Starting Right Now

Do I have the time to show up at the office and churn out a short paragraph about my thoughts and feelings ? Do I have the time to moisturize my face after working outside with sun beating down and pallets of earth moved across alleyways? Do I have the time to worry about Antarctica and the ice sheets and the people and Hydro Quebec and radical skepticism and ill informed rationalism and people who think way too much ? Do I have the time to consider and reconsider and reconsider still my contribution to what seems like a confused and collapsing civilization? Do I have the time to make a comic book and dream of a career in the arts instead of selling everything I have and moving to a small cabin in the countryside?

    Ask me what I would do if I had five years to live and I wouldn't answer 'what I'm doing now' so why am I doing what I'm doing now instead of what I'd do if I had only five years to live ?
    Tell me about it. Tell me about my choices and my decisions and my set backs and cop outs and excuses and fears and paralysis and devil you know. Devil you know will strangle every last breath out of you, five years or no. And by you I mean me.

    Here we are accumulating garbage for the big parade. Accumulating garbage to tuck into the loose corners of our coffins. And coffins ! What an extravagance. We'd be so lucky to get a nice lacquered wooden box to rot in. Some folks never get the option. They sink into the field where they are struck down, maybe thrown into the ravine with the others.

    Sure, go back to school to get a masters degree, join the post docs in line for food and clean water. Wait for the corporate overlords to have their ghost of Christmas past moment, wait for Dick Cheney to shudder at his reflection and take it all back, take it all back, restore the droned children to life, restore the forest to it's majesty, restore the women to their humanity.

    Let's work a tad harder, let's do a little spring cleaning all year round, let's whip it out and get it on, let's high five until the sun rises, let's sort the recycling, reuse the reusables, take out the trash, forgive our shitty neighbours, rejoice with our cousins and see where that takes us.

    This is a moment of missives, this is the time for all times, we've made so many children, let's scrub the sidewalks for them so we don't have to pick glass shards out of their kneecaps. Let's turn off the power so they can breathe. Let's stop with the filth so they can eat some decent food and make their teenage parties something not tinged with ragged desperation born of hopelessness.

    We'll turn around in circles until we straighten out this mess. We'll pull the plug and wear extra sweaters in the winter. We'll collect family members to live with us. We'll turn this boat around, I swear, and plant gardens in every cop car.

    Starting now, starting right exactly now.

Moving Into Sleep

I love nodding off while reading. The words blur and the dreaming self continues the sentence in ways unexpected. I've snapped to and seen that the last words I read were nowhere on the page.
    Falling asleep on the bus is a pleasure I haven't had in years, since I was a daily long distance commuter. I'd bring a book, hike my knees up against the back of the seat ahead open my book and eventually nod off.
    Again, on road trips, the car getting silent as the driver focuses, the shotgun co-pilot drifts off and I, in the back seat, bob my head, never quite making it, half trying to stay awake for the nebulous benefit of the driver.
    In my father's arms, a mere child, mostly asleep as he takes me from the bed full of coats where we were crashed out to the car, after a family party. Pure pleasure, easier than making the walk on my own.
    Staying awake, bordering on sleep, as baby wakes up again and again.
    Doctor's waiting room, Chatelaine in hand, eyes closed. Almost but not quite.
    On the acupuncturist's table, breathing deep, twenty needles in me treating heat in the body. The doctor leaves me for twenty minutes or more, I drift into dream.
    Getting back to bed, tired from a day of hardly sleeping and working hard. As soon as I hit the pillow and pull the blankets over me, teasing tastes of last night's dreams rush back. They've been waiting for me, soaked in the bedding, dreams woven through the thread count.
    Right now, asleep at the keys, tapping notions, eyelids drooping heavy. Needing a book jammed under my chin, splayed open on my chest, the best pillow. Read a paragraph, something about something and I'm off.

