Images and Thoughts

[from my personal journal]

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On the slope to first Burroughs a second time, when the fog rolled in thick, in the setting sun’s yellow light, the earth around me disappeared, there was only a slope of snow, the radiant fullness of the star across from me, as though I were ten or twenty feet from it. The path to the inner self which falls away to reveal a radiant other, the only kind of peaceful solitude, being a part of him or her, of it, of it all. Such an idea is embodied rather clearly in the orange orb I saw with ease, cloaked in cold air and modified by moisture. Our star is not a symbol, nor a god. The snow bank ascending and descending into oblivion both ways was just as memorable and important. But in this dream, it is here with us, in this dream, it points in all directions, in this dream a thousand paths are laid open before it, in my dream a beautiful conflation of mirages lurks behind each moment, and to press them together into an image with referential meaning does not require benevolence or malevolence but only ready willingness to move to the next path with curiosity and binding confidence. From intuition a tapestry of symbols is sewn that reveals my romantically twisted whims, but when I can balance there on the edge of all my whims, I can dream (or paint, I hope) a gesture of gratitude that might reciprocate the intrigue of life, into death, into the unknown chaos of matter with no hidden meaning. Grace is generated and the fingers of the dark universe beckon tantalizingly from corners of light and vision, a form of embrace, outside of moral obligation, of mutual being, of death within life and life within death, of the experience of time disintegrating. Even if it comes back, one moment where the veil is cut through, which surely I have felt, which surely I have known, which surely I can remember, that is what it takes to lift the heaviest dangerous amnesia of this dream.

I want only to dream more within whatever framework I can (to feel outwards), to find the tenacity in weightlessness, to tease the bold out of the transient, to remember the briefness of eternity. Whatever I seek could be worth it, but a whim is not a whim if I am not also touching something solid. Sometimes I let go and I float around a bit in confusion or despair before I remember I can’t look without eyes. Nice gooey eyes. They anchor me again to my saddle. My body encases me like syrup on stone. I rolled around on a beach and all the specks of dust stuck to me like memories.

I am not a stone.

I am not a human.

I was once, though, both.