For it is in the eyes of men where all that is hidden, all that is present, all that is feared and hated, all that is cherished and loved, can be unveiled.

Next is the handshake. The grip of a man can determine that which he has to offer, that which he intends to take, it can measure both strength and weakness and in that brief and casual exchange there is a conversation of souls revealing truths and deeper truths, that, if we allow, can express more than just words. We can feel all this, and more, through something so simple, so subtle, so intimate, as touch.

Today I met the madness of men.

I met the vulnerable angel on the coast. Contemplating the oil tankers and the erosion of the hopes and dreams of fisherman.

I met a mermaid. Again. Her hair red and flowing, flying through the the endless paved highway, streams of mane singing whispers of better times.

Which dream will I hold on to? Which wish? To which will I give my breath?

My fear, dear friends, and my conclusion, is that no matter where I give my attention, the flows of oil and the excess poisoned liquids of men will creep into a desolate sea, with or without my benevolent tidings.

I must believe in prayer.

But that is not my story.

Today.

Today we cry for Fukushima.

Sitting there on the coast we questioned all the truths that cruel science has laid bare.

We asked ourselves, “What will happen to this island when the radiation hits?”

I remember you cried so gently as I held you on the shore. Truth, stranger than fiction, and selfish beyond belief, has made pulp of our lovers hearts. For we fear, this great Island that we hold so dear, in time, may be stripped of its sacred cycle and become subject to the wicked wasting away of nuclear holocaust.

But these are still joyful times. The New Moon has come and a new lunar phase is upon us. We indeed make our offerings with each breath, but the duality of such times seems to work against us. For styrofoam’ed are my meals. Nuclear is the water I use to wash my hands. The water I use to quench my thirst is fluoridated and calcified. The ocean where I go to bathe is brown with run-off both chemical and heinous.There are cesspools in the Hanalei watershed and I am overcome with grief. Sea turtles with unsightly growths, dying coral, and inexplicable, bacterial white foam, combine with a witches brew of run-off: resulting in the death of 60 miles of 100 year old reef in less than eight weeks.

Let me say it again: There are cesspools brewing in the Hanalei watershed, and I am overcome with grief.

Coral, sweet coral, my heart cries for you. For it is by the multitude of your mystery these islands are given life, not as some would think, by the almighty dollar of the investor and the tourist.

Golfers, scientists, businessmen-corrupt, middle-class middleman, children of greed poisoned children. I cry for you all alike. Native and tourist. Cannibal and savage, clergyman and priestess, boatsman and net-casters, civilized mass murderers with their guns and laws and steel and lies…

I weep for you all, and for each of you I weep alike. For the burden approaching is for us all of us to bear.

The problem is one of proximity: All are entitled to happiness, this we must accept. So here, the happiness of one tribe is supported by a taro patch, by bare feet, by clean water and long hair, and in this paradigm life has a certain trajectory of longevity. The words Aloha, Pono, and Ohana become as real as you or I and are given life through the sons and daughters of the earth. The strength of a nation flourishing still though slavery, deception, subjugation, and genocide, is reborn in each intake and exhale of this sacred breath, the HA, and new life can still have room to thrive and the cycle goes.

Yet the happiness of others, those who come by boat and plane, takes an altogether different spin and the great cycle changes. This happiness, both pseudo and commercial, has built a jagged wall against the natural pillars of human law. Those sleeping yet claiming to be awake, whose multitude contingency rests in the deathly comforts of spray-on lotions, chemical riddled cosmetics, aluminums and sulfides- applied liberally on bright pink bodies upon waking, then again at mid-day, and yet again before sleep. This regiment is cruel and profane for the singular body, but the torture stops not at an army of one. For with each crass ceremony, mixed with sweat and sewage, these chemicals are flushed down toilets and drains, washed off at oceanside showers and answering the call of some sick piper, rush seaward, joining in with the chemicals used to maintain both golf courses, and gardens, lawns pedicured and pedigree’d with toxins approved with federal regulations and supported with advertisements both baffling, degrading, and attractive.

Imagine them sleeking. Slouching towards Bethlehem in droves, gathering in militant molecules EVERY SINGLE HOUR in a destructive legion creeping through rivers and lakes and streams…westward towards the ocean, where children go to swim, where ecosystems once flourished, where the potential and irrevocable balance of life swings on the edge of a knife, sleeking and shifting and mutating the vast and complex reefs where the smallest creatures, who feed the biggest catch, are met with a holocaust of their own.

There are cesspools in the Hanalei watershed. And though I pray for peace and alchemy. In my aching heart I am mad as hell.

So come. Come businessmen and lobbyist who tempt snake-tongued politicians behind close doors. Come you speakers of house who lie in broad daylight. Come you hired hands who buy off any conclusive evidence that may jeopordize your endless incomes and put a chip in your mountains of greed.

COME.

Look me in the eye.

Come and bleed.