Tools Of The Trade

Along with the image of a cavorting chess board, disorienting poor existing creatures like ourselves come a few other images in the same category. The chess board, as seen earlier, divides the plane into white and black tiles, each colour representing one of two possible perspectives. Then they come together and form a lattice they hint at grey, the third path. This chessboard, when seen through the fish eye lens of dream, cannot help but tilt and quiver. The strategy game men play in the park is a far cry from this cosmic farce. This playing board speaks of unknown and ever changing rules. One quickly forgets what side one is on. Which are my playing pieces? which my opponents ? My opponent looks a lot like me. Why are there Monopoly playing pieces on a chessboard ?
    Some situations in life call for drastic measures. Sometimes, on the battle field, when faced with non-stop absurdity of the highest order the options for response are limited. Either on slumps to the floor, starts drooling and thrubbing ones lips with a forefinger or one takes action. The action in this case is to quickly make a Napoleon hat from scratch. If one is adept at shaping aether, all the better ! Fashion yourself a hat, this token will bestow power. If all you have is cardboard and tape, get cracking but I will say, your imagination is quicker and doesn't lead you into the dead ends craft time can land you. The hat, often seen in the loony bins of funny pages, is a shamanic item that will lead you through chaos mostly intact. It will allow you to stand up tall, take charge of the situation irregardless of whether or not you are a natural born leader of men.
    The next things you'll need are a clipboard to take down notes and a pointing stick. The stick will allow you to isolate details that strike you as absurd. Aha! you shout, that thing is melting and/or dancing. Take a note of it. These tools will help you analyze your environment thus gaining control over it. Remember, the battle field, the game board, the mean streets, the drawing room….all these places are stand ins for the fun house, that shape shifting ground that can topple you as soon as set you on your way.
    The last image that will help the weary traveler in these rolling lands in a clear understanding of the origins of language. It is imperative that the black and white of the chess board are understood to also represent the twin parents of spoken tongues - the laugh and the cry. These two primal modes of expression twist together tightly and within that nexus is the fruit that ripens into all spoken communication. Heed this. You can switch easily from one to the other if you understand this key. As you take things too lightly you can add a dash of gravity. If you're sobbing through the jungles you can add a sprinkle of levity. What's funnier than a monkey lost in the forest, especially if that monkey thinks it's a man ?
    I offer these dream images to you, dear reader, in the hopes that you see what a silly place this is. It is of course heart rending and at times joyous. It can be both, damnably so. One must be equipped to tramp through these wilds. A hat to cover your head and lend you authority, a notepad to document the madness, a stick to notice things with, an expansive understanding that the roots of language can change your moods. Onwards !

Guess What ?

