Ink a bink- a bottle of ink...

Drops of acid poured into my hands bursting into life, spilling drugs into the arms of American hopefuls. In a fit of delight they screamed their way to far off worlds. This is where I met him, in the fictionalized palace of human allegories.

I did not know who the beautiful creature, looming in the shadows of the sanctuary of thoughts, was.

“what are you doing?”  His speech was unspoken, the audio waves bypassing my eardrums, licked my brain.

“this is a deserted place.  Presence is no longer here.” Said the creature.

“Ah” I moaned, leaning back as the blood rushed to my head, the “wah, wah, wah” sounds set my heart on fire.

“I think I love you” I said, “I can feel you in my heart”

Just then, winter set into his eyes. A blue light flashed itself in the form of a papparazi light show.  I stumbled to my mind and fell over an oak tree full of miniature balls of thinking. They filed into my  head, slamming into my lungs and trickling into my bloodstream. I listened again to the sounds of the cerebral radio of the heavens.

Four words; sand, sound, soothing, sleep flew- speared through my head and burst out of the surface, my attention drawn like a moth to the flame.

“what did that mean?” I thought.

Another series of words catapulted through my body and I forgot their meaning. A story began.

In the cave south of the big ocean of self-awareness there is a marble tiled floor in a cottage by the Lake of Feeling. Each one of these tiles contains a milky way and weighs about a gram. When you try to touch them you realize that you cant. Instead, your hand will go right through them, and if you jump into them you will fly into them. Soaring into life, being born again. My mother told me of this place back when it was past time for a change. She opened her silver lips and shouted out with golden streams of sound the cottage itself into existence. And somewhere in this golden stream, between the golden particles, there was life, preserved in little cylindrical capsules about a quarter inch long.

I wanted to kiss the creature of beauty. Where did it go? I cant be certain.  I will have to search for him in the cottage of milky ways.  I must search until he finds me.

I sat out on the yacht of gold. My heart was below the deck and I no longer noticed it. An enormous compass was placed in my head and I avoided the dangers of sea life with regular success. A bird named Love flew above and beside me the whole time telling me stories and poems. I had a favorite-

“Store and save, rant and rave

The oceans tides befall you

Under the glistening of the silver moon

You will find your calling”

                One day, when Love flew off with my warmest thought, winter began raining on my deck and crew. We laid out many buckets but were unable to catch it all, no matter how careful we were. It was a marvelous sight im sure. We ran in zig-zags and circles, squares and triangles frantically catching the rain, shuddering at every drop we missed. Desperately seizing the radicals. It did not work. After we exhausted ourselves, we became me and I was born to the land in which the cottage was spoken. The land of hindsight.

The grass was a few yards up the beach, I only realized this after the crunch of grass stalks echoed up from beneath my feet. I could see for many miles. I only noticed when I exited the fog that had engulfed me from the moment of my landing. The cottage was more of a palace, a porcelain palace. I only realized this when I walked through its painted red door and left behind the ugly façade that was its exterior, so released from my memory.  I witnessed a water staircase leading to a diving board, five stories in the air, hovering over the black and white marble floor.  I came to climb these stairs, my shoes competing to be one step above the other, anxiously attempting to prove their superior obedience to my mind.

A woman wearing a red dress called to me, introducing herself as Curiosity. She was seriously gentle, maniacally serene, receptively outgoing.

“welcome to my home” said her voice, jumping from the space between her crimson lips. “my home is yours, and I am so glad that you are here. Where have you been?”

In elation I spoke “I arrived on the beach in the time between here and there. I walked through the door earlier this moment and am understandably vexed as to where I am now. Why?”

“I wanted to know what you would say.” She stated, revealing her nature.

In a state of enlightened bewilderment I spoke forth “I understand. I can’t figure it out, but I understand that now.”

An important theory presented itself: If I were to know that which is unknowable, would I ever be capable of telling another. I asked it to the woman.

                “how did you stumble upon that?” she thought aloud.

“Between the particles of gold in my mothers breath” I said, “when I was created to ask this.”

“very interesting thing, that you would say that,” she said “your mother spoke this to you. She said this very thing?”

“no” I said.

