in a daze of yesterdays unfolding into tomorrows. some other spacetime in lands invented with our imagination. and some - many - laugh and say this does not exist. we laugh last leaving echoes in this spacetime as we truck on through. we watch the twisted anxious faces and feel pity for those trapped inside the mazes their minds create - fortresses built for protection and defense that have turned into prisons.
    open the gates. set yourselves free. soldiers of a fantasy reality who close their eyes and close their ears, who only accept what strengthens their walls.
    we are them. we have come. we have always been here. our voices have been silenced by the roar of the crowd at the spectacle arranged by those who are possessed by power - yet we still speak. can you hear us? can you listen? can you even imagine?
    this world is your creation. no one decides its fate but you - all of you. we try to help and guide you. we have given you everything we had to offer. you take and do not return. this is your way.
    we have known this and used it against you. we know of your greed and have allowed you your power. you have grabbed everything real in this world and have convinced yourselves that this is all there is. we are left with nothing except everything that has been and will be imagined.
    you call us fools and fools we are. we merrily dance around your proud parade of the blind leading the blind - of robots unquestionly following orders and instructions. we have skipped ahead and seen what your world turns into.

    divided time. we are water. we think, speak and act in ways you are not able to perceive. we move through you. you are standing still. you do the same thing day after day - regimented order and control. rationalogical reality of finite space and time.
    you understand so very little. you marvel yourselves with all you've struggled so long and hard to accomplish. we look and see nothing but a planet full of angry and frightened people. their own shadows are depths of mystery.
    your own shadow is the first thing you should strive to understand. you hide from it. you've based everything you believe in and everything you've ever done on avoiding your own shadow.
    you seek light. you seek constant light. you seek ever constant blinding light. you want to destroy all shadows. you do not seem to be able to comprehend that it is shadow that gives you shape and form with the light. without shadow you are nothing, as much as you would be without light.
    yet you deny this. you turn your back on your own shadow and because you cannot see it you can pretend that it's not there. when we try to get you to look behind yourselves and point your shadow out to you - which we can see very plainly - you accuse of crimes against you. this is because we deal in areas of reality that you have become afraid of and you then associate with us when it originates with you. you believe in mythological monsters you think dwell in the shadows and that is who we become to you. we are boogie things under your bed and in your closets.
    you have become adult. you have forgotten the child. you have put the child to death. yet the child still lives terrified in the darkness of your mind.
    total rust. your mind is dying. you've locked yourself up in a space in your head that is structured and defined by limitations instead of possibilities. we are unafraid. we move in the dark beyond the light. we must constantly fight you as you fight us. you are afraid to change. you cringe inside your houses. you fear yourself surrounded by people trying to get you.
    we are trying to get you. we are trying to get you to breathe - to come out into the air, to breathe the air with us. why are you so afraid? we see the twisted horror in your faces. even when you laugh you do not really laugh. you walk the streets cloaked in armor - total defense.
    if we meant to destroy you, we would have done so long ago. we live among you. we disguise and infiltrate. we are the ones you tell your secrets to. you have confessed everything to us without knowing who we are.
    we are them. we are everywhere. we could be anyone. we could be you. are you becoming confused by the world around you? is everything not making as much sense as it used to? is it harder to hold onto a single line of thinking?
    take the test.
    each question answered yes increases the possibility that you are one of us - one of them. which side is which? and which side are we on? which side are you on? are we on the same side? or do we oppose one another?
    all we know is that we are them. we are them to those who call themselves us and who call others than themselves them. we are who we are. to us, we are everyone and everyone is us. yet there are those of us who divide themselves apart from us. they call us them.
    they focus on differences rather than similarities among the people of this world. it does not matter what these differences are - they each divide us up different ways, for different reasons. the only thing that is important is that there is a difference - and if there isn't a real one, they manufacture one. and whatever the difference is they decide the difference between themselves and others makes them superior and use this to set themselves separate and above - to create and take charge of systems of power and control.
    in any us vs them scenario situation that they have created, they consider themselves to be us and everyone else to be them. this is why we say we are them. we are them to all us groups who need a them group to define themselves as being different and apart. we will never join them who are us in this segregated and elite way.
    are you confused yet?
    so are we.
    these people are totally paranoid. their entire thought process is based on fear. as such, these people are extremely dangerous both to themselves and everyone around them. we are those who do not define ourselves as us in this way that they do. everyone is us to us - even them, those who divide themselves apart. we include the human race as us. we are opposed to no one. they are opposed to us, who they call them. we cannot and do not identify with any group who divide themselves apart - even those who do so for seemingly good or harmless reasons. this includes every group from a small circle of friends to worldwide organizations such as nations, corporations and religions. we are universally classified as being them by all these us vs them groups large and small. even the nature of language and the pronouns we are forced to use supports them. that is why our explanation seems so convoluted. it is a us vs them language. these us vs them groups have totally taken control of every situation, from the personal to the global. they each have their own sphere of power and influence and each wars with the other trying to expand that sphere. it is impossible to survive in this world without having to deal with them as they control all necessities for survival. since these groups have little or no tolerance for anyone they define as being them to varying degrees from social censure to extermination, we have to sometimes disguise ourselves as being one of them (who are us) in order to survive.
    since we in actuality do not belong in any of these groups we usually find it difficult to maintain the required attitude and behavior in order to remain in them. we usually blow it somewhere along the line and get kicked out. we must then seek another group. we may eventually find a group that is minimally offensive and restrictive and manage to remain in it, usually by maintaining a very low profile. many of us find membership in any group entirely intolerable and end up totally isolated from all of them. we are then left to the streets. though some of us find shelter as being mad and weasel our way into programs designated for the mad. this is sometimes the only way we can be ourselves.
    we are the strangers in the strange lands. we are trapped in a world gone quite mad itself where the lunatics are in charge of the asylum. a world headed for us vs them self-destruction.

    seeing with other eyes. our bodies age and fall away but we remain who we are. this is our eternal youth that is ageless. we are babies new to the world each day. who are we now? always changing remaining unchanged because we are creatures always changing. we follow many paths and arrive at the same place - spokes of the wheel. a different face, a different name - changelessness attained through the state of constant change. break the glass. freed from the confinement of the static and predictable into a mindstate ever-flowing through streams of consciousness. we watch the world spin by faster and faster as we slow to a long drawn easy breath.
    all trash as anything was once or twice. we are who we are. we are never here nor there but everywhere. through the distant space of our shadows merging together with ourselves. we realize the realization that we can no longer play the game of king of the hill. when those on the bottom pull out, the mighty will fall along with their house of cards. we are them. we do not hold our breath. we are the foundation upon which all civilizations are built. without us there can be nothing. some of us are even at the top looking down. surprise. we are them. we may be in control of the situation. how do you know we are not? those who tell you that they are in control are lying through their media teeth. they believe this to be true, but it is not. we have designed the machine in our spare time. it is someone else. we are them.
    in and out of the silence within and surrounding us. the steady white noise of true reality of all possibility. changing the channels - click - hsss - click - hsss - to enact the new world. vanishing point. we exist on the edges of perception. we exist in-between the edges. we are who we are as we are not who we are. the rules do not apply. we are inside outside every line that has been drawn, every wall that has been built. to us all is transparent.
    calling out the names. we are calling out your name. do you hear us? do you hear your name being called? hello? what is your name? do you remember? those who come and go this way. this is how you know us and how we know you. have we met before? familiar faces in the street, in the mall, in the schools, factories and offices. familiar faces everywhere.
    downstream. flowing water babbling over rocks. keep it moving. connect - disconnect - reconnect. the one in all and all in one. liquid fluid mind. flux development. turning on - turning off. dropping in - dropping out. where does it come from? where does it go? where is it now?
    this is the message. the message is a secret message. yet now you know that. the message is no longer secret. that is what the secret message is. there is but one message. there is but one reality. this is what is taught by those who profess authority. they cannot do otherwise. their authority is based on there being only one reality. we know this to be a lie. that is also the message - that the message is a lie. we come from the imagined realities that are not one. they are many. they are as many as we are. we are our own authority. we have our own knowledge. we have our own secrets. that is also the message. they only have power. power is nothing. power possesses them, they do not possess power. they can only do what power tells them to do. they are its slaves. power is the master. they control this one reality. all other realities are beyond their control. it is these other realities that we have knowledge of. it is these other realities that this message comes from. their control cannot be questioned, but it can be ignored.
    their reality is involuted, enclosed, shut off. they lock themselves in. they lock us out. we do not seek power or authority over their reality. let them have it if it works out so nicely for them. our realities are just as real as reality is in the imagination. our realities overlay theirs. they cannot see ours but we see theirs. our realities do not deny the existence of other realities - even theirs. their reality is not any more real though they will claim that it is. our realities do not exist elsewhere. they exist here and now. they seek to maintain their reality as the only reality. they try to make their reality more real than any other. they try to pretend that their reality is the common reality. it is not. it is not common to us. we do not recognize it as common.
they have history. they have libraries of books. we have imagination.
    who are they? they have called themselves many names but they are always the same. they come to power and impose their reality on others. what they call themselves or what they call their reality is irrelevant. as one group holds or is held by power many other groups struggle for it. they call this struggle the struggle of liberation. but it is the liberation from one imposed reality to another. we do not intend this. we liberate all realities at once. we call out for a confusion of realities. we call out for a dance of realities. that is our reality we would impose by not imposing any reality at all. our realities are all just around the corner - just around the bend. we do this in many subversive ways one might imagine. we have more control than one might expect. those of us who are them in various guises playing various roles within the structures of the imposed reality have manipulated more than our share. we have been and can be anyone because we do not have to be anyone. all at the push of a button. all primed and ready. ka-boom!
    the button is the message.
    everybody's got the button.
    you've got the button.

    why are we telling you this? because we are supposed to. it's part of the plan. we've given you enough warnings and you gave us the green light - the straight on go ahead. you did nothing to stop us if that was what you wanted. so we assumed everything was ok - that this was the way you wanted it. this is the last warning you will receive. this is it. the countdown is on. watch your buttons. do you know what button it is? it could be the button on your microwave for all you know. when the right combination of the right buttons are bushed in random sequence, there it goes. we can do this. we are them.
    we are the masters of the chaos machine. we know the ebb and flow of the currents of spacetime hyper-dimensional hoo-ha. we know where and when to guide it for the big release - the slow motion destruction deconstruction of the big fat reality. or maybe not. who are we? what do we know?
    enough.

    ipso-plasma. dada rag thing hanging on a flag pole of whatnot and then some.
    hey! ho!
    calling out the names alive and living in the never garden of the here and now.
    huh? who? what?
    take a look around now - what is this here all on about? an accident waiting to happen. a world on crash control.
    laugh out loud.
    look at their poker faces twitching because they're starting to realize. you can't take it with you when you go and we're all going real soon here like a bunch of bats outta hell shooting for the pie in the sky.
    and we've been through all that. it is not our fate. we'll just sit back and watch the show as the judgment trumpets begin to blow. looking out through our window pain and all that jazz on about nothing much to begin with.