Then let us, as brothers, embrace hands. That you might see me, and I might feel you, and together, united by touch, we might stand against this coming siege.

There is not a moment to waste, us stand now, and witness the true consequence, the suffering blow of the modern age, for we have given up our lives to be your resource. Some offer willingly in exchange for your beads, your screens, and your currency. But now, let us embrace the uniting poverty of the future of all mankind: the jeopordy towards which we have walked willingly, to the potential end of the green earth and the dawning of the new mars.

I have read the leaves of tea. I have seen the signs and stars aligning.

The next world war will be a war for water and the next holocaust, if we act idle, will be that of this vast and precious ecosystem.

We live, we dance, we die, and heavens doors are opened. But the water? What of the water?

And where? Where I ask?

Where can the good hearted go to be free?

Gimiwan. Let the rain dance begin. For we will need a god both ancient and powerful to save us from this endless, endless, proliferation of poisons.

GIMIWAN.

Let your rain dance begin my strong and mighty brother. Let us become the rain. Let us be raptured in waters anew. And let every man, woman, and child, hear that trumpeting song.

And dance until the rain comes.

dance until the rain comes.

dance until the rain comes.

Under the New Moon, we make our offering.

Praise.

With every breath, we rise above.

Creeping out of the concrete. Our love grows resilient.

Though muzzled and weak are the best of us. Though misguided and seeking refuge are countless others, this love cannot be stopped. This love cannot be silenced.

I have a brother who was lost at sea. The stories of his death are conflicting. Some say he leapt beyond to save a friend, others say his life was stolen by whimsy and the recklessness of youth.

I say my brother will live forever. For in the short moments I knew him, he was both quiet and loud in his thinking. He said money is the root of all evil, but that soon all wickedness too shall pass.

I felt guilt when I heard that he had died. For we had shared Kava. A cup had passed from his lips to mine and from mine to his. Could I have given him one more warm embrace that would have spared his heart whatever troubled it accrued? Could I have looked more intently into his eyes, soon to look far beyond what any mortal can see, and offered solace for whatever his heart had ailed? Or was his time destined to pass, and our brief supper simply a passing rite, a swift ceremony for brothers meeting over and over through the vast recesses of time?

Why is it that the searching die so young and the lost live to be so rich and old?

I believe sometimes it is because the wicked do not really live. They live but half-lives. As shadows sucking light from those who live brightly. My brother has passed on, but his words linger on:

No one can steal your energy. it can only be given.

So, said my brother: give freely, but be careful what you give.

In an alternate universe. In a time far ahead of ours, far beyond the revealing of the galactic council, beyond nuclear meltdown and human involution, there is a sea of quantum entanglement.

There lies a woman. Somni.

“Our lives our not our own. By every crime and every kindness we birth our future.”

Death is but a door.

So my brother, you have walked through, and in many ways I walk with you. Discovering through the lesson you’re teaching us all, that life can be long, life can be hard, life can stretch on hapless or intentional, life can seem but an endless stream,

but it too can be abrupt, it can be sharp, loving fruitful and passionate, and when we decide through our process of grief that life is cut short- in that fragmented sentence, your life lingers beyond our knowledge of being, singing with the angels, composed delicately on a whole note, a beautiful and resonate OHM.

In that peaceful ocean of sound you gave your spirit a new home.

The legend of your Mana, your kindness, your leadership, your grace- those are the lessons that in my heart will stand.

Tonight, with this new moon, may you be blessed in your place among the stars, and sleep gently for awhile, before you return once again from the tides, into a world washed anew.

If I could ask one thing though, my dear friend, in your passing through the cosmos, and through your great wonderings through the void, tonight when we pray, lend your ear. And if you could, translate for us this message to those angels on whose wings you fly:

Look down upon us with love. Bless this age with a great transformation, and deliver us into a time of praise and peace.

Fly true brave Eros. Into the great beyond, and the wild ever.

Bless your name. Bless your house. Bless the arms of the almighty.

In loving memory of E.D.

Wake up. Endless stream.

Mermaids are real!

Rubbish!

Hey, give it back!

BLIMEY! You are silly!

Two children. British by the sounds of it. Zipping around the cafe. Have I fallen asleep in a public place? Am I here or there?

Last night I went to bed with a fractured wrist. Slumped over with food poisoning. And trying my hardest to keep hold of my sanity as some awful wretching bug made its way through my system.

I was sleeping on a floor in the palace of the lord. The rain was deafening. which was just as well as it muffled my moaning and delirious cries. I had fever dreams. A dragon of eyes breathed it’s tempest on my chest and invested in me the power to breath ice and water from my mouth and hands. A dragon of magma engulfed me in his flames but I was untouched. I saw my self rising on pillars of fire and pillars of ice, and though I was delirious, I can still swear one hand feels awfully cool and another unbearably hot. Like I’ve been touched by some magic I’ve forgotten how to use.

