WRITING (2017)
Love, Loves, and Half a Love
Hillside adventures, sitting on a stone wall, he listens to her talk as she takes off her clothes and showers with a water hose, turning toward him nonchalantly as she continues the conversation. They lay on the ground, her head on his arm, then she gets up to go to her house on top of the hill. Erotic intrigue, wearing only a green football jersey as he follows her, tangling herself in a long mesh curtain, as he takes a pair of scissors to cut her free.
Laying in bed, he watches her walk across the room, lithe and tanned, fascinated by the white tips on her cropped black hair. Music plays and a shower runs in the bathroom, billowing in with warm steamy air. Fully opening the sliding door, he walks in to an orgy in progress, white guys naked behind frosted glass in the steaming shower. Closing the door into the darkened living room, he bumps into someone on his way in.
Through the dim light, he sees groups of brown and black men and boys lounging on sofas and chairs in the dark. A young man with curly hair and a mustache catches his eye with interest as he walks by, headed back to the bedroom. Finding her there kneeling on the white bedsheets, they embrace, ready to make love in the misty fog from the shower. She stands up, pulls on some riot gear, and playfully attacks him with a baton. He grabs it and wrestles her onto the bed atop him, as they smile and laugh. Forcibly pulling off the gear, he slathers with white muddy clay, looking like icing on her naked body, and notices the strange way she looks sexy, like an indigenous zombie girl.
Moving to the table, together they sit. He stares at the wet clay against her skin as she puts a leg under the table, touches his and says, “I’d really like to spend some time together, I think we’d enjoy that”, looking him flirtingly in the eye. He pauses, leaning forward and says “that would be fun, we could watch some movies, or just…” his voice trailing off. Reflective, he says, “I like my highs deep not shallow”, and pictures her flowing like a fountain as he begins to sing “deep and wide, deep and wide, there’s a fountain flowing deep and wide”.
Later, asleep, the riot gear strewn across the floor and bedsheets caked in dried mud, he is awakened by a string of licorice dangling on his lips and begins to chew upward. Opening his eyes, he sees her upside down face smiling at him, chewing her way towards him, their lips almost meeting. Her baby girl is at her hip, as she places her on his stomach and the child squeals with delight. She picks up the girl, and they walk outside to the gazebo to her daughter’s birthday party, and he turns to hug her when she says, “let’s do this, on the lips”, as they come together in a tender and extended kiss.
He has a vision of his true female self looking back at him, poignant but coy. Brown skinned face and piercing eyes in the flickering light. Sitting at the edge of the pool, she motions and he swims over to her. Looking in his eyes, she pulls him close once more and says “kiss me”. Closing his eyes, they embrace, then separating, she looks at him again, and points down toward the water between her legs saying, “I meant here”.
Frontiers of Flight
(Past) Driving an old wagon through wooded country dirt back roads, he slows down as they approach a group of natives walking in the middle of the road and pass through a huge puddle where they are ritually bathing in the muddy water. Pausing, he notices their long black braided hair and the bones they hold, and horses standing in the water with them.
Leaving the puddle, they come upon a huge train of tarnished silver, and a mad engineer who talks about how he is going to take a group of unsuspecting people on one last horrific train ride. They approach the large stockage wall of an old fort, and the gate opens for them to leave.
Sensing the train on the other side of the wall, he realizes that if they stay, they will be killed when it fires up. They pass people loading onto the train, sitting in open compartments, and realize they are going to their deaths. The train powers up as it prepares to leave.
(Present) Watching as a line of soldiers moves across the rolling desert plateau, under fire from blue tracers. They move parallel to the soldiers at a distance, the two of them, into enemy territory, and find a stash of shrink wrapped cassettes and two amber crystals. His partner says, “you should take those”. He sees from an inscription that they belong to a teenaged Palestinian girl, so he leaves them there.
Now, climbing a high mountain pass, they watch as down below Nazi troops come near. Holding his rifle and waiting for a signal from his partner to attack, he looks for bullets but finds none. No signal comes as the troops advance on the high plain, and he makes his way alone, passing invisibly through a wave of attack dogs and their soldier handlers, who don’t see him as they rush to battle. Free again, he runs back toward the border, climbing a steep canyon wall of overhanging stone terraces to get back to his own land and safety.
(Future) In the space suit, he fumbles with the pants, pulling them down to take a leak in front of the craft’s window, noticing a circle of people standing outside in the sun looking his way. Embarrassed, he pulls up the bulky pants vowing not to do that again. Still wearing the protective suit, he goes under a misty chemical spray bath. The zombies are taking over. His team is preparing the handmade space vehicle to pilot and capture a metallic moth in space to end their invasion.
