The P.I. Letters

 By: OnnaMove

"Critics, mathematicians, scientists and busybodies want to classify everything, marking the boundaries and limits... In art, there is room for all possibilities."

---The Letters---

Book I

Chapter I

Statistics 101

"She paints, she reads, she lights things on fire." But what's a girl to do? ...take many baths by candle light? A dismal fate! Statistics can be so maddening. ...too many why bars (ha ha!), probabilities, and what ifs. Why don't we just go out and find out for ourselves? That would be a practical application for life. Such is the lesson to learn in probability; hence if you find that you were wrong, well then you've wasted your time spent on the matter. But then when is one's time truly wasted? ...in the experience of learning that you are wrong, or in the time spent calculating the probability of being wrong? Then... what is the probability that these numbers and experiences are even real? After you rearrange things so many times, aren't you likely to error in logic and interpretation? I seem to recall playing the "gossip game" as a child that would suggest this to be so. What if you misplace or forget entirely one of the variables?

What is the probability that I was wrong to experience the making of mud pies as a child? All the toppings were delightful. ...dandelion heads, spider legs, and the most precious driveway finds set the image in my thoughts that life could be so grand! But the hillside behind our house quickly led me astray. It led me to the apple trees and all that stings and bites. I would return each day to that ripe green fruit and my flesh feeding friends. And then of course there was the rhubarb patch... I so wanted to taste the lush green of its leaves. I still imagine what it would be like--the green of the leaves and the sour caress filling my mouth with all that mustn't be. But such is as with all forbidden poisons that lie undisturbed holding restraining orders on desire.

What's a girl to do? ...cover herself with mud and dance naked by the firelight? ...burning all the history of everything she's ever thought? What is the probability that this says, "Fuck you Fate! This is my story!" Only Pandora's box could have written a better story. But if I turn my back on the picture, who's to see to its completion? Does this mean that I've rejected my duty to this calling? But who believes in a calling anymore anyway? After all, life has not been such to lend me the collar of a priest. I was assured of that at an early age before my conception. Thank god or the trees!

My mother likes to tell the story of how she dreamt of me long before I was ever conceived. This story has always lied unsettled with me. ...kinda makes me feel like I have to live up to something really grand or important—like dreaming of myself before I even exist. Now doesn't that take Newton and throw his conception of physics to the wind. I wonder if he dreamt of his physics before the laws of reality were actually conceived. I myself find it difficult to live in a world imprisoned by Newtonian rules. For myself, I believe in the calling of the trees. The thrashing of their limbs whip my thoughts into submission and their outstretched leaves point in the direction I'm going and remind me where I've been. It causes me to lose sight of all that's unimportant, and if I stay too long their roots begin to take hold. But what do you think the probability is that anything is truly unimportant?

What's a girl to do? ...spray paint her ass glow in the dark orange and hook up with a firefly? We could flicker arm in arm all spring, but come summer we would have to part ways. And then, once again, I'd have to return to submit to the flicker of the candle flame. Have you ever filled a 9x11 room with more than a hundred candles and watched their flames dance to the in and out of your breath—while at the same time being reflected by a ¼ inch layer of glass shards beneath your feet? If you have not—you should! ...but what's the probability of that?

 The Crystal Ball: Mirror Mirror on the Wall

Act I: Scene I

OM:

Mirror Mirror on the wall, why has my vision stalled?

MM:

Hmmm, ...One moment to look into my crystal ball.

OM:

What see you? One plus one equals two?

MM:

Now who is the fool?

OM:

But where is the error in logic and interpretation here?

MM:

All that you live and believe is but a fallacy within a linear scheme. Cannot one plus one my dear... equal three?

OM:

A challenge... set before me?

MM:

The answer lies within the sight you choose to see.

OM: to the audience

I invite you to accompany me in this challenge. If for a moment you imagine yourself positioned within the crystal ball or, lets say for a better arguments sake, you are a carbon imperfection within the many facets of a diamond. Now, face forward. Are you in position? O.k., now I'm telling you that that is your place and everything you know from here you can only view and extrapolate from that position facing the one to two facets directly before you. The number of facets you can view at one time depends on how good your peripheral vision is. You are only instructed through these facets. Everything you think, believe, and see. Now, can one and one be three? O.k., well turn your head just slightly to get a different perspective. Oh, that's right, you're bound in that single position. You have yet to realize that you can because you are stuck due to a multitude of binding clauses in your contract. Well let's just imagine then, let's try this a different way. If you could have seen all that you have seen but from, lets say, the facet directly behind you—would you see the same thing? I don't think so. If you answered yes—go stand in front of your mirror. Now, in front of you—you see... What? Now look into the mirror. What do you see? O.k. then, but I must clarify that there is still a flaw here. You are seeing what is behind you based only on your view of what is in front of you. I have yet to discover how to abolish my birth given contract with this binding clause.

