Author: auspiciaoblativa

Ecliptic

Something shifted noiselessly through the shadows. Something became the shadows, then relinquished their forms when a pair of eyes latched on and signaled the nerves to reach out a shaky hand to scare the witness awake. Something went unnameable and unnoticed, puppeting its effects into chain-link fences and reaction formations. Something loomed up the size of billboards and scuttled along under car tires. Something filled the cracks in seamless veneers and snaked its way into the chinks of the armor. Something “Hey-Hey-Hey”ed the pop stations and paid-paid-paid the culture-war centurions. Something slinked along at the bathroom door of a drunken President, overwhelmed and weeping. Something fought in the online pit bull rings and spat hatred at the gay soldiers. Something cranked out the merchandise and trampled the competition. Something tazed the old ladies and swallowed the extra Perkoset.

There was indeed an Enemy at Large, but it was not the “diabiological plot” for which the news stations were already making up cutesie names. It was not the crazy weather patterns nor the thousands of pointing fingers. It was not the Leftist Extremists, and it was not the Anti-Choice Nutjobs. It was not the Carters nor the Clintons, not the Kardashians nor the Cosbys, not the Jester nor Anonymous.

It was a Shadow, the so-called monster of the vast dark inside which all villains and goblins were conceived.

It was a Shadow, a shape cast upon a surface, made by the dance of whatever exists between the Light and a Wall.

As with anything perceivable on the inner screens of consciousness: it was always an Inside Job.

Beau DuPont awakened from an undeniably wakeful sleep to write down these words:

“all is one, within which light & shadow play. there is shadow, and we are present with it. when it is not a dark that we are afraid to go into, it ceases to be a monster invented to threaten us from inside our closets and under our beds. it is simply the natural effect of sunlight, candlelight, fire, casting its warmth on the reflective side of whatever it touches; the other side is dark, and the shadow that lengthens from its body is a measure of the space it holds.” [1]

 

 

-**

1. In case it’s been a while, have a moment.

Desperado

Desperate. The last thing that people wanted to be. The last thing, at least, that people wanted to be seen being. (A subtle but important distinction, yes?)

Desperation had Jove by the jugular. He walked around in its acrid fog, from night to day, from class to class, from push to shove. He looked out of its eyes at the hand-holding couples on their way to the swanky bars where they would pretend to do their homework over beers, kisses, and mid-afternoon sunshine. He wrote about it in his journal and drew its monsters in the sidelines of his notes.

It’s not that he didn’t count his blessings. It’s certainly not that he didn’t thank his lucky stars he had won a lavish position in the “arts” part of the liberal arts community (“liberal,” as it turns out, was somewhat of a euphemism anyway) and he now was required—not tolerated, not discouraged—yes, required, to dance his heart out several times per week. This alone was far and away reason enough to float to dreamland every night in a bed of delicious satiation. But no such bed awaited him at night. Jove had made a practice for so very many years of feeling downtrodden, incomplete, desolate, misunderstood, and—yup—desperate.

No, it’s not like he woke up one day and chose it. No one does that, do they? “I think today I’m going to feel alienated from my kind and impossible to appreciate, and I’m going to deal with that by eating too many Nutter Butters, farting a lot, and hiding in my bag when people come by, digging for something that will make me feel momentarily important. I will also write with a smug look on my face so that people don’t approach me and so I can rest assured that they will think I think I’m better than them. Lastly, I will throw an internal tantrum when I step in a puddle with my new shoes, cursing god and all the angels and most of all my sad, sad shitsack self.” Humans don’t decide these things outright. They tend to make it up as they go along, riding on autopilot, filling in the gaps that make sense with the status quo. “I feel like crap: must be a good reason…” And thus, reasons come flooding in.

Not that young Jove was depleted of Very Good Reasons. He still had a constant sense of ungrievable loss that he had never, ever been without. He still had a family who denied, denigrated, and disowned non-normative gender expression [1]. He still had only a few years of space from his experience with sexual trauma, having found out in the midst of depressive isolated teenaged angst that things were even worse than they seemed. He still had a daily mix of attraction and revulsion with his brethren, a melée of confounding, turbulent, simultaneously-occuring desire and hatred. He still had a guilt-ridden white-kid trust fund and a growing arsenal of supplies for an imminent cathartic guilt-clearing of personal and public interest. He still had his large front teeth and too-serious nose.

But the habit of desperation did not survive on explanation. It was not affected by the presence or lack of any of those Very Good Reasons. In fact, it had become shorthand for the reasons, which meant that even though the reasons would always be there to back it up and give it weight, they were not even readily available for examination. They were all zipped up in a file marked “Desperate.” To manage this, one has to search for and download a free extraction application, after making sure it isn’t full of viruses and spyware, and by the time it downloads, oh yeah, one has to re-start one’s computer and agree to all the preliminary set-up options, and then, even after all that, sometimes the application doesn’t support the file type, and one has to do the whole thing over again, this time being very vigilant to seek an application that includes the right file configuration for the contents of “Desperate,” and then, finally, if it all works out, one can wait a few minutes while the giant file called “Desperate” is unzipped and made ready for perusal. And, if one is lucky or stubborn or touched, one will still remember why the file was so important to read in the first place, and one will spend hours on end getting lost in the maze of well-rutted justifications of the psyche.

This is not a recipe for becoming less desperate. [2]

The mantle of desperation that Jove wore around like he was clothed by Ichabod Crane, it did have one notable payoff. It made for some invigorating stage work. Jove’s dancing was second to none, always at the ready to burst forth, a lava flow from somewhere hot and dark within the deep. When he pulled that realm into being, there was nothing in the world that could hold it back. Fellow dancers would twirl to a stop. Instructors would hold their breath and squint their eyes. Dust bunnies would flee the scene. And Jove—firey, storm-brewing, rock-generating Jove—would be in five places at once, hands to the invisible sky and body rolling yards below the ground, gulping air into his cannon and blasting its molecules into color combustions no eye would allow the mind to discard.

All in the name of Desperation.

A great critic would say it was worth it. A great artist would say it could be no other way. A great lover would say it was exquisite, courageous, and unnecessary.

Jove said it was survival, as he packed up his sodden clothing into a flimsy vinyl bag, leaving his curious dancing partners without another word.

And when he got home to his chilled, unsatisfactory bedding, he cried the tears of a survivor, triumphantly sad and sadly triumphant, leaning into the sharp edge of his only weapon.

 

-**

1. As well as, if one pans back for a wide-angle view, anything else out of the ordinary, anything that didn’t match their curtain patterns.
2. It is, however, free, voluntary advertising for a program called jZip that requires none of the aforementioned bullshit.

Gunpowder

“Explosion.”

The room was chaotic with the sound of indignant pigeons.

“What, you mean we blow up if we fart close to an open flame?” Boopsie shat as he spoke, in order to keep a semblance of calm. The pigeons underneath him moved without pause. All eyes were still on the kid from Jersey.

“Worse.”

Squawking. Flapping. “What else? High atmospheric pressures? Lightning? Static electricity?”

“All possible.”

A small dust cloud formed where compulsive little feet scratched at the ground. Aleister shouted over the rest, “So that’s it, it just goes off internally without warning?”

“We’re not sure yet.”

“Why, that would be like… like…” Jericho could not say it.

“Birdshot.”

It was one of the worst words in avian language, and the kid had said it. Second only to “birdstrike,” and just before “towerkill.” And the kid had said it.