Certainty is a crutch. Knowledge is false comfort. Being informed is one of the biggest wastes of energy one can participate in. Go ahead, read the news, see if I care. Oh damn it, I do care. I care about our collective search for meaning, I care that you think keeping up on the press releases from our owners is a good and important pursuit. I care because I have compassion. The news junkie is akin to the Moonie, hanging on the every last word from his master. Of course, I'm not in the deprogramming business, so every man for himself.
    I've been in a cult already. I know that sweet flavour of group mind. It's real. It's also short lasting and in the long run no one can say if the pros outweigh the cons. Having done my short tour of duty in a group project, a group intent on worshiping the elementals and celebrating feast day after feast day, I am better equipped to realize that I partake of belief systems. I know that I just may believe certain things. Knowledge of what my faith may be, mind you, is false comfort. It is also widely inaccurate in that everything constantly shifts. Some pet opinion of mine is dashed to bits with a new article read. Just like changing shirts as some old bastard said of belief. Switch it up.
    The sorriest fools I've encountered are the one's with faith unrecognized. They puff and preen regarding the latest finding, doled out to them from sanctioned sources of course. Sceptical about any questionable thing except their own news sources. This happens time and again. If you are going to be sceptical, go for the whole thing, old friend. Question everything, not only the straw men your favourite podcasts have already selected. Question what and who you are, why you eat what you eat, why you feel how you feel, always and often. Question your brand loyalty, even if their reputation is based on quality and low low prices both. There is a catch somewhere.
    How is it that one can recoil from pundits and authors and honoured guests of Oprah yet swallow whole lines fed by governmental agencies. The mind boggles.
    It's not that I side with the legendary Hashishin and the wry motto hijacked by video-gamed slaves, 'nothing is true, everything is permitted'. No, not so. Lots of things are true. Even some contradictory things. Permissiveness I leave to the society at hand, without having any inclination to agree. We are, to a one, searching for meaning in our lives. Even the cynics and the materialists, even the ones who dismiss meaning and it's search as wastes of time. Even them. They too search. They may search for it in endless fouled up relationships, in extended grudges with best selling authors, in the collecting of immaterial details surrounding television serials. You do it, you think it, you feel it, chalk it up to your humanity. No one can shake that search. Cold grave or waving dead relatives welcoming you into the light, same thing. God, no god, moot point, same thing. Paradox all, paradox always. There is no escape. The thing is the thing. We are one, we are splintered fragments. There is no difference. Pull out all the logic stops, draw charts proving my words empty and I'll laugh if I have the time to honour how you have wasted yours.
    What do I believe ? Who's asking ? And why would you care ? Follow me around and gauge my deeds. Crunch the numbers and conduct severe meta-analysis. There is a creature out there who tricks. There are liars and there are storytellers. There are magicians and wizards. There are cobblers who hoard diamonds under the floorboards, still others who heal the poor souls who come to get some shoes repaired. The cosmos is made of a warp and woof, a black and white tiled checkerboard floor like the stodgy Masons dance on. This fabric wobbles and careens. Upon, within and through it exist all manner of realities, enjoying all grades of existence. That there monster is only sixty-four percent real, that table closer to ninety-eight. Of course, it all depends on where you are standing and who you really are. Stop it, my head hurts. Now, it's yours, is it ? We'll see about that.
    The trickster lives in a place between places. The world axis may determine the land that is ours but others still creep about the borderland. Two is not the biggest number around. Who among you relish ambiguity ? Come then, we'll sit at the same table and tell jokes at the expense of those who think they know what's going on.

Day 48

I don't think everyone has written their own origin story. Even worse, many have had their own story hijacked by trauma. Every child is on their way to understanding the world, cobbling together meaning. If that process is interrupted by being wounded, one's story take a radical turn. One is stripped of innocence and one has clouds and ghosts and deep hurt in place of wonder.
    I have always known of the privilege I had having a good childhood. I was a sensitive kid, crying easily and often but I was comfortable, well fed and well loved. I was surrounded by caring adults. I was close to my older brother. He would tease me though, daily it seemed and we would fight. His tactic was slow creeping verbal pokes. Not abuse, far from it. More like the Chinese Water Torture. He pushed my buttons and got a huge kick when I exploded. We would chase each other around the house, me inflicting way more physical damage on him than him on me. He would tease, I would shriek and pinch, focusing as much power as I could into that small space between index finger and thumb, clenching my jaw for added effect and wincing. It's amazing I never drew blood. He would laugh and laugh at my efforts to hurt him which made me see red and jump up and down on his ribs. He'd get up laughing hysterically and would chase me to the bathroom where I'd lock myself in. A good place to get a breather. We both soon realized the door could be unlocked by inserting a souvlaki skewer into the small hole of the outside doorknob and pushing out the button that locked it.
    My brother and I were a year and four months apart, very close regardless of the drama. I still consider my childhood to have been good. I've even used the word idyllic but am aware enough now that if I were to use it and recount the aforementioned episodes, people would think I was denying something primary. I'm still working all kinds of things out, my relationship to my parents and brother, my own insecurities and perceived failings, my issues surrounding food and sex, the list goes on. I think what I consider great about my childhood was that I more than often was allowed to just play and daydream without interruption. Sure there were scuffles and the occasional blow out but there was never any genuine fear. Things went back to peace easily. My solo adventures with my action figures and cars, in the dirt under the stairs, in the driveway, at the base of the three pronged tree beside the house, in the park next door are memorable and happy. And many. We played together too, sitting and building models and drawing quietly, stuffing our faces with candy and reading any comic book that featured a giant gorilla on the cover.
    I was allowed to build a slow myth, added to daily. Day dream bleeding into day dream and continuing at night. My playtime was around the clock. Toys and art during the day and dreams the rest of the time, telling myself stories, setting out on epic quests. The story built upon itself and lasted many years. As a twenty something I was shocked to realize that I had been secretly harbouring a fantasy since childhood. Deep down I had buried the conviction that with adulthood will come super powers. This was forgotten early on and jolted me awake as a young adult. It did not come to pass, the world was amazing but not that amazing. Though I still held wonder I was often hit by the mundane struggles of burgeoning adulthood. My reveries took a turn towards bitter political concerns and social hierarchies, bands and girls and friends and heartache. My demeanour though was generally happy, to such an extent that one friend dismissed me as shallow simply because I wasn't depressive. I was happy. I found excitement in most things. I was extremely social. I held that as a chemical make-up can account for someone's depression, perhaps one can account for my buoyancy. All too simple. My self characterizations turned into cartoons, maybe I was shallow ? Question after question occurred to me. I demanded my friends outline any faults they perceived in me. I carried doubt in my shirt pocket, genuinely sceptical about anything and everything. I made it a habit to study objects from multiple perspectives at once, trying to hold simultaneous points of view concurrently. I was graced by unbidden waves of ecstasy coursing up my back. I continued to build my story. Fantasy and reality merged seamlessly, it would sort itself out in due time, right now, on the surface of this planet I'd indulge my imaginations.
    My story is coalescing now in my mid forties. I am seeing an over arching theme emerging. For the first time I'm attempting to pull it out of myself with words.

