A Travelling Circle

“Whenever I’ve been faced with a fork in the road and didn’t know which way to go, something always guided me and it was always for the better.” says the gentle man, sporadically slipping through dream days.

His eyebrows are thick and bushy. As he talks they move amicably up and down like plump, hairy, grey caterpillars above soft brown eyes.

“How’s your love?” he asks.

His memory is good. I haven’t seen him in months, not since I carried my life on my back again through the rain. He is alive. I feel his vibe. My body rises. With the next thought, it falls.

“I don’t know where to begin with that right now.” I answer.

“Ok, don’t worry. Just keep dreaming.” He says with his soft, soothing voice.

He reminds me of a Dad I never had. I’m tempted to ask him to retell the story of how he and his wife met, the story his wife wrote a book about, but I don’t.

“I really believe dreams are all we’ve got, I mean, really.” He says.

I can’t see his lips; they move a fuzzy, seal lion moustache over the dry beach plain of his face.

“If you take away a person’s dream, you take away…everything. There’s no harm in dreaming because you never know, they may come true.”

The City At Night.

Dusk creeps over the warm palm tree stretching city of angels as I shower with sage and sit on a sofa on the porch with a skateboarding cowboy musician, listening to the sounds of the night, awaiting the arrival of a post dance party gyrating, midnight starlit sky caressing brief encounter endeavor. Butterflies flutter by rising from my belly and dance through my mind. She arrives in a silver spaceship. A girlfriend of another sipping beer throughout the day at the shhhhmoke house goes woooooh and descends steps to introduce herself. I move from left leg to right, shifting weight. I want to invite her too, so I can slip into silence without emphasis. After polite introductions, the L.A woman fresh from her spaceship turns to me and asks if I’m ready. An overly brisk nod of the head follows, like a nodding doll on the dash of a dirt buggy. My brain jingle jangles inside like a tambourine.

Quiet in the passenger seat, we slip through streets to a restaurant and eat dinner, I’m distant and weird. She’s nervous and shy. It’s awkward and clammy. Deciding to cut through mangled messes of heartbreak, of pressures from past ideals of perfections projected from others, deluded illusion and loose the thread imagination, of conditioning, of prison, I stutter utter fidget shuffle truths at the table, hoping for a connection. The space between us is vast in comparison to the sweaty music swaying night of lust and attraction, which brought us close together, suffocating the silent dry scream of devastation.

Close to the peak of moving along with textual healing from the L.A woman, a hot kiss from the lips that cried goodbye on a bleak, rainy day burns me up like the sunshine. The full on lip smacking, dream flying, swirling, lassoing hearts back home again, to ride free spirited into the oblivion of bliss, swaying sweetly from the stars, where bags from shoulders fall fast to the ground and arms consume, embrace, ignite, connect, fly to the heavens, with feet on ground and mind flying, heartbeat bouncing through the cosmos as the kiss lasts through new worlds, old ones, torn ripped freeways, the cities and the streets, through all of this.

I tell the L.A woman my truth and she tells me hers of trickery and lies, of seeing the brightness of what is, but squinting and closing her eyes, echo booms self-torture and she ends with caution and now she’s more weary of others and I wonder why she’d stay in something once she saw the illusion, but I’m not here to judge, but to try and understand, to listen, to relate, to not fuck this woman tonight.

“Do you wanna come back to mine?” She asks outside the restaurant as we wait for her spaceship to come around.

Feet in water, not on shore. I stutter utter vowels and sounds, panic splash tongue and my nerves kick out my limbs in different directions as animal and angel battle in the grounds of mind, rolling, beating, lashing, kicking up dirt, and choking my throat.

“It’s ok. You don’t have to. I just wanted to show you my place. I could bring you back afterwards.”

Ten lifetimes pass by in the sticky scene of a second and finally we’re moving on to a rooftop bar, where the view span stretches midnight twinkling skyscrapers, which appear to sigh. We talk of things that have no meaning or relevance in this moment because I’ve fallen asleep, dreaming of a distant doctor. I can’t remember words spoken, which is the ultimate reminder.

The inhalation of air through a straw in an empty glass, bar ice cubes, breaks the egg shell stepping silence with a noise like the hungry gargle burp of a sink, drain digesting a liquid luncheon. She looks at me and suggests we leave. I need a wee. So does she. We enter the bathroom, and as I walk into the cubicle, she follows, pushing me up against the wall, and bringing her lips to mine. Her cheek and nose becomes fuzzy, like a sand storm. I see the toilet and avert my eyes, hoping to salvage a smidgen of romanticism. I look back to her and see three closed eyes moving like a kaleidoscope. My mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water, I’m not into this. Is she the same woman as before? Am I the same?…Arh, right, that’s where it’s at. She pulls back.

