Wednesday, January 2, 2008

SYREN SEA


SYREN SEA

You wind down out of the desert just outside Joshua Tree with the taste of dry air and dust in your mouth and the scent of orange blossoms in your head. You drive past the wind-whipped sand and the rows of date trees straight out of The Thousand and One Nights and find yourself along a barren highway stretch where the only things you see are fenced-in tracts of empty land. Your mind whirls chromesthesially from the shouting of the desert flower and you swear you hallucinate when to the side you see a vast ocean and smell the salt in the air. The vision is too immense for a mirage—Ocean water stretching for miles here amid the desert. As you drive further you come upon a sign that beckons you to follow a cosmic road:

“Welcome to the Syren Sea

Syren Sea, California, is an oasis that rises wicked and inscrutable from the farthest corner of a near-endless desert. The desert rolls effortlessly, until it tumbles and falls, abrupt and heedless, into an emerald-green ocean. The ocean breeze wraps her inhabitants in a veil of lethargic bliss that lends itself best to idle pleasure and shameless indulgence. Though the climate is parched, the city is watered copiously and blooms abundant with all manner of flora and fauna. The palm trees sway in the hot breezes and the animals mate with abandon. There are ripe fruits and there is rich soil.

The guardians of Syren Sea are careful to maintain her image. They invest in her growth so that she devours more and more of the sand which surrounds her—without ever gaining a pound. Movies and gambling are her great loves. There are plenty of strip clubs, but nary a church. You feel like you need a forklift here just to send up a prayer.

When the sun sets and nighttime reveals its mystery, the lights of the city are unleashed like a plague of phosphorescent locusts and the rattle and ring of slot machines burst forth in a sinister buzz.

This is the draw, the excitement of this place. People come. They never stop coming. They come with portfolios of dreams that they invest in the dust and wind.

So it was that I fell into this place many years ago when I left New York. Back then, my soul was filled with artistry and my eyes hungered for pleasure. Now the world has emptied both of their wonder. I freeze in the hot sun wondering where the time went.

This is where we shall begin. Sit with me awhile. We've got stuff to talk about.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

QUADRATIC INVOCATION


QUADRATIC INVOCATION

Beloved, I’ve tried to write this many times. Even now I can barely think of how to start or where to go, save for the fact that now I’ve lived these stories fully and completely. I have become a character that I created and my stories have become fact in the strange way that things like that happen in life.

I will keep this as a journal, a blog, for you, beloved, because you understand and because were there. You saw what it was all about, what it is: The political sorcerers leading mystery cults, the alchemist businessmen sleeping on beds of silver and gold, greed and delusion, the journalistic magi casting spells of falsehood with image and world. They run this place. We know it. And we know it's bull, but everyone still pretends it's fine and lines up at the well of madness for a drink 'cause they say they like the flavor. I don't care what they say. We have to do something. If we are silent to insanity, we give it credence.

We must find the discriminant to discover its roots, rational or irrational, real or imaginary. No magician can alter the mathematical truth of life itself. Only God has that power.

I have nothing to hold me back now, baby. I have nothing to lose. When their lunacy killed, Cristo, my feline son, my life was altered forever. Some people find it ridiculous that his death hurt me that deeply. I don't care. The natives of this land, whose blood flows through me, say the Great Spirit above gives us each an animal totem who speaks to our souls. That was Cristo-- but he was more than that. He was the son of my heart. So, now, I will try to put away childish things and leave my creations as an inheritance for his soul. And when he comes to me now, little Cristo, talking in my dreams, and on the winds of the night when I call to him upon the stars, I will have something of value to give him. Our souls travel together, as they always have and always will.

And your soul is with me too, beloved. Your soul is my soul. Forget the poetry and philosophy and all that. Nobody seems to care about it anymore, I know. Just remember, as flesh in flesh we were one, so are we now, one in spirit always.

So sing in me, Daughter of Truth and Beauty, that my words may echo through spirits and thoughts. For all we have is faith, hope and love, and love is the greatest of all.

But you know me, baby, I will wield that love like a sword.

Let us slit the veil now and show them the world: