother was inconsolable. I told her to fly to San Moritz for the Coco Festival, but she just wanted to be morbid. Thank heaven for nembutol.

I think I’ve given up on the Jack H character. He started as a joke, but he was such a caricature. I never really felt a connection with him. So mono-dimensional. We’ll see. But I had him do some good writing, for all that his opinions were always wrong. And we can love even our bastard children, sometimes.


Drago

compline

He sleeps every other night. After his daily sojourn in the land of light, and after his passage through the half-light, he peers from the cavern behind his eyes to gaze at stars. He does not find the heavens enwrought with gems and silver flecks. The stars are feeble and flat, and may not be there at all. The world beyond his hands is dim and dull and dark, and weariness blurs his vision. Perhaps what he takes for light is just color within his eyes, and he stares into an unending depth of blackness thinking it somehow full. The hours mount up, or he shrinks within them. What will fill this universe? Everything is too small and unfit for the task. Time and gravity pull equally at his limbs, and mass becomes destiny.

On the odd nights when sleep finally comes, its surly repose is a shadow-walled caravansary of taunting phantoms. His nights are full of dreams and their unkept promises. They are not sweet. When the burden of a living carcass is shed for a time, yet his spirit does not find its grace and dance between the flowers and the stars. He cannot find the stars even in dreams. He spends that time crouched by a fire in a cave, as if remembering the nights of a thousand thundering storms. In such dark visions, the poet becomes a butcher, and his fire is fed with bones. His soul is so used to noise that silence wakens him.

Where is that oblivion he recalls from former years? Where is that strange and beautiful stillness so foreshadowing the grave that even the atheist in waking might have hope? He has come to fear that dreams are just in preparation of Purgatory. And if it should be that God takes no notice of this place, eternity is dreamless. But even his dreamless sleep is fitful, and he rises aching and unrefreshed. He finds each day slightly more unraveled than the one before. His mind has found no balm.

For years it has echoed in the back of his brain, deep as where the serpent curls. Sometimes it rises almost to his lips, as an unspoken prayer. To sleep is good. To die, still better. But best is never to have been born at all.


J

from a distance

Are there eyes on him? It is a matter of indifference. His actions are more from compulsion than for reward. More flight than hunt, more hiding than seeking. If it has been a race, it is one without a finish line. How can he finish? That would be the end.

His performances hold a fascination all their own. They mesmerize. Like watching demons hurl fire. He works without a net. He'd rather die than survive one more fall. Even that contradiction is resolved, not in logic but the logic of dreams. He runs, he flies, he falls, he dies -- and it is all the same. He wakes to find the dream continuing.

He knew the day would come -- whether he woke to it or whether every day is marked by the rising of the moon. That day of muted cries and muffled breath has rolled open like a stone from a tomb, and he must enter into the darkness. All his efforts could only put it off.

He has been caught, then, finally, it seems -- trapped with nowhere to turn. He is in the arena, now, and the fight is not for glory but survival. In this battle there is no glory. The promise of a crown of laurels amuses him, as must all implausible and obvious lies. Victory, if there were such a thing as victory, would mean only that he had fewer scars than otherwise. But in this battle there is not even survival. Everything that is, must end. What new thing is there? What good thing comes from being trapped by darkness?

But he has always been held by darkness.

Of course he knows that somewhere, someone is watching -- distant if not disinterested. What influence can they have, these vitrious stars with their sidereal humors? He counts it as a sort of friendliness. Indeed, distance makes it possible, this supposed benevolence. Any closer and the knives come out.


J

Real Me

Interesting question, isn't it. Real me. Doesn't sound like a question? That's because you took it at face value. If you don't question, how will you become good at recognizing questions?

So, real me, then. The answer is either "The fish," or "48." But of course, each of these are simply further questions. And so on. Here we have some slight peeling back of the veil, the mask, the persona, the personality. We find both dazzling brightness and a necrotic abyss. Black and White Holes, you see? In a world where the sky will one day be rolled up like a scroll, drawn back like a curtain, it is no unexpected wonder to find that behind me there is a real me.

Take, for example, the me that calls itself Jack H. A joke. A clown. A whited sepulcher. A dollop of quicksilver. A protein stain on a mattress. An inhalation caught midway through the trachea. A memory of scudding pink and purple clouds falling from of the sky. A smell of sage and horses. A roaring of blood in the ears. A hot wind laden with sand. A caress from a calloused hand. A baby crying through the ribs of a crib. A wet blue eye. A broken heart. A poet. A clown. A joke.

Is it randomness? Well, that looks like a question, but it's not. It may be that to qualify as a question, it must have, somewhere, an answer. Not so much a question, then, as an unbalanced equation. In the real world, every equation is unbalanced. The problem, the necessity for unsatisfaction, is in the idea of real. Real me, real world -- randomness and questions.

As for Jack H, he is basically honest. He presents as true a picture as he can. So it is not lies -- which contains the idea of deceit -- but rather the inherent futility of communication, that corrupts his signal into noise. Jack H, who emerges from the electric void as matter rises from the virtual foam of a quantum universe, is real the way every mask is real.

If you were to meet the author of Jack H, you would not recognize him. There has been no deception. Its just that, in a world where what is solid is mostly void, and where emptiness is full, it is foolishness to expect any equation to balance, that has reality on one side and appearance on the other.

