We Get High Tonight

(Outer Body Experience, from We Soon Be Nigh!, 2012)

The call came from all around.  It was dark out with barely a blue cast to the sky and silhouettes of the trees.  Our breath was smokey and all I could do was remember the act of acting like one were smoking when their warm exhaled air met the cold air of the outside world.  It sounded like a howl, perhaps from an animal perhaps from a human, either or it was wild and that's about all that mattered.
We called it, him, her, the thing, the Shotcallah.  His face was of fur and his eyes beamed outwards like a light tower does in a dark and stormy seascape.  His teeth were yellow like years of smoking and his breath and body odor were surprisingly tame.  When we brought Shotcallah out and about he would attracted all the attention, from all walks of society, and he would provide.  Hooting and hollering, howl and hiss, he tore the clothes that looked wrong on him off and ran around with his hairiness.  And somewhere in all those chaotic moments of wild versus the unwild was whether or not he was a he or if he was a she we stared and waited at its crotch for its garbage to show itself from out of the wild bush.
Never did we find out, and eventually we stopped wondering and let Shotcallah be simply and rightfully, Shotcallah.  Of no gender, race, or housey home.  And that was that.

To be wild and yet to be tamed.

When I came from my home country to here I had a set of rules that I lived by.  I would behave a certain way and saw the world a certain way.  Those have surely changed.  Back in the motherland I'd sit in the backseat of the car and watch the city at night.  The lights falling on the contours of the car's reflective paint job and all was quiet but the radio that faintly played in the background.  I remember the illuminated fastfood sign, and the warmth of fried food sitting and waiting to be tore at.  I felt at peace and realized in that moment, one of those moments that I had a gift.  That gift was perspective and it gave me insight into the world outside of my normal eternal situation.  I would constantly try to externalize myself with others.  I would imagine life through their eyes and become them.  I'd learn their history and try to piece them together.  When I was with them I'd see myself through their eyes and think of how I sounded, how I looked, was I saying the right things with the right tone?  Who were they at the time I was talking while I was trying to figuring out who I was?  When drunk the sober half stayed and held me up and listened to my voice, my words, my tone as I spoke to others, or how I behaved while purchasing a burger and fries with two tacos.  I was listen to that kid and watch over him as he fell asleep.  When he was high I'd be there as well, I'd make sure he remembered every eureka thought and made sure he wrote down everything.  I was there when he was about to make bad decisions.  I was always there, as two, we were together, always.

I never got to do Peyote while I lived in the desert, nor did I do acid that one time.  I never was arrested nor did I ever really get caught (only assumed and looked at with stern eyes knowing, he did it, he really DID do it).  But all the horseplay is done and I have moved many times since and have met so many people, been to so many places, and have experiences a grander sense of being since.  One day I can wake up as a thirteen year old boy and realized that the past thirteen years of my life were all a trip.  That my coming to age and coming to AGE were a cheap gimmick to storytelling.  But forget all that and let's mediate on it.  Imagine waking up and realizing that that ordinary life you were living was just one long short trip?  It makes it extraordinary, it makes it fantastic, and bleeding in meaning.  And why can't it be.

I have never stopped throwing my eyeballs at things and seeing the world at a different angle.  Nor has the guardian angel of self projecting self stopped watching over me.  I barely know you and yet we are no longer strangers.  And perhaps we were never ever ever strangers, that we had met before, and not in another life time but this: we have met each other through the people we have known and experienced, we know life as life and from the very example of our own life that we are in tuned with it -as it flows through our body and is all we are.  Life.  Can't you see your life in a riverbed?  Can't you see it in the wind as it shakes up the branches and the leaves struggle to hold on?  Can't see it in the weeping of weeping willow, the striking hawk, the roar of a lion, and the blood of an elk?  When wine is blood and bread is flesh, when a circle is the soul, a circle is a bond, and a circle is the world.  When we are wild and at peace because we were never unwild nor tame.  When we step out of our tempurpedic beds and realize what is on the surface and what is deep within, so deep it is lost in flesh!

That which you realize, THAT which you are, is exactly that, you and are, in being, as just that, you are looking somewhere else but what is inside is all that matters.  When it all comes back and you realize you were always looking at yourself as you looked out to see yourself.  Like a pat on the back, like a kneeling friend to help you back to your feet, that hand that holds the door open, those hands that cut your steak up and feed you, even when you are too old to be fed.  That was you, silly.  Be good to yourself.

And so Shotcallah yelled out at the night, smiled, peed himself, and smiled some more and waved his big furry arm as his body became another shadow to the moon.  The trees rustled with the wind, the song in my heart sang, and I was feeling pretty good.  Warm from the liquor and drunk from life we all retired in the cabin next to the woods.  The end.