But I’m up now. My face slumped on the keys of my laptop in an ocean side cafe. 2 brutes in motorcycles rocking righteous jesus pieces have just bought 2 creamy mochas and left a couple treats for the britain cubs running about the cafe.

You can never judge a book by any over. You got to read it. You got to bleed it.

So how did I get here? Did these words right themselves or are they writing me?

I embrace the confusion. Wipe some crust from my eyes as a child, one of the brits, is poking me.

Thanks for the shells mister!

What do you mean?

You’re silly mister, you walked over and gave us these shells just a minute ago. Is it hot having all that hair?

What’s your name mister?!

My name?

I think you’re a buffalo!

Hmm. I suppose I am.

Life is but a dream and for the life of me, I can’t remember a thing.

I got off the plane and charged straight through the fields of dried lava and abandoned plastics. I found tunnels and whispers of ancestors in the cracks and hollows. I saw wraiths in the multi-colored inks of consummate refuse. I wandered for a mile with my airplane thoughts. I prayed that I might be welcomed with grace and abundance. I mused and prayed and whistled in the sunlight until I found my peace.

That’s when I found the road. The road that I thought would lead me to you, but in some island twist, brought you straight to me.

We drove along the mountain highways and down to the coast.

Dinners and sunshine and the reminescent talk that fond lovers share.

We talked and walked and howled into the deep blue ocean. I thought I saw a spiky critter on the rocks. You returned from your dive with the creature tamed and dancing in your hand. We made offerings of pretty stones we found and arranged them on the rocks for our gods to see.

Then the rain began. Gently. Almost as a suggestion, that those coupled on the beach in ecstacy should pull just a bit closer and embrace fully the shared synchronicity and undeniable bliss of this life.

We woke from our embrace with speckles of fresh water kisses on our faces. The sweet sky fall persisted. Just enough to fall in kisses upon your face and catch that brilliant light forecasted in rainbows as we walked all along the green and triumphant coast.

The thing about dreaming, is you can always wake up into a new dream with new love and new life.

Last night I dreamed a thousand dreams.

Today I woke up to a hilo sunrise and the laughter of children. Spoonfuls of cereal, delivered with airplane gestures, to the future generation, and a home, warm and welcome, with which to plant a spirit garden.

Bless the seeds. Bless the harvest.

For with that which grows, we will feed our millions.

In this moment I am a breath. I am a breath caught in the ocean of breaths. A simple yet profound tide that beats upon the existent shore of every single creature on this planet.

The breath of life.

Isn’t it crazy how we can take our breath for granted? We are living giants of bio-majesty. Within each and every one of us there is a micro-cosm of mystery and intuitive mechanics that guide our towering vessels throughout the charmed and perplexing labyrinth of life.

I have woken into a sleeping world. The sun, while it shines the truth of it’s brightness, is not the primary care giver. His radiance is not allowed to fill it’s celestial duty. Through a consciousness all too separate from earth and her rhythms, a new light has formed.

There are those who worship the sun.

But I have never heard of those who perform fluorescent salutations.

What can be said about the sun can also be said for the great harvest of this planet. A spiraling web of succulent treats, grains and fibers, the freshest fruits and purest waters. Now all can be purchased, and only so, upon the injection of metals and the transference of false-light energy.

Isn’t it crazy that we can accumulate a resource called money in exchange for our time? And depending on our backgrounds and various bureaucracies of human capital and estimated social worth, we can be deemed among the very rich, or the extremely poor.

The problem is that we’ve allowed ourselves to ignore the inherent richness of this world. We’ve allowed ourselves to be marked stricken in a world of endless abundance.

Nature will never be silenced.

Step out of the known.

Step into the void.

Silence the busy mind.

Be washed and amazed in the rapture of the natural world.

At first you may not know which way to turn.

But you must simply go forth.

You may think your will is not strong enough.

But if you have any doubts that you will succeed, remember, a world of blessing awaits you.

Go forth.

I trust that you will.

I can’t care forever. My heart would dry up.

I can’t give up on caring. My heart would become calloused, barren, unfit to love anything but my own self pity.

I walk the jagged edge of a knife. I do not know the cost of all that hangs in the balance. I do not know the true cost of bleeding, nor am I aware the true ignorance of walking safely.

There is a stamp on this letter that says TRUST IN ALL THINGS.

As it happens, upon its opening, I received a paper cut on my thumb.

Upon walking to the sink I slipped on some water.

Upon reaching for the towel I opened the oven to find a tunnel stretching deep into my apartment cellar.

Curious.

For weeks I have noticed the missing of many little things. Being a depressed bachelor, I make most of my food via radiation and microwaves. Now I see the path of a borrower in my unused oven. Of course I decide to follow. Where I went, I can’t tell. Where I’m going I can’t tell. That is simply a story for another time.

Flash forward.

