Volume V: Taste of Eden

Dead weight dead girl in a hairnet cleaning toilet garbage can waste man while you wait man while you get another man a date with the end And she sees you in the mirror while she scrubs away bobbing up and back down again like a rubber duck In the water she sees your reflection behind her then she flushes it away Again she states her sins and they look like bargains to you but you want to wait and see if they get any cheaper Wherever she goes man she's gonna get canned and wonder when she'll see you again Will it ever again be in a garbage can?

Volume V: Magnanimity

The inexorability of you and your following determines the distance between you and your itinerary. 

 Take a look back and tell me what you see.  

Are you anywhere near where you thought you would be?  Take three steps back before you go forward two.  See those little petals there on the concrete?  Watch them blow away, further, into the gutters.  Watch their beauty dissolve, but not their mystery, which grows.  

It's a tough joint to be wrenched between the intellectual and the mundane, and then to look beyond worldliness.  To end strife, preventing anything unsatisfactory from disturbing your place in the void.  Beyond it all.  Auspicious practice leads to successful imprisonment and subsequent escape.   

Before you could feel it.  Now, you can taste it.

Volume IV: Sequestration

Eating seaweed and hummus, wearing a sweatshirt with horses on it, looking into the abyss and finding comfort in its depths, breathing ever so barely, moist with exhaustion and ocean air, hungry, pained, looking out the window toward and away from inspiration, wondering what to eat but not wanting to get up, realizing it's time to bathe, noticing that it's time to breathe, pondering future projections, eyeing two guitars and a ukulele, trying not to think about work, trying desperately not to try, smelling food and the summer air, watching the grey, refusing to be held down, memorizing anachronistic procedures, meeting The Ones, teething on still and moving images, hungrier all the time, blue and red and black all over, preparing to sell every thing, looking for fresh fruit, imagining zebra skin, envisioning vibrant mandalas, needing a drink.

Volume IV: Nobody Knows

Villain or victim, people have always taken me far too seriously.  If you think I might be joking, I probably am.  I long for and simultaneously bemoan the days when the internet was nubile, when our classmates and future lovers were but silent icons on a screen, pixels making an appearance only to stick around for further analysis.  My renderings and writings have extended far into the technological realm and remained firmly grounded in the reality of ink and paper.   I have a clear preference for one over the other, though you wouldn't know it considering how much time I spend on each side of the brain.

Letters that go unread or unnoticed might be doubly sad as a cheque that flies into a sewer grate before its hungry owner's weary eyes.  We've all seen those eyes before, in the mirror or otherwise. As someone who was entrenched in political studies for many years (a youthful pastime of sorts), I see the politician in every one of us.  Some of us are naturals.  The expansiveness of the human psyche allows for copious distractions and interactions, but there seems to be a natural limit to this madness.  A turnaround starts once we are overwhelmed with infinite technological possibilities:  "I could message anyone in the world right now, or I could walk up the stairs and talk to my roommate."  The mundane option keeps you grounded, and the higher flight takes you wherever it may go.

I've seen entryways to hell and to heavenly wilderness mazes that go on and on without any turns.   I can just imagine what others have seen.  In the earlier days of this global community, I .took advantage of the roommate option:  if you're close by and you like each other, why waste your time pining after souls all over the earth?  There is immense comfort in our humanity, and our love of other land souls.  Spirit through technology is not something that many people have mastered.  I know that our enlightened elders might see virtue in us being connected, but see harm in our lack of humanness as we go about our days pinned to screens instead of squealing children.  We let our fingers do the talking as we remain eerily silent.  Writers have been doing this for centuries, but we used to have to read things aloud occasionally, for dramatic effect.

The voice has been loved and lost.  