“I followed you in here. I’ll leave.” she says.

I close the door behind her and sit on the toilet. I don’t know if I’ve urinated or if I’m waiting to. I sit for a lifetime, blowing my own mind.

She drives me back to the shhhmoke house.

“I love this song.” she says in her spaceship, turning up Bowie and muting the silence.

Mind static muffles the lyrics. I attempt to say nothing.

“Can you get in? It looks like everyone’s sleeping.” She asks, pulling up outside the slow snoring shhmoke house.

“I dunno. I’m about to find out. If not, the guys are sleeping over on the sofa; I can knock on the window and wake them up.”

“I wanna snuggle.” She says batting her eyelids reminding me of Betty Boob.

“You do?” I’m confused.

“Where are you sleeping?”

“In with the hippie businessman Wayne Campbell, we’re leaving early tomorrow morning. The guys are staying over.”

“I wanna snuggle.” Her eye lashes move some more.

“In with me and the hippie businessman Wayne Campbell?”

She shrugs.

“There’s no room.”

“I’m being silly, I should go.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

An awkward flutter kiss on each cheek parts us.

I slip in with the hippie business man Wayne Campbell and lay awake beginning to believe that I’m not ready for close encounters of the bird kind.

A Brief Moment in History

In tent, half moon and stars shine light land trees, pond drying, grass damp, kissing hot lips in cool air, hearing distant sounds, like a Gladiators arena, savage men shout, cry, anger anguish.

A small animal dies, snatched by the mouth of a fox, a surprised yelp surfaces, cut short by silence, the end of life accepted by nature’s ceremonious hush.

We snuggle spoon, release energies up to the moon and fall asleep gently rocking on each other’s body waves, waking before the sun rises and the tent melts.

Doctors and Fairies

I remember laying entwined in her universe, singing The Beatles, The Beach Boys, the feel good vibes of optimism and positivity, whistling the tune of love, which floated up and through my eyes, blinking acceptance and patience in both. I never saw the slap, the spin, the crash crush coming…

…FLASH…

My eyes roll out of my head and back to her, fuzzy, wavy orb to definite form. She pushes a raft with my bloodied skull upon it, further, further into the cool, blue ocean tide. She never jumps on, instead she heads back to the sand made of chains and the trees made from brains. She stands there waving goodbye or hello as I slip into unconsciousness without her kiss.

Do fairies exist? She dances tiny in my palm, sipping whiskey, wine and gin. Is it a dream? She whispers curiousities into my ear with the lightest breath, which creates a wild whirlwind within. The raft breaks, cracks, smashes, tears, capsizes. I reach out to her. She spits words of hurt and hate and flies away with another, who takes her by the shoulder. She follows because they have that thing in common.

Washed up, I find some solace, a place for the storm to quieten on the inside in a hot room with The L Word and icecream, huddled under blankets. If I crawled the walls, I don’t remember, but I’m on the ceiling. I stay here emptying the water from my lungs, heart and eyes, before life begins biting at my arse like an over excited dog wanting to play. I can’t ignore it. The heartbreak is leaving and in its place comes the healing.

Rat Race

Indian Aaron bounces over the Las Vegas casino carpeted ballroom floor in bright white sneakers, with small shiny beady eyes that dart here and there and a long nose which runs down the centre of his triangular face below a flat cap, I’m surprised at the absence of a long, skinny tail trailing behind him.

“There is a different kind of yoga; the idea is to burn it all up.” He says, after jumping onto the stage and seeing a yoga mat.  “If someone wants to be an alcoholic because they think drinking is the best thing in the world, they drink and drink and drink and drink, until they realize it’s poison, then they won’t drink no more. Burn them all up. Do it now. Then you’ll be free from desire and enjoy everything with joy because they’ll be no desire, attachment or suffering.”

He runs a long, slender finger over the strings of a communal guitar.

“Everything people have told themselves they are, they’re not. They’re something completely different. Do it now, without fear. Burn it up. Reality is whatever we make it.” He jumps off the stage and runs along the side of the ballroom bar, disappearing out into the oozing neon street.

