...how to remove an astral traveler...
“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.”
-Lao Tzu-
I started to sleep again. Tonight I am making the mistake not to. I awoke like a clam in cioppino, my shell cracked open in smiling tight muscles. Cuts, pinches and splinters are making my hands mindful. I got the day off from computers to move pieces of wood (slabs) and I am reminded of how interesting the physical world is in comparison to the virtual. The land of ideas is lost inside of itself. I prefer being lost on land. Feel my feet.
The new neighbors are arguing about grandma behind bathroom plants and matches. It is 4:56AM. I have to decide between seeing sunrise or finishing my thoughts. Red light in the darkness of the living room gives an eerie omen. Stop, it says. I am watching you. Is it the TV or something more sinister? Upstairs a cleaning fan removes incensed debris with a hushed hum.
It is interesting how many worlds are going on in the world right now. Each of us characters living as many seasons as our executives allow. The gods wear ties and bad hair. Their shadows are better dressed but indistinguishable.
I wince to see it. Caring about how the unknowable appears is accepting my unknowledge. Ignorance is bliss. So too though is sugar.
I just escaped three weeks of intrusion by an astral traveler. Her energy was benign except for the time she showed me faceless humans pellet-deathed through their crown chakras. She brought me to a future McDonalds run by Jack Black and used a fake $50 bill to get us $250 in credits on a claw machine that operated around a counter bar overlooking a sizzling burger build. The prizes were all vaguely anime and we tipped over the “not for sale” vase. I woke from this fever by eating a fabric stuffed donut covered in “real” strawberry cream. My snoring life and my sleeping dreams share mouths of dry white pillow.
Earlier in the week I was just as hungry. I dreamt I was staffed in the back of a redwood dinner theater, singing back-up for an aged redhead rockstar, shaving a tree made of carrots. I asked the internet to give this meaning and they told me everything is behind me. Backstage. Beneath the bark. Two doors down with a dog I walk when asked to do so. Everything was orange today.
Gendering an absence feels odd and honest. I have trouble making meaning of things that aren’t here. Being home to the unconsented. I packed bags and made her leave. The fight was simple, barely any debris. Someone else should hold her. Leave it all impossibly unrepeatable. Empty dots of forgotten whistle. A few seconds passing stone sellers next to a brackish lake.
I took a quick nap and missed the way the morning world starts to color itself. Imagination will have to hold those photos. I can sense the warmth rise. A couple of crows wrinkled on an electric line above unbuckled sidewalk oaks. It is practice to put meaning here. To tell you why this was worth your time. Instead I offer us retreat.
These words were almost nothing. They dream to be reread. The truth is out, inside and options. Choice like a ponytail, behooved. I can feel the reason or forget it for the future. The sound of fur, internal mechanical buzz.
Burrr. Burrr. Burrr.
I have fans in every room. They sound like distance. Whir and horn. I watch myself to sleep.
“It's not where you go, it's who you travel with.”
-Charles M. Schulz-
“Travelers repose and dream among my leaves.”
-William Blake-
…thanks to for your helpful editing feedback on this…safe travels to you always…
You, my friend, are an artist through and through. What a breath of fresh air it is to consume your art.
Thanks for this piece, man. It was a lovely reading it, and it brought back many old memories!