The My In Myth

In Mister Feher's grade ten math class I experienced something that would forever change my life. It was an otherwise normal day, the teacher regaling us with the enthusiasm he derived from mathematics. We were teenagers with better things on our minds than functions. The teacher himself was a bit on an odd duck. Proper, turtle necked, eye glasses Carl Sagan would wear if that makes sense, Carl Sagan's hair around the facial equivalent of Hush Puppies. Always some kind of wry semi-smile. His signature was signed, on important documents like test deferrals or late notes, via a fine rubber stamp bearing his name in a light cursive. He enunciated clearly.
    I was sitting there, spacing out or trying to understand the topic, one of the two, when I wrote something out in my exercise book. I don't think I still have this Ur document but I have it's near descendants. I wrote four capital letters, block form. A B A C. Not those letters, I'm simply showing the repetition and relative sequence. I wrote this un-word, this geometric arrangement, each letter having no curves or diagonals. Nice vertical or horizontal lines only. X and Y axes. Maybe I was picking something up from the lessons after all.
    Nonetheless, I wrote these four letters down in my book and the world stopped.
    I wrote down this code, this gibberish, this … name. My eyes widened, my breathe suspended for an instant. The world stopped. I was flushed with meaning completely unknown. I was in class, I couldn't exactly turn to my mates and say, "It came to me ! It came ! A magic word ! A secret name !" Nope, couldn't do that. Still can't do that. Not allowed.
    Here I was, some fifteen year old kid and I stumble upon a sequence of letters that opens a door to the mysteries. I took this name home, this cypher. I tried a two letter suffix, an add-on. Nothing. I kept it as is, all caps. I drew a picture and realized it was only good to associate this new name with this new style of drawing. I still added my civilian name. I was not convinced that this ABAC was my name. I still don't think it really is, even though I used it in art and eventually in scads of global correspondence art, signing and yes, rubber stamping, the name on postcards, envelopes, letters, poems, collages and drawings mailed to artists around the world. The stacks of mail I received were addressed to this name. Years later I attempted the awkward process of conflating the two names, my magic one and my real one, transitioning to get my affairs in order and have only one name that represents this artist, the name I go by today, the one my folks gave me.
    I searched for the meaning of this secret name, one half could be construed as Hebrew. But my tetragrammaton wasn't in the angel dictionaries. The stoner junior cabalist I knew wrote out what each letter or it's Hebraic equivalent might mean in gematrical values. Tables of correspondences followed. Elements, animals, minerals. It wasn't Enochian. No entity revealed to John Dee came close enough to sporting this name. It may be as yet unrevealed Atlantean but I've never been able to commit to full time space cadet, I'm still too shy for that kind of thing. What would my cynical friends, some no where near as cynical as I am, say if I cracked out the lavender robes and started channeling entities? I know I shouldn't care but sadly I do. Maybe I'll save this crazy shit for my old age. Hopefully I'll still have my wits about me to take the plunge in earnest.
    Of course I had dreams where I saw the word. One time it was tattooed on the back of a male First Nations person, another time hidden in plain sight amid the text in an antique Shakespearean folio. The internet has given me English and foreign acronyms, it means 'relative' in one language, and describes a carved domestic item in another. All in all, it remains more mine than anything else. That strange elation that came over me in class kept my imagination busy for years. It has, of course, faded into the background of my life but is an essential part of my personal mythology. My origin story. I sometimes think that my capacity to encourage and develop a personal myth is mostly responsible for the good cheer I enjoy. I have given myself meaning, regardless of any objective standard that may exist. No one can call me out on it, no one can whistle bullshit in my direction. These are my sacred things, these are the details that prod me towards wonder. I spin yarn in my own service, I spin yarn into gold and you can keep your baby. I'm still trying to figure out how to spend my earnings, I'll get old and hopefully wise trying. I may end up on the street corner, staff in hand, amethyst headband, beard Darwinian in it's glory, twinkling eyes to those that walk among us but are still afraid to describe themselves as magical.
    It's important to pay attention in math class. To something you feel if not the lessons.

