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 !

Waking Up Again

I used to meticulously catalogue the experiences I had that pointed to what could be understood as spiritual. Nervous system bucking, giddy spinal flashes, hot coal palms, tightening forehead focusings, sensations of enlarging or shrinking body, precog moments, sustained deja vu, odd dreams, distortions in my visual field, synchronicities, transcendent moments, unity consciousness. I was excited and excitable.
    By the age of twenty three it often felt like every step I took was a step deeper into an ever unfolding initiation. Some of my anomalous experiences were induced, many predated any experimentation with drugs. I'd go so far to say that my willingness to experiment with drugs was encouraged by a desire to have more such non-ordinary glimpses into a larger world. I hoped that my first foray into joint smoking would send me down the path from Hobbiton to Rivendell. Suffice to say, it didn't turn out quite like that.
    I was a cautious and over-read drug dabbler. I was hellbent on recognizing the stronger hallucinogens as sacraments even if my friends were happy to just trip out. My catalogue of oddities surpassed my infrequent and few trips. I would meditate and feel intense heat in my body. My palms glowed with tai-chi. Aura exercise yielded results quickly. Most overtime I scored some transcendent points I would promise myself to be more diligent, to investigate further, to develop a daily routine that incorporated the body and the spirit.
    I was a poor student. The old men in my dreams held out scrolls to me, covered in holy script. I would shake my head and look away. Twice I was offered torahs, twice I botched the move. Even once, sitting in my kitchen and aided by the fungus, I saw intricate Mayan cartoons play out on the wall, I shook them away, confident that this kind of thing is dime-a-dozen. I'll check it out later.
    Later came and with it the insight that rare gems shouldn't be tossed out. I repeated my mantra, I'm a poor student. I feared the universe would abandon me, reveal nothing of itself. Cosmological models and geometric symmetries stopped showing up to my drawing pad.
    The visions faded. The magic retreated. Occasionally the universe would make a reappearance, proving to me that though I slept, things churned lively just beyond my eyelids. I shut up about it though. Maybe ten years without a peep to the muggles. I quietly read and read. I shook the poor student status. I joined a goddess study group. I peaked in magic. That didn't last long and I set out on the deepest darkest mundanity yet. Beer and bagels set themselves up as staples.
    Nowadays I still read, more than ever, and am steeling my nerves for a rebirth of the body I mistreated for so long. One thing at a time, first body then mind, then both or all three and I'm off.
I'm starting over without a care for the trophies I once thought I had won.

Litter Witching

On the far side of the school yard there was an unused parking lot, away from the main play areas. This lot was just sitting there, ringed by a curb, the lines painted on the pavement fading away. I would walk along this narrow concrete curb, balancing and looking down for things lost or forgotten. Small fragments of broken toys, pen caps, coins, washers. I would scour the area looking hard. These were my first attempts at looking to find things. I found things. I still do.
    Finding things has been a huge part of my identity since those days in grade four, grade five when I would set out on my missions. A happy corollary has been my love for decaying urban areas, crumbling curbs, weeds breaking through asphalt, odd cement structures, metal rings embedded in concrete for absentee poles, painted sigils once communicating something to someone about a job that needed doing. Loading docks, parking lots, any place where small broken items can be laid out bare to the elements, dry, clean, scuffed. I don't go looking for treasure in tall wet grass. I don't want to wipe mud off of something. I want it like I want a pebble or a quarter, ready to go into pocket. A small photograph, the leg of an action figure, a lego block, a widget, a screw, a bead, a tab, a nut, a slug. Small things for small hands to put into small pockets.
    I'd keep these things in empty vitamin bottles, in breath mint tins, in shoe boxes. I'd empty pockets when they got too full. I'd string them together on key chains, on safety pins. I'd wear them hanging off bags or jackets. I'd make necklaces with the parts I'd find. I'd make bracelets, earrings I wouldn't wear. These were magical things. Some rusted bits I'd lacquer with my mothers clear nail polish.
    Into college and university I would have clusters hanging off of me. I had a structure I made on my bedroom wall that things would get tied to, get hung off, get added to. Litter. Pure litter witchery. The spell was in the act of finding, claiming, bestowing with meaning, rearranging, wearing, changing. My friends joked, pointing out an old tire in the fields, 'why don't you make an earring out of it ?' They'd present a washer to me to add to my collection, with a grin. Their washer didn't resonate with me. It was inert. They didn't get it. I had to find it. Or it had to be really special. Occasionally a friend would get it, laugh at me with a knowing wink. My happiest moments were me left alone in a lot, finding items and lining them up on the curb, too numerous to take with me, they would be left there, an evident sign that some witness passed through that place and left a sign. I saw that was all art was, a witnessing, scratching a deep line into a rock as if to say, I was here, I saw this place, I leave a mark for others to know that someone else has been a witness to this. 'This' was life itself. Leaving a mark was akin to collecting a mark left my design or by accident. Taking things found and bringing them to a new place, a new context. Finding things, finding meaning. Making things, making meaning.