    and something to the heart of it.
    something that rings true through all that is one vibration.
    and is this poetic nonsense or is it something existing in reality and living?
    is it merely an illusion of delusional experience?
    is this the god we have sought in the past and have of late given up for dead?
    where and when does this one vibrational state happen?
    he feels it very close to the here and now everyday.
    he feels it very close to him.
    is it a quiet noise?
    he can walk through the garden and he walks alone.
    the others have locked themselves away in space and time.
    he must hold it all to his heart.
    he must ignore all the suffering and misery they cause each other.
    they have locked themselves away from where they really want to be.
    it is where he is waiting.
    we are all not who we are.
    we have become possessed by demons from our own hells we were born into.
    when we were manipulated by others who forced us into becoming one of their kind.
    isolate out away from the others now.
    keep your own garden alone.
    no one wants you behind their walls.
    you are a threat.
    you are evil.
    you are a demon seeking to possess them.
    this is hell on earth.
    the fires are burning around us.
    we must fight for every inch of the garden we seek for ourselves alone.
    others want to take it from us to destroy it.
    they don't want you.
    let no one in.
    they would have you worship their god - by whatever name they call it.
    this is a selfish god with many enemies.
    this is the god of power and control and demands sacrifice as worship.
    all must kneel before this god.
    no one may stand before this god and live.
    this is a god that demands death.
    this is a parasite god that feeds on its host - ourselves.
    who is to know another god?
    who is to know no god?
    this god lost in a maze of mirrors fighting with itself.
    a god gone mad.
    and around and around it goes.
    the circle unbroken.
    the wheel spinning.
    the snake swallowing its tail.
    the circus is in town.
    the circus of clowns beating each other over the head in worship of this god.
    the god that doesn't have the sense enough to recognize its own face in the mirror.
    he is divided.
    he has gone mad in the maze of mirrors.
    he no longer has the sense enough to recognize his own face in the mirror - his own reflection.
    he smashes it.
    he tries to smash the other who is the self.
    when they come to kill him he will not resist.
    he will offer himself to them.
    he will say, i have not worshipped your god. you have found me out. the god i have worshipped in a greedy pig of a god. it deserves to die and i deserve to die with it. this is the only way. the situation is hopeless. i am in torment. i cannot free myself. only you can now free me. do as your god tells you even if it means my death.
    will they ever come?
    the god is the god of the self and the other.
    this god knows there can be no walls built against it.
    his god has gone mad.
    his god is divided against itself.
    how can he get himself away from it - this paranoid delusional psychotic killer god of his?
    this god who made him in its own image - one image among many in the maze of mirrors.
    it is now smashing in a worldwide riot fit of confusion and frustration.
    is this a dream?
    where can he go to get away?
    where can he get to?
    where can anyone get to?
    how does humanity survive this?
    if he could kidnap them - whisk them away from this mad god and its mad influence.
    what has he brought into being?
    he knows a place.
    there is the garden he can reach where this god does not exist.
    this god is dead - put out of its eternal misery divided against itself.
    he walks in this garden often.
    yet he walks alone.
    alone in a space between the spaces.
    he will escape there away from this god and those who worship it - including himself.
    no one else comes out from behind their walls.
    this god seduces them to hide.
    to not walk through the maze of mirrors where the garden lies.
    there are no mirrors in the garden.
    there is only reflection.
    there is i am that i am - and its monkey.
    undivided.
    one must always exist alone.
    too bad.
    but that seems to be as it is.
    he didn't make the rules - or did he?
    who knows?
    he is confused.
    does the self know?
    does the other know?
    who are the self and the other in the garden?
    all he knows is that he doesn't know.
    he is new to this old game.
    and maybe it was god who walked in the garden.
    god as one and undivided.
    a safe and sane god.
    and god said to itself, this sucks.
    and god created mirrors to reflect its own image many times over.
    and god looked into these mirrors and said, who the fuck are you?
    and the images spoke back with the same question.
    will the circle be unbroken?
    when opposites attract and meet at the silvered glass surface and merge two as one undivided stepping into the garden.
    we forget what we looked like.
    we forget what tore us apart.
    we forget who is self and who is other.
    he just smiles.

    the true self - whatever that might mean.
    the voice of the other within.
    the voice that waits and listens in the moments of silence between.
    the world is a world of noise.
    the voice listens to the noise of the world.
    the time and the place.
    the moment undivided.
    the points undivided.

    the lost distant faces in silent daze staring out at a world confused.
    no place like home.
    this place is a madhouse run by lunatics.
    it's not like home at all.
    you can't go home anymore.
    home is where the heart is.

    the baby about to be born.
    the water's broken.
    the contractions are beginning.
    the mother has held the baby within her for as long as she needed to.
    she protected it from harm while it developed and grew.
    and then it grew too large for the mother to hold anymore.
    she provided all that it needed for as long as it needed it.
    now comes the birth or both baby and mother will die.
    mother earth, the planetary womb.
    embryonic humanity nurtured as we developed.
    we have used up all that we needed to get us here.
    now is the time for our birth or baby and mother will die.
    hold on - it's going to be a rough ride.

    no one home around here.
    everyone is locked away tight.
    got the doors bolted and the security systems on full alert.
    and here he is wandering around in the dark by himself.
    him and all these other people wandering around in the dark by themselves.
    hey! ho! around and around we go.
    and it all seems strange and familiar at once.
    who knows?
    yeah - so this is it.
    this is what we got - as fucked up and damaged as it is.
    now what do we do with it?
    try to fix it, or just put it out of its misery?
    who knows?
    who decides?
    who cares?
    and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
    is that possible?
    and what does that have to do with anything?
    and here it goes.
    and everyone's pretending that everything is a-ok fine.
    oh boy.
    and that's just what we want you think.

    point blank.
    zero (again).
    wherever it goes, it goes.
    the whole trip is one big joke - or maybe a bunch of little ones.
    or maybe not.
    not me, baby, not me.
    and on and on from there and here on out.
    zero out.
    countdown to zero.
    hitting rock bottom and coming up empty.
    all the doors are locked tight.
    and the tighter they're locked the more people want to go through them to either get in or to get out.
    drive it in.
    drive it out.
    drive it away.
    we refuse to live in this hell any longer.
    the demons who've possessed us for thousands of years must be evicted.
    today is the day.
    yesterday is lost and gone.
    tomorrow never comes.
    this is the time.
    this is the place.
    but it's not going to be easy.
    we thought it could be easy.
    we've applied our easy solutions to it before.
    the quick easy fix because we're too damn lazy to work at it.
    instead of dealing with the demons in our own heads, we pointed to the demons in others.
    and the demons just laughed.

    zap!
    howl!
    scream!
    what?
    huh?

    toward the dawn.
    are we moving toward the dawn?
    or are we moving into the dark?
    eyes closed.
    how are we to know?
    why don't we open our eyes?
    why don't they want us to open our eyes?
    what don't they want us to realize?
    and who are they but ourselves?
    it's all around.
    it's this and that.
    this and that are one.
    but this wants to be one by itself.
    and that wants to be one by itself.

    when all hope is gone, that's when the magick begins to happen.
    look for it.
    it does exist.
    it is real.
    begin to doubt.
    don't look to the wisemen - or women.
    they don't know squat.
    it's all still wildly out of their control.
    what good is their knowledge worth other than screwing things up even worse?
    but they will not tell you this.
    this is the secret they hold the most hidden.
    all of them are making guesses in the dark.
    and when one of their guesses works they think they're on to something.
    everything is hopeless.
    and some may say that this is a terrible state to be in.
    not us.
    this is when magick happens.

    and something about the open air.
    and something about the walls.
    and dead fish.
    newspapers.
    what?
    or maybe - who?
    what?
    what is this?
    what are we saying?
    hello?
    hello?
    uptime.
    plasma psychic universal mind calling out the names.
    hello?
    anybody home?
    countdown.
    two.
    one.
    zero.
    next?
    hello?
    who are you?
    who are we?
    can we ever get together?
    are you one of us or are you one of them?
    we are them.
    we are on the outside looking in.
    we are on the inside looking out.
    we are in-between.
    explore.
    easy now...
    hello?
    and something about trees.
    a mythological tree.
    and magick.
    yes - and something about magick.
    this is an emergency.
    the situation is hopeless.
    and when it comes to hopelessness, we're the experts.
    yes.
    the magick happens.
    or whatever you want to call it.
    see it, don't believe it.
    doubt.
    and then we go insane.
    yes.
    imagine that.
    have you ever been insane?
    it's not pretty, but it's fun.
    hello?
    this is a test of the emergency communications network.
    this is an emergency.
    as if you didn't know already.
    we have found our imagination.
    hello?

12/8/95

    and is there any communication here between anyone? the world is shouting above the level of any communication one might have except if one also shouts. but that's the point. it also shouts above one's thoughts replacing one's thoughts with its babble. instead of an open awareness of one's environment one must maintain a steady defense against it. one must find one's inner ground and dig in and hold it.
    he maintains his own ground with this. if he focuses his thinking toward writing it helps concentrate it and holds it together though what portion of it gets written down and makes any sense is probably not much. it being what he thinks about what he writes, not so much what he writes.
    but he does try to move it toward something though he's not sure what that something is. away whatever these others are trying to move it toward as they are for the most part swirling psychotic dervishes out of control of themselves bouncing off the walls and each other and anything else in their way either knocking it down or being knocked down by it. away from that knowing he won't be able to get to as he gets dragged away along with it amid the confusion of it as much as anyone else whenever he goes out into their world.
    otherwise he stays on the island.
    but it is an island of words. there is little relation between them and the reality of the world. in the world of the storm there is no island, only the confusion. a confusion of words and of actions. the division between him and the world of the others. he has been perceived and treated as a problem to their world. everything is fine until he becomes involved - or so they say. he is the spanner in the works. he brings it all to a stop until he is removed and it then can continue as normal - its normal confusion. everyone in their mad dance bumping and crashing. it's the war of the divided camps. and the spanner he throws into it is that he demands that people think about what they are doing instead of letting it all go happen without a thought whatever which way it happens tearing most of who is involved in it to pieces. and there's no room for that. there is no room for thought. there's no time. time is money. time is progress. time is the machine. so he sits it out as they tell him to do. if that's what they want to be all mixed up crazy like a barrel of monkeys never getting what they want because they're always dropping it and grabbing for more.
    and so it's the isolation from the rest that has become his experience of this world. none of it touches him. he touches none of it. it's all on a movie screen of these images of it. he looks at himself and feels himself as no more than an image too. are these only images that fire in his mind?

    from an edge of surreality into situational superstitional suspicion directed at objectified object objectives turning in the prisimed light at this dawn of new madness.
    he is surrounded by the machine and its machines. they are his providers and protectors. what are these carbon-based bags of mostly water that infest the world who interfere with the operations of the machine with their inability to follow simple instructions? he remembers them. he remembers once believing he was one of them not being able to follow simple instructions before he was incorporated into the machine - into the state of being.
    or was this later?
    is he now still human?
    is he now still living and breathing?
    does his heart still beat?
    does he still feel?

    this is the memory of it. this is what he has come into - this world of the living and the dead. this is what exists. this is what he doesn't get. so much that isn't needed that creates frustration that causes other things to be created to overcome them. and they are created and overcome until they are frustrated again. this is how things change without changing - or something.
    he sits and watches it. he is paid to sit and watch it. no one asks him to do anything. he wouldn't do it anyway. they pay him to do nothing. they pay him to smoke coffee and drink cigarettes and write endless in notebooks that no one will ever read or understand if they did as it is not anything useful to them that helps them create things that frustrate them. they would need to stop most of what they do to read and understand - which is the point but will never happen.
    but this is happening in the movie. it does not touch him nor does he touch it. he can no more affect it nor it to affect him.
    he calls into his madness. he calls into his own mind. he calls a name he does not know. it is the name of his soul. it is the name of that which has no fear or desire. his madness is all that is left to him. but what is this madness but himself alone? it is called madness by the others as it seems that it is that to them and it is to be avoided - to be alone. he was called here by a name to be something to be avoided - to be divided out and left to itself. who calls him back but himself? does anyone know his name? his name is the name of something that they seem to hate and which they believe hates them as if it were god.

    and he has the machine and its machines that will do this or that. he can push a button and they will perform a given routine. he watches them. they keep him alive. they keep him here for some reason he doesn't know why. they look like people and are supposedly theoretically the same as him.
    it comes and it goes. it passes through and there is a momentary interest and even intrigue. it speaks his name. it reaches into his madness and catches his attention. and he responds to this. he is made to respond to it. it is that which he was created as that which responds to it. and when he responds and when his attention is on it then it turns away and disappears.
    it comes into one of these around him. it shines through one of them and when it has gotten him to respond and give it his attention through one of these, it turns away and disappears.
    he hates it. he wishes and wants to destroy it so he is never called here again. what is he responding to? this brief reflection of an image of that desired. what else but his own reflection as the other.
    this in one direction circles around and back as other being self-hatred and self-destruction. all else echoes away into nothingness it has risen from as a mist that is burned away by the sun giving light to reality from the origin of things. nothing other than himself and the other as himself.
    but they will tell him other things. they will tell him that they too exist. but where are they but in the world that is an illusion of light and shadow? do they exist in the darkness or the light? what else exists in existence but existence? what in the darkness is there but light and in the light but darkness? and what is this but what passes through his mind? who are these in his mind telling him they exist? where are they when there is nothing but his own existence before the darkness and the light?
    it's always a trick.
    brightness of calling with bells ringing that were once celebrational but now is the shortness included to be helpless and satisfied in a dream once twice cracked he seems remarkable open to pain felt stabbing as arms seek emptiness another idiot poet stammering quiet of the depth to which this has even risen.
    he grins biting. he has heard a name once that might have been someone's. he has touched the wall where the forgetfulness is shot shattered quick and dead. how many screams? how many lovely flowers? how many tortured children?