Feathers fluffed. Silence filled every breast in the room. Every breast, that is, save one.

“WHAT??!” squawked the Reverend Fledgling Flop. “How is this possible?!” The Rev’s head made a compulsive triple-shake every few steps as he began to pace the floor, his down shedding in spurts of wild gesticulation. “It’s not possible, that’s how. What good are gizzards if not to remove such poisons? How could this be? How could the Great Winged Lorde [1] let this happen? It wouldn’t. It couldn’t! And… how do we know you’re really with our flocks in Jersey? Propaganda of the non-believers, that’s what this is.”

The youth was shiny-eyed, sincere, urgent. “Your esteemed plumage, sir. I ask your forgiveness but also your caution. Urban-dwelling flocks throughout the eastern seaboard are dealing with much disruption. We’ve seen this with pit-bulls, your plumage. It’s been done before. Humans are capable of such innovative madness. And worse. Remember the–”

“Don’t peck at old wounds! Don’t bring up the bags!”

“Your grand plumage, sir, I wouldn’t dare…”

“Don’t explode the horrible pictoral memory & geotemporal reckoning through the electrical units that spread from our minute grey matter! Do not flash slides of 4,000 bagged brethren dragged unceremoniously through the subconscious. Do not broadcast that bloodbath across the silent background radiation. On top of everything we’re dealing with here, that’s the last thing we need. On my wings ever skyward, son, I swear. If Martha herself–”

“Your plumage! Sir, stop it! Stop! Just stop!”

“Silence, squab!” [2]

A mild gasp of atmosphere followed the room’s collective ruffle. The Rev swooped it up. He had to. Everyone was watching.

“I’m sure your rash tone arises from the very clear emotional distress you are in, carrying this disturbing message of dubious veracity. Perhaps we should adjourn for a period of communal roosting, get our wits about us again?”

It was very generous of the ole RFF, and very tactical. He knew the loyalty that a generous nature could generate. Livia came to mind, and his breast feathers gave rise. Florence caught his eye and they settled back down.

The young Jersey bird gave his wings a flap and spoke. Or rather, he stammered:

“I apologize, your esteemed plumage. I… You have to know. I was only sent to bring the message. I’m not allowed to edit. Homer’s Honor. I will repeat this information, as it is my sovereign duty. Then I am open to your suggestion of adjournment. But I… I must say it again, for there is a risk of getting lost in…” the bird’s eyes darted back and forth from the Rev to the rest of the room. He need not point out the obvious. “…translation. This is the message, again, without interpretation nor interruption. If you please, your plumage?”

The Reverend, weary and agitated, settled under Flo’s severe silence. He knew when it was time to back off. He gave the kid a nod. The youth repeated, from the top:

“We have confirmed a high percentage of charcoal present in all pigeon food, from public supply chains to organized racing specialty blends. In addition to the drastically increased protein and sulfur levels, this new discovery spells potential disaster. Our sources in the Jersey Hill dovecotes have confirmed that the amount of charcoal & sulfur ingested daily, per bird, combined with the naturally occurring levels of potassium nitrate, means…”

He felt the pressure of the atmosphere squeeze his feathers flatly upon his meat. This is where the room blew up last time. The irony was humorless. He looked at the RFF. Humorless. Florence. Humorless. Karl. A twinkle. He took a deep breath. It had to be said.

“It… It means that our bodies are producing something like processed gunpowder, and… under certain conditions… are at risk of… explosion.”

 

-**

1. Short for the Great Radiant Olde Winged Lorde, GROWL, that’s right. Not all birds use the same name for the All-Bird. Like many a magic mirror, it tends to reflect the constitution of its conjurer.
2. Worth noting here: Pigeons have been reclaiming several of their epithets over time. So “Squab” is common slang amongst Pigeonfolk, and they use it liberally in closed circles. But it still bears something of its origins and so when used in certain ways, it can be found deeply disrespectful and insulting. Feather-ruffling. [3]
3. If you are in need of further research into respectful language choices, there’s this.

Lunar Glory

{Excerpt #3, journal of a sacred whore.}

Whatever precise or abstract theory one may have about Mary Magdalene, there is a distinct difference between thinking about Mary Magdalene and actually being Mary Magdalene.

Consciously making Love with the Divine in any given era, the current one quite spoken for, comes with certain requirements. It requires the will to love exactly what comes up, exactly as it is. It requires steadfast devotion and unshakable trust, as well as an outspokenly humble nature and a firm openness to growing–bolder, wiser, more compassionate–no matter what the circumstances. It requires willingness to always return to the work inside, to find one’s own hands making the shadow puppets upon the wall, to anoint those hands in scented oils and the smooth warm waters of Love.

Mary Magdalene is the thin, craggy Ironwood growing in the stark desert at the side of a constantly-traveled highway, seldom perched upon, seldom visited, seldom even noticed, saying in the language that touches all the elements: “I grow. I grow.”

Mary Magdalene is the tall, awkward dandelion stretching out of the minuscule crack between concrete and brick wall, reaching its face toward the sun, chanting the song of the faerie-footed passerby: “I don’t care what it looks like, I’m going to grow here!”

Mary, Beloved of Yeshua, she who makes Love with Everlasting Divinity, does not have the luxury of acting on her passing whims or dallying with fleeting edits. In the act of being intimate with the One, she does not get to keep only the parts she likes best and avoid the parts she’d rather not love. She does not get to be theoretical about her Consent. When she says “Yes” to the Divine, she says “Yes” to its every formation, its every delineation. In the exact Now moment, this includes everything.

Does this mean she has no choice? Does this mean she is doomed to affirm the suffering of the world, never to move beyond the acceptance of what is so, despite all the carnage and all the deception and all the slavery and all the coercion and all the brutality and all the horrors? Where is her Choice if she only says this one word? What is meant by the word repeating from her lips, constantly playing softly on these strings of her vocal chords, resonating from this brass of her open throat, spilling out into fingers and toe-tips every moment?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

What is she saying? Every whisper a “Yes.” Every song, shout, smile, murmur, and wail: “Yes.” What does it mean? What has been missing from understanding, both of those who hate her and those who love her, those who wish to live purely from the drops of her blood in their embodied oceans and those who wish to malign and eradicate the honest memories of her contribution to the Whole?

There on the bridge between the extremes, what has been missing in consensual reality?

When she says “Yes,” it is an act of Creation.

She doesn’t say “Yes” out of lack; she doesn’t say it because she has no other choice, no better ideas. She certainly doesn’t say it because she can’t say something else. In fact, the only thing that makes “Yes” mean anything at all, anything other than the vocalization of linguistic evolution singing its strange sounds into nothingness—Da, Si, N’am, Ja, Ho, Yey, U’mme, Toh, Oui, Han, Nyeya, Tak, ‘Ae, Ioe, Ava, Webo, Sawa, Mm, Eeya, Han Ji, Ken, Ba’leh, Haha, Ee, Hai—is this: she has the full undauntable power of “No.” She has its every shape and size and color. She has its silence & its roar. She understands “No” better than anyone on the planet, better than the two-year olds who toss it about ceaselessly, better than the war-makers shooting its bullets into Final Showdown. She knows “No” in spades, in a royal flush, and she lets it rest in the infinite center of her Being where it darkens the stage for “Yes” to choose its spotlit dance.

“No” is a line. “Yes” is an act of Creation, using that very line to draw, to build, to mend, to sculpt, to write stories and letters and law.