Day 31 - Approaching A Corner

The recurring dream goes something like this. I'm embedded in some darkness, an organic mass. I manage to emerge out of it onto a number line (an elementary school math tool used to teach fractions). I count to infinity and end up on the top of a tower, bright and clear, so high up above the clouds. I immediately find myself in the murk again. I have to count to infinity again. I wake up screaming.
    Screaming, agitated, crying, scared, shook up. I may have had this dream twice, maybe three times. I've considered going to hypnosis to see if I can recall more. I have told it so often to myself and others that I fear a broken telephone has set in, a memory of a memory, infinite regress.
    I must have been five the first time, by seven the last time.
    Number lines. Imagine a ruler of ten segments. Draw an arc from the start of one segment to the start of another. Do that the whole way across. Draw an arc spanning two segments. Draw that the whole way across. You'll have five of those arcs. Draw an arc spanning five segments. You'll only need two arcs. Now imagine if each segment was subdivided into ten. Arcs aplenty. You can go on forever. Counting to infinity, I guess.
    When I was older I was drawn to mythology and later symbolism. I read a bit about motifs found all over the place in human history. Art, stories, architecture, dreams, myths. Lots of overlap. I read enough to know that my dream was text book symbolism at it's basic. Dark, cold, wet, organic to start with, Light, airy, angular & crystalline (the rooftop was diamond shaped). I emerged horizontal, I ended up vertical. Here we go again.
    I've interpreted it to my own satisfaction at times through out my life but have often missed the crux, literally, of the story. How did I, the roving point of view that was me in the dream, for there were no figures, turn the bend from my horizontal number line and start climbing the tower ? That's the missing part. Where the X and Y axes meet.
   