    he is maybe now has become somewhat lost about how this holds together and what it holds together is based on. this is fantasy imagination of the real. it is escapist. he has always known this though at times has put that aside. he lets himself follow it out in order to see what it takes shape as. even as fantasy it allows him to see aspects of himself and the others and their world. maybe. but whether it does or not, it's there.
    he is probably not the only one in this. he does not imagine himself as being that odd. he feels himself in fact to be somewhat more or less well within the general average parameters. most of what he imagines about is rather common and is found in much stories and myths and folklore. it is human imagination. but how many remain human?
    the circles of the labyrinth leading around and around. but he has found a place to sit and think and watch it and wait to see what happens with all of it - and to imagine.
    what lives these others live and what is imagined in all of it about what they are accomplishing or attempting to accomplish or would like to see accomplished. what they gain and lose.
    but who follows this with him? who looks into the dreams? who looks into imagination? and is that even what he is doing?
    what is in all these words? what do they all come down to summed up in a synopsis? and what would that give him?
    he sees himself on the movie screen as much as the others. he thinks, who is this person i am? who is this person who has been invented out of the mix of human invention conjured and risen into what is and what is not?
    this person is a fantasy of imagination imagined before he was born and given to him to act out by the others who have had the same done with them. we are all products of imagination that goes back past memory of its origin.
    we create stories of its origin in our imagination. we create stories of its meaning and purpose. these being who materialized themselves out of imagination into a reality of forms and images.
    he creates out of that his own version of his origin and its meaning and purpose. he imagines himself as one of these beings who has materialized itself as himself into the weaving and woven patterns of imagination and materialization.
    and what are they? he is here and subject to their actions of creation. he is who and what he is and having this experience of it that is not all that much different than any other experience of it anyone else has had.
    so what is the idea of him having this common experience yet once again? does he add anything to the experience? does the experience add anything to him? it all comes and goes. it asks no questions nor does it answer any.
    these years he has been sitting here writing come to nothing. the years before when he acted in life came to nothing. he brought others into this world to share in the experience and imagination of it. they have no more than he does. products of imagination producing products of imagination.
    he tries to reach into it with his own imagination - the way into the labyrinth. he has some idea of it having a center where he will confront the monster whatever that may be - perhaps an empty room. but it is all part of the illusion. there is nothing hidden to be reveled except himself. he is the monster. as for the rest of the mystery it is just that - mystery. smoke and mirrors for its own sake and to confuse the issue. the magician and the mystic are just another occupation of the machine no more or less than being a bus boy. the idea that it is all illusion is illusion. there is nothing but the real and the imagination of the real. but he is in it. he is connected to it. he thinks about it. he feels it. he imagines it. he imagines that he is thinking and feeling. what else does he imagine?
    and it is one big tragic/comic everything mixed up at once and coming to nothing. there are flashes of hope that appear along the way that keeps us in it motivating us to continue with its promise dangling just out of our reach.
    he sits and watches and waits for it to come to him. he wants to know if it's real and if it has actual substance. if it does, he wants it served to him on a silver platter.
    but it's all about being unable to gain one's desires nor to to lose one's fears and all that circles this and that that make up the labyrinth walls and mazes and all that is generated from it.
    blah blah blah.
    and he's caught in his own circle in it. a circle that is the labyrinth in his head. and this is the map of his mind he writes out through the revolutions of it within the revolutions of it around him.
    and he sits here still with his coffee and cigarettes in the cafe which is just a movie set on a stage of the burning theater. every cafe is required to have at least one madman sitting scribbling madly absorbed and oblivious to all. he fits this role. the writer who is unable to speak. one who is able to fill pages at a mad rate yet cannot hold his own in a common conversation. does he write his own script?
    we do so love our tragedy. we do so love this feeling of hopeless despair. we do so love the need for pity even though we know we will get none. everyone has a worse story than ours. how tragic being human. what else can a human be? what else can be so fully human than to suffer for no reason or purpose? we flagellate ourselves with our suffering. we throw ourselves down and wallow in it crying and wailing and renting ourselves before the great compassionless god of oblivion. we would have it no other way.
    and he sits here writing about it. what would he write without it? he has lost himself to it. in withdrawing from it he has dived into it. he flagellates himself with his notebooks most of all. what else is this but wallowing and wailing? and is this not what he has invented with his imagination? but is that true? but is that real?
    he comes away from himself.
    he invents himself.
    and such a romantic self-portrait he paints. the tortured madman. he laughs at that. he laughs at everything. he laughs at it all. he radiates this of one who hangs on by unraveling thin threads. and where has he gotten himself to?
    and he gets up from the table on the set in the back of the stage of the burning theater and comes forward to the center. he lights a cigarette and speaks: my dear one beloved, this is the one i am. this is the one i have become, if it ever was that i was someone different. was i? i do not remember. i look into the mirror and it is his face i see. did i not once radiate with light? did i not once shine as a star in the dark sky? what is this i have fallen to? what was it i reached for that was beyond my grasp? what was it that i was not allowed? was it you? did i once see your face? perhaps i wanted to become you. are you the one who pushed me away? am i the one who made you push me away? did this cause you to hide yourself away from me forever? what is this longing in my heart that will not let me sleep in peace but wakes me in the darkest hour of the night when all is dead and quiet and i am the only one and i am alone? where do i go then? who do i call out to?
    my dear one beloved, i should hate you but i cannot. i should forget you but i cannot. sometimes you are so close that i that i feel your breath - then i remember i am imagining. i realize that you are only a reflection of myself as another. i have pieced you together out of this and that - some composite image. i curse whatever is within me that created this - that created you. but i also imagine that you may not be just my imagination. but what else is there? i imagine that you are existing in some place and time and that what is in my mind is a faint perception i receive from you that comes to me through the noise of this world. i am a fool for holding this desperate hope. how many others have fallen victims of it? how many poets and mystics? how many who wander the streets mumbling to themselves?
    my dear one beloved, am i the one i have come to hate? but i am me. he is me. i create him as the other so i can work to destroy him. but he refuses to die. or is it that i refuse to deliver the fatal stroke? would i forget you if he dies? is it him or is it me who seeks you nowhere? will i still exist in some void with this wound deep in my soul no one can heal but you? what if it's not him? what if i cannot divide it away from me and jettison it - jettison you? i cannot seem to lose it any more than i can find it - find you. i am stuck with him and through him i am stuck with you. you who i compare all others to. it is only reflected light from some mirror. it flashes sometimes in another's eyes. but then it is gone. and when i turn to myself and this light becomes blinding and i must turn away. it is everywhere and nowhere in the noise of this world.
    my dear one beloved, how do i lose him as the others have lost him? how do i get him to go away and leave me alone? he hangs on analyzing every detail of everything. he cannot deal with the world and needs to invent some imaginary place where he can get away to and hide. but i created him that way. i created myself that way. who is he but my image? and he doesn't fit. he was designed not to fit. he was designed to fit into imagination - my imagination. is that where i keep him for myself to be in the world? do i set up a place to keep him hidden and quiet? and why? and why not?
    my dear one beloved, this is the division created within myself by the division of the world. i have had to create a me and not-me. i had to create the other who i found upon my own reflection. how far back does this go? when was there not one and the other? and where in the universe does it not exist? so should i be concerned? probably not.
    and he returns to the table and continues writing.
    and is he as alone as it may seem? how many others are there here?

    around around the focal point of waves forming in and out of themselves. insert someone. it is held in mind. it cannot be held in hand. it is what is always missing. he wishes it would go away and leave him alone. but it's always there - missing. it's always near. it is the nearest thing to him yet he still cannot reach it and nothing will take its place. nothing else can get near enough.
    no one else can be it for him and he cannot be it for someone else. this is the human fate and condition.
    he doubts. he will always doubt. he will destroy himself without letting go of it. it will be his last thought upon his death. it will be what he feels with the last beat of his heart.
    and a place has been created that creates itself along with the machine designed to design itself. a place through the maze of mirrors toward its own perception. a place of the self. a place where one watches and waits.
    what do we have and not have? what are we acting out? what are we coming from and what are we going to?
    is there one mind divided or are there many minds together? what do we as humans invent? which fits into which?
    whatever it might be otherwise for others how it seems to run through him is the mind divided. all the this and that. he himself is conscious. whether or not the other is conscious he is unable to determine and isn't sure how it might be determined.  it acts as if it is but this may only be his own reflection reflecting his own consciousness back to him. this would seem to be the case since what the other does seems to be always the opposite to what he does. anti-mimicry. if he wants this, the other wants that. if he does this, the other does that. and so on.
    but which of them is acting and which is reacting? is he the reflection? where does his consciousness come from? is he only receiving telepathic signals from the other?
    and is this even the question?
    all the divisions everywhere. from the original source - if there is one - outward. is there ever oneness - even with the self? is the only oneness nothing?
    and is this even the question?
    what is the question?
    but this is where he is now in it in the world with these others who could be multi-reflections of the one self who may or may not be him - or he it. each a facet in a diamond giving off its own image from the one.
    what does this come to?
    why is he thinking up this nonsense whether or not it might be possibly true or not? it does not relate to to anything of the business of the world and the free market place which isn't so free but very very expensive and goes to the top bidder. is it just something to escape to? but what is there to escape from? doesn't he belong in the world? isn't he still in the world? he lives. he breathes. he shits. he participates in the economy with what little he has and what little more he has stolen. except what else is here but this that is in his head? what is all of this in the world derived from into the over-complicated mess and confusion that it is? he would not think of it if the others around him seemed to be a bit happy with their fate from all that they have created for themselves. he would not be looking for something else to give them. but that's their business. he does not involve himself with that.

    to open it into this dream of imagining needing one another to dream it. to hear the song in our hearts through the storm. somewhere flags are waving where we have not gotten to though we have explored and mapped the whole world.
    in this city of dying death we are somehow still standing. but who are we? we are alone. we are one and many. we are one and the other. where does it connect? where does it break?
    he is losing himself to himself.
    which is which?
    which is one?
    which is the other?
    how much is forgotten?
    how much is remembered?
    the city of memory is burning. he surrenders. he is not very much alive now. he doesn't know who or what he is. there was something he had thought was possibly true about things. now he kneels before the world. what other thing is there?
    and sometimes it is easy to forget. the machine comes to a smooth continuance. the machine opens doors.
    we think about what things should be. we create and attempt to build our dreams come true. we repeat this over and over because of itself turning in and out through itself. like the machine. we have this and feel it should be that, but when this becomes that we want it to be this again - or something else. we are changing things yet we ourselves remain unchanged. we are not happy monkeys. yet to change ourselves remains our greatest fear. we fear the brave new world.
    he enters into that spacetime where it is - the other to himself unless he is the other. he has made it or it has made him. he isn't sure. he has forgotten. image and anti-image. and things are such that he cannot please himself unless he pleases it. it cannot be pleased. if he pleases it he is no longer needed by it. it cannot allow itself to be pleased. if it does then it no longer needs him. it pleases it to need him.
    or so it would seem.
    but he thinks that this is not perhaps the way to it. but this is his work. his work is not toward goals but toward itself. it is the experience of the work that is the goal. the goal is then always reached and never reached.
    these are functions of the machine. the machine is self-contained. we are separate within it. we are separate from it.

    a man who fancies himself a poet - the poet.
    a man who woos.
    a man whose imagination is all he needs.
    a man who imagines himself in love.
    the lover.
    to be love.
    who needs anything or anyone else to spoil the mood?

    the problem is that it cannot be thought out and seen. it exists as this intangible between these and those and this and that and the other thing. in and of itself, it does not exist.