When Mary, the Sacred Priestess of Magda, the Beloved Disciple, the Holy Daughter, says “Yes,” she is writing the Dream in that moment, hiding nothing, including everything, and choosing Love with a power so great as to turn the tides of Earth. Spinning “Yes” through every sunrise, weaving “Yes” through every moon, the One who makes Love with the One, oh yes, she knows precisely what Consent is.

Mary Magdalene is not a side character in some tired-ass mafia plot devised for world conquest.

Mary Magdalene is an archetype, a guru, a Way of discovery: She who makes Love with the Present.

Put in a different light, Mary Magdalene is the Present making Love with you. As you choose.

You feel me?

As an Ordained Priestess of Magdalene, I follow the rhythm of the blood and tides of the Moon. The Moon, she holds Mary’s face close to her own and kisses it with such loving abandon, a spectral halo enshrines them both. This is how the Lunar Glory came to be: round rainbow encircling the bright-eyed satellite, sinking its smile well into the tissues of the Earth, the Word made Flesh. Such smiles can last lifetimes. And to this I owe my existence.

One such rainbow shone the night of my Birth. And one in the midnight of my Initiation. I suspect one glows every inky black of my Death and every indigo twilight of my Rebirth.

I suspect you keep one below your navel and together we could find it.

I gather you can see mine with your eyes closed.

Bless your Yes, wherever you may find it. Bless your No, exactly from whence it comes.

 

Benedixitque sermo verborum Magdalene.

 

~VGR~

 

**

Sundays

Really, a good soap opera could carry the weight of the worst day in the trenches of class warfare. A bad soap opera could lighten the mood of the heaviest drug user in Baltimore. Dennis Maycomb, being well-acquainted with both, was once a loyal daily viewer of everything from Days of Our Lives to Our Own Private World.

Like many bad habits, it didn’t occur as some dramatic choice to stray from center. It simply… grew in. Here’s how: days turned to weeks turned to months after Dennis had resigned from his first “real job” and given up on his dreams of making it in the corporate world. During those days, weeks, and months, he slept on the couch in his clothes, surrounded by buckets of ice cream residue and cans of Chef Boyardee remnants, each holding a single silver spoon. During this time, he did most of his sleeping in the day and played his sad, cold sax through the night. His neighbors didn’t have the heart to complain; besides, in Baltimore throughout the 80s one would find it odd not to have a lonely saxophone droning through the night, soundtracking their dreams. It was comforting, in a sense, to call a spade a spade.

More often than not, as he snored through the flicker of daytime TV, Dennis would catch himself listening to the plots of other people’s dramatic turmoil and supposedly fantastic sex. As the world turned, he began to listen with his eyes open. The stories tended the wounds of his psyche like a hospital, generally balming his sore, loving heart and spoiled passions. After a while, he considered them all his children. His search for tomorrow began to revolve around the guiding light of the young, the restless. The days of his one life to live were fed by another world from morning to the edge of night.

By the time he was able to admit to himself he was watching them on purpose, he was already hooked. Line & sinker. The man was slowly being trained to be an all-consuming, perpetually-dissatisfied, self-obsessed-but-inexorably-critical, tragically beautiful spouse of learned helplessness. But he loved it. He was married to it, and being married was a Good Thing. It felt fantastic.[1] The only things that got him out of the house were trips to the store for sustenance and visits to his mother’s house for quilting day.

Quilting day with his mother was still happening every Sunday despite her terribly erratic drug habit and his adamantly consistent soap habit. Quilting day was the time the two of them had to just be, to be in the world together like always, to remember who they once were and who they dreamed to be.

Dennis had grown up with quilting Sundays as a sane fixture amid all the worldly tumult. And there he was, barreling on through what was left of his twenties with only this cornerstone of tradition to keep him tethered. He loved his mother dearly, but he had lost the argument about drugs to a killer combination of “I’m a grown-ass woman who raised five kids by my damn self and I think I’ve earned the right to do what I want” and his own guilt for being the only one of those five who would still come to see her.

Minnie Maycomb was an incredible woman: strong and stubborn, caring and creative, daring and dedicated. She was a widow and a working woman and a Baptist. She had indeed raised those five children on her own and come out with just enough money to put them into college before collapsing into a pool of pain. The byproduct of perpetual overwhelm. Besides the good creole coffee and cigarettes that got her through most of the havoc of pushing her kids to grow in a harsh environment where she herself often questioned the toxicity of soil and inadequacy of sunlight, her first drugs were prescribed for chronic arthritis. Then rheumatoid arthritis: stronger painkillers. Then a string of racist doctors who couldn’t diagnose her problems and wouldn’t prescribe her a damn thing. And, well, you know what they say: one opiate can lead to another, and down the line you go.

Dennis didn’t fault her for this, but he did require her to lay off it when he was around. Likewise, she did not understand nor condone his “filthy, pompous, privileged, delusional trash TV” habit and had asked him to avoid bringing it up in her presence. They made a deal, and quilting Sundays continued amicably like always.

As her youngest son, Dennis had the great benefit of hearing all the stories and instructions and motivational speeches times five. All his life, the things his mother had said were repeated by each of his older siblings, until they could be worn on the inside of the skin. His eye would trace their patterns at night while he fell asleep, moving from one piece of perfectly-placed information to the next.

Quilting was a natural source of connection for the two of them, and the pieces they worked on together resulted in mammoth spreads of storytelling and warmth.

“Every square is a story,” she’d say, “and every story fits neatly into the arms of another.”

This woman was chronically misunderstood and historically undervalued, as far as Dennis was concerned. As he’d grown older and had begun to conceive of the vast rows of spiky cultural odds thoroughly stacked up against her, he found himself in awe of her unbowed strength and her undauntable will to continue through every obstacle. In truth, had you inquired at the grave after her life was complete, what had kept her going was a determination to give her children the life she’d wanted for herself. Determination has its impacts, its gifts as well as its costs. Dennis alone was certain she was an unsung superhero. So he hung on to every word, cherished every lesson, carefully cut every square. Even in the wake of her deteriorating health and dangerous wanders off the deep end, he knew she was a rare and precious jewel of humanity. His biggest fear was that she might die one day without anyone else really appreciating the genius her life shined into the world.

So Dennis had helped her make quilts for years, from the time that he could cut a straight line. They gave away every one they made. The woman was steadfast on this point: she would not sell her art, she would not attach a price to the prayers they made into form, and she declared so from the beginning: “I certainly do not need the almighty dollar, the White Man’s Divinity, the warmaker and dreamkiller, to assign any particular value to the creations that pour from my heart, thank you very much.”

The quilts they made together held simple truths, spontaneous secret-telling, and intricate harmonies of loving attention. When they gave them away to churches and AIDS clinics, nursing homes and schools, they liked to imagine the thousands of sweeps of the eye that each story would greet. “This is what they’re for, wrapping little dreamers up to grow in the warm cocoon of stories and safety. That’s the only way through the day, it seems. Gotta rest well through the night and make sense of the life that’s inside.”

Like most people, she was very good at giving the advice that she herself had needed to hear.

And Dennis lapped up every bit, even when the woman turned up pregnant without memory of the circumstances. Even when she declared herself to be the Mother Mary, finally being gifted an unexpected reward for all her years of selfless service.

Shortly after he found out that his 50-year-old mother was pregnant, believing herself to be the next bearer of immaculate conception, refusing the advice of her only companions in the world and several “blind, racist, no-good, non-believing doctors,” Dennis received his own aftershock of said epicenter. In comparison to the earthquake of his mother’s situation, it was such a quiet bit of information he uncovered, but it rocked the structures of his life so thoroughly the only stone left standing was the promise to be at his mother’s house with his supplies Sunday morning at 11am sharp.