SaViNg ThE wOrLd WiTh A sMiLe

We’re saving the world with our smiles because we have love in our hearts and we want to share it, show it, and spread it. It’s the simplest, smallest, most effective gesture we can use, it brings lightness to being and it can flip the day around, bringing sun ray waves to dark mood shades and rain puddle splashes to desert dry sadness.

It’s easy for the mouth to curl upwards and the heart to beat a harmonious tune to skip along to, when the bounce in the step takes us over the moon and through the stars, rolling in Venus and spin twirl dancing with Mercury.  It’s a little tougher to remember, when circled by armour and weaponry, where flurries of attack are delivered with tongues or grey, concrete walls, spanning far and wide loom gloomily, where the only contrast in colour is from a sign repeating, ‘No touching, no breathing, no living allowed.’ Or stepping, slipping, suffocating in the quicksand blob of a broken heart. Still, these are the times when it matters most to remember, remember to love.

When we fill ourselves with love in the darkest desolation of our days and the brightest revelation of our nights, we live with a peace that remains throughout all the wild storms that may come and go. It’s not always in the gesture of a smile, ‘We can’t always can,’ says a Spanish Jane Russell, fast becoming a best friend. A great reminder, that we’re not machines on the crystalised conveyor belt of darkness or the sticky thick syrup belt of happiness. The light guides the way, but it can also blind the way. However, the truth and the magic live forever in the feeling of love.

Spare Some Change? Make A Change!

The bums, the homeless, the drunks sheep walk through the streets, scavenging for a dime and a drink, mumbling mind madness like a string pulled from their gullets with words upon it, expressed in slurry monotone mumbles, where the only difference in pitch comes from an anger that erupts sporadically like a volcano with hiccups.

I wonder if I’ve become jaded and tainted by seeing this so frequently, no longer do I make eye contact or pass change with a smile. Now, I deny their presence. I walk by as though the mumbling mad men and cracked out angry eye rolling, teeth grinding women do not exist.

I mention this one afternoon, walking with a wonder flower on a mission down the mission, as a zombie in ripped clothes, moves towards us with an outstretched hand. He doesn’t get his feed, our feet move by him quicker than he can literally blink.

“Instead of giving spare change, what if everybody saved it and put it together to open up a space where hot meals could be prepared and given out daily.”

“Exactly! I don’t give them anything,” she says, stomping forwards. “People say they are against Bush and all he stands for, but then they support it by throwing money to these guys who will head straight to the liquor store or crack dealer.”

There is a way to change.

I’m in the middle of a bunch of hippies on a joyride through the city. I listen to stories of getting drunk, so fucking wasted, puking and falling in it and my mind spins. These kids aren’t twenty. They’re not new to this malarkey. There’s some kind of rotten stench of a contradiction in the beliefs of, Wake up! Wake up! Wake up world, when there are wishes to fall asleep by noon, floating away in a bottle of gin. There is a way to change and things are beginning to move, but it has to be at a higher level.

The jingle jangle gypsy Jew and the sparkle eyed hippie share their ideas and visions, which shines a light through the midnight rain. We sip coffee and tea, eating cake in a diner down the Castro talking philosophy, sustainability and love through the night.

“She’s writing a book about love.” says the jingle jangle gypsy Jew.

“That’s great.” smiles the sparkle eyed hippie. “I believe love is seeing each other. I mean, really seeing one another. Everything else is bullshit.”

“You mean, without the layers, the façade, the ego?” I ask.

She nods wide eyed like a rabbit, a rabbit munching cheese cake.

“It’s harder now because the culture has changed, it’s becoming more individualistic. People look for love and connection in all these other places in the outside world. When a community is formed the basic need of being together is met, so there’s more contentment and love. Instead of individualism, we should all be tapping into the one big consciousness.” says jingle jangles, warming her hands on the steaming coffee cup in front of her.

 

Talks of finding land and beginning communities brings joyful bounces and happy hands willing to help, that high five in union, in agreement that there is a way to change.

Needed is a team, a team of lovers whose first priority is helping the land and the souls who roam it without excess, addiction or paranoia distorting visions. Rising above the ego in all its slippery sneaky guises is a major freaking plus. The fame of being a hero on the other side of the tracks, the political activist lost in political activism, the labels that are slapped upon us by others to kill, to still their fear of the unknown, labels we slap upon ourselves when we pat our backs, well done, only cover up the true meaning of why we are here.

There is a way to change and the pieces are slowly coming together as likeminded lovers collaborate and create with a balance of theory and action and logic and dream.

Make.Love.Share.Love.Be.Love