OM:

Mirror Mirror on the wall, how many facets can you recall?

MM:

Come; look into my crystal ball. What do you see? ...a three dimensional reality? One plus one can equal three!

OM:

Act I: Scene II

OM: to the audience

Have you ever really tried to put the pieces together and made the connections? I've had some amazing moments in life where I believed in the things around me. ...believed so much in those moments that I became what's around me. As a child, I remember the dot-to-dot puzzles in my coloring books. Some were more complex than others, but always fascinated me. I'm still learning to not see the dots and not connect the dots, but instead, all at once—make the picture and be the picture.

OM:

Mirror Mirror on the wall, come from where these dots?

MM:

Here child; lets look into my crystal ball. Is what you see not whole?

OM:

But what I see is this: you, me, and the ball.

MM:

My dear child, why do you still insist on seeing everything separate from the ball? Do you not believe that this is the ball? ...that there is no ball?

OM:

Mirror Mirror on the wall, why am I still trying to connect the dots? Do not all the facets contain within them the same picture?

MM:

Remember one plus one, and recall... But now my dear, forget! It is really all just a single thought!

OM: to the audience

Have you ever really believed that if you could forget the dots—you could disperse into the wind and in that same exact moment be any dot again?

OM:

Mirror Mirror on the wall, where have the mud pies gone? What is a girl to do? ...but connect the dots when one and one are two!

Act II: Scene I

{Final Scene}

OM prances about pondering meaning in the facets:

They say that diamonds are a girl's best friend, but that's not for me. ...too limiting in all I want to see. Oh, the romance and the passion make a lovely story be; the cool nights in warm arms holding all I'm told is this: The lovely caress of your stinging lips. There have been years where I could not forget the mountain that shadowed over me. The hillside of my youth has grown now. It stands as a beacon to remind me that in her valleys lie all that stings and bites. The flesh of your leaves contains stains in thee. I've fallen into your spell beneath my doorstep fell. Oh sure, there were times before where I had met you at the door, but now I see that you and me shall never part scenes.

OM:

Mirror Mirror on the wall, had I not read that binding clause?

MM:

Come To My Window

It blows my mind to be here so far from where I began. It shouldn't, but it does. There have been days and in truth years when the world was only to me what from my window could be seen—and more than that, that's all I wanted it to be. And now, sometimes I believe things to be so much larger and more intricate than even those who have lived beyond their window closed. If only I could have left you as I had been told.

I've met you before, in other forms I have adored. But in knowing you as this, my immunity has slipped. Urushiol, oh Urushiol I'm sure this is not your given name. A subdivision of your flesh has my flesh stained. I invite you to my window and accept your fiery glow. I give to you my flesh and all that I have kept. With thy vines my flesh does bind, ...sensitive to the touch, and in knowing this, I know too much: leaves of three let them be, but now I know in disbelief a secret that's mine to keep.

Without Boundaries

...positioned between two worlds, imitating the crashing together of symbols. The crescendo of their collide shutters over me in these days. If only I had been born a turtle, but life offers no such comfort for me.

The luring glances that fell upon me in my youth have now shifted into something new and different—they've become hesitant and awkward—challenging me to understand the peculiarity of these moments. Have the years really taken that much from me?

I find myself wanting to know things that are too far from my reach—preventing me from understanding the patterns of thought that intrigue the unconscious part of my existence. It's become a tug-a-war of sorts—asking more of life than I'm told is there. It's trademarked by the building of a new currency for thought... the creation of a new language of understanding without boundaries and limits placed on it. Up till now, these boundaries have flooded the marketplace of my thoughts—placing value based on the arbitrary constructs of truth established by the history of few within hardly a single dent in time.

Having no parameters or boundaries is a challenging concept to perceive and in the end is unattainable. Boundaries are always lurking within the equation of new thought because new thought is always born from old thought. How is it possible to know something in an unlimiting and truly intimate way as if to be the very thing itself? I'm constrained by the indoctrination of my youth. But do things really exist as I've been told? This intrigue on my part did not start with my love for you, but instead began with my doubts—doubts that you are really as you appear.