“Mama,” he said when they had gotten settled inside of their billowing nests of cut fabric, “how is it you always say there’s something big behind the little things?”

“Well, now. You see, it’s like everything we see, Denny. It’s how the sun, that huge star all those millions of miles away, it grew the—what did you eat for breakfast? Well, nevermind, you’re eating those cakes now—it grew the grains that made the flour that I squished with my two hands to make that scrumptious cake you’re nibbling on.” She passed him a paper towel out of nowhere. “Don’t get it on the upholstery, young man.”

“Yeah. I know. But sometimes you say it’s something bad, something gone wrong, something Evil secretly controlling every last little thing. Don’t you say that sometimes?” he prodded gently, knowing full well she entered that territory quite often. He didn’t want to push her into a manic, tormented frenzy, especially not in her condition(s), but he felt he needed some sort of ground for his trembling realization.

She peered at him over the reading glasses she had fought tooth-and-nail against. “Would you pin those circle pieces down while you chatter? Thanks.” She took up a pile of red stars in one hand and a needle in the other, musing as lightly as she worked. “Well, now, you know I have lots of thoughts on that, quite often. And I do declare, I’ve seen the work of the Devil himself here in this life, I’ve told you more than twice. But I’m thinking now in a new way, a different way, since I’ve been blessed with the Immaculate. I can feel new life growing, a Miracle coming from within. And sometimes I get this message clear as a bell: nothing is wrong here, there is something Big at work, something Divine in play, and it encompasses every last little ripple in the whole stinking Universe.” She grabbed another handful of smaller stars, these ones purple with polka-dots. “Including your control freaks and dreamkillers.”

Dennis was pensive, preoccupied by the multitudinous, screamingly loud reactions to her sentiments, all firing off inside of him. Immaculate. Blessed. Stinking.[2] When he finally spoke, it was to ask about the direction of the circles. “Which way do you want these leading, Mama?”

“Oh, Dennis. Not like that! Well… Well, now, that’s just fine, you know what? It will be like that after all, let’s change it on the spot. Keep them leading over this way, it will be like ten thousand suns in one long line to the center.” She took a sip of her soda and licked another thread. “Ooh! I’m getting so poetic now that I’m With Child. I’m liable to find myself in tongues soon. Bless us this day.”

Dennis nibbled a bit more of his delicious cake. Good God, he loved that woman. Good God, she was going nuts. Good God, she made a delicious cake though. He took a long, deep, adult breath and allowed himself to allow her the space to be Mother Mary, even as he knew the strength of his own conviction that the Evil of the world was destroying her life one delusion at a time.

“Mama, what about when things look like they are all linked together in a bad way?”

“Now, honey, you’re gonna have to just be more specific than that, Mama can’t hardly hear you inside of all those little veils you’re wearing. Just spit it out, boy.”

“Okay, okay,” Dennis blushed his shame down toward the ten thousand suns. “You won’t like it, though. I’ll have to talk about what I said I wouldn’t.”

“That’s okay, Denny,” his mother gave him a calm nod and patted her belly under the quilt. “I’m not doing what I’m not talking about anymore anyway, so we’re home free.”

“Well, I guess I’m not doing what I’m not talking about anymore either,” he sighed. “Not after this. Mama, I saw the production label that comes up after every single soap opera.” Her eyes flicked up at his words, watching them issue from his sad mouth. “And wouldn’t you know: Proctor and Gamble. Proctor. And Gamble. Proctor and corrupt-assed-no-good-shithouse Gamble!” Minnie frowned her smile toward the quilt. “Sorry, Mama. I just… I can’t tell you how mad, how furious… how terrible…. They own every last show! Every last episode!”

“I know it comes as a surprise to you, dear. But I could tell you, in my day, they were named soap operas for a reason. Everything seems to lose its lineage around all these wires and bright lights and clangity-bang.” She caught him with a look on his face no mother wants to perpetuate, so she stopped talking. “I’m sorry. Please, go on.”

“It’s just… Look, all I wanted was a little comfort, a little place to rest my mind, you know? And I didn’t even know I wanted it until I had it—then it’s all I wanted, just to let my brain be swept along by the storytime, the wild extremes of emotion, and most of all—and you’ll hate this, I know—how real it felt! I’ve just been some guy on a couch; these people were corrupting bank officials, saving dying babies, having affairs and then cheating on their paramours with their spouse’s secret lover, evading the death sentence because it turns out they’re a ghost from the eighteenth century and can’t die anyway!”

“Dennis. Good Lord.” she couldn’t help herself. “You know that’s not real. What’s real is you have grown accustomed to letting them tell you what’s real. What is real is you spend more money on electricity than on food.”

Dennis let the fight go by. She was right anyway. “Not anymore! Never again. I saw it. I saw it at last, the little clue they’ve hidden under my nose the whole time. Proctor and Gamble! They’re still stealing from me! Stealing my nice ideas and then corrupting them into something ugly and feeding them back to me like I should be so lucky! And the worst part is, it’s not just me! They’re feeding glamorous lies and awful role models and useless dreams into millions of people’s heads, and you wanna know why?”

She looked on with a high-mileage sympathetic frown and simply nodded.

“So they can sell more soap. And more razors. And more stuff. And more lies, stuff, razors and soap. They have a corner on the whole homemaking market, filling heads and emptying pockets! It’s a sham! It’s not entertainment! It’s not even real marketing! It’s hypnosis! It’s a sham!” He got so worked up, he stuck his little finger with his big needle. She handed him another paper towel, on cue.

“Oh, my dear boy. Oh, my dear, honest, hardworking boy.” As the Virgin Mother now, she was beyond any shade of “I told you so,” merely full of loving compassion for her sad, grown-up, disappointed little boy. “It does look awful, doesn’t it? That company of yours, it has its greedy little hands in everyone’s pockets, I know. And it seems like it’s beyond redemption…”

“Beyond redemption!” Dennis stuck the needle through the edge of another sun. “I’m telling you, they’ve been this way since square one![3] I went to the library, Ma! I found out they’ve been investigated for everything from swindling, to child labor, to price-fixing, to even a Satanic emblem on their logo. It is beyond beyond redemption.”[4]

“Denny, I know this is hard for you, especially after all those days you thought you were getting some kinda therapy there on that sad little couch.” She rocked back and forth, cuddling her work in her ample lap. “But an evil mastermind tinkering behind what looks so big to you and me is nothing—nothing—compared to the Benevolent Force of Good [5] that turns the earth and shines the sun and grows this little blessing in my belly. Miracles, around every corner! The great Hand of God stirring everything into place. Why I tell you…”

She went on like that for the next hour, happily singing praises of the new life the Sacred Sovereign had bestowed upon her, completely and immutably convinced of the way that the world worked.

Dennis could only sit, sew, and listen.

He had no room for anything else.

This was his mother, and she was dying one stitch at a time.

Months down the road, when the baby came and the virus had advanced into full-blown AIDS, Dennis watched his Divine Mother on her deathbed, treating the child like a glowing Lamb, like the Gift of the new Aeon, like her doorway to Heaven. Through pain that had long since blown the charts, she was stoic, untouched, beatific. She named the baby Morning Glory, for the dawn of a new day and for the flowers that grew outside the last window she lay behind.