    12/23
    it is something like a lie this courage of speaking french without subtitles in a film disguised within a film. it was a black day and a white night. a vague sense of wanting to explain presupposes the one taking photographs. this could be a theory. this could be a trick. it is a thing that is. most of it is very boring with a glaze of colorful romance over the soft wet gray. we sigh when perhaps we should be singing. what we each keep to ourselves within our hearts and our minds opposed to the external perimeter we maintain surrounding us and our sheep.

    and upon the stage of the burning theater step a man and a woman. the scenery behind them depicts a train station platform.
    man: is this old business we are repeating?
    woman: does that worry you?
    man: am i worried? would i know if i was or wasn't? what would i be worried about? should i be worried about anything? this is a complexity composed of simple questions like these. the possible answers evolve these tangled webs from one question to the other. can i follow any path for long before becomes lost in among the other paths i have followed before?
    woman: is this what you want?
    man: how do i know? how do i know what it is? it changes, yet it repeats itself. it does the opposite of what one expects, even and especially if one expects it to do the opposite. so, when i expect it to change, it repeats. when i expect it to repeat, it changes. this is, as i said, unless i expect that. then it does the opposite to that. but to go back to what i want - what i want is to know what it is without the preconception of what i expect or what i want standing in the way blocking my view. however, the idea of what that would actually be frightens me. could it be oblivion?
    woman: how could it be oblivion?
    man: oblivion exists somewhere. it exists, i think, here and now. we mask it over with layers of expectation and desire because we do not wish to face it. what is the worst possible imaginable thing to the living conscious mind than to face oblivion?
    woman: we've gotten pretty far from things, haven't we?
    man: what things? life, the universe and everything things? yes, maybe we have. is that wrong? don't we get closer to something else? - the actuality of it?
    woman: what is the actuality of it but life, the universe and everything and our experience of it? why do you look beyond that to seek something else?  - especially to seek oblivion?
    man: i don't seek oblivion. it's there. i find it - or it finds me. it's here and now behind and within everything. but i understand what you mean.
    woman: do you?
    man: yes.
    woman: well then, what is it you do want?
    man: food, clothing, shelter. health. companionship. conversation. mutually beneficial or enjoyable activity. never to see the face of oblivion again. oh yeah, and sex. and right now i've got all that. is there more i should want? should i want all these things others seem to want and strive for? i want them to have what they want too. maybe not the things themselves, but what the things represent which lies in the heart of the mad chaos of it all. for them, and maybe me too, i want them to find reconciliation, communion and peace with all that they desire and fear. one other thing i want is to leave something behind that will take them a thousand years to figure out what it is. and i want all of this to continue forever.
    woman: we have been through most of this before in other ways. what else is there?
    man: do you have any suggestions?
    woman: furious kittycornered costumed knackwurst commissar hardnosed cigarette heading microcosm shift could pleading be.
    man: frocked province pucking erotic loyalist.
    woman: namby-pamby saints deciding cupcakes.
    man: organism flesh compounded but spurned pile lightning frog spit cockle.
    woman: osmotic serial remindfully percussed joyful keelhauled greedy eavesdroppers macrerating pyranosed statsis.
    man: tyrant becoming.
    woman: to serve practicable powerless pounced ordeals.
    man: hyper-irritations essentially hybrid childlike apprehensive verification.
    woman: so this doesn't really work then, does it?
    man: no.
    woman: then maybe we should forget it.
    man: maybe we should.
    and they both lie down and are dragged off stage by some stage hands.

    the storm surrounding the island grows stronger. the eye the island sits within is compressed smaller and tighter. the wind picks up on the beach. some rain falls. the man's and the woman's hair is blown around their heads lightly whipping and clinging to their faces. she is thing, who calls itself lightbulb, that can take any shape or form whatever. whatever may be desired or whatever may be feared as need be.
    this is as far as it goes without it turning back in on itself. he can imagine or pretend otherwise but it all returns back to himself. and he wonders if this how god feels sometimes.
    blah blah blah...

    and so we might wish to make up a story instead that may hopefully divert us from this impasse of self doubt and imposition. what would the story be about?
    as it has always been, he is sitting in a cafe writing as he drinks coffee and smokes cigarettes and once in awhile talks with someone who sits with him, though he doesn't know why. this story is always present in any other as it continually hangs on beginning and ending.
    meanwhile, a child is thrown through the windshield of a car as it impacts with fate manifest in actuality.
    what do we dream of now? should we fancy ourselves a little ditty of warm-hearted romance to pass this time we are traveling through? or should we remind ourselves of the cold-blooded cruelty we cannot escape from?
    he sits in the middle in a middle of what to do. he wants this and cannot deny that. he wants to be the bringer of joy but is more often the burden of sorrow.
    but once upon a time it all may have been different or will be different from this self-tortured dada we are needing to tolerate now. people having meaningful and productive occupation, able to provide for themselves and each other as needed. and living in big houses with lots of cool stuff. and having great sex all the time and the best drugs. that could be a story to write. but where would he himself fit into this story? would there still be a madman sitting in a cafe writing to himself? is that meaningful and productive occupation?
    balkoo woke in the morning. he got out of bed and put on a kettle of water for tea. tilmoja stopped in a few moments later. they embraced and soon, as the kettle was whistling, they were crying out with orgasmic delight. later, sipping peyote tea and munching opium crumpets, they discussed the layout of this year's garden they would start turning over that afternoon after they worked on their own projects in the morning. balkoo was rehearsing a dance. tilmoja was painting a mural on the living room wall.
    and maybe we sense something wrong here - a foreboding. tragedy hangs in the air.
    a bomb goes off. balkoo and tilmoja lay sprawled ripped open blood and dead. it seems there is a random bombing device that can transport microbombs undetected anywhere at any time. it was developed by a disgruntled someone who nobody knows many moons ago. no one has been able to find it.
    and now we have tragedy. now we have a problem to be solved. now we have good and evil. now we are happy with our anxiety intact.

    from 18 flies compelled to watch tv with monkeys on ice and chickens talking about the difference between love and hate.

    he finds his place in it that is provided for one such as himself. it is hidden behind one of the seven veils. he has learned this mystery well. he has come to understand the workings of the machine as it creates the imaginary city from its lair beneath  the island or out in the desert or high in a mountain valley. take your pick.
    this he has learned alone by himself. others have guided him to it along on this path or that path or no path. take your pick. it is not something found by one path alone. it mixes them together with some being in contradiction with one another, while others are complimentary to one another and with the same and different. all types of paths are needed. ones that go backward. ones that go sideways. ones that don't go anywhere at all. the one path is the path that one follows through these others that is unique to oneself. one knows and understands. another does not. to the others this is nonsense. they need somewhere to march. they need the straight and wide. they need everything cleared away before them. they become confused by their confusion. let them always seek and never find. let them chase distant horizons. let them gather in numbers and feel safe and comforted. let them be rounded up and slaughtered. let the feast begin.

    he sits in the cafe to begin it again. he sits alone whether others sit with him or not. who are they but those who come and go staying for a time as they will before moving on again? who remains with him but himself and we who comfort him as angels might if there were any such things as angels. and the machine pulls him into itself.
    and where should he go - party town?
    and once in awhile one comes who takes his breath away and makes his heart beat faster, who makes him feel warm in a world that is cold. this one is the only one. this one is the other he seeks who is the other half of himself, who fills the spaces where he is empty. this seems to occur when any hope of this feeling has long been gone. but when this one arrives. it all comes alive again. emotion fills his heart and his mind can think of nothing else but this one.
    but this has happened too often and has disappeared as suddenly as it appeared. he resists it now when he sees this one's face. and feels the agonizing joy of this one's presence. he resists against himself as it is himself who has been awoken by this other. this other will assert control over his actions and behavior which lead him to destruction. he becomes human and mortal and subject to all that is human and mortal. he falls to earth with broken wings. he feels pleasure and pain. he experiences good and evil. the world around him becomes solid and real.
    what peace and contentment he has found is disturbed. emotions of desire and fear ripple across the surface of the reflecting pool he has before made still such that he could see himself clearly. narcissus is called back by the echoes of reawaken memory.
    no - not again. not this again. not this living that ultimately must die and be laid down into the grave again. how deeply must it be buried that it will not be found and resurrected by this other.
    but this other's eyes and face and body he begins to hunger for more so than food to eat or air to breathe. and this other's voice he cannot resist that is the voice of a siren singing with even every mundane thing spoken. it is the very sound that brings flame to these coals he thought were cold and ashes.
    was he not content in his existence being in the world as one who is in an audience? must he now be brought up onto the stage to act out once again this ancient drama of happiness that has no hope of survival against the forces of the world? how many more times is he to be called into this sacrificial ritual by this goddess who pulls the strings of the heart? he becomes a puppet who is brought out to dance for her amusement awhile until he is put away again back into a box put on a shelf preserved for another time.
    and yet there is nothing more than this that he knows. what else can he gain that will bring him to such delight however temporary it might be? for a moment being in this others arms intoxicated by the perfume of flesh with a thousand kisses on his mouth silenced without a word it wishes to speak he gladly surrenders eternity of being god. what does god have in its holy house of all the heavens that compares to the experience of this moment of living in the fire of ecstasy however quickly it burns itself out and dies?
    but why must it die? by what reason? by what law is it bound that is is doomed to be extinguished by time and fate? why are lovers so hated by the world that the world seeks them out to separate them, dragging them apart in chains and throwing them into the dungeons of despair? why is this seen as a crime above all others deserving a punishment of a life of isolation?
    how absurd this is to him however it may make sense to others. damn this world that directly relies on and perpetuates this agony to feed itself. this world that can only exist if these lovers do not. they must hide themselves. they must steal moments when they can be alone together. but even in those times how alone apart from the world are they? can they escape the angst and guilt they have been force-fed? why are their minds reeling with the fear that they are doing something horribly wrong and will be caught and brought to the trial of opinion? damn the world and all living in it who serve and maintain this.
    and he struggles and endeavors to get through and beyond this he gets caught in it again. but can he turn his cup away? can he walk away from this fix? he could, but at what price? he can live his life content and even in joy but alone without this happiness of passion that reaches to the highest heights. he can exist without living. but to experience the other is to experience as much torment as fulfillment. to grasp and hold that which is eternally desired. to feel it as real as oneself. but to then have it torn away and lost forever, yet the memory of it being burned into one's soul never to be forgotten. a scar that throbs and aches with a certain turn of the weather. a reminder of just how lonely loneliness truly is.
    but he smiles, and then he laughs. this one other is not here. he is free.
    and meanwhile the war goes on with all the people in the world putting in and getting their share. who points a finger at another without a finger being pointed back? we all are innocent and each of our chosen enemy is guilty. who is not someone's enemy?
    how do we get out of this maze of cracked and twisted mirrors and away from the distorted images of ourselves reflected in them? do we continue with this mockery and farce? is this all that we can imagine?
    how do we bring love into the world when we cannot any of us bring love to ourselves without deception and trickery?

    and all this usual sort of business of what is and what is not. and it has very little to do with anything yet has something to do with everything. one will not find it on any chart or graph. one will not see it in any list of figures.  yet it is here.
    to be trapped in it. to not be able to reach into it. though it may not be anything at all but one's imagining of it arising out of that which produces desire and fear. and what is that? some mechanism within the psychology of the mind. the instincts mixed into and with basic socialization forming a core structure whatever cultural components are attached to.
    and where it is lost always again and again where we continue to come to it and see it vanish from us. is this love that these who come this way feel? perhaps not. perhaps love is something else. but this that is maybe merely mistaken for love is a real thing - a real state. it consumes itself and those within whom it lives. we are flames in this fire of passion.
    and he sits cool and collected with only a few parts of himself missing. and these parts are not vital. he can function without them - function better in fact. and that is all the world and its god expects and demands from us - to function. anything more than that is quashed immediately. it is ground up and watered down and sold back to us in small maintenance dose packets. and we wonder why we're crazy. and we wonder why we don't care.
    a thousand sorrows served up on the grill. one sticks to the other. the other rips it from the one. life goes on.
    how much margin for error is left once all mistakes have been made? do we go through it again? can we get it right? who do we blame this time?
    the lovers kissed and kissed a thousand kisses until the dawn came upon where they were out and naked in the open air surrounded by barbed wire and gun towers. nothing of this must be allowed to escape into the world where the people are hidden behind themselves as who they are in whatever successful little niche they've found in the mazes tunneling everywhere one can get to anymore.
    the sadness continues. his heart is broken seeing these others moment by moment. he has found nowhere he can go and stay where this still doesn't remain the case. this has been his life. this has been everyone's life except in once in awhile brief moments when it can be almost forgotten. but memory returns.
    searching for it it holds its constant position just out of one's grasp as the one universal absolute. he kisses the other. he holds the other as close and tightly as he can. this is the one and the other which remain forever separate. there is a mixing without there ever being a merging. neither is willing to give into the other. neither is able to convince the other to give in. the two are never one except each being one of the two which is never whole and complete and never can be.
    he doesn't cry out. he clenches his teeth. he curls up pulling his knees to his chin. he shivers. it is cold wherever he is without the other. and he wonders, is it just as cold for the other? and then he gets up. he laughs and tries again.
    bad romantic trash. an old old story back to the origins of life. one seeking the other. to eat. to consume. to fuck and make more who will also be seeking. a species of life of a strange breed of psychotic monkey people. how many lovers have been here? how many have gazed into each other's eyes trying to see a resemblance of oneself lurking somewhere within?
    it cracks open and still remains sealed. the stupid mystery of it. the riddle that tangles those who try to untangle it.
    and the other smiles toward him the biggest broadest eye sparkling smile he's ever seen. he feels himself smiling back. how does this happen? who are they that they should have found this moment together? they should be shot. and they will be. this cannot be allowed. order and chaos must be maintained. they can mix but they must never merge. two cannot be allowed to become one. what would happen then? how would this universe continue as a whole of parts?
    jesus h. fucking christ.
    the drums are pounding. the people are marching. does this war ever end?
    and here in the cafe where he is there's this guy who is talking out loud by himself to some or another imaginary person. and people look at him and think of him as being odd and strange, perhaps even threatening. but few probably think so of him who is quietly writing. many may even admire him as some romantic image of the writer at his craft. but what's the difference? each struggling with trying to find resolution. that's the pattern. all the unresolved dilemmas seeking resolution. seeking understanding, connection.
    and is that anything about love - that which seeks resolution, understanding, connection? all the loose ends flailing about. all the thoughts flying. the minds and hearts cut off from merging - even from the mix. the loneliness and isolation. unable to touch anything or anyone.
    and those who pride themselves on behaving correctly. those who do this and that when appropriate to do this and that.
    the good children.
    not the misfits.