Everyone I talk to cherishes a good singer and a good conversationalist equally.  All of those passionate letters that get no response see their original meaning severed in two as time passes.  No reciprocity for such a commitment of words means no continued connection, and every time, we start anew.  I`ve always despised my writing just a little bit more than I love it.  I`ve spilled my heart onto so many people I couldn`t begin to count.  Each one of them deserved what they saw and felt, and most, in turn, have shown me what I deserve.  My friends and family have all written to me at one time or another.  This is my first language.  Many people, I'm sure, are afraid to commit their hearts to words on paper or a screen, for they will see in those letters and pixels their whole being laid out like a puzzle in pieces, and then of course, they`ll want to put it all back together. It can be done.  It can be painful, like finding a lost art.  It can lead to a significant - though not disproportionate - amount of rejection.
We reach out for it, pull back a red velvet curtain, and divine the sensuality that lies in etymology.  Or risk losing our words between our teeth.

  

Volume IV: The Return

I have so many jobs I sometimes forget which one pays...The ones that pain aren't so often the same.  I'm married, and he sits in the other room writing, and his music comes from a deep, spiritual place that I once misunderstood.  I champion the underdogs because I am one of them.  Channelling all of your being into a creative force means entering into a race with It.  Tell yourself you have a long way to go if you want a shot at being the best in the universe.

We pulled into the alley and had that "Is this the place?" conversation that lasts only seconds but feels like a waste of time.  When I climbed up out of the car, black and low-slung, I saw a black and white cat a few feet away and reached out to it.  Contrary to my current rural placement I was in a city, where cats fight not only nature for their lives, and it bit me.  Not a bad bite but it made me smile nonetheless.  Contrariness has made itself a theme in this life, and so many others, but you only want to contradict yourself for so long before you lose your glasses and have to start all over again.

The folk scene that had embraced us years before was warm and abounded with life's happiness.  They didn't need our help.  The punks and the higher-ups were similarly independent, and I found myself on a mission to find those in need.  The message has often been unclear but the messenger has always been apparent.  Take the rhythm of his and the message of hers and mix them up in a great mortar with the message of his and the rhythm of mine.  Each drop of water into the remains lubricates the communication, making it mobile.  Perhaps many of those in need are invisible to me, but I see them every now and again - they are the well-adjusted, intelligent, music-loving humans with love in their eyes and the whole world in their minds.  I am a muse, and that is as wondrous as it is terrifying, just as I chose the path without knowing the destination.

There are some lovely sights along the way - a rocking horse bobbing in the bed of a truck; a mystical sunset blanketing the cries of coyotes; cars pushing past us toward certain death on the highway seconds later; so many dead bodies and belongings of the deceased.  Karmic laws, or vibrations if you prefer, map out interactions as they are occurring, keeping you abreast of your own progress if you're willing to look.  

My favourite director walked into the cafe in Ontario where I spent my days behind the counter as a barista, one who pulls espresso shots and shoots the shit with all sorts of caffeine-addicted folk.   It is just as romantic as it sounds, and you end up cleaning toilets more often than you do making latte art and handing it to your idol.  The man who waltzed in with him was someone I loathed without merit, I felt annoyed by his presence and his demeanour until that day, when I realized - he is just unique.  He puts himself in unusual situations to be with artists, a lifestyle to which I could relate.  They were scouting locations for the anti-sequel to a favourite film of my youth, but I didn't know it.  I was too wrapped up in my recently completed second album, which seems to have been about telepathy and ecological warfare.  I was reading Thompson and Kerouac like we all do, but taking it in like no one else ever does.

He was coming through the doorway and I stared at his hat, at the crooked framed picture of old New Berlin on the wall, and his boots.  He smiled at me as his cohort introduced us - none was necessary - and I smiled and looked around for someone to share in my delight but my coworker friends were occupied or otherwise unaware of the momentous nature of this meeting.  Later, his companion, knowing about my band, asked me if I knew the rock starlet who would co-star in the film they were shooting.  I said I didn't, but I related to her, and we'd crossed paths.  He looked at me the way TV and movie producers always do.  I didn't have the words to express the impact that this occasion had on me for many years, and in fact, I'm surprised to find that I still don't.  Perhaps one day I will articulate further the joy I felt hosting my hero for a brief stay.  I didn't ask for anything, just gave him my word and my handiwork.  I hope he enjoyed that god damned coffee!

I found this path not knowing where it ends, and I shall not stray.