Dennis never found out for sure if she was openly lying to herself the whole time or if she was simply altered by that one last trauma, altered in a way she could not come back from, living in the shadow of some fairy tale she sewed together to blanket the suffering world.

When he received the baby in his arms, he sobbed until its skin wrinkled up like their mother’s. Then he bundled it in a quilt and drove it home like she asked. A week later, up to his elbows in sudsy baby bath, he received the call.

He moved outta that town the day after the funeral, driving all the way to the West coast singing the mantra of his new life to the new child of his mother’s DNA, singing, “Something’s gotta change, something’s gotta change, you know it, something’s gotta change, baby girl, something’s gotta change.”

 

-**

1. Etymologically speaking.
2. IBS?
3. Quilting joke.
4. I, too, went to the library.
5. The BFG!

The Frozen Fogstorm

The bell sounded, sending a sharp shock through the drowsy silence.

Enter autopilot. Kids gathered their things and tromped out of the room. Glory joined them, her head turning involuntarily back out the window, looking for some clue of Nature’s intention. The fog pulsed with nearly invisible lightning.

Of course. Glory’s antennae stood up.

Moments later, another bell sounded, this one akin to the fire alarm she knew so well. It was accompanied by a bright LED strobe flashing down the hallway, illuminating the excitement of the middle school herds. They loved a break from routine. They lived for a disturbance in schedule. They pined for a postponement to that group presentation they hadn’t finished. Whooping and screaming, tearing through the halls, they hardly listened to the voice-over sternly instructing them to make their way to the gym for an immediate, mandatory, emergency all-school assembly.

In the chaotic shepherding adventure that the schoolteachers’ union had failed to get stricken from their job duties, Morning Glory managed to find Marma immediately. They clung together to avoid suffocation and separation, respectively. Once they were seated, there was an Order to maintain, and that Order generally had the Maycomb section well-separated from the Vouvray section, so the two friends needed to hold tight and quietly refuse to budge. Usually, keepers of the Order soon found bigger fish to fry. And so it was, in this as in all school assemblies thus far.

Glory sat next to Marma, narrating everything that was happening, in part because it helped them both understand, in part because it was much more fun with the voice-overs Glory could supply.

“Thah has been a tahhhrible difficulty with the weathahhh,” Glory quacked through her invisible tiny megaphone. Marma was the perfect audience: difficult to impress and impossible to crack. So Glory went for it every time. “We seem to have been eaaaaten.”

“Eaaaaten?” whispered Marma.

“Eeeaaaaaaaaten!” Glory confirmed in Gollum’s shrillest whisper.

Far from cracking, Marma merely turned her whole face down a centimeter and looked at Glory over her glasses.

“We have been eaaaaaaten by a laaaahge cloud, it seems.” Glory switched to Katherine Hepburn. “And this laaaahge cloud is not neeeahly done digesting us, deah gahhhhhd! This laaaahge cloud has only gotten us into its stomach and rrrrrrallied its digestive juices. Unfaaaahtunately, children, we will burn in stomach acids for houwaaahs before we are finally released into a thin paaaaasageway to the foggy duodenum—single file line for the pyloras, make us prouuuud.”

Marma rolled her eyes and turned up her lips in more of a dare than a smile.

Glory just went on, “So we’re going to have to paaaih up aftah this, because some of you ahh to be digested as nutwients! Yes, this means you are etahhhnally bound to cloud-dom for all your days, but at least you’ll be useful…. and the rest of you, oh my deeeeah children, you will be eliminated.”

Marma stared at Glory’s mouth, as was her habit when Glory spoke. This was unnerving to some, but Glory said it made her better at articulation. [1]

“You will be eliminated, some of you as mere liquid waste—heads up, footballahhhs, this is most of you—and some as the solid waste—now, Bwee McDonough, you’ll be wesponsible as captain of the solid waste, do you feel like you can handle this sewious assignment?”

Glory couldn’t tell if Marma was smiling or about to sneeze, so she amped it up a bit.

“Then, of couwse, we have the gaseous waste pwoducts. Casey Twigglew, will you do us the gwand honaaw of employing your mighty tubahhh in sewenading the elimination of the waste pwoduct team? Thank you dahling. Foe that, we’ll put in a good wohd foe you to be utilized in a tenuwed position as a digestive enzyme or one of sevewal billion membews of the intestinal flowa team. Now, wheah wuhh we?”

Marma let out a snort, not because the digestive health lesson was all that luxuriously humorous, but because of the old-school-Barbara-Walters-special going on. Marma watched a lot of news reruns from the early 90s, mostly because her father wrote sociopolitical analyses and had pumped out several books on the early days of the internet.  [2] So there was a fond spot in Marma’s heart for the missing letter “R” and the abundance of “W.”

“Oh yes! We ahh doomed, being eeeaaaaaten and slowly digested by a laaaaahge gwey cloud. And the only one who can save us is… Mahma? Mahma dahling are you there? We need your expahtise. You ahh the only one who knows the cowwect density of gaseous waste. This is the key to our fweedom, the antidote to our doooom! If we can simply genewate enough flatulence for this cloud to blow, we will buhhst out of here in a fwee-wheeling blast: a possibly catastwophic, ultimately life-saving, cehtainly stinky, EXPLOSION! Save us, deahh child! Save us from the clouuuuud!”

It wasn’t Marma that cracked, but the highly fragile young man behind them, Casey Actual Twiggler. He had been fervently listening to the speakers at the front of the room, who had been saying something close enough in tone—if not in actual content—to what Glory’s Gollum-Hepburn-Walters mash-up was inventing. And Casey was terrified, distracted, completely at his wits end about what he was hearing. He grabbed Morning Glory by the shoulders and shouted, “Enough! Enough already! Someone save us! Dear God save us from the cloud!!!”

The whole assembly full of eyes turned and stared, some staring above open mouths of laughter, some staring under knotted eyebrows of disapproval. As the stern eyebrows tried to resume order, Marma stared, too—but not at Casey’s bright red face—at the symphony of lightning flashing outside in the opaque fog. The row of windows lining the ceiling made the gym into a night club she’d never been in. It had become a Fantasia of school-day surprises: first the magnificent mold, now this multicolored flashdance of fog. Marma’s mind was simply bent on the possibilities the Universe was opening up for one who had been an earthling for just over a decade.

When the last twitter of Casey Twiggler’s ridicule at last dissipated, the strobe effect had taken over entirely, and the room fell silent. Not even the know-it-all vice-principle could speak over the pulsing splendor. Even more formidable by the silence it cast, the cloud spoke in waves, pink and blue flashes lighting up every last molecule of the density engulfing the school. No sound could hold a candle to the immensity. When at last the administration made it their job to speak, to make plans, to set guidelines and offer quiet reassurance, the assembly had lost much of its authority structure. It was merely older humbled humans speaking to younger humbled humans.

The news teams would later refer to it as the “Frozen Fogstorm.” Like freezing fog and ice fog, it was an anomalous occurrence that coalesced forces over the long, chilly, wet autumn, the surprise burst of warm wintertime, and the sudden plunge into Real Winter. This brought together unforseen conditions of daily freezing fog and icy thunderstorms. Its heaviest days were at the beginning, which was doubly difficult because it was also the time when townsfolk went the battiest with panic and ill-prepared emergency responses. Over weeks, the opaqueness would ebb and flow and eventually disperse completely. But on that first day, it wielded the power to completely shut down all transportation and most electricity, pinning everyone right where they were. Lucky for many, that meant that some folks were stuck within arms’ reach of cell phones and emergency broadcast systems. Others: lots of coffee and acoustic instruments. Others still: glow-in-the-dark spraypaint. Silver linings all around.