Upon our arrival, we are all provided with the story of who we are, where we came from and what the truths of our world are. The inconsistency; however, lies within the variation of these stories and the long history of arguments that plague our common experiences. The groundwork laid for the validity of these arguments is convoluted by the fact that, though we all appear to be looking at the same thing, there are more interpretations than there are concrete truths. This only confirms my suspicion that things are not as I've been led to believe.

The first time we touched brought a moment of decay to my world that burned through my flesh before we were properly introduced. I had, of course, been warned of your wanting ways, but I refused to listen. You first touched me in the garden when I was not looking for you. It kills me to not be able to touch you now, but as with all forbidden love affairs I'm prevented from knowing you at the depths of your thoughts. I think this is because our true nature is kept even from ourselves. In an effort to not see the exterior or inward boundaries of this desire to know you—something else becomes apparent. And without jumping to conclusions too hastily in a way that fits within the parameters of my indoctrination, but instead trying to rid my mind of the preconceived notions of what I've been taught about you; only here have I come to know you in a different way. And when I say that I love you—it's not as you might think—I see you differently than others see you... this from the inside of all my senses. Your thoughts have penetrated the very depths of my soul and chained my heart to all that others could not imagine or understand. I'm sure it is you! And this I know to be true... If I could just let go—you'd penetrate farther and deeper into all that I was not meant to know.

As a little girl, I would stare out across the landscape being sure to make eye contact with all that crossed my path—and in doing so—I experienced something else... I thought I might just float away. It was like a bullet passing through my body, but with no entry point and no exit wound... but it happened just the same. The more I experienced this phenomenon, the more I became aware that this happens everywhere. It scared me so—later in my youth, until... I met you. Now, when I walk these same paths I ever so quietly lift my skirt just to feel the lure and caress of your touch.

Do you think that's what love is—a bullet passing through our senses that has no entry point and no exit wound... a moment of concentrated thought—constricting and then freeing the boundaries of our soul? But then why does it so often go wrong? Why do we insist on placing boundaries where there were previously none? Why do we construct our reality into such tiny little blocks of definable limits? ...closing ourselves off to the possibilities.

My desire to know you is the desire to understand this connection—to know things not just beyond their surface qualities but beyond the limits of my contract. In all these years I cannot recall the moment that I signed this contract and therefore I officially renounce the limits placed on me by laws of its court.

What is pain and why does it vary in scale so much across the board? Is it the intensity of electrical impulses that causes us to short circuit... or is it that we don't allow ourselves to let go long enough to experience all of our senses?

I imagine the tugging of your vines tearing through my skin—releasing the blood that flows through my flesh ...while wrapped up in your vines like a corset pushing the breath from beneath my bodice. It's a chemical reaction, I'm told. Some are not allergic while others are. Oh, how my sorrow grows! ...for all those who are not.

Chapter III

A Slower Ride

She's Strange, oh how strange. She holds all her elements out of place. Her mixed up order of representation holds life in much of a daze! But what's a girl to do... chain herself to the steps of the institution and refuse to leave. They'd walk right up, laugh, and take her coloring book away. ...education has become that of a disease. If only I had listened when I was told to go out and play.

The trees were so inviting, tantalizing my childish gaze ...giving gifts I was told I shouldn't keep. With their long limbs stretched out over head, I would spend hours hanging over the edge... and then—all at once hit the ground—not knowing when... Up and then down, but the moment in between was always lost and the ground always the same. Wasn't long before I designed new ways to fall just to see if I could catch the middle, but the sudden impact would jar my thoughts and in the whirl—the moment was lost.

What's a girl to do but keep trying... to find the middle, shake hands, and discover the moment! ...a somersault down the stairs? ...for a slower ride? A silly proposition that I'm sure you're waiting for me to share. I think I might have been seven at the time just before the crushing weight of gravity fell upon my legs. I got my ears pierced when I was eight with a sewing needle and a potato. Oh, how I love the starchy flesh of potatoes. It's quite the challenge to fall down stairs gracefully—as if happened by chance. The mind will always stop the motion before it has been set.

It all began with this silly little picture in my head that I follow around like a road map to somewhere, anywhere, or maybe even nowhere. I can't remember exactly when it started. Maybe it was on that first day...

In time, I've become lost in the circular rotation of the glass-faced washing machine. The clothes continue to tumble over themselves, twisting in and out and back and forth, in an attempt to rid themselves of the week's events.

Each pass of the cars on the street reminds me of my attempts to make sense of it all. I watch the cars coming closer, and faster. I try to focus on their structure but they keep moving in accordance to somebody's law of motion... their image remains branded in my mind.

