He cried, “Out!”
(In the darkest corner of a small wooden landing at the top of the steps to the fenced back yard of a rented home currently occupied by a trio of underpaid shift workers whom, as a kindness and in response to the predicted overnight cold snap, have taken into their foster care a destitute stray. A man of roughly 40 clearly hard worn years kneels doubled over and wailing mournfully to himself, his head tucked in and down toward his chest in an undeniably penitent posture similar to the pious prayer of those who heed the daily call, and face Mecca. Apropos of nothing, he just so happens to be faced to Mecca at this moment. This is, however, purely coincidental, as our pitiful subject here is not a man of clothe, nor one of great or even minor faith, much less a man of daily prayer or mindful meditation. Quite In contrast, He is a drinker and a drifter; drug-addicted, disaffected, dissatisfied, and dismayed. Yet he is also a dreamer of the highest order, completely convinced of the attainability of a singular salvation of creative elucidation, a dream he has been chasing unrelentingly for more than 20 years; and which he has just this very evening seen how truly attainable it is. Merely moments ago, In a vision of clarity which came over him unwittingly, and uninitiated by anything within his purview, our vagrant interloper has seen a crystallization of artistic inspiration which envisioned all the interconnections within his disjointed philosophical treatises, which he has spent the better part of three decades composing, and in that moment he was overtaken by the sudden uninhibitable need to bleed the pressure wellingup inside his chest and his lungs began to squeeze. The noise they made directed itself toward the realm of sorrow. It is a wail of a desperation; not unlike one you might hear from fathers who’s lost there cherished sons, from lovers who’ve lost their lovers, and from children having a tantrum who need to eat and then to sleep, but refuse. He was at that moment all of these things in essence; a man rejected and alone, beset by turmoil of his own making, and both exhausted and famished; but his noise came joyfully, as it was the expression of something deep within him which he had recently freed; and so no effort was made to sequester or quiet the cries that he now seethes. It is simply the gasp and exhalation of soul which desperately needed to breathe.)
A soft wail arises quietly from silence to an open mouth, a single note, unbroken and controlled as much as one can control such a sound. From this beginning after a moment, almost a minute but something less, if you were to count; the wail completes with a sharp cutoff instead off dying back down. It ends, from an open mouth to clenched teeth and the tongue cutting off the sound. It makes a word but he did not consciously say it; it’s just the only word that could come…
Out.
GET OUT!
GET OUT OF ME!
Go the **** away!
I do not need you
I do not want you
I will not hold you
You have to leave
There is no place for you in here any more
Get. Out.
Get out.
GET THE **** OUT OF ME!
PLEASE!
(As he spits these curses and pleads, something moves deep with in him. he convulses and every muscle in him begins to squeeze and he feels as if he’s imploding and but his eyes are about to explode out, and in this seizing state, he feels the expelled energy escape, physically, through the center of his mind and forehead, like a boiler valve exploding with steam in a movie. It goes out and up and away and silently it leaves. A calm settles over the whole scene as he stills his body, still convulsing, and then he sees swirling among the phosphors on the back of his eyelids, where it burns an impression when one stares at bright light too long, something coalesce: an impression of an Iris, pulsing and folding into itself but without edge, as if his minds eye were right in front of him. He stays there penitent and quiet and keeps his eyes closed, in order not to lose it, because whatever it is he needs to know it; what ever it is, he cannot deny he sees it. He stays perfectly still while it’s centered in his vision, as if it were a wild animal he intended not to scare away, and silently he studies it and stares and considers what has just opened in his vision and what, preceding that, had thusly broken away. Slowly realization comes, as it’s elemental name is spoken silently from behind,
“I am the one who sees,
I am that which drives
I am you, and you are me
We are together,
A single being
but You
are part of me”
and upon the realization solidifying, without hesitation he addresses it, directly and in a docile tone…
I see you
I see you there
staring back at me
I know who you are
I know you are me
It’s good to see you
I’ve missed you
Where did you go?
He lifts his head just a little, just so he’s holding it with his neck, it’s the first movement he has made beyond the minimum necessary to say the words he had to say and to expand and contract his lungs enough to breath. As he opens his eyes, the vision persists and he’s now staring at it outside of him, nestled into his unknowingly cupped and folded hands, like one would make to receive the sacrament of communion, which is ironic yet somehow perfect for this experience is the only religious thing he’s ever felt or known or seen. Now, with eyes open it looks to be an orb of energy without a glow, and he folds his hands closed around it as if to hold it, and he stands up with eyes closed; as yet unwilling to lose the vision and let it go. He turns slightly to the north, away from the darkness he had hidden in before and opens his eyes hopefully for the first time in ages.
He stares distantly into the foliage of a few scattered trees that occupy a greenway next to a drainage ditch called “flood street” to the people
that know, and in those last late autumn leaves still hanging on with incredulity, he sees the inner eye again, still staring back at him, and in that moment he already knows- it’s not going go, it is part of his mind, which now he’s opened it will be ever-present, even if unseen. He shifts his gaze over to the corner of a house not too far away and again he sees it shimmering, superimposed. It’s not external it is like a lens through which he sees now, and he becomes joyful.
He lowers his eyes in peaceful pause and starts to take off his clothes, he sheds his jacket, shirt and socks, flinging them to and fro and descends the steps into the yard and squeezes the grass between his toes. He presses hard down through his feet, to let the ground know that he is there and he will not sink. His stance widens. He loosens his shoulders as he reaches down between his feet, and sets his palms flat in the grass, exhaling deeply as he folds. Then breathing deeply in and upward he raises up towards the sky stretching everything inside, reaching as high as he go, and there he sees the Cheshire smile and he greets the moonlight glow
Hi how are you, I’m glad you’re here too
And then he begins to dance with it, in Meditative and intentional movement. He makes a show for the moonlight and the minds eye and he moves every muscle under his control, twisting and turning in soft ecstasy releasing decades of unwanted tension; finally letting all the build-up go. He lands down in the sweet smelling grass on his belly, arms folded and in his vision are two small flowers swaying slightly and only them, no leaves rustle because no breeze blows. It seems to him that they danced with him and he will remember this for the rest of his troubled life, though it should be a little easier now knowing what he knows.
Another short for Footnote
12-24-23 Christmas Eve
I was homeless, ostracized from the family, high strung out, sad, salty, smelly, sleepy, but indoors by the grace of a good friend, and on the verge of being as sick as I have been in a very long time. The next day would be spent entirely in bed ill with a flu like I had never seen. It was the worst Christmas pageant ever… but the night before I was able to distill this auto-fiction from an experience that with the exception of the names of streets, happened exactly as written, it was a very poignant experience for me, and its details were summarily seared into my brain.