The weather phenomenon had begun as an odd juxtaposition of air currents, pressure systems, and humidity, a bit of rather curious science for meteorologists to bat around cyberspace, until it became popularized as the crisis known as The Frozen Fogstorm. As soon as it turned from a verb to a noun, it became a Problem. It had a kitchy title and thus it could be treated as a Foe, a Top Story, a Fearsome Unknown that people could pretend to know by giving it a clever nickname. [3]

The Frozen Fog made headlines for months in Everett, weeks in Washington state, days in national news, hours in international reports. A blip in the saturated tronzfield of cat memes and politics. But it would make a lifetime impact on the inhabitants of Everett, especially the schoolchildren who were camped out overnight in their gyms and cafeterias.

Glory and Marma huddled in a corner to whisper together well into the night. Gaggles of teenagers giggled and snored, as muted adults shushed and shuffled, and twitchy kids tripped back and forth from the bathrooms all night.

For Marma, the best day of her life was getting better all the time. Science!!!

For her best friend, it was one long syncopated dance step of the Dragon after another, and which side of the story they were on was chosen only in the telling. In the dark disco of the wee hours, the two could barely keep their eyes plastered to the windows. They had been staring for hours at the shapes lit up in the fog. It looked sometimes like rain, sometimes like snow, and sometimes like flocks of birds swooping furiously through the swirling cloud dance. At last the meditation gave way to the hug of sleep.

“Ooh, I can’t wait for my dreams tonight,” Glory spouted out just before her eyes closed in the pulsing darkness.

 

-**

1. Not so much in this case.
2. Back when books were books and the internet merely caused family feuds about the 6 hours tied up on the phone line every night for the sixteen downloaded versions of Freebird, 97% complete.
3. Common tactic.

Middle School

Something goes wonky when we think another person is more powerful than we are. The exalted ones get this big complex about how they’re supposed to be better than they are, and the lowly ones get this big complex about how they’re not good enough. (It’s the exact same complex, mind you, just with different access points and justifications. Wouldn’t wanna give exquisitely talented brains too easy of a Rubik’s cube.)

Morning Glory wasn’t about to play with that boring old game. She’d seen it in her dad’s hands for years, and he’d get all worked up about the square little crapper so he wouldn’t even finish his cereal or look at the cool bird (look! look!) she was pointing out.

Well, it wasn’t gonna be her gig.

Even so, there were several new words that Glory learned when she landed in sixth grade: muffintop, cameltoe, bitchy resting face, etc. None of these were of any use to her at all. Due to the tonality and timing of their delivery by others, she inferred that she was supposed to take offense at them and organize her life so as to avoid them being directed toward her at all costs. The cost, however, was quite obviously wrapped up in the organizing. Glory was uninterested in playing that game. Thus, many people said these words to her. And many people suffered the dissatisfaction of getting no reaction.

She had noticed the same difference in her friend Marma. There was absolutely no reason why people ought to assume they have any idea what’s going on in Marma’s head. This is true about everyone, of course, but in Marma’s case, being moderately autistic and very colorblind, information was being processed on pathways that most of her schoolmates would find about as accessible as a Texas oilfield after dark. And yet, so many kids were working very hard to make Marma into a colored square in their endlessly-shifting cubes.

Marma had no concern for the opinions of others. She was constantly teased, belittled, and mocked, according to the standards and agreements of most of the sixth grade cohort. However, according to her own standards and agreements, it went like this: people made a lot of effort to get her attention, and then when she gave it to them, they got very excited and squealed with laughter. No problem there. People are very interested in expressing connection. Middle school students are no exception; in fact, they are torch-bearers of the rule. Due to an unquenchable desire to experience connection, they tend to try many more approaches than the average adult does. Naturally, they encounter more frequent misunderstandings and maladjustments of the best methods of expressing and experiencing connection. But it’s not that they try to be difficult and obstinate. It’s that their moral values have not congealed into the lifelong molds in which they will try to determine and control their sugary, gelatinous futures. So they mess up a lot, give up a lot, try again a lot. It gets sticky.

Meanwhile, in the process, they’re all co-inventing a rampantly-growing, constantly-rearranging, nebulously-unpredictable culture of clownery. So courageously silly, the lot of them. So many Totally Screamworthy Scenarios and Unbelievable Madness and Big Romantic Ordeals. Not unlike any given channel on the teevee.

On this particular day, the very day The Frozen Fogstorm would hit the little town of Everett, Glory had seen several of her peers have the worst day of their lives, several others have the best day of their lives, and a few of them have one then the other, back to back. Marma, for example, was having the best day of her life.

“Oh Glory. What did I tell you? There was no way, no way that fungus could have formed so fast in my project if I hadn’t used saliva. Do you understand what this means?”

“What, what?” Glory was excited, but unsure whether it was due to her friend’s experiment or her friend’s rare glee.

“It means that life forms evolve more rapidly with the help of other life forms!”

“Wait, what? How does it mean that? You spit in a container of spores. If I were those spores, I might have a problem with that.” She knew better, in fact she had studied agricultural methods of indigenous cultures for her Humanities class last semester, even though the assignment was just supposed to be about the history of corn as a cash crop. But she liked to crack the top of the proverbial crème brulée as much as she liked to tease Marma, sometimes just to see if it went undetected (which it usually did). This time, it elicited a little snort and a wave of the hand.

“Glory! Spit contains DNA, man. Personal life codes! Do you know what kind of gift that is? It’s like giving them a lifelong battery booster. It’s like giving them a treasure map! It’s—”

“How’s the cheese, little mousies?” Bree The Soccer Duchess came by to take her usual handfuls of their lunches. Today she scored trail mix in one hand and dry Cocoa Puffs in the other. Her demeanor was not noticeably squelched by the disappointment. “You little ladies staying out of trouble? I don’t want to have to call your mom’s ass on you, Marmaduke.” Marma’s mother was the principle at the middle school, partially responsible for the excellent specialized education spectrum that spanned every grade and ability level. The kids had no conception of this, nor of the benefit that they derived from it. They did know, however, that the woman had a categorically wide rear end, and that they could, if they wanted to, inform Marma about it all day long.

“Yeah. I wouldn’t want to bother her. She’s working.” Marma wore such a wonderful poker face, one would think she was trying.

“Well…” Bree looked over to her designated slot at the popular-kids table. No help arrived. “You better watch your back, she’s been stomping that booty down the halls all day… we felt it in math class and thought it was an earthquake… maybe a storm brewing… might affect your driving conditions… you might have to camp out here overnight for safety.”

Bree was full of as much shit as usual, flailing around for an upper hand to use in slapping her bored targets awake. She spewed showers of puff cereal as she spoke, unaware, in the way of most Fools, that she was courting a possible future. Like a physician prescribing a drug, one of whose multitude of side-effects happens to actually attend to the matter for which you have come a-calling. Lucky chum. Or highly skilled. Take your pick.

When Bree finally got tired, or full, or both, she recoiled back to the winners’ table, where she bent heads and giggled stupidly with her flock.

“We should give her a little treasure map, eh?” Glory said.

Marma stared through an unflinching glaze.

“You know? Spit on her?”

No change. “Why would we do that? I’m not invested in seeing her particular configuration charging ahead in evolution.”