The clothes spin differently in the dryer. They spin round and round and occasionally, all at once, fall to the bottom. Looking back, I realize just how much this cycle has repeated itself.

I'm reassured by the rhythm of the cards. It's as if I know what will happen next, but then I wait too long and miss my chance. The rhythm changes with each new deal adding a continued uncertainty to the way it is played.

Waiting for my clothes to dry always makes me anxious. Patience never was my greatest virtue. ...and you wonder how I do it? ...keep moving? It's because my patience weakens in the long moments between the beginning and the end. It's the middle that's hard to define.

In the private moments of her mind... Isn't it lovely? She says.

From my lips, the wine... I recall—the aching moments of the last sip, before time fell from the wall. The frame shattered and broke—the wholeness of the line. What is no longer whole fools the mind—in absence—slaved to its parts and functions, from the curtain behind. What's a girl to do? ...but mend its wounds and hang it back on the wall. No one will ever know—nor care—she whispers to her lonely thoughts...

To break the line from the beginning to the end—a duplicity framed—creates illusions one can't escape. The point is the same, I suppose, which carries the space into repose. A careful lie—I can't reclaim ...but takes its toll, on the final remains.

Its last days—I tell you were grim—went up in flames with the best of friends. Pandora's box, becomes the prize—for all history gave—was never mine! Salvaging the silence, in ashes she slaves. Silence in words—tears came down in rain. A long bath, submits its rage—to the constant flicker ...of flame.

 Chapter IV

Mirror Mirror on the Wall: Part II

OM:

Mirror Mirror on the wall, where has time gone?

MM:

Dear child, have you forgotten our previous lesson?

OM:

But isn't this a different question?

MM:

Is it really? ...or from within the walls of your concision—have you made too many subdivisions? ...within the courts of your mind that wish for sense and order to be defined—carrying with them absolute truths segregated by the individual thoughts of the subject at hand ...and by you!

OM:

I'm sorry, I don't understand!

MM:

Remember, it is really all just a single thought ...with no entry point and no exit from within the confines of your consciousness ...but is your consciousness.

OM:

Mirror Mirror on the wall, have you gone mad? I don't understand at all!

MM:

No child, but I can no longer see my separateness from the world before me being limited by that of your reality.

OM:

But don't we all see the same thing ...you, me, and the ball? Do we not all define our world the same way? When I look out on the landscape I see what you see ...earth, sky, and trees!

MM:

Do you really, or are you seeing only what you want to see? ...dimensions prescribed for thee? ...within a language you borrow from and create within, but can't see beyond the boundaries of your words?

OM:

Another riddle placed before me? But I do not know the answer!

MM:

The simplicity and complexity is within the boundaries of your mind. Let go, and you will find more than just time!

OM: to the audience

If you can imagine yourself outside the diamond looking in on this carbon imperfection through one of its many facets; walk around it, what do you see? O.k., now lets imagine that you and all your friends are surrounding it, looking in at this same thing ...you and them. Do you all see the same thing? The answer is yes, and the answer is no! Why? ...And then who is right and who is wrong? The error is not just in the difference of the angle viewed seeing a limited section but in that you've lost that which is integral—the connection!

There in lies the problem, that with imagining looking out on or in on the world from within or from without the diamond itself creates complexities in how we've evolved to define ...being that you're looking out on or in on the intricacies that make up the larger whole and insist on seeing all this separate from itself, you destroy—by the very nature of what it means to define—like that of the crystal ball, which, within its walls confine a three dimensional reality in absence of time. The problem is that we've yet to come upon the complete equation that describes the language we use that places limits on our sight that breaks down what is whole in order to define. Language is deceptive that way, existing in it's most creative form—describes things based on the breakdown of their parts and functions and is limited to and trapped by each viewers ability to map this understanding—losing this integral connection. There was once a beautiful sentence written, which states that ...looking is the art of understanding. Now if you ponder for a moment to examine this more closely you'll find this to be untrue! The conclusion becomes that ...looking is the conscious or unconscious act of deconstruction. Do you agree? And if you do, then it must be clear what you've not seen!

Before Waking

These dreams escape my waking consciousness—as they always do. Written before that moment, I climbed up that day, expecting to find this moment delayed. For when I went—I left. ...scratched till I bled—but never came. There it was. In that moment, something new and without words—became me ...absurd! I love you, she said. I lost you; I was scared... but think of you fondly in the days before—I believe, before I met you under that tree. The moonlight was full and my balance lost—at last—I wrapped up in your leaves and laughed. Screamed... I love you and I lost you, before waking, she said.