I am at the table of a bumbling and endless idiot. The year is 1320. I have the healing rash of frostbite all over my body, and I am exceedingly drunk on mead. The castle is heated by a large fire. Large firs line the warmer parts of the hearth and there is singing coming from the head of the king’s table.

I am the courier of news from the western edge of the empire, and tonight the bastard Lord Tuberis has requested my company to fill him in on the goings on of the neighboring city states. This is usually a quaint and cordial business. We dine in the hall. The village peasants serve goblet upon goblet of the finest mead. I brief whatever Lord has requested my services, and I am paid in various mystical trinkets and a small sum of silver.

Then comes the feast.

Today however I have walked 16 miles through the wretched cold, stopping only to visit a witch-healer that she might apply balms upon my chill-bitten skin.

Now I am the discontent guest of the a exasperatedly drunken Lord, who has, in his excess, insisted I match him drink for drink in his child’s game.

Weariness does not even begin to describe the levels of my demeanor. This business, were I allowed to get one word in edge wise, would be, by now, done and over with, and I would have only the slightest bit of malice from the company of his rattled and self-inflated Lordship.

As it goes with my business. I go places most thieves dare not go and keep the company of men weaker souls shudder to keep.

So it is by this affiliation with the lowest of the low, that I have found myself in passing the tidings of the feudal underground into the higher circuits of England’s expansive, excessive, and elite.

It is not often, for the firmaments of a heart that deals in compassionate absolutes, to meet a man that makes the loving mind a nihilist. Yet here I am, in the abysmal horse latitudes of my regret, with nothing to distract the attention of my mind than the sullen wine dripping from the beard of Tuberis and the fetid flaps of chicken skin flying rampant around his false prince lapels.

Behold, I am become death. Eater of worlds.

Or something of the sort.

Tuberis: These chickens. So richly fed. Strict diets, actually. Kept warm in the stables of one of the more amicable serfs. They lay their eggs freely and know comfort from laying to slaughter. Such a sweetness in this flesh. Would you care for some?

Courier: I’m fine thank you, I would prefer to get to the matter at hand, the mead dealings and steel trade-

Tuberis: MEAD! MEAD! Why of course. Yes. Wench. Let there be more of this mead. Pour an extra goblet for courier here. Do you know of this mead, Courier? The Queen and her bees, reveled throughout the kingdom, as you well know, in addition to the full moon alchemies of the harvest, the grains picked by the young farm hands was particularly rich this season. What year again, dear?

He says this, mead in one hand, chicken in the other, and spilling on the nearest table guest.

I have resolved to be patient. But patience can only last so long.

It is here, where a much welcome interruption comes. Tuberis and his dealings with an informant, such as myself, happen, more or less, under the radar. So when a fellow Lord approaches to hold  his council I make a welcome retreat, out of the castle, and into the courtyard.

Behold.

The moon has awakened from the fullness of her slumber. The winter winds are crisp and silent.

Outside the castle, in the biting cold.

All is well in the empire.

In the empire, all is well.

The self as the vessel of all chaos. The gods as tribal and mystic dancers. Ecstatic and mad. Spiraling in a dervish frenzy upon the soil of man. Dashing their dust in the fires of our hearts. Voices raised in chaotic crescendo.

I am the dust beneath your feet.

I am ash of your burning offerings.

Do not go easy on me.

Burn me with no abandon.

Trample me without regard.

I have not come to the world of being and non-being to simply be a spectator. If this world is a great rain then I have come for the flood. If this hour of man is doomed to darkness than I have come for the fullness of armageddon.

Soldiers, ready your bayonets. I have come for the salt of your gun powder. I have come for the piercing and un-letting throes of your countless wars. I have come to die your countless deaths. I have come to be the un-sacrificial wolf of your bloody campaigns of peace.

Tax collectors. Hide not behind your heavy armed thugs. Abandon now the profane sanctuary of your well paid brutes. Come to me with your gnashing of teeth and your greed like knives. Come scratch the surface of my flesh. Come with your scales and computations. Come open eyed and burning.

You will see the power of poverty is endless. You will see the power of pain is greater than the comfort of your cushioned and stolen houses.

I ask you. You who are pale and thin of flesh. You who boast for the high prices of your high society, yet know nothing of its true cost. You who decree the burning of forests, turning pure hearts orcish to your nickles and dimes. You who sow nothing that you reap, yet shy from the faces of the poor by whom you are served. Come.

Cast your pennies to our gutters. Come drink the wine of your tortured millions. Come taste the cost of the worlds that your comfort has assailed. Come sleep in the weeping forests who cry blood for your expansive holocausts.

For decades you have traded your stocks and your diamonds and your false smiles and hollow laughs in the confines of your secret sepulchers, away from the true heart of modern man. I invite you now, do not be so exclusive. Come trade with us, come pound for pound, come to the true harvest of your cruel empire. Come lose yourself in the fear of the battle ground you have created. You who have made the poor man a criminal. You who have turned the middle class in on itself. You who hire slaves to build houses upon the sand with one knife to our throats and one to our backs, you who pull the floor out and then demand your unjust penance.

