Wednesday, February 16, 2011

In Production

Layers melt away until all I can see are the patterns. The mechanisms in my life are hard at work. As the equations work themselves down to their simplest expressions, I see it all play out. And it all seems so familiar. The faces behind the masks, the meanings behind the words. All those I've always known but never met.

I glide between the orbits, never making contact. Pieces come together, pieces fall apart. I see lone elements on vagrant paths to nowhere, I see overwhelming plans coming to fruition.

It's all so beautiful in its function. It's the art of living. Paint stroke decisions, melodic mistakes, the grammar of emotions.

I wonder the landscape of my past, strolling through the painful times and taking a moment to rest in the pleasant ones. I watch the machine operate as a whole. It doesn't make a sound, flawlessly creating a product never meant to be completed.

Things start to lose their perfection, variables are added to the equations. An uncertain future fractures the landscape. The masks slip back on, the layers are laid down once again. I begin to lose sight of the orbits. As the over-saturated colors of subjectivity begin to fade in from the monochromatic perfection I'd witnessed, I find myself back in the abstract.

I step into the future and let the mechanisms get back to work, and I make some new paint strokes. The melody goes on.

1 comment:

The Spiritual Hobo said...

I like your site. Thanks! Here is a true story of mine in return.

I BROKE THE TABOO WITH A TATTOO
Lisa Nicole Lopes had premonitions about her own death, but she wasn't able to avoid it, despite the early warnings. I feel that I can relate to her, but I dealt with similar suspicions (of my own) differently than she did and I, unlike her, am here to tell you what I did to survive my first encounter with The Reaper.

Lisa Lopes was better known as Left Eye (a nickname that a boyfriend gave her because he said that her left eye was lazy). She was one of three singers in the 80's band TLC. Her premonitions about her own death and subsequent untimely demise are well documented, because Lisa and a crew were filming a documentary in Honduras during the time. Left Eye Lopes spoke on film about her omen, and again after a car that she was riding in had run over and killed a young boy. She lamented that the spirit that killed the boy was actually aiming for her but had missed.

Lopes paid for the little boy's funeral and did what she could to comfort the lost lad's family. Apparently Left Eye was right about the spirit that haunted her, because a month after the boy's death, Lopes died in a car crash (in Honduras). This time she was driving. Lisa was the only one in the vehicle that was wearing a seat-belt, but she died... and everyone else survived.

After hearing a story like this, some would say that it was Lisa's time, and that there wasn't anything that she could do to avoid it. Had I not gone through a similar situation, I might agree. But since I did, I don't.

There was a time when I felt like (my) death was close to me. I ignored the eery feelings for awhile, chocking them up to pessimism, but eventually I faced the strengthening force, first by admitting to my self that it existed. Left Eye got this far, but recognizing spirits isn't rocket science for god's sake. You have to fight shit like this, not freeze like a deer caught in the headlights!

I FOUGHT MY TABOO WITH A TATTOO.

It was 1986 and I was in Davenport, Iowa, when I finally decided to face the Reaper before he faced me. Since the Reaper has no face, I'm speaking figuratively.
I was sitting on a bar stool when a fellow came in asking if anyone wanted to get a tattoo. We chatted, and before too long I was the customer that he was looking for. We left the bar and went to a little garage space that he tattooed out of. The scene was totally unprofessional, as far as tattoo shops go, but since I was a carny (carnival guy) it wasn't anything new to me. I stopped the artist from apologizing for the place and we got down to the business of picking something out to tattoo on me.

There wasn't a lot to choose from, no walls of colorful flash or volumes of designs just a single, thinly filled, loose leaf binder. Having never wanted a skull tattoo, I surprised myself by selecting one with a black rose between it's teeth. "That's the Black Rose Of Death tattoo," the needler told me. "Perfect," I proclaimed! "It's just what I need to fight the reaper. Put it on my left arm where I can keep my eye on him.¨

I believe that the left represents the spiritual side and the right represents the physical side, so my tattoos are placed accordingly. One month later, in Chicago, I was stabbed (in the heart and stomach) to death. The doctor that saved me, said that I have a new birthday and... I still have that tattoo, too.