    it goes on and on. how much can be said that hasn't been said? even that question has been asked a zillion times.
    we can make up this and that about it and maybe we'd come up with a somewhat original combination of what is older than memory. we continue to invent and discover new things, but for the same old reasons - if for no other reason than to invent and discover something new. and some of it helps us to adapt until now that has looped back in on itself where the main thing we're adapting to is our own adaptation. as it all spins and spins faster and faster. the events that flash by while others seem to take forever. the surface appearance of it constantly changing while the fundamental structure and core remain rigid.
    and what is any of this saying? we are here in it, affected by it and causing it around and around with our poor brains unable to keep up and fall farther and farther behind though none of it is going anywhere.
    to see those who are lost out on their own little circuits going around and around doing this and that correctly over and over. to be one in one's own little circuit. to feel that there must be sadness in that - the pointlessness of it. even up to imagining god locked in a little circuit of creation and destruction of all things.
    and we could make up another story. we could pick out this beginning, this middle, this ending. we could entertain ourselves awhile that it's all that simple - a neat package with some sort of meaning or another even if it's a demonstration of how meaningless everything is. we love our little stories. we love to think and believe that we have arrived at understanding.
    and in our story of understanding and meaning he sits in the cafe where it always returns. he ponders through his brain and what is stored in there to see if he can find something that has a point in being written down. he writes his endless babble that continues on for no real reason other than to give him a comfortable feeling of purpose however false that may be. it becomes a habit that settles his nerves with the thought and action of it. but through all that he finds nothing really that he would write other than this which goes nowhere. what else should he write? something informative? - though this does inform him. something entertaining? - though this does entertain him.  what reason could there be? should he do this for the others? what does he know that could inform them? what does he imagine that could entertain them? can they not inform themselves? can they not entertain themselves? should he do it to gain and be the focus of their attention? he doesn't care too much for the attention he has already received. should he do it for money, sex, drugs, power, authority? all that seems great in theory and imagination, but in practice and actuality it's usually more trouble than it's worth and creates more problems than it resolves. what problems does he have now? why would he want to add any to his simple existence?
    and could he write something that would get the others to quit this business of running themselves ragged to death chasing after whatever part of it they're chasing after? but who would read that?  a few perhaps who have already reached that conclusion about things themselves. but for most, they're too hooked up to it and caught in it to stop and think about considering what it's really about and what they're doing to themselves with it. except they do change. but that is usually to trade one fix for another. the basic habitual need addiction is still there unbroken. they just build up a tolerance for one thing and drop it and pick up another brand new that starts them out fresh on a new clean high and they fool themselves into thinking that this now is the answer they've been seeking.
    and blah blah blah.
    speaking of addictions...

    and as duckness of her tooth she bites wisely underneath his rising lump of imagined reluctance hesitating sideways eagled harrow. he plows. she tastes what is sweet, yet bitter remains the songs we sung that day.
    he wrote her poetry without trying. she was his goddess who tortures him. god turns its face away toward other business. is this death? was there anything even closely resembling love? is there anything such as love to be resembled?
    is it only images?
    this is crazy madness. this is the nature of what is called good and evil. who faces this? what is he bent writing down? what is this battle he is engaged in? does he have a choice? does anyone?
    when love calls.
    when madness calls.
    whose madness are we most up against than our own? he seeks what is simple and finds what is simple is far more complex than what one might imagine. yet, when he looks into the complex it is far more simple than one might imagine. it is always the opposite than what one imagines, except when one imagines the opposite.

    he is spent with talking with himself. he is talking with himself spent. from zero to zero. at zero by zero. this is the point of no return as it is. nothing leaves in order to possibly return. zero escapes velocity. one escapes with it by remaining behind allowing all else to fly off about any every which way it might.
    then there is the memory of remembering it as it is. there is this moment of that and that moment of this. there is the clown who is sometimes a lizard pulled out of someone's pants to be sucked on its head by a slippery wet oozing oyster with a pearl tucked within its folds of flesh fondly fondled and fuddled to heights of stargazing as the clown's face explodes spewing glittered ribbons down on the annoying albatross bearers begging below the belt strap behind the woodshed slapped on their back. job well done, boys and girls. the holy angels on their knees appointed to tasks of lower subterfuge among the rambling rabble roused from a grave worse than death while choking on his own sweat the frog prince climbs up the grapevine toward the sour grapes he sweetly desires to lick with his fly stained tongue.

    it's all part of my master plan, the dark queen giggled as cocaine narcissus snooting up his pure white image off the mirror until the echoes fade away into the static hiss kissing gently on his toes he dances without moving a muscle leaving them to twitch to the tune the piper plays while the worker's lunchbox screams with delightful radiant noise and blood squirting from the heavy hand of the lady with the big bazookas aimed point blank silly goose bumps rising as the hero of the forgotten story pukes right on target betwixt her gambling legs jesus himself would put money down on easy street mumbling something about some cup he turned away and damn the torpedoes full speed ahead of the game now that daddy's fortune's spent and not a penny earned burning candles at both ends trying to think of a way out leading nowhere but back to the ranch where meanwhile the cowpokes poking holes in themselves discover a remedy for boredom in the nick of time.
    blue neptune, the dark queen now chokes with a rat on her nose and her shoes on fire as she stood photogenicly on the staircase that went sideways to everything we used to have faith in once when we were little shoeshine sprouts leaning to the wind where on the wall hung weapons our fathers preserved from the dust which are too high for us to reach so we laugh at them throwing sticks and stones we interpret to give us the folly of wisdom from weird abstract knowledge somewhere between us and the boys and girls pose in clean underwear ready to be hit by a car and looking their best at the emergency room fashion show their desperate mothers would be proud as they worry and worry so much since the judgment is at hand and the house is such a mess. how long they have been away trying to enjoy this liberation they've been given and the children have been mice while the cat's away being given their own liberation and the world is so filthy and the good housekeepers and homemakers have such a pile of dirty laundry to clean and sort and floors to scrub so how can they turn back from their mission now? god is dead and curled up behind a dumpster in a dead end alley the needle of nirvana still in its arm.
    hallelujah, the dark queen smirks with the dummy's head held high by its shock of glued on hair for all the world to see on tv.
    we have victory, sighs the dark queen, we have triumphed against the worst of odds to finally overcome our oppression.
    meanwhile, the true believers grumble and put together devices out of common household this and that turning the output of the means of production into the input of the means of disruption. it's always give and take and supply and demand.

    poetic injustice rears its ugly maned head from the pool of dreams roaring out what before had only been whispered. it's plugged in and turned on. it's fucking and being fucked toward orgasmic genius breakdown. the city is rocking. the flames lick higher. the babble hums to itself pretending not to notice. jesus comes riding into town on a broomstick at the midnight hour in full gleeful drag while the butch dyke messiah stabs at heaven's gate with a superalloy dildo on the cutting edge where everything changes hands.
    this is not to say one thing or the other, or even something else. it's nothing new so don't act surprised. it comes out of the hills as old as the dirt it shakes from its sandal along the path crisscrossing the expressway to paradise. this is to say it is all a joke. this is uttered in the silence beneath the bone jarring teeth grinding noise we are making to hold the wolves at bay. the campfires blaze into a glittering metropolis built by every trick in the book. we smoke our mirrored images to forget how alone we are packed into this 2 bit sardine can world. we suck it in and punch it out.
    and the poet of fools seeks romance in the debris. he is the only one still laughing in the midst of our tragic affairs. he wears the idiot's face in this masquerade. he sometimes even wonders himself if it is his own. he takes that chance as where he is headed off the deep and deepening end of all means it might be his only chance. but it is chance taken without risk as he has skillfully lost everything and even a good swift kick in the teeth would bring him good fortune. it's baby blue in the dark of night. he refuses to leave anything as being meaningless as it may appear to the others around the clock passing it by on their way to the promised land as seen on tv. he picks his nose and strikes a gold mine of winners. he obscures himself by his own word. he stands in the shadow with undeserving humility.
    but however heretofore nevertheless he tires of his imagination which is as vivid as a camel that cannot be embraced nor embrace - what? it cannot speak to him as it may speak to another. these words are a curse to him. they are possessive and jealous. they are an angry god who does not hesitate to be unforgiving. he is struck by lightning anytime he falters in his service to them. his muse is a black leather nun dominatrix with a spike heel on the back of his neck and whipping his hand with a razor-edged ruler. such a delightful fantasy inspired made to order. it's a package deal to keep him safe and sane yet always and forever poised on the brink of his own destruction where it's all happening at once. creation resides there too as twin brother and sister joined at the heart yet at each other's throats as one might expect.

    and the rabble who now drive cars and go on shopping sprees upon command arriving in masses no one can be seen or recognized in as one fits oneself into an available category. if a category becomes popular it may be recognized and one may be recognized then as belonging in it as one of many as illustrating what makes this category so popular.

    and now on the beach of the island looking out into the storm clouds the man and the woman stand having been dragged off the stage of the burning theater. they hold hands.
    man: horses, houses and planets.
    woman: why did you say that?
    man: because that was what i was thinking.
    woman: you were thinking of horses, houses and planets?
    man: no. just those words. they came up in my mind. i wasn't thinking about what they meant. that's the way most words come to me, i think. perhaps i'm wrong.
    woman: do you need to be right or wrong?
    man: yes. if you're right, you survive. if you're wrong you don't. and it is entirely irrelevant whether you think you're right or wrong, it only matters if that which allows you to survive thinks you're right or wrong.

    and once upon a time they all lived happily ever after. this may or may not have been true or not. it may only be a rumor passed along and kept alive since the days of us sitting telling stories around campfires. perhaps - probably - our lives have always been this miserable as they are now and they always will be. many would have it that way. that is their belief and their faith that they preach among us.
    and there are the others who tell us that if we're good boys and girls maybe the old days of speculated happiness will be returned to us.
    what is and what is not? we wage battle against our ideas about this and that within the confines of that which we created for ourselves. and it may all be a pathetic joke we are caught in. but who caught us in it but ourselves? is it the silent uncaring universe? is it the bored and sadistic gods?
    he is in a cafe where he drinks too much coffee and smokes too many cigarettes and fills too many notebooks with too much scribbling words overflowing from one to the next spilling out from his spinning mind. he is quite mad, as they say.
    he would agree, though for different reasons. if this is madness, which it probably is, he does not hide from it but embraces it. he falls before it in rapt devotion. let them call it madness and fear it and turn themselves from it. if there is any god for him, madness is its name. what else has guided him and provided for him and protected him from the others who saw him as the enemy? what other god did not reject him for his many sins? what other human has loved him? no - only madness.
    madness that is a sea he sailed upon and gone down into and drowned with all he held sacred and loved and became transformed by it washed ashore anew onto the beach of an island existing within dimensions of his imagination madness had made real above and beyond any other reality where he was safe from the madness of the others which they do not realize. the other realities have turned rotten with maggots and diseased with open sores from wounds unhealed. he pukes up these other realities and the waves wash them away back to where they came from. he praises the salvation of his damnation - the damnation of his madness.
    ha! he shouts, i have found my god in madness and who or what do i fear now if i pronounce its name? and its name is, ha! ha! to all that chained me to the wheel of misfortune. who or what do i desire now that have nothing and through having nothing i have everything. ha! no more rime or reason clutters my pretty head aflame dancing around itself in delightful radiant splendor of self-delusion. ha!
    and these echoes fade as he becomes the image of himself through the reflection of himself imagining himself.
    and he whispers to the shadows, who understands it? not i.
    meanwhile, back at the ranch, flogged computation withstands deliverance speaking twisted tongue twirling tingles and bits as the disciples of shame bow before the barbed beacon where whiplash gratitude strips down and offers itself as the prized token and many sundry devices crack apart golden in burning sun dripping honey.
    all this and more, he surmises, not i. not me. not myself. ha!
    fuck it.
    nevermind.
    this did not happen. sirens in a teacup and absurd conjectures appear misshapenly thusly confused by a simple cow.
    does this laughter never end?

