I have, for most of my life, been curious about the creation of a better world. When I think about what this world could be, it comes with feelings of wonder and happiness that are quite the opposite of the guilt and grief that attend the world as we have known it. I think these feelings are related to the sensation of things working out. Or perhaps more accurately, of things having already worked out. […]
Remembering perfectly, so that you produce the type of knowing that actually yields light, does not take practice. But you do need to clear a space. Give it time, and allow it to happen. I left home once, you see— pulled the door softly-to behind me so the others wouldn’t be woken. Clapped my hands in the cold and breathed into their midst. The night was so thick you could smell the absence of light. […]
[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] I realize I’ve been slow in getting to the point. About what I believe. You’ll want a point to all this, I know. Three, four, five parts. At least. You’d be crazy to read it all. It’s clearly a little self-indulgent, but on the other hand I don’t think the what matters so much as the how or why, maybe. The process. The route. I probably can’t actually tell […]
I could suggest I’m grappling with writing—with the idea of writing, perhaps, and how the idea crumbles when I sit down to write; how I pan in the dust for gold and will myself to proceed though a dense and peculiar metal, of itself, is meaningless; how I come up dry and uncertain, but then find a sparkle or two in the half-light just as I turn away, and suddenly am renewed—but the real grappling is […]
“I feel better. But I did that thing again, didn’t I, Hafiz?” “Yes.” “How come we both know what I’m talking about, but we can’t explain it?” “The horses giving chase always get mud in their eyes.” “That was easier than I thought. But giving chase to what?” “To whatever you think is over there.” He waved his hand limply towards the distance, indicating that somewhere along the periphery of my mind there were these […]
The last few weeks have been challenging for me, and I have felt the awkward stretching that comes sometimes when change is upon us. There is this desire to be certain of things, to know what lies ahead, to make nothing but informed decisions, and to navigate the consequences with aplomb. We want to understand the right way to go about things, to think about things– the proper way to perceive, and to know. Today […]
The sky in the distance is yellow because it is saturated with the living dust that is emitted by trees, who I happen to notice are standing quite silent on the matter of this atmospheric discoloration, as if you can do a thing little-by-little and it doesn’t count. But I see you can take a thing too far. Fresh from my coursework on the dangers of coffee dust and grain silos, I note that with […]
A cardboard tube can make all the difference, and I’ll tell you how. Walking through a flavor of solitude in which I find myself sometimes, covering my face to ward off the trace of distant putrefaction, and squinting into the heat to see if my suspicion is correct about the horizon stockpiling behind its dusty curvature all the sad carcasses not fortunate enough to receive a proper burial– I’m wheezing in the fumes of my […]
I used to think the very act of coming out to this frontier town, to this slat-walled refuge set down in the wild light and crooning darkness, would be sufficient. A proof of concept. Like I could purchase everlasting freedom with an act of unexpected boldness. Without thinking it per se, I believed that after packing just my necessaries and lashing them down, selling the house and the grandfather clock, then riding west across creaking leagues […]
They said once, in the papers, they found sea shells in the Rocky Mountains. To minds so disposed, these findings– like all such mockeries of the mundane– sparked a series of concomitant revelations. I know this because Hafiz pinned me to the wall, told me to hold quite still, and then cordoned my life– which suddenly felt like a pop-up trailer with ten thousand doors– into endless sectors of moonlit bedrock and crushed eons. We […]
Embracing Forever 