The Devil Within

(Hoodlumz, from We Soon Be Nigh!, 2012)

I remember the devil appearing on the television in the form of a program on possession.  I grew up fearing The Exorcist but somewhere in my child mind I knew it wasn't real, the fear it produced was real but what was before me was just an illuminated imagination not to be taken literally.  It was the devil in that Discovery Channel program about cases of possession that hit me with a reality being realized.  One after another each case taking twenty of so minutes was filled with accounts from those who experienced it first hand.  There were parents, siblings, priests, and even psychologists, and then finally the formally possessed talking about the experience.  Something hit home to me, I remember being at someone else's house, just beside the church my mother would take us to, and that the room, the house, the night were all set in a type of darkness that transcends the absence of light.  It was an eerie and if I may, "evil" night.  I remember this experience proceeding my confirmation.  I never shared with my family my fears of being possessed by demons or how it seems to replace my fear of being abducted by aliens.  And as an adult now I see it as the birth of "evil", or rather, the supernatural that struggles to be defined within logic and reason and that ancient fear of the unknown.
Before this first account of evil I was a wild child.  Where once was church going and lighting fires down the creek was alcohol drinking, marijuana smoking, paint spraying, and skate of a skateboarding with no rules nor curfews.  We stayed up all night, skateboarding across the city, in a landscape consumed by amber glow and shadows and the starry sky above.  Of dark alleyways where drunks drink and chuckle away and the seas of empty beer and liquor bottles, to which we would smash until our hands and arms bled, there were no laws in that child I call my past self.  I was also godless and without care.  And somehow I was still responsible and knew my limit and also was well aware of the things I was doing and how they were not right.  I remember accompanying my best friend on ambushing his neighbor and helping that friend beat that neighbor up.  That kid was an annoying little twerp that had a face that called to be punched and slammed, but had he done anything to me?  I don't remember which one I did, if I was kicking or punching, nor how hard I hit nor really why I did so.  All I remember is reaching a threshold and beyond and how after that first punch or kick was made I felt a deep sense of shame and regret.  I was drowning in shame and yet I carried on, perhaps shame fed the flames of my blind rage.  That neighborhood twerp was a symbol of the weakness that was reminiscent of my own.  And eventually we stopped and when we stopped we heard the seriousness of our crimes against this kid, he was crying, groaning in a whine that only comes from the most pathetic moments as he yelled at us.  I can still hear that voice, I've heard it in others before and it pierces me as it pierces the ears and makes me realize that we do not understand each other.  This is why we fight.  This is why we throw punches at each other and why we kick each other down.
I remember the shame of losing the last fight I had in New Mexico back in 1998.  It was against a shorter and smaller kid than myself and why we were fighting escapes me.  Some differences.  I remember it was the end of the day and there was enough shit spoken behind our backs about each other that this moment just had to happen.  I remember that burning feeling of my body transforming into rage and readiness to fight and I remember him walking towards me.  I remember the place: the back entrance to the school that was before a hill and the portables were behind us and the school buses on top of the hill.  I remember every punch I swung at him missed as he dodged them, and I remember all of his landing and the sharp feeling of pain and the sound static.  I remember getting so frustrated that I couldn't hit him that I started throwing dirt balls at him.  At the end we were both covered in dirt and pulled away to the principal's office.  And we were both fine, waiting in those steep chairs of shame somewhat relieved.  We finally realized we had something in common.  We were called into the office and talked to the principal one-on-one and were given a one day expulsion.  When we returned we were both in line for lunch and we shook hands.  I remember it feeling so good to come out of that rage and hatred to be at peace with what was once my enemy.  And to this day I feel lucky to have gotten in that fight, to have gotten in all the fights I have ever gotten in because it made me the peaceful person I am today.
I learned gospels from the bible and made an X cross, that of St. Andrews, on a wax ring which was later crafted into a silver ring.  I was confirmed at thirteen and rediscovered God.  I remember things happening by chance and how it just happen that I was being confirmed when I realized God on my own for the first time.  There was a chapter that was turned and I had an event to place that feeling with.  It was a transformation, and I had become something else and how if I am able to be transformed now I will be transformed again later, and so on and so forth.  The chapters keep turning and that I shouldn't be afraid of the devil or being possessed, nor should I fight "thine" neighbor or my buddy's neighbor, even if he had a whiny little voice, none of that shit matters.
In the age now I am starting to realize the god within me, within you, within everything, and to learn how to respect everything, to not see evil nor bad but just is.  I am trying to discover peace, I am trying to learn how to nourish myself in life, and through my suffering comes enlightenment.  I am not there yet.  But I am reaching towards it and in my fingertips is warmth of illumination.

Fan Mail

(Somewhere off Route 66 / Somewhere in New Mexico, from Nathan Cyprys, 2012)

Today I received a very unique piece of mail in the form of a Fuji Instax instant photo.  The photograph was taken by Nathan Cyprys of the Nathan Cyprys fame from his recent journey through the true God's country, America.

When I close my eyes I can see him, shirtless and proud, his girl, Layla, close by perhaps holding a film magazine, perhaps sipping a can of soda and silently admiring the high desert in its enchanting scope.  When I open my eyes I see an old familiar of a landscape, of hills pokey-dotted with shrubs and sage bush, of rushed old fencing, of buck-shot pitted roadsigns, and some of the most gorgeous skies a lad and a lass can ever see in a lifetime.

Thanks for the memories, N-dawg and L-cat.