Playtime is over, gentleman.

Make certain your suits are fitted. Be sure your ties are tied tight. There is a great reckoning whose sleeping wrath knows no rich and poor, this is a reckoning that has come for all.

Did you truly expect to hide forever?

Did you think the mysteries of gaul, thebes, and alexandria would sleep forever dormant in your vatican vaults?

Did you expect the handicap of your hidden schools to be hidden forever?

There are those who know the secrets that lie in your false cathedrals.

There are those who have more than tasted the price of the blood upon which you have built your castles.

You have cowered for too long in your shadows. You have done every thing in your power to tip the scales, but now the scale is broken.

Come.

Break with us.

Suffer yourselves not to take refuge from the great judgement.

Death is not the only horsemen who knocks on your door.

You have payed your unearned portions to these reapers of essence since before the dawn of Ashtaroth and Moloch. You have made your unholy treaties with those outer-worldly scavengers, gray and scaled ,and traded gifts of this earth that do not belong to you, in exchange for malevolent mechanics not meant for this sacred planet.

Drink now.

The dark alms of your bargaining are no longer valid in this court.

There is no satiation for the black hunger of this womb.

When these demons come they will be blind. They will not see your status. They will not see your contracts and your bank statements. They will not remember Baal and Cabal. They will not remember Thule or Arya. They will know the only thing a starved and tricked beast can ever know.

Hunger.

Oathbreakers, I ask you to come. We have prepared a place at the table. This wine is bitter and the bread is stale, but in these final hours,  let us know each other once more in the depth of communion before mankind is eclipsed in 3 days of darkness.

DRINK UP

Then, let those who survive on the other side determine the way humankind will survive.

Chin, Chin

The awakening is now.

my lover, of course, has caught the eye of the warlord. and in some strange turn of events, he has taken her to be his own. I don’t recall why this happened, or how this came to be. as a matter of fact, I can’t remember much at all. I’m currently sitting in some river of hell, with some vague recollections of a skirmish with the blood-king and his minions, and more than a couple wounds of my own to speak of. keeping me company are an onslaught of demons. they torture my every waking thought until I pass out in agony. then the pain begins. in dreams they strike without reason. with no restraint. I’ve been here only 5 seconds and my hair is grey from the eternities I have suffered.

biting through the pain I have managed to shift dimensions. an oracle. a water woman has given me a key. blue stones. as pendant, necklace, or bracelet. protection against the profane puppeteer. she washes the blood from my eyes and I am awakened into the accumulative dream. a breath of fresh air. with only the orcish haunts of 21st century progress and the ever present fear of nuclear warfare, government enslavement, and the automobile to weigh on my soul.

here I am in the woods. somewhere in the west. the trees smell of a heavenly warmth. each breath brings healing. blue waters, crystal enchantments.

if I had more control of this accumulated awakening I would make all the world in greens and golds and soft browns and blues.

for now however I simply drift.

back to heaven for a moment.

and then the plunge to hell.

party. lucifer. drugs. chaos. I am walking with my lover through the blackness of the 7 castles of some dark mordor. moments, bizarre. it’s like a Dante Alegre novel but trade the peasants for metropolitan college students. I am literally surrounded by bar kids, milling about, screaming their heads of. the great lemming exodus is ever upward towards this chasm of spiraling blackness. there is no rhyme or reason, and being without great compulsion ourselves, we follow the procession warily. dark and hooded monks whisper repulsive oaths on the fringes. they speak of a great reward at the top of the castle. we emerge to find the copulating onslaught of youth throwing themselves into the harsh shadows of an endless plunge down into the depths of a great abyss. they scream and drink merrily as they throw themselves naked into the immolation. written in blackened blood above the chasm is some sort of antithesis.

ALL YE SOULS
LOST IN YE DECADENCE
CAST YE SELVES INTO THE ABYSS
AND IN THE LETTING THROWS OF DEATH
BECOME ONE WITH THE GREAT CREATOR

I shudder and say

NO.

But my lover? Where has she gone? I search. The vacuum suddenly empty. Now faced with the thought of isolation from my desire, I step towards the edge. Ready to jump, and depart into the endlessness of yet a deeper and darker hell, my redemption comes in the form of a cackling coyote. my lover, there too. and a great swirl. I step away from the edge and into a palace full of etiquette and japanese decor. a couple makes love on the couch. velvet overhangs hang from the walls. a cream castle with deep wooden beams and golden light trickling through everywhere. I take a deep breath.

for now, again, I am free.

can I even recall where my accumulated awakening has brought me from here?

yes.

stars. endless and countless as the waves of the ocean. as mighty and ferocious. as peaceful and serene. they flicker and break on the coast. they erode the painful blackness of my virgin heart. leaving only the joyful youth. to be wild. for now. to be fulfilled. to be baptized, ever in the presence of saints. an angelic chorus of wind and water.

