03/22/04
The world blurs in my peripheral as I guide my Scarab in and out of traffic. I'm heading home as a beautiful sadness overcomes me. Thoughts race through my greymatter and I find myself coming to no solid conclusions.
The names of automobiles pass me and I feel sick. Escape, Adventure, Liberty. Empty promises bought and sold and never experienced. How many of these truck owners have had the picturesque off-road experience that was staged, filmed, aired, and consumed? How many drivers of slim, sleek, and stylish sports cars are starring in the superspy scenes that run through their minds as they shift between gears stuck in traffic behind the thousand other like-minded consumers trapped in the same mental snare?
Nature itself seems to be doing battle today. Snow, sun, rain. Something has disturbed the essence of weather, and it now seeks to punish or cleanse as the changing of seasons sneaks up on us. The cycle continues its march forward as the cold death slips away and life shakes free from its icy grip. A new season is about to be born and we fuss about it as if it were the most humdrum event of the year. Nature tearing itself free from one stage and pushing us all towards a renewal of ourselves, while plunging another part of the world into a seasonal slumber.
I feel a sickness coming on, self-generated or not, that makes me shake with fever. I'm heading home and I can't think straight. My mind wanders and dips and bends. I can't come to a conclusion on how I feel about anything. A malleable mind, eager to destroy or accept all the pain and love of the years of yesterday.
Ahead lies friends and family. Loved ones that have not seen me for some time now. My brain runs through simulated meetings and tries to come up with the most likely course of events while planning and preparing for the most dire.
Now has come the time for confrontation and a final reckoning. A balancing of scales, and a excavating of the heart.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
THE TOWER OF BRAHMA: Chapter 10 - "Rest Stop Bloodbath" (edit)
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Monday, December 13, 2010
THE TOWER OF BRAHMA: Chapter 9 - The Ride Home (edit)
03/15/04
I don't recall actually leaving the rest stop, but after spending so much of my time there in a delirious daydream, that's not really a surprise. I found myself in my car blasting a new CD, windows dropped, and gliding down a stretch of Americana.
I didn't realize until I stopped for gas off the parkway. I was headed south, I was heading home.
My dreams have been plenty lately and the intensity of them has been draining to say the least. It's almost like my body would much prefer the simplicity of dormant identity. In hazy dreamscapes I find myself talking to old friends and revisiting boyhood haunts. But I'm seeing them as they are now, not as I recall them. They're changed, hacked up, and shown as something completely new. Something clean.
A beautiful blue sky lies open above me, welcoming me to this world of possible unity. It's hard to say but hope is stronger in me than ever. Something happened to me back there at that rest stop. I feel stripped of my pain and confusion.
I look at the cracked concrete between my feet as if seeing such a sight for the first time. I see it as if it were the most important thing in the world. It might be, but then this cold metal gas pump in my hand is no less important, nor the many ordinary things that dance the daily routine around me.
With the change from the last of my money I get a bottle of water and a bagel. Once out on the road again I've found that the bagel is the best I have ever had. My final meal before facing whatever is coming before me now. I wash it down with the water and I swear I can feel my body breaking it down and converting it, sucking from it the nutrients it provides.
I take a break from singing at the top of my lungs to laugh heartily as I cross over the bridge and approach the tollbooth. I've always been afraid of bridges. Well, I used to be anyway. I hadn't thought about it in so long but now I can see this bridge just as I did when I traveled over it twenty years ago in the back seat of the family car.
Frantically worrying about paying the upcoming toll, my mind releases itself. I'm suddenly a kid again, sick from the smell of exhaust and the bouncing of the road, my mind slipping into a daydream not unlike the experience at the rest stop. A blurring of the edges, riding through the physical pain, and winding up somewhere in a place where all the rules you've made up for yourself no longer apply.
I don't recall actually leaving the rest stop, but after spending so much of my time there in a delirious daydream, that's not really a surprise. I found myself in my car blasting a new CD, windows dropped, and gliding down a stretch of Americana.
I didn't realize until I stopped for gas off the parkway. I was headed south, I was heading home.
My dreams have been plenty lately and the intensity of them has been draining to say the least. It's almost like my body would much prefer the simplicity of dormant identity. In hazy dreamscapes I find myself talking to old friends and revisiting boyhood haunts. But I'm seeing them as they are now, not as I recall them. They're changed, hacked up, and shown as something completely new. Something clean.
A beautiful blue sky lies open above me, welcoming me to this world of possible unity. It's hard to say but hope is stronger in me than ever. Something happened to me back there at that rest stop. I feel stripped of my pain and confusion.
I look at the cracked concrete between my feet as if seeing such a sight for the first time. I see it as if it were the most important thing in the world. It might be, but then this cold metal gas pump in my hand is no less important, nor the many ordinary things that dance the daily routine around me.