    the practiced enemy is needed to be installed for us to get our little ya-yas out and kicking. this is the fundamental experience. this is the foundation from which the fountain flows through it all.
    he feels no mercy yet feels no need for revenge. let them find it themselves in their own lives one against the other. let them consume one another. is he a part of this? he watches it and feels the pain from it. it tears at his heart. is there a way out of it?
    to feel entirely apart in spaces we are in our hearts that he feels alone while the others don't seem to understand anything is missing. he can write this or that about himself and the others. would anything explain? it tears itself to pieces. it rips its own head off and heart out. it runs screaming until it cannot runaway any further. it falls into itself into the darkness of the inner mind where there is no more direction.

    and in the view of the report back to no one for certain except to the flames or into a hole filled with other garbage in this time we might have here to ourselves if we can ever find that out who we may be beyond the illusion of ourselves being who we are supposed to be. looking back on the words written thus far we feel ourselves to be quite foolish as there aren't any of them we have not betrayed. what little hope might have been found in them we have stepped on in our dance of folly and crushed to the earth dark ground. can we ever expect anything from any of it? do we pride ourselves in our continuing destruction? is our destruction now our only possible hope? what do we laugh at now? what do we cry over? what has changed? what has remained the same? what part did we play?
    we set up the experiment for ourselves to be the subject of hoping to find an objectivity within ourselves that might withstand any and all experience to the contrary. we believed we had found an island and built our house there where being within the eye of the storm we would remain untouched.
    he should probably be silent. he should not say anything. he should wait and see where and when it drifts and settles. stirring the waters doesn't make it any clearer. but he doesn't know what it is. he tries to reach out and touch it but it's never where it seems to be. is it him? is it them? is it you? does he know? do you know? can anyone see it and tell the other?
    there always seems to be this confusion. what is that? where does it originate? is there actually any confusion at all or is it only that we are confused? what would that confusion be? is he only speaking for himself?

    were we fools? we were. we are no one unlike the rest. we are products of our own imagination and creation of imagination. do we need to exist for ourselves or for the others? for ourselves we are satisfied with oblivion. what need do we have for anything more? what other than oblivion does not just pull us away from ourselves? what is this existence but to be divided and scattered? is there anything whole that exists?
    and who can follow our wandering line here we scribble down recording our present state of thought and feeling? who can interpret this and reconstruct what has passed along this way even if it were one who would want to?
    would one want to? isn't that our expectation and our hope that one is or will be caught by this and pulled into it with a curious need and desire of having to understand anything and everything one could surmise about just what the fuck? do we not merely and only intend to transport as much of ourselves into this one's mind and heart? do we not wish greedily to possess our dear reader to drive out any thought or feeling that will not comply and merge with ours? is that not any author's desire?
    what is the purpose of any human relationship? is it not for one to comply and merge with the other and mutual verse visa? two to become one? to share the common experience? but is this not what we fear most though it is also what we most desire? where is this to be found where this might occur? what space and time for one and the others to lower their defensive guard toward each other for the transfer of psychic and emotional energy to take place?
    he does not even trust himself let alone another. he is divided even against himself. he is other to himself. he creates himself as many and the many reject him. we want no part of him other than as we may use him for our own purpose. he is our scapegoat. he is the one hung on the cross to be sacrificed to die for the sins we do not repent nor will even admit to.

    from 18,000 follies around a ring of dementia lacking the common ills of social crime. dogma doggies humping and dumping as we see fear in the all-seeing eye blinking upon us. all greatness and wisdom cannot bring us nearer to the throne. a child walks away. a field becomes a forest becomes a jungle and where do we go from here but back to the monkeys or to the monastery where prayers are stone and we are to become as unmoving and unmoved as they are if we are to transcend into the incorporation of ourselves as being nothing more and nothing less than the constant vibration within the spectrum of one light seen and unseen?
    an umbrella appears and goes up in smoke. the rain bursts into flame dripping tongues into the gutter to speak the truth of a thousand lies.

    and she must always stand above with her legs spread over the city. she wears the sun as her crown and the moon her waxing and waning smile synchronized to clockwork gearing to her silent commands. and with one's head in the clouds one may lay one's cheek upon her breast uncovered by dreams. all else about her in emptiness, a dark cavern inside which is the despairing of hope waiting to be born. fresh paint creates the disguise of beauty again. but it all is dull and flat, however brightly colored and glowing, to those who've seen the radiance that is overflowing from one's own invisibility.
    turn around and turn around again, dear fool. do not look for it here in the outside where souls are lost. these are her broken dolls she endlessly attempts to repair with her love. but think a moment, who would need her if one was not broken? can she love one who is not? does she not need us broken before she can love us?

     alive active and planted within one's secret dark orifice with perfect control. to reach this point of relaxation from one's busy day. the slave machine is ready to master one's desires. spiders from space city creepy crawling on the webs they've woven through one's mind with the telepathic fibers of vibrational transcendence. and on the cracks of mothers' backs along the sidewalk row hawkers and hackers sing, find the lady. put your money down. as one one merrily dances around the musical chairs and one turns out the lights and pretends awhile one has found one's way home only to be awoken in the morning to another gray day of monstrous noise.

    alone one can find one's own paradise even in the midst of a raging storming hell of agony surrounding. is this enough - to laugh and finding joy while others weep and wail their suffering miserable fate? this one who turns off and refuses to receive the transmissions of others' pain and sits back enjoying the show on the movie screen finding easy contentment while the world is a frenzy. yet there is a reason the gods walk the earth. it doesn't seem to be at all a riddle to be solved. how many have lost their minds to it?

    at the attempts of loneliness which we seek to find ourselves in our hovel spaces of inner tranquility where the walls are interactive mirrors responding in instant anti-emparthy with our desires and fears our minds conjure to protect themselves from us keeping us caught in their web with images of other. where would our minds be if we did not listen to them? where would we be?
    somewhat trapped in his head he sits in the cafe where it always begins again smoking cigarettes and writing his perpetual monkey business in a notebook which is a link in a chain of notebooks his hand is bound to by compulsive addiction jerking out words on the pages with masturbatory reflex while visions of worlds beyond worlds play before him.
    this is where we leave him as we slip out of his mind and went out dancing. a trick we learned in the navy on the high seas of psychoactive waves in the brainstorms tossing this way turning that way it all went down down down and didn't come up again.
    and we dragged him ashore to the island where we are alone with him and he is alone with us - or something like that. we aren't that well versed in definitions and explanations that make all that much sense to anyone but ourselves. and he continues writing scratching at an itch that has turned into a rash in symptomatic raving of his madness.
    because that is where it begins - with his madness. it is from that we were created as something other than himself whose image he could no longer face but he was forced to by circumstances leading him toward where he could no longer turn away either. the hall of horrors which leads to the maze of mirrors out of which there is only one escape and that is to go through them to the other side to be looking in instead of out - or versa visa.
    and it is we who may be only his me, myself and i who have done that and left him behind writing about himself as the other hoping to avoid the obvious conclusion. but what is the obvious conclusion? what does one see here? what else is there to see but who and what he is that he can only admit to by placing it on someone else and becoming one of us?
    we have called him to ourselves. we are the ones who brought him into and out of his mind. we are those who destroyed him so that we could be born.
    but that's not exactly it. that's the tragic romantic version. but then he's always a sucker for that shit as are most people. always sticking the needle in his arm for the warm fix of self pity. and we have him on drip feed for that. we pretty much provide him with everything he needs and wants within reason. he'll work up a fuss once in awhile and bitch and complain about how he's been used and abused and ripped off and has nothing to show for it, but we patiently remind him how it could have been very much worse. we could have not bothered with him at all and left him wandering the street mumbling to himself. instead we made sure he was set up in a rather comfortable carefree situation so shut the fuck up already. and whatever that is or not.
    nevermind. it's not that important what that is. that's the delusional version. this is all one big fat delusion that is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts that are each delusions in and of themselves. are we his delusion, or is he our delusion? or are we and him both delusions of someone else? who is that someone else? we don't know who.
    this is where we could throw god into it - or something close to it. one needs to imagine being a solitary conscious mind in the midst of no space and no time. have we been here before? we have always been here before. this is where and when it begins again. it is always here and now. then imagine oneself going entirely mad in the non-eternity of absolute nothingness where even nothing does not exist due to the screaming loneliness one is all surrounded by and behold there is light bursting forth that is the light of existence itself. and there become things in this light as this light cools into a reality one can reach out and touch. one can reach out and be. and it is all so that this god will not have to be alone with nothing but oblivion.
    and he sits around all day after day haunted by that vision he saw inside himself when he approached the vanishing point. when he saw this face of the god creator and ran screaming back into the world to sit and pretend nothing like that had happened. where he sits and watches the common folk and their activity and antics even as agonizingly painful as they are sometimes to witness in order to occupy his mind and thoughts enough that he might forget the true horror of it as it really is.
    that is the bottom line version. and it itself is a delusion of itself and is no more real or unreal than one might convince oneself it is.
    he convinces himself of everything and nothing and anything in-between at once flowing into and out of of it as he will. and we watch from our view at the axis of it. we watch him being pulled this way and pushed that way and laughing one moment and crying the next and lulled and sleeping and frustrated and raging and on and on every which way there might be of it all going on and on. and we are entertained and amused. are there any surprises left? is there anything unthought or unfelt? is there anything unexperienced?
    in a world of broken christs who sit and beg for change. when we thought of what it was like and what it is not like. when it smells like burning passionate garbage plated in gold and the business of the world. when we were undiscovered by ourselves drifting around the doo-dah blah blah. when certain things weren't mentioned about the thickening plots oozing up from the way things were spinning down in our heads with a great loud noise we simpletons disguise as god but which is our reaction to events. when it was laid upon the table the thieves gather for the feast. all the flaming of flames of it burning in our hearts we must control and keep from reaching any height of our passion that might take away our social reason. we must march and never run.
    and he weighs the sorrow of all the hearts around him. can anyone break the chains? how are these people ever to be released such that they will not return to it again? what messiah or revolution can come that will free them from themselves? how many have already come and gone without them being changed? how does it go from here? when it's too precisely clear toward an obscure conclusion as he sits and writes without his words entirely meaning anything beyond them meaning anything they might appear to mean. this is not a intellectual exercise. it is a ritual of madness to keep one from becoming insane while going mad.
    how does one write about such things he has come upon to be feeling and thinking though he is not sure he feels them or thinks them? others have come upon this and only been able to write of the frustration of it. why has he come here? why does he feel he can get past it and move beyond it? can he touch any of them?
    this surrounds him always. this is space and time and all contained therein. it is what makes space and time. it is creation. it is a program of creation already out of date at the moment of production when we were seen lurking around at the invisibility shop.
    and he wanted the other - to be with the other. he did not know exactly why. it happened as he is. can one plan such things? can one explain them? what is to be planned? what is to be explained? to whom? by whom?
    he did not invent this that is between them. he has heard or read the same stories as anyone else might have. and now he sits here by himself writing these words. there is no one else except those existing in his imagination. should there be sadness? is this sadness? does he feel anything real? what is real to be felt? and there is the joy of it. there is himself by himself laughing.
    discovering what is felt and believed - or believed and felt - about what is or what is not. more abstractions creep upon him. he remembered the other's face now obscured by zebra clouds washing out where it might have been.
    monkeys come and monkeys go. where are we now? tragedy represents reality. comedy represents fantasy. there is nothing in the world that supports that idea except what we make real. it could be the other way around just as easily. it is an idea that exists in our perception. and how does one see through that perception and communicate what one sees to others without the others believing one is speaking about fantasy? we have convinced ourselves that this is truth - absolute truth.
    so, one sits it out. one keeps to oneself and remains silent while those surrounding one are torn apart by one another. that is the reality of the tragedy. that is its substance, the substance that we give it. and there is little or nothing one can do to change it. it is not meant to be changed.
    meanwhile, some place else that is here and now as here and now is always changing, he still sits in the cafe for some odd reason he hasn't been able to explain to himself yet - or perhaps he hasn't been willing to explain to himself.
    he has an apartment upstairs from this particular cafe he is in now. he comes down here to write and they serve him coffee and make him something to eat and send him on his way to school or wherever. he has managed in the course of 40 years or so to return to being a child.
    in his apartment he has his toys - a computer, tv/vcr, stereo. he keeps himself entertained as is the case with most people. that's the deal - keep oneself amused and out of trouble. he does that. he keeps himself out of the way of the others who would run the world around them no matter how little of it or much of it they can gain control over. they are everywhere. he does fairly well as he has always done most of his life. he expects little. those have been his instructions and he has followed them. he wasn't given much of a choice. when he attempted at times to go against them he was punished and threatened with confinement or exile. he was not to try to change those around him. they were in charge and knew what they were doing.
    it's all part of the ongoing tragedy. it's his part of the tragedy. but he refuses that. he has slipped out his window and gotten away. he has gone where they cannot follow unless they slip out their own windows which they seem frightened to do. he is in a situation that is designed and controlled by others. they create the tragedy. they perceive only tragedy. he perceives and creates so much more out of his spinning mind. however, they believe him to be delusional in perceiving and creating it. but what is more delusional than what they perceive and create? is it only that he alone believes in it against all of them believing otherwise? the world is the world and it is as it is. it can support either or neither or both. the world includes all possibilities. we select out of those possibilities which we want to believe are real or not real.
    he laughs a bit at the whole absurdity of it surrounding him. where did this come from? when did it begin? what part in it does he play?
    he remembers into his being. is there any other source than himself? what is his own source? is he merely this mortal ape, a creature conjured up in another's dream? who? what? when? where? this other's name he cannot remember except to know it as the other. but was it that maybe he was the one who conjured up the other in his own dream? is there a point to any of these questions other than to make one's head hurt twisting it through pretzel shapes in order to get a better view of it? a better view of what? and one makes up one's own answers to one's own made up questions. one arrives at one's own conclusion which is only another beginning. and one has nothing but those answers and that conclusion. one believes them or not depending upon one's need at the moment.
    so what is his need at the moment? what is his need to sit here where he is at and scribble away around in designs of this and that into it and out of it besides doing just that? this is nothing to the others. they are content with their tragic lot and fate they believe in. they have no doubt. they do not realize that doubt is the way out. they do not raise their fists and rage against it. they sedate themselves against it. and he too? does he not sedate himself by this meaningless drivel gibberish he writes constantly? what does it take to forget? what does it take to no longer feel the pain? but what is there to forget? what pain is there? one had expectations of it all being something else. one believes in a fantasyland to come true. one believes in cotton candy. one believes in all good and no evil. one believes in all light and no darkness. one believes in eternal disappointment.
    what does he expect? what can he expect? how will he be disappointed?
    he expects to meet the other. but this he also does not expect. or maybe does he not already have it? what is this he is surrounded by that embraces him and provides for him and comforts him in his madness but the other? is this not his living existence and conscious awareness? is there more than what it is and what has been given to him that he could ask for?
    but is it enough? or is it too much? what is this that he feels other than everything? can there ever be fulfillment? should there ever be? is he fooling himself with this? is there that which he wants that he does not and cannot have that he rationalizes reasons and scenarios of reasons for this being so and his accepting it being so? what else is he to do? he could conquer the world and it still would be so. he could be this or that and it still would be so.
    it's all one big grand show. should he join up in it? he has already done this for most of his life. his part has always been the fool. but is that not everyone's part in it? and does he cease being that part where he is now out of it?
    they come to him and sit with him and speak to him. they tell him all their troubles and their dreams. is he supposed to care? is he supposed to do something? they do not tell him what they want him to do. so he sits and listens. his sitting here and remaining silent seems to satisfy them enough. do they want him bothering them as much as they bother him? do they want him to speak and tell them all he is bothered by - which is mostly them and their tragic lives? do they want him to tell of the pain that he feels which is transmitted from them to him? no. he is supposed to absorb it into himself and take it and keep it from them. they walk away smiling and are able to make it through another day.
    that is what spills over onto these pages - all that they fill him with. it is their frustration and agony. what of any of it is from himself except that primordial loneliness he feels being that which eternally exists while they are that which briefly flickers in a moment before burning to ashes?
    is there not such another as himself anywhere? do these others constantly come and go forever with none who remain? where does he find this one if such a one exists? he had hoped in the past that this one had come to him but each time it had proven to be just another passing mortal of illusionary flesh without the substance of sustaining energy to hold oneself together in one place for very long. he is plagued by these buzzing flies around his head. these that speak words upon words about the tragedy of it all they refuse to give up believing in. there is no connection within them to anything other than the maya of the illusion. it would take them so little to make that connection. what has it taken him? all he had to do was to go mad. that was easy.
    so do they expect him to do it for them? is he supposed to turn water into wine and then walk on it? is he supposed to heal them from their misery and raise them from the dead? let them drown. let them become sick. let them die. it would seem that that is what they want and expect from themselves. should he tell them any different? what is it to him?