He prepares to leave his woman behind for the journey, thinking of the seaside cottage perched on the rocks, where they walked hand in hand on that sunny day, the air salty and warm with the spray of water as the surf pounded the rocks. On board now, in a seventies style room, with vintage mood lighting, on the wall a poster of that cottage by the sea. Leaving his fellow astronaut in the next compartment, he flips the switches on a bank of blue lights under plexiglass.
Looking outside, from the confines of their ship that they are in some type of alternate reality. He is hooked up to an intravenous robotic killing machine made from a video game console or cable tv box. Pulling the needle out from his arm, he stomps on it, smashing it to pieces as it attempts to skitter away. He grabs its flywheel brain, tearing apart the multitude of tiny memory chips, scattering them in all directions as his partner yells for him to stop, madness possessing him.
Suddenly, a high powered weapon seemingly controlled by an angry being shoots methodically, hitting random targets nearby. He sees that it is a rogue fighter jet of immense scale, maneuvering along above the ground firing blasts from its nose, causing great damage. Now just a couple of hundred feet away, it turns toward him as he moves the craft obliquely, throwing his unsuspecting partner to the floor, and begin to ascend rapidly, moving skillfully into the air, quickly putting distance between them and the killer weapon. High above the earth and holding onto a four leaf clover as he pilots their craft, he descends lightly and faraway landing into a lush green expanse, feeling free and safe.
Stepping out, he looks up at a strange evening sky as a blue white asteroid skims by, watching as it crashes into the planet in the distance, a huge dust cloud rising and spreading his way, peacefully considering that it may be the end of this world they have just discovered. Looking down, he sees that the cloak on his suit has a design showing that very same trajectory of the planet crashing down, in some weird kind of prophetic design.
Unto the Sepulchre
Pushing an old cart along a rough cobblestone street, you stop and goes down into a decrepit cave like courtyard of a haunted church or grotto. You are scared and intrigued as you walk up toward a stone shrine lit by candlelight with creatures embedded on the wall. An open crypt is there in the wall, carved concave into stone. You walk in, thinking to yourself “I came in here to dream a peaceful dream”. Time passes and light shines through a hole at the top of the space, as you remember the dreams of the night. Kneeling on the stone cave-like floor, you look through a small opening down unto the sepulcher of deep water where an agitated sea creature, some kind of shark, is down there looking for prey.
Walking along, you notice the floor undulating, as though it is breathing. Fascinated, you walk along its ivory surface, which feels like skin and bone. Kneeling down, you peer into a furnace glowing fiery red, like the mouth of an angry monster. Looking back you see a tall monster approaching in the misty darkness. Heading rapidly toward a stairwell, you see an opening that leads somewhere unknown. Diving in, you float and turn through space to look upon a vast underwater city, of abandoned antiquity, bathed in an amber glow. You float over the building tops, like rocky outcroppings, as though flying above them. Diving deeper, the waters darken and there are more swimming sharks. You see a word seeming esoteric and arranged in a circle on the ocean floor, but can’t recognize it clearly.
Warm bright sunshine hits your face as you swim up through billowing ocean waves, other swimmers in the water nearby. You tell them no matter what they see, to keep moving and it will be ok. Moving fast across the smooth waters, you pass quickly through turbulence, and then across the path of a large snake, who rolls across and over as you pass, leaving it behind. Nearing shore and touching the ground below, you walk forward, neck deep, as it gradually becomes more shallow. You feel the warmth of the water, noting the blue color and white foam of the surf, and taste the extreme saltiness of the water as you head toward the shoreline in shallow rolling surf.
Buster Keaton
Watching a beautiful film that he made twenty years ago. It begins with a fallen native kneeling on the ground, struggling to hold onto the reins of a horse above him as he tries to calm it. In the next scene, he pulls a dead tree across the frame from left to right, wearing only a swim suit with American flag trim, contrasting against his skin.
Set in black and white, it transforms into a swashbuckling theatrical production. He slides down a sheer fabric and drops a long distance, but knows he won’t be hurt because it is illusionistic, a story. He unfurls a long white flag with a field of white stars. A young girl grabs, pulling the flag and breaks it from its pole.
The camera pulls back, revealing him now as a clown in ruffles standing blurred in the distance and dancing in slow motion. His hips shake and shimmy, an exaggerated open mouthed smile in black lipstick on white face paint. It pans to reveal a row of clowns all dancing freestyle in a row from tall to short, in blurry black and white grainy film stock.
Hundreds of people watch the film in the auditorium. From the top row of seats, he sees himself on the screen, and then, opening a bottle of soda, pours it over his head in a meaningful symbolic way. He does it just for laughs, and the audience applauds.
