The Cave Wall

1/30/2006 6:36 AM-6:57 AM

Stumbling through the creekbed, looking for stones. They’re what you stumble on. The things you’re looking for. I look so far ahead and only so far. The arrow needs a target to fly. Pay attention. This in, this out. Pay attention. Focus on this thing for as long as it takes. Is this what they talked about with fifteen times a day?

Can I abstain, and wait for the next round? Where is it? That thing that made it move? Where has it gone? Say an ave maria for the dead things. Say an ave maria for the living. Get up now. Get up and walk. This does not connect. This is just an arm of the one thing. How do we reconcile the knowledge of the worst thought with living? Are we to forget, turn it into sterile words? Existing again. Blocking out the worst possible thought (though you can name the thought and say the words of its sutra, if you don’t feel it, it isn’t real). Ave maria.

An excellent thought – she is my true mistress. I have not found you, because I don’t need you. The search for her is allconsuming. Pick me up and let me ride in the back seat, listening to the hard happiness of the music you’re playing on the stereo. While back ago, we heard the perfection that all men seek. Now we are complete. And so far from it. After the enlightenment, the laundry. Somehow, beauty is infused with the work. Somehow, it all makes sense. And all I ever wanted was to smell her hair. But she is a symbol of the other thing. The Blond will never be found because the Blond is a placeholder for finding the perfection in the twisted stalk of self. I become real. I become a lie. When you step beyond the boundaries of the excellent path and crawl out into the dark woods of the hermit, you find your split-apart waiting in the cave. We are unknowing creatures. We have always known all there is to know. If I fuck up my finances, peace will leave me. If I fuck up my vision, peace will leave me. I tear my peace apart looking for it. There’s only this second and now it’s gone. Gone. Gone. Here. Here. We carve her out of the base stone of the cave wall and, praying, give her life.

Angel, Belfast, NY

A shack somewhere in North Central New Mexico

My Denny's, Gallup, NM

Bisti Badlands, New Mexico

Can't all be pirates.

an elegant and heartless machine

01/17/2006 6:43 AM-7:06 AM

Existence exists without your permission. When you die, the world and all the stars will keep going. You will be forgotten. This is the nature of the thing. We may wish that we were a part of all things and that all things were a part of us, but we exist as we are. We grow and shed the smaller shell, but there always remains a shell.

The ego does not dissolve when consumed. It merely stops screaming and forgets the weight it carries. The hero is the ego. It can be no other way. We create so that we can have something to discuss with other egos. Why? Why should that matter? Don’t know. But then, don’t know anything. No truth, only justified belief, and, in some cases, only belief. You just want to love your work and love you wife. You just want to eat and drink and enjoy your existence. When you stare into the deep dark at the heart there is great fear and the fear clings when the memory of the dark fades. So be it. There is always that answer. So be it. Catch and release the thought. The sticky slime that protects the fish from the smaller creatures that inhabit it’s plane of existence stick to your hands, but the fish is gone and, in time, the slime and the smell will fade as well.

Where were you when the foundations of existence were laid? For a few moments, don’t see it as rhetoric and see it as an actual question. I was here, at right this second in right this place. But perhaps I was somewhere else at right this second. Perhaps I wasn’t at all. When you’ve met the requirements of honest speculation and gone down to the bottom of the well, are you allowed to forget it? Can I come back and think of comics and movies and naked girls? Should the Cloud of Unknowing never let me go? My point in going was proactive, not just idle speculation. Not that there’s anything wrong with idle speculation. Where else would the best-wrought lies come from? Like Narnia. Pick up and start again. The cyclical nature of the beast is not indicative of the whole, but it is the beast that creates the whole. To perceive is to create. Except, of course, that existence doesn’t ask your permission. It just keeps rolling and rolling along, mindless of what falls behind. Such an elegant and heartless machine. Time, chance, and effort. We pick up and go on. The lights are strung from the trees. The cars are going by. I’ll smoke and drink coffee. I’ll try to count my breaths for a whole fifteen minutes. We’ll see what happens and try to force enjoyment on my pessimistic soul. So be it.

“Why has the Western Barbarian no beard?”

Some possible responses:

-He has a beard, look at the pictures of him! …dork.

-Because he was in touch with his feminine side.

-Because he was actually a woman.

-The Western Barbarian was a man. All men were once boys. Most boys are beardless. Therefore, it is likely that the Western Barbarian was beardless for part of his life.

-You know, they had razors back then.

-Yes.

-No.

-Maybe.

-All of the above.

-There is no “Western Barbarian,” thus no beard.

-He has transcended his beard.

-Why is the fact untrue?

-Beard envy.

-Yes. Hi. I’d like a #3 – large with a root beer. To go.

That’s all I got so far.

On Law, Living, Value and Agnostisim

And then I went and had a dream about the Perfect Girl for Holloween. She left me. Stupid subconcious.

The Case of the Closed Box