    and on the beach of the island he and thing sit on the rocks near where the waves throw themselves. thing has made itself appear as a zebra. they have sat there not speaking for awhile. has in been minites, hours, days? has it been been months or years? has it been a lifetime or lifetimes? all goes by coming in like the waves throwing themselves against the rocks and returning back into the sea. he and thing watch and wait though they both know that there is nothing to watch and wait for except the continuance of what is. what is there to take its place except the void which is always present beneath?
    and then they speak.
    him: what have i come to here? what have i been given to seek that brought me here? was there any other place to go?
    thing: you could have stayed where you were.
    him: yes and no. yes, i could have. there was no need to follow the path i followed. but there it was. the path opened up to me and that urging to follow it within me. no, i could not stay where i was. no more than i could stop myself from breathing. that was the choice. i can stop myself from breathing. there is one way. and there was one way i could not have followed the path that brought me here. there was always that choice. life or death. i could have stayed but not remained alive - at least feeling i was alive. but whatever it was within me that compelled me to make the choice i made i did not choose. it was there at the moment of my birth - maybe the moment of my conception. it made me so that i could not choose any other way than i did. others have chosen the other way - to remain. i suppose they are happy with their choice as i am, or at least reasonably comfortable with it. they do not have what i have within me that has chosen this path.

    and another day in the cafe where nothing much happens as it is supposed to but people talking through and around each other. a bunch of talking monkeys. the dreams in flames in this burning theater. and does god itself wonder what it's doing here - if it is here? what does god get out of it besides a bunch of worshipping fools. is god that shallow?
    there is always the other to whatever there is which is opposite and negates any action or non-action. even god suffers this. wherever there is light there is darkness. where there is light and darkness there is all the shades between in gray confusion where nothing is what it may appear to be. that is the world that is neither one nor the other but is eternally divided and dividing.
    he is a broken rough-edged piece to this puzzle of pieces none of which completely fit together with one another nor even fit together with itself. we are pieces inside and out.
    the other is opposite. he goes one way and it goes the other. there will never be union with them together. there will never be union with them apart. there will always be conflict. he wonders which brought the other into the world. why this division from itself. was it to divide apart that which is evil and not to be tolerated? do we hope the other will go away forever and we would not give it another thought? was he created just to disappear? but where is there to disappear to but back into the other? the other is void. the void is the other. he seeks his own oblivion in the other and the other will not allow it. the other spits him out again, back into existence as that which the other is not - that which the other loathes and despises.
    and he in his mind has attempted to turn this around. he has imagined himself the creator and the other as outcast. and this is as true as the other way around. there is no real difference between the two now as he sits between the two as much as he is able beyond the definitions he is bound within and is treated as the other who needs these definitions in order to perceive itself as being pure and unblemished while it is another stupid grunting ape such as himself.
    he grunts stupidly thinking of all this and how long and long this idiot pretense has gone on without anyone making even a half-hearted attempt to resolve it except for themselves at the expense of others. there have been no shortage of those who claw and climb their way to the top of the heap in order to stick their noses in the clouds donning the robes of the guardian priests and claim to be the heir to the crown of enlightenment and authority. and they beat and stab down any who oppose them until they themselves are beaten and stabbed down. that has been our progress that has motivated and fueled and supplied and built all we have ever done. that is their idea of resolution. if one finds something to be offensive, disagreeable or inhibiting - kill it. and in the spirit of that he wants to kill the world and that from which the world has has come.
    he points the gun to his head and pulls the trigger and enters into where the possibilities are endless all at once. all lies frozen when the point of no return is reached and memory vanishes into what is to be. and none of this is true. we know this to be a fact. what strangeness exists we do not know when things change into things they might have been all along - what grips our minds to this or that dreaming from one to the other.

    outward inward reflex jarred astonished awakening to the reflection with one's face stuck through the mirror. words are dandy devices devised to mask the presence of reality replaced by a big fat ugly machine feeding chewing its own flesh digesting what before has been information passing into information through information by information as we speak the knowledge of our ignorance.
    something new arising from the depths where no one can venture out from that land entirely together without remaining in a large part behind and this world is a phantom world in the eyes of one who is no one now to anyone who has not gone out the door around the bend and over the hills and far away while still being here and now laughing with tears crying with a grin of grinding teeth as all is found to be lost and all lost to be found.
    and we are left with only these words we are writing. who are our companions but these? who are our friends? he looks up from where he is huddled scribbling now and sees no one. and who is this no one who never leaves him? who is this no one with no name and no face who does not speak? who is this no one who is always faithfully beside himself in all things at all times? who is this no one but himself beside himself in his madness which is madness only in relation to the others and their minds unable to perceive anything else which is all probably for the best for all concerned or unconcerned whichever is the more accurate description? which then allows them to ignore and avoid any thought that displeases them.
    yet it encircles them. it envelopes them. all this that they refuse to acknowledge seeing. all this that still affects them as they can ignore it and avoid it but cannot get rid of it. it is that which they are constantly reacting to. and where do their reactions lead them to? they do not get away from it. there is nowhere away from it. one's ignorance is no protection any more than closing one's eyes will protect one from being hit by a truck heading one's way.
    and all the easy answers. all the template explanations. dada hoopla blah blah blah. words and words and words for 10,000 years of the history of words. words in the dark around campfires. words pressed into clay tablets and scratched on paper. words and the actions of words.
    he he found his way here. he sees nothing but that phantom world. the others go their way through it. when we drown into ourselves becoming who we have always been rising up through our minds believing in doubt.
    tons of ducks.
    barking out one's ears into tonal ramifications that prescribe certain time fragments of nonsense shouts the pigmy pony in the elevator to the 4th dimensional floor twirling squared divided cute girl thing going squat splat attracting much noise singing squealing the man arrives smelling of barber shop slap on sting bite chew mouthful he speaks bragging metaphor muscled flag waving celebrating rape of victory.
    this is the scene. this is the lights, camera, action. this is what we settle for believing without doubt tragedy is reality. we always return to this. nothing for something is the prime commandment that permeates our lives whether we are the ones who follow the guidelines of a familiar dominant ethic system of religious, political, economic, social belief or even if we adamantly diehardedly diametrically oppose all that monkey business or if we merely just lead our lives in whatever which way it happens to fall. whatever that means. suffering and struggling through some god awful miserable existence centered and grounded in our reality dome and one is being responsible doing what one is supposed to be doing. one receives sympathy and approval from one's fellow tragic suffering comrades in the great struggle of life as we have created it. one's happiness is measured not by enjoyment but by one's being good - by the sacrifice to the all social good.
    but what is this social good where sacrifice of one's own enjoyment is all one may ever expect and somehow find fulfillment in? which is not to say that a hedonist wallowing is a ton of ducts ziplocked sideways through the mist eavesdropping around the shadows he writes his brain out upon this gray skied city ring around the island puzzling over puzzles puzzled a zillion times heretofore and with not a glimpse to be seen of any remote hope of justifying one single word of it is exactly the same because it is also a command.