I drift away on that endless ocean and awake in a hotel room.

black tar. poor boys. finest heroin. cocaine and whiskey walls. this is my kind of hell. a television plays sportscenter. I drink a mix of cough syrup and red wine. a knock approaches in the doorways of my mind. then manifests in the physical. dream physical.

this is new. I dream. the deeper dream. and now I feel. there is lucidity. this is something different. the cord is getting thicker. I am pulling myself through the void and into a deeper dimension. I do not know its door. I do not know its name. all I know is I’ve been there. I am. there.

resume to the door. I can feel instantly. this is a cop. so do my cohorts in our drug induced haze.

dark stone: guys. it’s a cop.

drug homies: turn him into something.

dark stone: what?

drug homies: turn him into something.

dark stone: what? turn him into what?

too late the door opens. I see the badge. I taste the taser. I can almost feel the steel of the cuffs.

so I think fast. I imagine my old friend. a pitcher who I haven’t seen in a couple years.

*BAM*

there he is. no cop. just my old friend and the muffled applause of the rest of the homies in the drug den.

he grabs a beer. I eat some white powder. the room starts spinning. in a minute or two we’re fighting. I have issues. abandonment issues. attachment issues.

he’s mad I didn’t flush the toilet.

flash forward. a couple of fists fly. I grab a handful of dust and mark a square in the ground. dodge a left. step outside of a right, and old homie has fallen through some demon trap I’ve set.

and now?

the total and absolute dissolution of all perceived physical surroundings.

in a yellow fog the world begins to dissolve. if you could superimpose sand through an hour glass, a burning picture, and melting wax, that would come close. as the world of before begins to fall it is soon replaced by castles. new castles. this is no hell. these are vast and complex vertices of ice. great snow palaces rising up. I fall through a velvet sky into a mountain of snow. all around me are my dearest friends. I hear the barking of dogs and the cracking of reins. sled dogs. friends mushing through the white powder wonderland. ice castles everywhere. fairies of auroura borealis hues freckle the bright star kissed sky. I have fallen into a deeper dream. a new place of wonder and endless benevolent whimsy and delightful possibility.

this is my kind of heaven.

explosions mark the sky. I am pulled from conversing with anthropomorphic dogs and igloo building australians to an uproar of pixie dust filling the entire snow covered scene with the most spectacular sensory show the world has ever seen. as each speck of dust begins to hit the ground and each particle meets the snow, a strange melting happens to the snow and great and powerful trees rise up from the puddles, vast as lakes, at a mile a minute. upward. rushing upward. faster and ever faster until the whole world is that majestic gold green of the deep and sleeping forest. my brother the archer is first to his feet.

Brothers! Awake, and quickly. take refuge behind the trees…

STAMPEDE!

and in seconds a multitude of elk, as large as elephants and as tall as giraffes run through the forest by the hundreds. so dense are they at first that all one can sense is the great mass of these behemoths and the great trumpeting of the forest floor rumbling beneath their wake. their giant and corded muscles rippling, looking almost like trees themselves, and each massive exhaling breath like a warm ocean mist. this all happens so fast, and gradually, like some violent yet peaceful tsunami, this all subsides as the herd becomes smaller and more sparse until finally, a single elk, no larger than usually and gradually becoming smaller, begins to take a humaoid shape and slowly turn towards our direction with great antlers towering meters in the air and deep almonds and amber eyes glistening in the golden light. he speaks with the voice of a god and makes an utterance that wakes me into a new paradigm.

there in the counsel of the high trees in that magnificent wood, the oracle speaks.

YOU

YOU WHO HAVE GATHERED HERE IN THE DEPTHS OF YOUR DEEPEST DREAMS

FROM THIS MOMENT ON YOUR TRIBE SHALL BE KNOWN AS FAIRIE TOUNGE

FOR BY YOUR WORKS AND SONGS

HAVE AWOKEN THOSE WHO SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF THE GREAT FOREST

Dark stone reporting.

Beaming to y’all from San Francisco…again.

Fighting bad guys. Protecting the streets. Giving alms to the poor.

Blessed drives. Coastal moments. 3 vans. 13 friends. Traveling cross country. Playing music. Singing songs. Dancing in the ocean mist. Diving into the cold baptism of the pacific northwest. Waving at seals. Blowing kisses to starfish. Sprinting through the dunes. Screaming to those frozen behemoths of stone.

BLESS THESE HANDS, WE ARE FORGIVEN.

BLESS THE SCARS, MAY WE SHINE LIKE STARS.

We pulled in on a summer camp. We walked with the old guru. Back bent and broken by the aggression of those sworn to protect the people but paid to protect the financiers and the money lenders of the empire. His staff gnarled as hi humor.

