I keep this book beside my bed. It’s blue like water and almost completely full with pages from my dreams. I wonder at the thought of it overflowing into the real world. I wonder at the thought of what even is real these days. A world of abstraction and financialization as my boii Rushkoff would say. I keep him beside my bed as well. I have kept many beside my bed over the years. I try to visit with them frequently in times of peace.
Lately though. There’s a war going on in my mind against my mind. The opposition comes from within and the fighting forces are depleting themselves dry trying to keep it up.
“This is a dream world.” It tells me.
“You’re not awake!” I scream back into the darkness.
I have been working with both sides and on many occasions ceasefires have been called and the enemy lines aren’t so easy to identify. A beam of clear white light shoots over the barricades and brings promises of understanding.
Suddenly I’m standing in a section of an old city. It’s familiar and there’s a small crowd forming at the top of a cobblestone hill. Cobblestones and large brown buildings with towering spires surround the edges of walls that portion off parts of the cobblestone streets from green growing grass. I walk forward in a daze. I see an old man dressed in red with a round cap and a string hanging off of the top. He’s sitting backwards in a chair. I step closer to him and he see his age. He’s an ancient looking man with soft wrinkles in his face. Time seems to be leaking down from above him and dragging him to the ground with it. He’s hunched at the shoulders and seems withered. I am walking past him while noticing these things.
Suddenly, he stands from the chair and gains the composure of a young man. He seems strong and powerful now. He beckons me over to the chair and the small crowd of people begin to surround us. He’s bending his stomach into the back of the chair now like some sort of voluntary solo Heimlich maneuver. He starts breathing these big, heaving breaths and is explaining the mechanics of the exercise to me. The crowd watches in anticipation as the old man in red begins to contort his body around this chair and continue the heavy heaving breaths. His back is arched in a gymnastic bridge pose. He’s looking at me upside down. I start to wonder how his hat doesn’t fall off…
Later I’m in the store. Purchasing some tomatoes and phoning a friend to ask him how to make his homemade salsa with chipotle peppers. I’m walking around the grocery store collecting the items he’s listing to me over the phone. It’s a dead end I begin to think. The red sign of the grocery melts away into the background as I’m struck by a memory and transported to an old city.
I’m watching this man flip and do cartwheels on the cobblestone as he continues instructing me on the importance of these breathing mechanics. He’s quite passionate but in a serious and stoic way more than enthusiasm. The small crowd is silently standing to the left. They are starting to gather in larger numbers.
“Breath starts here!” He shouts while contorting his spine to twist and point up to sky.
“Breath starts here!” He wails even louder contorting his body once again to twist and maneuver his arm to point back at the ground.
“Yo.”
“Yooooooooooo.”
“Did you get the plum tomatoes yet?”
My friend seems annoyed. He’s asking me about the plum tomatoes.
“Hey man.”
“Yea sorry I did.”
“I have the tomatoes, how many limes do I need?”
“It all depends on your taste but I like to grab 3 when I make mine. The more the merrier really.”
"Play"
spider on my ceiling
ocean in my ear
i made myself a promise
not to live my life in fear
not to beat up on the broken
not to focus on the pain
but to find the laughter in the losses
and the hope inside the flame
a burning of the heart strings
a yearning of the mind
beneath the buried treasure
is the peace you thought you’d find
the farthest of the galaxies
the tallest of the dreams
the dance of buzzing bumble bees
the stony walls of streams
the map is not the journey
it’s a tool to find direction
the shovel in the ground
digging deep into attention
from intention to invention
ideas make the drill
the shiny things are shiny things
desire it is a hill
and still climbing up the skills
I’m still writing out my will
to live is it to die?
why then to love it is to build
a ship beyond the deepest sea
a light beyond the star
something in that space
between the nearest things and far
and still the song and woah the wishes
there the secret and the riches
from the grandest cycle of a supernova
white to black to night and morning light re-risen
driving forces behind vision
eyes that track a made decision
and the mind that hides it’s wisdom
a precise and timed collision
stories spiral through a prism
not the sickness but the symptoms
all the same inside a prison
find the freedom chase the hidden time to
face it all is play
existin’