With the change from the last of my money I get a bottle of water and a bagel. Once out on the road again I've found that the bagel is the best I have ever had. My final meal before facing whatever is coming before me now. I wash it down with the water and I swear I can feel my body breaking it down and converting it, sucking from it the nutrients it provides.
I take a break from singing at the top of my lungs to laugh heartily as I cross over the bridge and approach the tollbooth. I've always been afraid of bridges. Well, I used to be anyway. I hadn't thought about it in so long but now I can see this bridge just as I did when I traveled over it twenty years ago in the back seat of the family car.
Frantically worrying about paying the upcoming toll, my mind releases itself. I'm suddenly a kid again, sick from the smell of exhaust and the bouncing of the road, my mind slipping into a daydream not unlike the experience at the rest stop. A blurring of the edges, riding through the physical pain, and winding up somewhere in a place where all the rules you've made up for yourself no longer apply.
Monday, December 6, 2010
THE TOWER OF BRAHMA: Chapter 8 - Sitting Alone (edit)
03/04/04
Sitting alone, quiet in my small defecation booth, I realize that I've put up some sort of barrier, impervious to entry. Secure in the knowledge that no ordinary citizen would attempt to slither underneath nor parachute in from above. I was protected in this four by three excretion chamber. Although there were men in the stalls on either side of me, most likely engaged in the same shameful acts of natural behavior as I was, I felt distanced from them, and from the threat they would normally present themselves as outside of this rest stop bathroom.
Recognizing the power within my mind, assisted by the two metal walls and the haphazardly locked stall door, I knew that I had it in me to protect my aura from these masculine intruders to personal safety. Here I was, just a child living in an adult male body, sitting alone in the great wide world, ruling my universe from a porcelain throne. Having reached this moment of safety and security opened doors in my mind, and I immediately wanted to extend my borders.
I exited the stall, having waited long enough for the guy next to me to remove himself from his lavatory cosmos, and went to wash my hands. I found myself looking into the mirror itself, as I wrung my hands free from the dreaded bacteria, the silvery shimmer is the oddest material I could imagine, one that so accurately casts back an imaginary self, projecting an external persona that is a lie constructed by the inner workings of our minds. A clever cover slid over insecurities and doubts. A construct comprised of imaginings about the person we wish to be. On the other side of this wall is the man I long for, deep in my heart.
Maybe mirrors show us more than we can imagine, if we look closely enough. A mirror is an inviting snare for the self-absorbed, allowing us to shallowly look upon ourselves not as we know ourselves to be, but instead as we appear to those around us. An impartial view of our shell, our scarred surface self that takes the brunt of our bumps and bruises. Swimming into sorrow filled eyes, I enter into the sacred center and truly evaluate. Distanced from the person being examined, I am able to penetrate into cellular psyche.
The water is scalding hot as I slide back into this reality. My eyes adjust to the surface of the mirror and I take in the room behind me. Men coming and going, leaving behind the waste that had built up in their bodies. Over my shoulder a man with an abnormally large penis is staring absently at the wall while urinating.
Sitting alone, quiet in my small defecation booth, I realize that I've put up some sort of barrier, impervious to entry. Secure in the knowledge that no ordinary citizen would attempt to slither underneath nor parachute in from above. I was protected in this four by three excretion chamber. Although there were men in the stalls on either side of me, most likely engaged in the same shameful acts of natural behavior as I was, I felt distanced from them, and from the threat they would normally present themselves as outside of this rest stop bathroom.
Recognizing the power within my mind, assisted by the two metal walls and the haphazardly locked stall door, I knew that I had it in me to protect my aura from these masculine intruders to personal safety. Here I was, just a child living in an adult male body, sitting alone in the great wide world, ruling my universe from a porcelain throne. Having reached this moment of safety and security opened doors in my mind, and I immediately wanted to extend my borders.
I exited the stall, having waited long enough for the guy next to me to remove himself from his lavatory cosmos, and went to wash my hands. I found myself looking into the mirror itself, as I wrung my hands free from the dreaded bacteria, the silvery shimmer is the oddest material I could imagine, one that so accurately casts back an imaginary self, projecting an external persona that is a lie constructed by the inner workings of our minds. A clever cover slid over insecurities and doubts. A construct comprised of imaginings about the person we wish to be. On the other side of this wall is the man I long for, deep in my heart.
Maybe mirrors show us more than we can imagine, if we look closely enough. A mirror is an inviting snare for the self-absorbed, allowing us to shallowly look upon ourselves not as we know ourselves to be, but instead as we appear to those around us. An impartial view of our shell, our scarred surface self that takes the brunt of our bumps and bruises. Swimming into sorrow filled eyes, I enter into the sacred center and truly evaluate. Distanced from the person being examined, I am able to penetrate into cellular psyche.
The water is scalding hot as I slide back into this reality. My eyes adjust to the surface of the mirror and I take in the room behind me. Men coming and going, leaving behind the waste that had built up in their bodies. Over my shoulder a man with an abnormally large penis is staring absently at the wall while urinating.
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