    •••

In 2012 I completed my first graphic novel, Inside Outside Overlap. It used this dream imagery as a spring board. It was clear that this recurring dream was the story I needed to tell. I had poked around with some poetry and graphics before but never a project of this size devoted to this topic. As far as I was concerned, this was the only topic to tackle. This puzzling dream, often thought of, came to be my story. At least my first story.
    In the comic my character uses ritual and meditation to enter an inner world wherein he finds a dormant version of himself covered (made?) with goo. He dives into the cesspool and begins the arduous task of digging through the mire, pulling the sludge off until a clarity is revealed. This leads to a crystallization and voilà, our hero is made peaceful.
    I haven't been able to pull this off. My sludge is chipped off at a rate of a flake a month if not a year. I'm not shoveling the shit out of me fast enough to reach catharsis. My meditation practise is still nil, despite my age-old yearning to integrate one into my life. Too often for a healthy mind to deal with, have I wondered what benefits such a routine may yield. I wonder more than actively explore this domain.
    I have slid into mundanity these last many years. Fourteen, I'd hazard. Before that I would perform ritual, pray to deities one and all, change my mind like I'd change a shirt. I felt initiated into the mysteries with each step. Of course with the years I concretized and calcified, gained weight and developed nagging health issues. My thyroid slowed down. My bowels rebelled. My skin said fuck you to my hands. My middle-agedness jumped out of the bushes and beat the shit out of my skinny rock star delusions about who I thought I was always going to be.
    Here I am today, the last day of my self-imposed daily writing routine and I don't know where to go. I can pack it all in, like Greek school or boxing or yoga, and continue the gnawing interior welt that has dogged me since I awoke into adulthood. I can banish the murk by embracing what I seem to fear most, stepping confidently into the light of a daily balanced routine. I can abandon that clarity and sink again into the morass of my many broken dreams. I can go upsy-daisy and down-under a thousand more times before I die. I don't want to wake up screaming every time I hit the squishy starting point again. I don't want to keep starting over. I don't want to count to infinity again.     I'm going to get to the crux of this thing, turn that damned corner, shoot to the top of that tower and stay there.
    You coming along ?

The Hag

The only time I remember meeting The Hag was when I was around twenty years old. The Hag is another name for what we call sleep paralysis, an event that is often reported as being accompanied by the feeling that something malevolent is sitting on your chest preventing you from moving. A frightening dream is the main meat of this event, a dream not recognized as one because the sufferer thinks they are perfectly awake and for some inexplicable reason not able to move. The body is frozen in place and the eyes are seemingly open, witnessing any number of grotesqueries. Cold sweat is probably also present.
    Now I'm unsure if The Hag is an unfair name. I have spent some small time in my life worshipping The Crone, one of three aspects of The Goddess in the western neopagan tradition of Wicca. The Goddess, we learn quickly, ain't all fun and games, light and love and prancing through the forest. Nor is she all black nail polish and fishnet sleeves. She is all manner of things, big and small and one of her aspects is The Crone. This is an archetype of mature human womanhood, old lady who has seen it all, passed through the myriad stages of life and has accrued wisdom. I guess The Hag would be the shadow side of this aspect, an embittered old being hellbent on poking young-uns with misery sticks.
    My meeting with The Hag is memorable. No old evil creature is remembered as sitting on my chest. What I do remember is waking up in the middle of the night and being frozen in place. Immediately the fear starts coursing through me. My eyes are snapped open and glued to the window of my bedroom. Outside my window, horribly backlit and casting spidery shadows throughout the room, is the tall knotted tree that by day just stands there. Well, this night its branches are creaking down across the window pane with total evil intent. The limbs of this tree want in, they want to breach the bubble of my bedroom and devour me. I am sweating pure fear, unable to do anything but witness the reality that everything I thought I knew is wrong. Monsters are real. Reality as we know it is total BS. Monsters are real and there is one outside my window trying to get in.
    This is where my 'dream' ends. I wake up in the morning and the first thing I notice is that I am facing away from the window. I chuckle a sigh of relief. It couldn't have happened, I rationalize, I was frozen in place staring at the window and here I am waking up in another direction. It was a dream, only a dream. Another detail, there has never been a tree outside my window. In that moment of horror I assumed the tree was always there, suddenly having turned mobile and monstrous. No tree, I wasn't facing the window equals I was dreaming.
    I have had cosmic abstract night terrors rife with symbolism from age 5 to 7, I have had muttering, gibbering fever dream deliriums as a kid and a teenagers. I have had nightmare after nightmare, weirdnesses too many to recount. But this was the only time I remember The Hag. She showed up as a tree turned bad, a force of nature usually associated with green growth and clean air, now knotted with ill intent and out to kill any promise of rest.