“If you found this in your mother breath,” she said, “it should be so.”

“AHA!” I said, “you’ve solved my problem!”

“what was your problem?” she asked. “Was it solved because it existed? Yes.”

“yes.” I said

“Curious thing” crept out of her mouth and dribbled down her chin, landing on her breasts in silence.

“have you seen a beautiful creature lately?” I asked.

“he went to that one,” she said, pointing beneath us into the milky way marble floor. I think I got the right tile in mind. I climbed atop the diving board and I dove down into it. I was partly shocked to see the beautiful creature on the other side, but I knew that curiosity would lead me to him.

“you’re here!” I said.

“how did you find me?” he replied in a disconcerted way.

I proceeded to tell him about the journey, the rain, the grass, the fog. I told him about the cottage tiled with black and white milky ways. At times he would stare at my mouth but his eyes, like a moth drawn to a flame, would find their way back to mine. Inside of them he hid a streak of fear, perhaps it was the eye contact, I couldn’t be sure.

                “well I’m glad somebody showed up.” He said, his words knocking me down into a pool of anonymity. Bubbles swimming past me fled to the surface at the speed of which the beautiful creature had cast me into our very temporary home.

“I came through a storm to get to the moment,” I said crossly, “I came for you.”

“very fortunate that you weathered it” he said, unaffected.

A saline solution bulged in pockets recessed in my eye sockets. Five words tumbled down my throat three times before tumbling back out.

“do you need my help?”

                “yes, I have lost my way.” He spat. “im trying to get home.”

“where do you live?” I asked.

                “I was hoping you could tell me.

I my gaze dropped to the ground, I could not help him. My heart wanted to help him, though. Just as the feeling passed through my stomach a portal opened in front of me the way an old tv set adjusts when you turn it on. The beautiful creature lifted its beautiful hand and reached inside. My sight followed it and I saw pure electricity, bouncing around in a manner that was comparable to the tesla machine I had read so much about. But these bolts were neon- Bright oranges, pinks, blues, greens and purples, soaring brilliantly.

My sight hitched a ride on one of the more pinkish bolts of energy. It took me around the world and back seventy times over the course of seventy years. I saw a large brick wall that was well placed in humanity to prevent spillage. They called this “nations.” This kept thoughts in neat cycles. There was also a large ribbon placed over the eyes of the masses and this was called faith. Behind this wall and hidden behind the ribbon was a naked woman with very dark skin and thick curly hair atop her head, and flowering out from between her thighs. Her name was Reality.

On one of my trips I sat and spoke with her. She was covered in scars and continuously thought of running away. At the drop of a hat she would burst into tears. She mentioned to me that she was out of tune with her brother, Truth. He had died in the war against Insanity, a vicious woman from the darkest parts of the soul. Without him, Reality forgot her importance. When this happened, the masses lost sight of her and no longer thought of her with any regard. I traveled with her over the mountains of mourning and out of the valley of consciousness. On our way out she told me about the cycles, how they rarely see change anymore. But every now and then there would be a brief change, a new light, but this would only appear on television. These often died off and never bore anything but a daughter of Chaos. When we approached The Cave of Forgetting, she hid herself. She has been unreachable since.

My sight jumped out and I realized the beautiful creature had left me. I looked down and noticed that I was standing on a giant mirror. I looked up and saw a crystal chandelier with a skeleton made of gold hanging from a pure white ceiling. To my left I saw a window leading out to an unknown forest, to my right was a painting of a soldier, standing victoriously on a hill, surveying the wilderness. I thought twice to look back but decidedly glanced forward. There I saw a pale young man in a white robe. He held in his left hand a compass and in his right a sword. A blizzard beard leapt from his chin and reached down from his ears toward the ground and that is when he noticed me.

“my name is Discovery, that man on the wall is my father, his name is Strength. I believe you met my mother, curiosity. She and he discovered this land and I have inherited it. Let me show you around.”