Dark Stone: How are you kind sir?

Pig King: I’m…semi-spectacular.

Dark Stone: Ha.

Pig King: You’ve come to ask me…something, yes?

Dark Stone: You’ve suffered so much for peace. Beatings. Assault from cops. How do you stay so positive? How can we be men of peace in times of war?

Pig King: Where does the Lone Ranger take his trash?

Dark Stone: Huh?

Pig King: To the dump, To the dump, To the dump-dump-dump.

Bewildering.

Some lessons are beyond words.

Rewind. Wake up in the fullness of dawn, walk barefoot through the woods, stepping through the brambles and the moss. find god in all her undefined divinity speaking sweetly through the drops of the morning mist.

Fast forward. 150 kids. Singing. Dancing. Sharing their talents and truths. Shining that pure and ever lasting light of youth. The beginners mind. Hope for mankind.

Onward.

I met a sorcerer. A Sagittarius.

He gave me readings of Tarot and guess-ture. Some intuitive. Some not.

That was just a day ago. But it seems like a lifetime.

Life moves so fast on the road. There are tombs and volumes I want and could say. But who has a mind to remember all the things we’ve done? Who has a pen to partake in such beauty?

Not I. Not yet.

Being in warm company and surrounded in earnest with the communion of my 100 companions, and feeling only the emotions and tender cleverness that comes from the presence of angels, and having learned the lessons of  bear, and fox, and lava rock, I had taken quite the recess from the competitive ways of self protection and deception I once knew so well.

Judgements. Weighing them on my friends and enemies.

Judgement. Like a mountain. Teenage. Messy closet. A quick room clean of the spirit and ego. Piling all the resent into an ever filling closet. Then…one day, the closet door busts open, and it’s all laid out there.

One thing I’ve realized. It’s better to just say something. If you’re angry. Let it out. If you’re hurt. Let the pain be known. Holding in emotions is like the hardening of a stone. Release is the purifying fire that yields diamonds.

I’ve been carrying a stomach full of coal.

But it’s great. With this poetic retelling of my process. I’m seeing every transgression on me as a transgression I’ve inflicted on someone else. It’s pretty cool actually. It’s reminding me of old friends and old times. There’s a lot of guilt, sure. But there’s a lot of nostalgia too. For all the silly and careless ways I’ve been, it never really was that bad. It’s just…learning. Seeing now through new eyes how i’ve taken advantage of people without meaning too. How I’ve made other people work on my behalf and been unappreciative of their efforts. There’s so many ways I’ve been, and I’m feeling them right now. It’s perfect. To remember. To forgive. Not only others, but myself as well.

I guess that’s the great illusion. That “I got it” space of self reflection and development. Life laughs just to remind you that you don’t. And that not having “it” is totally ok.

It’s the point actually.

There is a way on the road that is at once so distant and simultaneously familiar. For now, I’m home. Home in the bay. Home for now. I’ll sleep on a floor. Or in the van. Or under the light polluted sky.

But for now I’m drunk on the streets of San Francisco.

Another restless soul. Finding my rest in the chill and the fog.

Hanging from an alleyway staircase. Chasing giants into churches of blue. Finding that soothing peace in one congregations definition of what is god. Turning the other cheek. Forgiving those who betray. Loving endlessly and turning the tables on the money lenders. Fasting. Walking miles through endless desert. Confronting fortune and saying “so long” to the devil.

Though the church be crooked, the walk be straight.

Jesus Christ. Bless the homie.

Turn and face the strain.

Go with the flow.

I am just a passing wave. A sea turtle out at sea. Drifting from one micro-cosim of blessing to the other.

I am also a body. A soul in a body navigating this ship into the night. There is the smile. There is the laughter.

There is the pain. There are the late nights and long drives.

For my weariness I have been given strength.

For my sickness I have been given health.

For my wings I’ve been given…

Airplanes.

Wake up in Tahoe. Wake up in Vegas. Wake up in San Francisco. Wake up in Reno. Wake up in Denver. Wake up in Hawaii. Wake up in Fargo. Wake up in Minneapolis.

What time is it here? Do people smile in the street as they walk past? Do we give handshakes or hugs here? A kiss on the cheek? Much less? Maybe more?

Has it  really only been 5 weeks?

I am not the man I was yesterday. I am not the child I was before. I am not the ghost I will be tomorrow. I am not the demon. I am not the angel. I am not the memory nor the premonition. I am…

Now.

Conor Oberst has a line in one of his songs where he says “We’ll need something to remind us of all the sweetness that has passed through us.”

Lately it seems, sweetness prepares the way for sweetness.

Past becomes present. Present becomes future.

NOW remains NOW.

It is however, a gift to reminisce.