There's something about the smell of chlorine that makes me wrinkle the end of my nose and in that same breath... trace my life to the moment we met. In hotel swimming pools and gift shops—these memories seared such childish thoughts. In that same street I saw a thousand plain clothed stories begging me for life—already lived. Choices for beauty... we like and we dislike—the expression in its simultaneousness... brought on like lovers blight—I saw you become, desperate to survive. In time, time spent, time lost... begins—the ticking, perched, dripping—the rain gave way. Light fell dark, like a schoolgirl fickle.

They tell me it's cold out, but I don't believe them. Everything seems to be coming to an end sooner than it was supposed to. My concentration has fallen and focus weakened in this circle of thought. It consumes me. But I'm too busy. In the end I find myself—wanting... Everything leaves me wanting more! ...more words ...more answers ...wanting to know your nails in my back ...a hot flash of searing pain—my breath gasps—at last, maybe I can forget all the times I had no words when didn't know what to say after the rain. This, so intimately tied to the subtleties in language that have become so frightfully deafening, suppressing the very thoughts that inspire such creativity. A cycle that surely will be the demise of its own creation.

She enters the room assessing its layout, quietly and respectively... expecting to find these ordered moments replaced and defined. Instead, this path follows the discrimination of the mind to observe the space from within the walls of our time to the structured opening of the sublime. If I were to try to retrace these steps my thoughts would recoil with dizziness from the evolution of spiraling doubt for subjects merged between and within the linear constriction of our time.

Here in grows an emerging, merging, and disseminating birth of what my words fail to illuminate with any sense of objectivity or clarity. The probability of its significance remains elusive—for what is the relevance to the perceived destination? Does not within the confines of consciousness the end destination remain the same—regardless of the subjectivity of its location or actuality? But then where in does one find the middle—this illusive uncertainty to which reality is bound? We are left in contemplation at either side, but unable to say where you've been with such certainty as to trace your path at every point you stopped to gaze upon our world in your frolicking way.

Underlying this is yet another question: do reoccurring symbols create language or does language create reoccurring symbols. This mystery eludes me—a mathematical rearrangement that's sure to twist the actuality of its true probability—surely doesn't exist without first bringing forth its creation. To determine reality based on the interpretation of what is created in an attempt to understand what we believe we cannot see, brings me to question the relevance of arranging matter and hue in this same pursuit.

This objectivity only exists in its bound state. The uncertainty begins when these boundaries are removed. It is here that subjectivity rules space, boundaries dissolve, and limits escape. This shifting awareness and borrowed energy leaves me breathless—attributing to the deficit of my own solidity of thought and expectations of the illusions that surround me. It's a constant bargaining to lay claim on definitions for that, which hasn't already a name. Which, again brings about the very mystery of language creating the real or the real creating the language.

It's this breath, left breathless, that solidifies the deal—this contract I may reclaim. But only in its shared realization of borrowing and replacing this back to its rightful place; here, each facet crosses in and over itself, taking over and redefining the previous layer as its own. This example; however, is no longer useful for the limits it requires loses the picture it tries to inspire.

Interlude II

All the blinking, beeping, and bustling was driving me crazy—I got my double tall mocha latte and got back on the interstate. I was born round and fleshy with black hair. Now I live in an apartment where I have close intimate contact with white walls, like the white walls of life scrubbed clean of all their... white walls that hang pictures of me, me with orange hair—pictures that expose my flesh, round hanging flesh. No amount of push-ups, wall or floor, disguises this flesh.

That Saturday I woke inspired to unfold the streets, streets full of cars and people—lined with rotting vegetables, dusty fields, and retail stores. I was hoping to find coffee, but not just any coffee... I wanted the good stuff—for want of ...want of plastic wrapping, processed food, and the ever appealing latte in a throwaway paper cup. Life was exposed and piling up and there I was wanting to be part of it ...but part of what?

Chapter V

Across The Garden

I met a caterpillar today, but mind you it paid no attention to my presence. I watched, and longed to caress its bright orange hairs. Someone from across the garden said no, but secretly I desired the pleasure of its sting.

This strange history possesses my youth.

I watched you move into the center of the lettuce and wondered what it must be like... this deep intimate connection to your soul known only in this poisonous exchange.

What is it people fall in love with... an image of themselves reflected back from the things around them? But to truly know you is something different. And yes, maybe something from deep inside myself—but deeper inside of you—inside everything around us—the most intimate binding of souls, already bound, that departs from that which is made of... There is something here—the absolute decompression of life.