Leading me out of the grandiose structure we made our way out into the world. Stepping stones arranged in geometrical patterns dotted a trail leading into the darkness of the forest. Rain, falling like bombs initiated a tyranny of cold  on my skin as a breeze shoved its lack of warmth into my limbs, face, eyes.  Goosebumps formed themselves on my arms in patterns mimicking  those of the stone path I pursued. Compassion washed over me and I saw my hand. Hanging in there. A faithful servant. My most passionate helper. So beautiful. I pulled it near my lips and gave it a kiss, whispered a prayer and left it back to its lifestyle. Hanging in there. Pushing, pulling. Blindly obeying and loving.

Darkness enraptured me and my guide. He spoke of poetry to me. He had a favored poem.

Tears nourish the cheeks and chin

 As Sobbing awakes the divine within

Between the heaves and amidst the drool

Of the cries of the bleating fool

God is seen in a swan array

White and gold and brown of clay

Void is thought and thoughtless be

A perfect soul, perfectly free

His poetry moved me. It was my own. He had a way of putting such weightless things into the realm of words.

Pine-needles dislodged from trees in an all consuming urge to dance. Less photosynthetic, they yearned to be aerial ballerinas. Their mother tree wept one tear for each as they fell. Sorrowful, not neglecting the urge to disembark or to become less of the whole and more of an individual beauty. Sadly, the dance was short. Joined at my feet were all of the disengaged pine needles. Their deaths so quiet, so unnoticed, so many. Ballerinas, frail, light, composed of more than just greenness and length. Their story was that of a tree and her millions of ancestors.

Through these trees the moon became clear and visible. I looked out to really catch a sight of its whiteness, its roundness, its omnipotent, hushing, cerebral, heart achingly distant, relief of self expression. As the light brushed through my eyes I captured it. In a vault just beneath my stomach, I kept it.  It was there, upon revising the sight, that I had realized discovery was no longer before me. I looked in a 360 degree circle and found nothing but darkness and the rising moon.  I called out.

“Where am I?”

The moon began to set and the sky brightened to a familiar purple hue.  Twilight. The space between spaces. The proof of everything. The reality that one merges with all. All is merging with one. And as the thought, like a drop of color in a vessel of water, dispersed through my head I saw something moving in the distant. Glowing with bravery I illuminated that which would elude me. Standing out in a forest clearing I felt brave. Never so brave. The realm of words waited for my command unlike the salmon spawning barrage of my past. Now they were at my mouth where patience subdued the rest of them.

 A thin blade exposed itself.

“you think you know what it’s all about, don’t you? You think your brave”

A weight was added to my shoulders.

“you think your glowing.”

The weight became greater

“you think you have mastered yourself”

And it became unbearable, I collapsed to the carpeting graveyard of pine needles. And water flushed from my eyes. Yes I thought I was brave. Yes I thought I had mastered myself. That I had subdued the will of words with patience. 

And a stream of words gleamed, strode, and elegantly appeared itself before me. Determination.  Defiance. Denounce. Destroy.

The weight was great, my shoulders ached and knees bent before me.

Standing high ‘neath twilight sky, a thief in the night has called me

Bearing blades of word and phrase, on forest floor I’m crawling

But this is not the way to be, to be so crookedly bawling

So I threw the weight of the verbal rape at the feet of he.

I will show you thief, wicked thief that this death ain’t free

Lest I fall and weakly bawl and face such demeaning doom

Not inside these forests that hide, a jackals living room

Standing high ‘neath twilight sky my rage, steady accrue

And like a gun my words shot off with a painful boom

Blood spat out from his toungue and mouth, a death that came so soon

shards of doubt,  from me crept out and gleamed beneath the moon

So I stood, blood on hands, waiting for the morning light

As rage withdrew and patience knew I had no need to hide

I lay down, first feet then crown, eyes of tapering sight

Sun did rise and woke the cries- his majesties glor’ing light

And moon fell down, easily down for she had not spite

I slept beneath the trees so peacefully, with scenery so bright

In a dream I saw him, the beautiful creature. He came to me, held on to me. Felt me and my angst. Felt me and my sorrow. Felt me and my rage. And looked at me. Really looked at me. And I looked at him. Really looked at him. Our eyes meeting in the space somewhere in the middle, held each other. Became one, we became me. We became he. I had discovered the marvelous-ness in me. In him. And it was only beautiful.