Beaten by the best, Morning Glory merely rolled her eyes.

“I’ll spit on you, then!” Marma grabbed at Glory’s hand in an unusually frolicksome manner. Unperturbed by their daily shove from the usual contender, Marma was high on scientific possibility. Nerd to the core, Marma continued throughout lunch to pontificate on her theory. She glowed & beamed & scribbled notes through mouthfuls of nuts.

Glory finished her sandwich in a blissful state of gratitude for her choices as a person. Popular kids looked super boring. Meanwhile she had this treasure trove of friendship. Marma was such a great little Squirrel. With no disrespect to rodents of any kind, Morning Glory quite preferred her to the company of Meangirl Rats. Or… wait, Rats are cool. Something more snivelly… like… a mole. Or… a Possum! A stupid Possum.

Hey! Nothing wrong with a Possum, Glory’s inner reporter retorted. Nothing wrong! There’s no shame in Possoming. Funny how much like Dennis her inner reporter sounded.

Glory carefully poured her last bit of milk into the tiny paper bag of cereal. The game was to eat it now before it soaked the paper. And to answer the reporter calmly. It’s just important to be accurate. Bree is a spandexed Possum trying to play fisticuffs. That’s fine for her. And other sporty Possums. Meanwhile, we’re busy, the Squirrel and I, finding out about the building blocks of life.

Morning Glory won the cereal game with flying colors, but Marma was unimpressable and engrossed in her treatise on saving the world one spit at a time. No matter. Glory found herself absorbed in a question she had often entertained: What kind of animal am I? She continued to flip through mental slides of obscure amphibians as the bell rang to usher the herds into the hallways.

Lunchtime was followed by a quick study hall, at which time Glory normally stared out the window and wrote renegade haikus. Today, she was disappointed to find thick clouds obscuring her view of the sky. They were so thick that she couldn’t tell which part was cloud and which was the standard Everett atmosphere of wintry grey. They were so dense she couldn’t get any read on how low they hung. Her depth perception pulsed with vertigo when she tried to see. Thus it became a much more enjoyable game than cleverly arranged syllables. One by one, everyone’s gaze was drawn by the white gleam through the windows, all except for the teacher who droned on with his back turned. The whole room seemed to darken, tick by tick, as the clock inched closer to its noisy celebration of released captives.

The air grew curiously heavy. The untamed creature in Glory sniffed the air carefully, as molecules of her experience “indoors” began to swirl in an eerily familiar pattern that she was used to labeling “outdoors.” The other kids said nothing; however, more than a few had passed out on their desks to drool and dream, youngsters who usually spent their study hall time outrageously amped-up, fighting about pens and squealing about gum. Not surprising. The pressure drop was palpable. Morning Glory imagined her dreaming Dragon out in that dark light, and she was transported to a stillness of time, an awareness of unseen distance. She dizzied in the fluid of air and swam in the amplitude of her lungs. She felt unchanged across time, some kind of echoed birdsong mocking every clock & chalkboard in her mind.

The bell sounded, sending a sharp shock through the drowsy silence.

 

 

-**

No Bird Left Behind

“Wilhelm! Take the rear!”

“Mmph-a mmb-aph a-bmmmph.”

“What!? WILHELM. Take. The. Rear.”

The front bird was obviously struggling, double-flapping for every single wing flap of the bunch, but he held tight to his position.

“Mmb-AMPH mmph-a m-bumph APHMB!”

It was very rare that any Pigeon in a squadron would take the energy to squawk about anything at all when they were up that high. Conversation was completely uncalled for, even notably dangerous, when careening through the open sky at 60 mph. The only sounds they made were the steady crew-team rush of current through their plumed air oars, the occasional involuntary coos and squeaks of natural exertion, and that ever-so-rare call to a wayward flyer who didn’t catch the silent signal to change formation. The latter was in play here with dear Hank and poor Wilhelm.

Emergency procedure began. A tricky maneuver with hundreds of determined, code-following Pigeons barrelling due North in a business-as-usual manner. However, as the signal was sent through the cloud in a wave of feathers and winks, the leaders on the front line wasted no time in catching up with Wilhelm. Florence and Karl got there first, immediately registering the distress of their bug-eyed friend. He was choking. Flapping like mad, cookies caught mid-toss, he had lodged a heap of some unknown toxicity in his gullet and was now in danger of spewing it out his little nostrils. Three of the others made it to the front in time to catch the alarm on their compatriots’ faces and they immediately dropped the signal to the flock. These pigeons were extremely close-knit, and they never, ever, ever let one of the tribe go down in flames. They were calling an emergency landing.

This procedure occurs often enough in mid-air articulations of winged ones, but when it happens, you better believe they waste no time in its execution. Before a groundling could count to seven, the bird cloud had come wheeling down from near the absolute ceiling to a very convenient spread of leafless oaks next to a sprawling pig farm. The only complaint was the smell, but only the adolescent birds at the back of the flock had any attention to pay for that triviality. The hulk of the flock was consumed with concern for their obviously-ailing Lead Bird of the day.

Wilhelm was heaving and whirling atop a wide branch. Flo, Karl, and the others had guided him gently to the perch, using their instinctive proprioception to effectively air-crutch him one stair at a time down the stairway from heaven [1]. Indeed, his fame and fortitude would be remembered for generations, for many reasons beyond the very personal circumstances of his peril.

The community tried to save him, as one can imagine a Pigeon community might do. But absent a working knowledge of the Heimlich [2], they were without recourse. Wilhelm at last gracefully stepped backwards off the perch, pinning his wings to his sides in a very dignified posture for final flight, and spun to the ground where his body would rest as nourishment for the trees.

Shocked, saddened, and consumed with the familial melancholy following such a loss, the flock spent the night in exactly that spot, weathering the stink of the too-many-pigs-in-one-place farm all through the night. In the morning, after each Pigeon had paid its respects to the land of their fallen friend, the doctorly crone of the bunch, Lady Rémoulade, would report to those curious that the bulge in young Wilhelm’s throat had consisted of bile and what seemed to be toxic grains.

The buzz of hushed conversation was relentless as they took their flight homeward in the rising sun. Like gossipy math students behind a substitute teacher, they hissed and hinted and gasped all the way back to their home room.

Serious shit was afoot. Someone had to tell Livia.

 

-**

1. Empirically, just for statistics, it’s safe to say his sink speed was legendary for a bird in the process of choking to death.
2. Let alone any practical necessities like the anatomy and flexibility required for its implementation.

Apocalypso

The problem with the humans is that they were all pulling for it, every last one. Apocalypse for breakfast, apocalypse with lunch, apocalypse on a toothpick in the afternoon bloody mary. The Situation, they all said, has gotten so far out of hand that it is on a beeline trajectory to explosive entropy, calamitous chaos, destructive downfall, impertinent implosion. It was headed in the direction from which grammatical whimsy never returns.

Strangely enough, although they all agreed on this viewpoint, the humans of this planet heavily, heatedly, vehemently disagreed about the causes. Some thought it was the pollution and the rising waters and the rampant, resource-guzzling, constantly-upgrading manufacturing process of the computer systems used to analyze these phenomena; others thought it was the last scene of the epic battle of Christ v. Antichrist (live on pay-per-view!); others believed it was politicians flooding social media with idiotic troll armies. To some, it was their looming divorce, to others, it was the tropical storm sent to smite the homos, to others, it was the incoming comet on a collision course with the upper half of the Western hemisphere. Still others: aliens!!! Any way you roll the dice, impending doom had everyone’s chips.