There, I have only glanced but still quiver from its touch.

To My Knees

To sit, to think—here in silence without my feet moving too quickly. Is this bounce some force of internal explosions—a force I fail to control? Can I will myself to sit still—to sit in silence? There is no silence here for me. This thought so overpowered by the need to be brought down—to sit still—brought down to my knees. Here, is where there is no one for me... to will me this silence—to give or force it upon me.

Am I here or there? Am I her or me—maybe you? Did you see me resting under the tree? Just before dusk, I watched the clouds roll in beneath my feet.

If only the quarry hadn't been so far away this afternoon, I would have lifted large rocks up over my head... and then fallen to my knees. My hands resting gently on the ground in front of me—resting still and waiting... was I waiting for you? Large rocks of marble, granite, or maybe just concrete surrounded by grass... did you see the flowers?

South Florida

I prefer a suit of poisonous armor to protect me... protect me from the thousand hungry beasts asking for just one more drop of blood to quench their thirst for breeding. In the past I've just brushed you aside, but now in your fury and hunger for life you've driven me closer to the edge than... than I imagined the edge could bring me. Is it you that at last will stop and force me to reclaim my contract?

Life in vision brings on the sleepless world where in my dreams carries on like an overloaded dopamine receptor. The fluorescent lights are the real kicker... drug me like hypnosis for the masses. I sat there today feeling desperate for sunlight and that humid air that everyone around me hides from. Maybe there should be a word, something akin to vampire perhaps, for all those that sit inside and hide from the heat of the day... all those that drive with their windows rolled up listening to NPR to stay informed? You see them everywhere running from the buildings they work in to their AC equipped cars... maybe out for a bit of shopping, but not outside any longer than it takes them to get from their car to the artificial environments of the "real world". Then what would be the word for all those that remain outside by choice or by circumstance?

This young girl inside still searching for the edge—this not to find as it doesn't exist—but where in does one define that which doesn't want to be missed? This small room where I pretend to be Houdini—from within its walls comfort escapes my imagination. Charley, Frances, Ivan... are you my soul mate—this whirlwind that drives my life? Were you sent to tear down these walls—to dissolve the boundaries that keep me from seeing? A balance hard to set... need, comfort, fear, possibility... a place so absolute where communication traces every movement of energy. Makes me imagine life in halo... dissolving into flickers of light... and then, then something I can't describe.

This hidden world beneath me, around me—possesses me! Communication without words ...is this what they mean to say when they speak of ..."the lost art of" ...of understanding something not trapped by definitions? How is it possible to understand something when we're the ones writing the definitions; therein, defining its reality? Does this mean that we're creating our own reality to believe in? Life is more powerful than that! ...more powerful than a single thought? Perhaps, but might it not just collapse in on itself and dissolve into a black hole if we don't provide the parameters for it to exist within? Or is it the other way around? Life, compartmentalized in what we believe we understand—little boxes of definitions tied together by weak bonds ...bonds like conjunctions that don't even exist in some languages. So is it my language then that defines my reality ...place and circumstance bound by own my words—locked tight like the coffin that defines my death?

I would love to ask you this one day, but I fear I will not remember you then. Has it already been that long? I've seen you in the nearby forests, but I've forbidden myself to touch. What is it you think that keeps us from our desires? Does the child ever touch the hot stove and like it? Then why does one get back on the bike after skinning their knee? Why do we drive when it is dangerous or open our doors when the world is full of mishaps... eat, when we might choke... breathe, when the air is poisonous? Why can't I... touch though it will burn? I did see you resting under that tree. I wanted to say hello, but instead I turned and let go. I watched your leaves fall. One by one they were caught by the wind. I saw them rise back up again and then slowly lower to the ground. By spring they had traced themselves like angels in the snow—laced together, fragile and strong.

This doesn't happen here in south Florida. Here you are small and only hurricanes carry your leaves... dragging them across the skies. This rope swings in my dreams. My wrists not tied. Cars honk. They pass. Is it all over my head or beneath my feet? Sometimes I cannot touch. I cannot sleep. Words, thought, and drink. This great divide—we are long lost friends. Choice creates the medium. Here is the picture. But if it changes, then does not the path create the destination? I think maybe they are the same thing---the destination and the path. I think stories do not have endings, only moments of hesitation when the universe has the hiccups. 

"An artist lies to reach another kind of truth"

-Pablo Picasso 1881-1973