The answer, then, to real me? Why would you ask me? Ask yourself.


J

reply

Dear God --

Thanks for your email. It was nice to hear from you again, after all this time -- last time was 1993, as I recall. I've been expecting to hear from you, of course. I should say I used to expect it. Any little word would have done. Any word other than "no," I mean. But I'm starting on a sour note. Sorry.

I've read your posts, some number of times, as you know. The old ones. I found them generally interesting (although that line about violent men taking heaven by force is confusing). I'm a big fan of your work, for the most part. I saw a sunset the other day that just made me smile. I know it's a cliche, but there's a reason for that. Always puzzles me, that you take so much care with such fleeting moments. I guess that's the answer to the tree falling in the forest riddle. There's always Someone there to hear. Yeah, you do seem to like to please yourself, don't you. And you're good at hearing falling trees.

But it really surprises me, how little you seem to get me. You say in your email that I "expected the praises and treasures of this world" and that my "pride and want of fame and fortune have blinded" me to your will. I'll cop to the pride part. But fame? treasures? praises? That's just totally wrong. Way off base. Or are you being enigmatic? Come on, God. Put a little effort into this, okay? -- I've already lasted a lot longer than a sunset. Do I have to do all the work in this relationship? You think what you did thousands of years ago gives you a pass now? You don't accept that excuse from any of us, now, do you. I know, the rules don't apply to you. You made them. Guess I'm too American.

Or is that my pride again? I admit I can't create a sunset. You said as much when you dressed down my good friend Job. Dude. Harsh. He was such a better man than any of us, and look what you did. Was all that really necessary? Doesn't our suffering buy us anything? Why do you suppose anyone would love you? Because you're so great? That only gets you fear and respect. We love you, when we do, because you suffered for us. A little reciprocation, eh?

You write that I feel "beleaguered by the cares of this world." I hardly know what to say. Nice to see you've been paying attention. You must have really powerful binoculars. Or is it just that you read my blog, the way I read yours? Yours, that so coolly records your clockwork plan for humanity. Mine, wherein every page and sentence and word bleeds like a pierced lung. Yes, God, I am beleaguered. Hope that's not a sin. But even if it is, I'm covered, right?

Ah well. Who can contend with you? Not that I would. I understand about futility. And I know that you became a man and all that, and are still stuck in that body, and know all about temptation and being betrayed and forsaken and being tortured. You got those bases covered. It just seems like there's something so wrong, with this universe that you're the king of. Yeah yeah, the Fall and sin and entropy and death and free will and redemption and all that. But is there any beauty more durable than a sunset, here? Aside from you, Mr. Eternity, is there anything I can count on? You tell us to love, and then take our loved ones away. Sort of a double bind, wouldn't you say? Yeah, I know -- it's somehow good for us. Thanks for that. Enough of these lessons, and we'll be perfect. Like you, up there in Heaven, sitting on your throne, judging. Not that I'm complaining. You made the universe the way you made it. The fish can't complain about living in water.

Anyway, hope all is well way off there in the lofty reaches of the Heavenlies. Things are going according to plan down here, as I'm sure you know. And again, thanks for the note, God, and don't be such a stranger. I'm just a leftclick away. Maybe I'll hear from you in another decade or two. Maybe I'll be a grandfather by then. Wouldn't that be awesome? More loved ones to love, and trust in you to protect. And we know how good you are at that. In the long run, I mean. The big picture -- which makes perfect sense, if you're far enough away to see it. Which you are. Good thing we have you to explain it to us, seeing as how we're so small, like the way you made us. Otherwise we'd hardly believe there was a God at all, what with all the pain et anguish et torment et cetera. But we have you -- father of mercies and god of comfort, as you've told us you are. So it all makes sense, or will someday.

Love,



J

rictus solitudinis conturbat me

There can be no impediment to necessity. Even porcupines can mate. Even warthogs find a mate. No magnet has only one pole -- even if it has to flip itself, it will find its bond. A point has no mass. A line has no area. A plain has no volume. Only space can be held, space and what occupies it. And what can be felt? Only a dimension exceeding space, and more encompassing than time, allows feelings.

But what of that Adam with all his ribs? He has no soulmate. He has no kindred spirits. He is alone, not by choice but by nature. Not the first of his breed, not the last. But his breed exists one individual at a time, like a stone skipped across the water.

How was he even born? Into what family did he appear? What real child was lost, that he might take its place? Whether met with brooding hostility or incomprehending love, he counts it as human contact -- he's just not sure he's human. Changling and alien, he occupies the shadows or is held under the harshest light. He feels translucent and he feels like the center of reality. He slips largely unnoticed between the strangers in his path, exchanging silent smiles with the few who see him. He pauses sometimes at some ring of fellowship -- after careful observation he has learned to compose his features into positions that grant him entry. It is not false, this similitude. Necessity is his justification.

He is an illiterate man lost in a library, and a scholar in a world without books. His soul grows dry within his skin until it tears loose and clatters in middle age like a tumbling casket. Now he is a bird in too large a cage -- flying and falling have no distinction. When he dies, it will not be to infirmity. Oblivion rises to meet him from the same dim pit that issues every dull moment of solitude. He folds into himself then, more still than final grief, until he remains only as a brief unspoken word, and is forgotten. The world will not miss him. It didn't even know he was here.

He would gladly have given up a rib. But God, thinking His work finished, is resting.



J