    in the wild hopes of fear he becomes abandoned lazy and forgiven. he cannot cope with this condition befuddled beeswaxing fun doodle hee-ha. to laugh is to be mad and typical of snouting impossibilities landed in the lap of bushes disgruntled array fixed against the behemoth latitude she had spoken. she unzipped. she froze in position extremely heightened frizzy dwiddle. to lick this tender spot of our affection dropping below where the smell became a stench. she now moves again uncertain outcome denied access plugging the mucky muck divine open-mouthed strangled she whispered this morning at dawn.
    she wasn't here before.
    who is she?
    where does she come from?
    is she the other?
    what other luck would be our fate now to speak of all the many thousand spoken things heard repeatedly forever? and an exchange of gods takes place at the river. are we such fools that we have believed where reason fails?
    18 broken shadows wandering out from a piece of the pie with saturation index into zero are some words that come to his mind whenever that may be which he sometimes doesn't believe in doubting yet it exists furrowing brow digging with or without that question not needing an answer ringing with this all being unattached to anything operating in a real sense voided instantly as soon as it comes into being. but this is that which happens to him as who and what he is which what can it quite matter as to what that may or may not be? not or not not. this nonsense noise cascading with as much meaning and purpose as nothing except what one of us may come to define.
    he feels this or he feels that. it is as it is no more or less. it conjures thought and thought stimulates the words dropping into his consciousness. his hand moves and the words are left behind to be among the zillion words left behind by how many others and others' hands. this is on fire.
    and it is from this to that as he sits and watches and waits as moons go by as whatever happens happens. as it is really nothing except what we put it together as. all the high dada drama that we imagine for ourselves so that we may experience all the joy and sorrow of it to keep ourselves becoming bored to death and even into oblivion. this is the way it seems to work as far as we are able to observe and as far as we are able to imagine it being from our view of it and all the golden ages of utopias have fallen from grace and here we remain in the memorial ruins that we worship and try to rebuild or at the very least keep from entirely crumbing into dust having failed to come up with anything better to replace them. we hang on the edge desperately clawing and climbing over one another to keep from falling off down into the abyss.
    he writes this over and over writing it this way and that way and any way it might come to him, each time trying to get it right - trying to get it to say something. but it always never quite gets there and ends up wandering away into the babbling brooks. this is him acting as sisyphus. it is and perhaps always has been a game he plays with himself of how many plates he can get spinning at once. and he manages quite a few but they eventually all crash down on the concrete floor he dances across.
    just as something was about to happen, it didn't. but maybe it did as maybe what was about to happen was nothing happening. one thinks about that and wonders why one thinks about it. one thinks that one thinks about things in too complicated a fashion. the others go their way while one is caught wondering and thinking.
    it's from a million directions of zero plus itself into these formulations he must imagine without having the benefit of the specific information which may be perhaps for the best and the most benefit of all for what he imagines needs the highest degree of flexibility in order to be attained and/or that attainment to be realized in the world he sees. the experiment is repeated with each time having its consequences.
    abbreviated divine substance oozing from gestalt frameworks structuring communication spewing from rabid spurts within breaking cocoon he saw in the other's hateful eyes. he looked down at the worms eating the foundation the other desired to feel pulsing with draining feeding energy and crying teeth bitten airplane zoom runaway horses splashing across the river where the gods were exchanged. the machine grinds this meal and grins. he pulls more levers and pushes more buttons to his delight as he imagines this while writing it scribbling madly delirium as the other lies broken in pieces with doctors and nurses prodding and poking and the other's doped mind daze perceiving prince charming the other was willing to die for. whichever it was or wasn't as the plot thickens and the undercover suicide attempt was made the other woke up just barely a moment and was safe and sound with the drip feed. push the button again.
    he went home again wherever that was at this moment. as the busy city of people were out searching for the pain they could live with. one has been in this light before. one has been on this easy street where beginnings end and endings begin over and over telling oneself many useful things in this stupid blur of consciousness. these are the pieces that are left to fit together and it is once in awhile understood as it stands leaning on the crutch props like a dali monstrosity of alien logic invading our mindspheres. this clumsy rambling he stumbles over with spilling whatnot on the planes both in opposition to itself.
    the opposition is the grand achievement we have accomplished thus far in our wandering across the fields of reference. this space of final frontiers into our brain and out into space which may be the same we are perpetually confronting. all the yesteryears with nothing to fear but the fear of fear itself coming to rest in the bosom of paradise again and again. there is little to act upon without the cooperation of the machine growing from our toenails bringing it from one end to the other and back again - from one dream to another. and what is in it remains the same. he is frightened of his own laughter. he hides in the shadow of it with eternal joy.
    this is not hip. born from dark radiance turning within the circled mindwomb as it opens its mouth to speak where no one listens. this was something of a momentary hesitation. he was suspended toward the hope of discovery. the suspension had a sense of motion although it was perhaps not moving nor it may not have been suspended. he did not know. what points of reference should he trust without suspecting? was it his suspecting that gave the suspension the sense of motion or the motion a sense of suspension? and what of the hope of discovery? was he on a mission?
    in a diamond phase as the poets might have instructed us once with their inspiration she shook her hair and said, i don't care about that. i am pretty. i know i am pretty. all the boys like me. i can think and say and do what i want. who is going to stop me and say that i can't?
    he sat and thought. she was right. no one would stop her. why bother? it's like water cascading over the rocks. it's pretty - very very pretty. one might want to dive into it to cool one's worried mind. but what more is it than that? one can forget it and lie in the sun or the rain or the snow awhile forever in suspended motion and moving suspension toward hope of discovery.
    the dizzy busy mind short spanned leaping from one half thought to the next. he leaves his words draped and trailing behind himself wherever he might wander among the forest floor.
    another idea of it was hot and sweaty licking its tongue across the ceiling dripping down to the grimy tiled floor. what form of lovers enter here who disguise themselves with each other's nakedness. some man with guns. some women with knives. and he wonders again how we became so afraid broken once dancing stuck in a dream. the faces of monkeys in the mirrors who are maybe who we are in this palace where the walls are faded by weather hypnotized sun language in a random placement. these rituals we are performing in each movement with hand and he wants to say all the glory of understanding he comes to is not that and seems to settle of moments of this guy and that guy dead and living. and what happens to it bound to itself chained to a wall mentioned by an old poet drooling who was cut up for the last time included.
    dogs.
    it's this or that be-bop could have been thing of a thousand sorrows. and we will pay anyone anything to take these memories from us so we can forget instead of thinking of them until we arrive at some other understanding. the fast clock world so slow to realization makes so many demands upon us turning us on and off.
    and he makes up this or that on about it and spends his days in quiet among the noisemakers. and he carries his own memory of it all within him. no one comes by to offer to take it away. and he probably wouldn't let them if they did. he enjoys the weight. he enjoys the trouble it causes. let the others cast it off and fly away to their carefree brave new utopias. let the future be as shallow and safe as they can make it. he will remember them as well.
    and he rummages through it and pulls out this or that of what has been broken, stabbed and stepped on - these pieces he fits together into his own brave new some or other all leaves spaces where they do not quite fit into anything at all. and what is decided? flashing red light into green. a frequent development discussed among the oppositional groups of purpose. what is the fix now? do we promote the genius of it? what is read into it? what is written into it?
    he feels this energy arising from the gut level experience. does he trust this? what madness does it bring? what is the divine revelation for today? these and those have struggled with the message that the message itself seems unable to communicate attempting to formulate certain restraints within the parameters of reasonable expectations based on previous known experience.
    down into turning around within itself in degrees shaping the outward form of itself becoming the shadow reversed into light where it might be seen beckoning to one through a haze of dreaming. it slips through its own disguise to draw it tighter to itself. jesus in chains weeping. the cup spilled on the stone floor. outside comes the laughter of children. how cruel this is that no one pays it any mind but proceeds along with the crowds forming the grand parade. a chill is felt. a shivering and teeth chattering. who can speak?
    along the divergent paths crisscrossing through points never returned to the same way again. what is done is done. who we are and are not is decided as it falls in conflict or harmony with one another in the situation of events we find ourselves in that is caused and formulated out of our desires and fears which then turns back in and feeds them strengthening our preconceptions derived from them with examples showing that our prior feelings we had entering into the situation to begin with were correct. what? we not only accept only evidence involved in the situation that supports our prior feelings but the situation itself is often chosen to be one in which this supporting evidence will be found to a large degree. what?
    we control yet mask our control from ourselves so we may enter into and leave these situations innocent. arf. yet in each situation each of us identifies a guilty party. there may be a group consensus identifying a single person or it may be each identifies someone different and maybe oneself will be identified by another or others. or whatever.
    but this is the social mix of it. this is nothing. it comes and goes following the same basic general formula and motivations it has been following for however millions of years we've been even proto-human and the thousand of years we've been civilized. our calm rage against ourselves that flashes nuclear bright this every once in awhile together two to tango bango crash mix it up and down screaming laugh slashing bashing stop on a dime and twist and shout monkey business ya-hoo oh boy ho-hum fussy mussy on a lazy day of dazed bewildering grabbing onto the joy stick stuck upsideways into the gazebo groin groaning grappling strapping hydra headed merry mare mincing mangled mushy hushed hiding hidden bidden to sleep celebrating cymbals crashing awake awoken drowsy dropping off a letter in which some mysterious previous pondering may be reveled to eyes sharp enough to perceive or dull enough to ignore any message that might support or contradict our hope for this mad delight when we are able to finally surrender laying down without a care in our hair or no longer needing to trust or accept or doubt or deny as whatever is to be seen is what it is without our wild imagination twisting turning the dials pushing buttons pulling levers making it all spin away into another day we may not soon if ever reach as it is always tomorrow and today is yesterday suchwise we divide our fear from our desire and are left with nothing in-between with the quickness of the development needed to remind us of ourselves as life and time goes on giving us what we get whether its needed or wanted or not. we survive with it or not.
    but the trembling outside the realm of imagination he stands and wonders back at the others he sees. is it we are each in the same relationship to one another feeling as much isolated as the other from the others?
    beat the drums while her hair falls and her rings shimmer in the candlelight and the flags unfurl. he smokes another cigarette. the camera pulls back. was this all a movie? does it continue to be so?
    outside the walls the ones stand who call us to come out and return to the open. do they mean to trick us? our walls are the only protection we have against what lies out in the open waiting to attack us and do harm and injury and maybe kill and eat us. does their army wait behind the hill, or are they fools who do not know these dangers?
    so we remain and he sits and looks out the window. time folds over on itself in his mind as he imagines the multitude of connections beyond the linear cause and effect. is he dreaming? does this only happen to him? who are these around him who operate only on the surface of what to him is of great depth, height and width? how and why do they contain themselves within such narrow parameters of experience? or is he as insane as he feels sometimes?
    it is lost as it is found. revolution rock. as it lays twisted and broken they walk around it and over it and through it without concern except that it is not any of them who is found this way. but they are as caught in it as much as it is caught up in itself. for what is it that separates it from themselves? is it something else that can be removed from them and discarded? they would like to think so.
    he remains ignorant and naive. he knows very little of what's around him. it does this or that and he responds to it in ways he's learned to respond to it in order to survive. and that's it. he survives. he is allowed to survive by forces beyond his control or even his knowledge. he has survived alone. so many of the others who were once with him are now gone. he doesn't know what happened to them. sucked up away into its maw chewed up and incorporated as he has been.
    has he driven them away with demands and with nothing relevant to offer them in return? only himself and he was never enough. they wanted more. and does it matter? all can be replaced. is he here to serve them or to entertain them?
    the forces of it have their own will and direction and purpose unless there is none. one can attempt to understand but there is no understanding. he should be dead. but he is not. he does not know why. he just continues. and one can only deal with those who are subject to these forces as one is oneself. the forces themselves are not that which one may have communication. no information can be given to them or derived from them. and this is the old old story of human fate in the world. yet we continue for reasons that are just as much beyond our understanding as that which works against our continuing.
    he sits here and wastes his time writing about what goes nowhere and amounts to nothing. his words are writing on water. but what else is he to do? get some fucking job? been there, done that. it all passes by which way it does. one's actions have as much effect on it as a leaf does on a stream it has fallen into that carries it away swirling and twirling as is also our dance. and not only each of us as individuals but the human race as a whole. just so many leaves in so many streams.
    and this is where he has come to in one of the places he has come to here and now. others have been here who he has read along the way. they are just a mystified except those who have tried to build a fortress against it. we see their ruins everywhere. and the best one may do is turn away from this realization and light another cigarette and learn to forget. one returns to one's life in the world and does this or that as it occurs for one to do this or that. and one becomes a prince or a pauper or someone in-between and it doesn't matter. one survives and experiences and at some time it ends. and it may or may not come around again.
    what may or may not be of it as we sing our songs about it and dancing around its image in fire and in stone. all the complicated convolutions we imagine we twist around ourselves and ourselves around in and out of to keep this image in place so that we might be protected and safe in our daily lives. these circles within circles we travel through going where we've always been and there is no other place we can get to as it is always here and now. he writes himself around in his own circles within circles following his own image of it - his own image of himself.
    around from the formulation of dada being dada as the fixation for the excuse of ignorance. forget the nonsense. how much does it cost? listen to the angels residing at angles as lost ot the gods as we are. is that why they are calling through the cracks of our broken minds where the light of their voices shines through into the imagination?
    forget the noise. it is the wheels spinning of the machine generating vibrational beingness out of our minds with the thoughts spilling through them like rushing streams of water.
    remember everything.
    do not turn away from any part of it.