Remember walking for hours? Past those dark dragons and serpents at the rivers mouth. How we dove through the waterfall past the bloody fallen angel, where you stopped and washed his feet and we paddled forward and onward to that great magic beast. All leaf green and towering over the waters. I’ve never seen anything so massive in my life. I can still feel it’s leviathan breath on my essence. I can still feel your hand in mine.

Remember walking up the hillside? Broken glass and homeless remnants of the American dawn. Each step a stronghold or a pitfall. Panting at the top. Dirty and covered in sweat. We found that field of mangos. Each one like some bountiful eightball that said:

At the end of each trial is treasure.

Remember the mountains? The fire that swept through acre after acre. Remember how Johnny showed us he really could fly? Bouncing from peak to peak and screaming the name of his virgin gods. Do you remember that wild fox screaming Adonis and Messiah and Shiva as he drove that trident into the cliffs and how the earth shook and the winds howled as he offered up his song of protection. For the people of Boulder. For the children of the hills.

Remember the stage. The sweat? The endless heat and those 4 doors. I thought I would die and you held me. I thought I would live forever and you smiled and said,

“We will see.”

Brother.

We walked barefoot on the rocks for miles and miles. Towards the moon. Towards the great eclipse. We raised our spirits from the sands and howled at the greatness of the pyramid night sky.

Sleeping in vans. Sleeping in buses. Sleep in planes. Sleeping on sidewalks. Sleeping on floors.

Where am I now. Where was I yesterday?

Are we really so young? Biking crooked to Yellow Cafes where Jesuit cultists call false prophet, fool, and while one druken companion just smiles and says:

“Between false gods, and whiskey, I do believe I’ll have myself another drink.”

That tax collector scoffed;

“You are a fool to think that God is Love.”

And we just smiled and stumbled all the way to Denver, basking in the endless glow of wild fire and heavenly love.

Shit, I even fell off my bike. Drifting from memory to memory. Sunflowers and bird wine. Drunk on solstice air. I howled then. Loud like before and louder as to come. I remembered another dream.

Hot tubs. Sauna. Resort living with full stomachs. Counting stars and kissing in the moonshade of that great sleeping buddha. We were kittens. Running through the farm, picking up mice and rubbing our whiskers in the soft afternoon grass. We were dolphins. The whole beach came alive with our laughter. Swallowing saltwater and diving deeper and deeper into blues and greens and ocean grays.

You would always be the first to jump. I would always be the first to catch you.

Stuck in this machine as we may be, we choose with each breath to honor the Sun and Moon and serve the sacred earth. Through the darkness of the age. Through the darkness of self. There is a greater depth and a deeper light within that calls to all beings. A void that beckons us all.

We have answered the call. To protect the earth. To honor every living being as serene.

The greatest beauty of all.

She hears us.

My name is no longer.

I am free to be as I have always been.

Free to see the perfection.

Free to take the good with the bad.

Free from definition.

Free from this hell.

I had erected prison walls. I stood for years captive in my doubts, my regret, my fear, my shame, my pain.

I erected an altar for each. I gave them names and with my power of will I gave them life.

I numbered them. I gave them systems of guilt. I gave them complex rules and guidelines.

I spent years perfecting this prison.

From time to time light would crack through. I would catch a glimpse on the cell walls.

At first I would only see the darkness illuminated.

A light would shine on my fear and I would only see FEAR.

It took awhile.

But grace.

Grace never gives up.

Grace is relentless.

Grace keeps on shining.

So shine she did, and by her persistent grace I began to notice cracks in the walls.

They appeared first as cracks in the paint.

I had always been restless in this prison of fear and lies. Upon seeing the chipping paint, I began to pick.

The paint was solid at first. Stuck and dried from the years of application.

But the light. The light continued to shine. The light continued to beam it’s truth and I kept picking until the letters began to peel away.

LO.

I saw fear give way for LOVE.

I saw pain turn away for PRAISE.

I saw shame give way for FORGIVENESS.

I saw death become LIFE.

I saw doubt become BRAVERY.

I saw all that was shallow regain DEPTH.

I saw all that was silenced SPEAK.

I saw all that was selfish in me learn to GIVE.

I saw the prison walls TRANSFORM.

I heard the angels SING.

Such a glorious sound coming from all sides. Cracks in the walls vibrating in deafening angelic intensity. The walls shattered. The intensity growing and growing and above that chorus of light I heard a new voice. A voice I had only heard once before when my being was called into existence. This voice rose above all the others and began to swell like a giant tidal wave and crashed against the final remnants of those prison walls. I heard the voice cry out

ALL IS FORGIVEN.

And in that instant I was free.

Free to walk in a world of endless blessing.

Free to SMILE.

Free to LAUGH.

Free to DANCE.

Free to SING.

Free to SHINE.

The best part is now, I realize…

The voice was mine.

A wise man once said:

“it is only when we realize that the divine speaks through us that we can truly begin to speak divine.”

Well, what are we waiting for?

SPEAK DIVINE.