Now, the film is over and the crowd disperses outside. Walking home, he notices red flames of light on the dark horizon, and silhouetted bodies dancing before the huge fire, as though performing some type of ritual. Zooming in to the illuminated dirt lot, a basketball player dressed as an African tribesman holds a shaker gourd in his hand as a tribal drummer plays. Sizing up the over the back shot, he concentrates, closing his eyes and tosses the gourd over his shoulder from a half court distance, a perfect shot into the basket.
Walking onto the ball court, he shoots hoops with a dark skinned boy and girl. Arcing the ball high toward the basket, it doesn’t come down. Looking up, he sees that it is balanced atop a power line. The line moves slightly in the wind, and as the ball falls downs, he catches and shoots it again, and once more it balances on the line, as the boy plays a special guitar made in a Mexican village high in the mountains. Its metal body vibrates, feeling like magic.
The boy and girl put white paint on themselves in some kind of performance. He walks up and joins them, slathering paint on himself. Now, two heavy set men, old time comedians stand on stage in suits. One of them, the straight man, is covered in black paint. He takes a spray can and begins to spray black paint onto the other comedian’s suit, the fall guy, who is visibly upset. “All in or nothing!” he exclaims, and continues to spray his frowning companion, who flails at the air in protest.
The children’s mother walks up, and pulls the boy and girl away from the chaotic scene, as he follows them. Together they run along the open landscape, as the atmosphere takes on a peculiar quality of intense light and storm clouds roll overhead. He senses that lightning is about to strike and tries to stay calm as they come to a cleft in the ground, and drop down into the crevasse for safety. Finding a sofa there, he reclines with the mother and children as the storm passes up above, and she says to him, “let’s do something creative”.
Finding a mic stand and guitar stashed behind the sofa, she puts on a black fur coat and begins to play crunchy slow heavy metal style chords, as he dons a silver metallic face mask and channels dark lyrics “unto, unto the sepulcher” into the mic with a growling voice. The boy and girl watch, as he continues to sing, now dressed in a pirate costume. “Well this looks familiar”, she says, unplugging the guitar as they walk through an opening in the rock into an underground cathedral with huge stained glass windows.
It is an ancient indigenous church, carved from stone, and at the altar an old woman performs blessings for those waiting. The young girl walks up to her, past those in line, and drawing an object to her face inhales, moving the smoke from the pipe over the old woman’s body in a ceremonial ritual. Pulling incense or sage from a basket, she gently blows it toward a blind baby, held by its grandfather in the line, as a sacred act of healing. Stirring now, the baby crawls toward the basket as coals glow a low fire inside it.
Watching the baby, he gets the distinct feeling that he is on fire and burning, but in another dimension, like a ghost or spirit being that cannot be easily seen. Falling to the ground, he yells out, “help me! help me!” as someone walks through and passes over him. He wakes up in a hospital bed, next to a black man wrapped in bandages. His friend, a hoodoo healer man, walks up and lays hands on him, as bright lights begin to flash in his field of vision. Getting up from the bed, he pulls the sheets and mattress away to reveal an arrangement of objects underneath, small tin milagros, swords and hearts placed in the shape of my body, and realize they are amulets placed there by his former lover as a form of protection.
Tower of Shiva Tower of Shakti
Cascading waterfalls of pink light against a dark sky as irregular orbs rotate sunlike above the horizon from left to right backlit in the distance. Shimmering blacklight shines your way, rotating like a searchlight beacon at the end of a long undefined field in the dark. In the distance, a tower rises, columns of light stacked haphazard into the night sky, shimmering vision fields of indigo splattered star freckles strobing upward into spiraling magenta ghost flowers that unfold petal by petal, a black diamond sparkle hidden among the creases.
At its base, you see a set of stairs winding upward without rails, and wondering how you might have the courage to go up. You stand there, picturing yourself climbing up the spiraling form as you sing “close your eyes, close your eyes, close your eyes…”, confident that you have mastered the performance. And somehow you do, ascending the spiraling tower staircase, where you see a majestic lioness guarding the top, and slip around the other side to avoid her. Climbing onto a structure atop the roof, you survey the landscape below. The lioness appears before you, her gaze staring into and through you, brightly colored lights all around her, as she holds her legs out from her body like a tantric deity.
Black kaleidoscope facets of light envelope you, rapidly overlapping, as down below you run through alleyways, scenes spliced one into the other, images spiraling fast in sequence, grasping to hold onto one, but they slip through your vision in pulsating fractals so you surrender to the onslaught of sensation. Figures vague but familiar pass quickly in shadow silhouette as though running through a crowd in the darkness. Blurring and indistinct form gives way to neon chakra mandalas illuminating the night.
Colors like a rainbow flag hanging in the air just in front of you, bleeding and dripping onto the ground. Feeling light and free, you rise into the air and move through the ethereal rainbow colored space.