Not that everyone would admit to it, though. Oh, no; on the contrary, people were working tirelessly to abort that future. But ironically, in order to play one’s whole hand to avoid the catastrophe, one must believe in the catastrophe. Devotedly. Resolutely. Unwaveringly. Maniacally. Fanatically.

Right?

So, what juicy little secret fuels so many engines trying to save the world? That’s right: people want apocalypse. They want apocalypse to come clean up the mess. They’d like it to gesso the living hell outta this dystopian canvass so they can paint something fresh from the start: something with a heart that isn’t so incessantly frosted with the cold breath of bail bondsmen, advertising pop-ups, and chronic identity crises that contribute to the horrible, suffering deaths of children and puppies and chickens. The whole species seems to have developed this character part that would rather blowtorch the bedroom than clean out the closet or decide on a new wallpaper scheme.

This is where Livia comes in.

She felt, at times, like the only human who knew the world itself—the living earth, inclusive of all its parts—was hell-bent on survival and perfectly equipped to continue. She believed, always, that the whole of the Earth was quite capable of bringing into balance its Shadow, its Light, and most fantastically of all, its Color.

When Livia had conducted her top-secret research, back when it had had a reason to be top-secret, way back in the day, before the Military Industrial Complex developed such a hard-on for mechanized warfare, tweetable policy, and the chilly back-door draft of the video game empire, she had felt utterly inspired and wholly supported by the workings of Nature. Yes: even in the wake of all the horrific human error of the second World War, even then, after some of the worst mistakes the species had ever made in its ruthless quest for illusions of spotless control. She had seen a very clear picture of the dumbfounding fallibility of human culture. And she had witnessed an unassuming group of birds commit heroic, selfless feats of grandeur and unimaginable tricks of intelligence. In those early days of her research, dedicating her toil to her late husband, she had received this message, loud and clear, and it began to ring true from every direction she went: Nature is completely aware.

Nature had this one in the bag. Humans were not a threat to It, humans were an act of It.

Human beings—the ones experiencing all the emotion and all the turmoil and all the determination—were the ones telling stories about what was wrong. Nature has always had its own story, and its story has proven to be much, much longer than any human story has ever been [1]. Nature had it clear as a bell: It was fully surrendered to the Flow that licked the face and washed the shores of any crumbled crisis that humans brought into being. As an Act of Nature, humanity was quite welcome to participate in healing the industrial scars that its dance brought into being. It was quite welcome to kiss the hand that fed it. It was quite welcome to sing along with a different chorus anytime it wanted. It was quite welcome to reach for the nearest tree and hold on for dear life. But no one was required to quit playing the villain. Or the saint. All those story-tellers, all those manipulators and prospectors and inventors, they were all happening inside of a large, beautiful, graceful ball that rolled as it pleased through the endless Breath of Quantum Gravitation. Everyone welcome. All included.

Now, for Livia, human as the rest, this recognition had taken something of a plunge after her lifeblood work was rejected and suppressed, after she had survived an attempted rape, a successful blackmail, and a vindictive dismissal. When she met the further censorship of her findings even after she had gained the courage to publish on her own, Livia S. Columbia decided to let herself go off the deep end for a while. She studied the Darkness.

She walked in the alleys alone at night and slept in the bright of day. She rolled cigarettes with chemically-processed Phillip-Morris tobacco and a pinch of cayenne. She camped out beneath billboards and inside abandoned toy factories. She read only Cosmopolitan and GQ. Occasionally, she dressed up like a trendsetter and went shopping all day at the big mall. She bought an expensive, unnecessary item at each of the largest department stores, ate a big lunch, and then returned her items in the afternoon before wasting the gas to creep all the way back home. A later version of herself would have called all of this “research,” but at the time it was simply the only thing to do. She was living on credit, searching for nothing, and discovering various ways to take someone else’s word for the (American) Dream. She was diligently dog-earing the manual of someone else’s Instructions for Living Properly. Every day, she was trying out someone else’s complex.

The Pigeons still followed her everywhere she went. Out of habit, she spoke to them with her mind and body. They seemed to follow her pain unquestioningly, lonely and lost as she felt. Slowly, surely, her wandering brought her further out of town, deeper into the forest. There, in the quiet company of the unseen, she began to find the skills that brought her into life again.

She noticed the opening and closing of the sky, imagining how the clouds looked from above the shadows they made. She began to watch for the shadows of approaching cars as she sat beside the highway, feeling the forest sigh persistently in its own vigil. She could feel the cool air of bird shadows passing, before she heard or saw their flight. She began to see the shadows arrive on store clerk’s faces before they attempted to hide their discomfort from her. The Shadow itself began to appear as one seamless character, one shapeshifting, innocuous, intangible Happening that occurred universally, as an affirmation of the relationship between all beings in process. A choice, but not a doom. A sensation, but not a diagnosis. A constantly-moving pattern of Life living Itself.

Once Livia was nearly fledging age within her new awareness, she began to actively re-engage the Pigeons in communication. She found them even more supple and adventurous than they had been in her earlier laboratory-bound work. She found them more capable of abstract thought, more willing to try difficult intellectual tasks and attend to long explorations of subject-object relations. She found them a lot more cunning, notably cheeky. It seemed their social awareness was just as well-tuned as their intelligence, and they were capable of a type of empathy she hadn’t been receiving from the likes of her own kind.

Together they migrated to the northerly stretches of the Boundary Waters, out beyond strands of rarely-trod roads, deep into the birch & pine of a liminal forest preserve, where they were left alone, very much alone, to discover the infinite possibilities of communication in the infinitesimal synapse between dark & light, between breath & bird, between doing & being.

As it turned out, what was possible was to accept the shape of the whole world’s Shadow. To actually accept it; not “take on,” not “process,” and not “assume responsibility for” it, but just “accept” the shape of the Shadow, for what it was. In that ever-deepening breath of clarity, Livia relinquished all enmity. Her vision clarified to the reach of a Hawk [2], and she could see new colors between the spectral rainbow. Feathers of a brilliance beyond any conception of black and white. There, in the timeslice of Ma [3], she could at last see the Shadowdance in fullness. It was not a noun; it was a verb.

Through adaptation to unconscionable trauma repeated en masse, the people had turned the Shadow into a Thing, into an Enemy, into a Beast. They had lost their connection with its natural movement, with its meaning. The dance of sunlight and space through the breathing poplar forest. The ridges and veins of the living neighborhoods holding their ground to the soles of feet and paws of hounds and hands of children. The vastness between breathing stars. Instead, flailing for control, the people had made their Shadow into an Other and then treated it like most colonized cultures treated their Others; they sought to annihilate it.

Annihilation, in a world of infinite connectivity, meant all engines going down: Suicide. Apocalypse. Doom. Extinction.

Livia and the Pigeons were learning that all beings were perfectly capable of living and dying without killing themselves in the process. They were learning that Nature had been fighting malignant cell networks since before radiation treatments were invented. And they were learning that Nature had already read the suicide note, and it was, in every waking moment and doubly in dreams, turning this ship around.

They were also learning, step by step, breath by wing by prayer, how to help with the turning.

-**

1. Consider the Monarch.
2. 20/2 by optometrist’s measure. Which means 100/10, you know. And 1000/100, of course. So we can get a proper understanding of Scale. Imagine this kind of visionary watching your dreamscapes.
3. 間