Table of Contents:

DeLorean Gray

The Life You Lose

Mocking

The Old Man

The Reef

The Animal

The Ever-Grove

Explanations of a Dog

The Quest

The Lagoon

The Hole and the Some

A Maze

The Wellspring

The Wrecking of the Lady Fortune

Life in the Shadow of the Colossus

The Tea Students’ Discussion

A Moment of Clarity, or Fractals

The Prognosis

The Hallway

Unwaking Life

You slowly open your eyes and blink the sleep away.

Sleep… sleep. Wait. Where were you? You think.

You breathe deep and stretch, letting the fatigue roll down your limbs and out through the tips of your fingers, out through the tips of your toes. Then you realize… slowly… you look around… it’s coming faster now and it hits you –

You have no idea where you are. You are wide awake. You scramble to your feet to take in your surroundings and regain your bearings. It only takes a few seconds to realize that when standing in a seamless gray void, the two are infinitely different.

Even without knowing, you know two things. The gray is infinite (maybe?). And you aren’t dead.

Frowning to yourself, you furrow your brow and look around. Your fingers trace your jawline while your cluck your tongue, as if stumped during a game of hide and seek.

You open your mouth to curse and realize you don’t remember how to speak. You panic.

You begin to hyperventilate, you run. You run as hard as you can. You move as fast as humanly possible and you get nowhere. Humanly possible isn’t good enough.

You stumble to a halt and fall into a crouch, supporting yourself with an outstretched arm. You reach for peace, you breathe deep and exhale slowly, letting the panic roll down your limbs… wait. Déjà vu. Again? No. Wait. Where are you?

Who are you?

Panic. System overload. You run again. You run as hard as you can. You move as fast… wait. Déjà vu. Again? No… wait. Yes.

Who are you?!

You panic. You run your fingers through your hair, combing your mind for the answer. It doesn’t come. You glance down at a stray hair on your finger. It’s white. You panic. You rip out a few strands of hair. White.

You scream.

You scream nothing.

You scream at nothing.

You scream anyways.

You know that, somewhere, sometime, you knew who you were. But you can’t quite place it. You DID know who you were. Yeah, that’s it. You just forgot. You must have known. Right?

Your mind races and you rack your brain, looking for something. Anything to latch on to. You probe your mind until you gag. Change is the variable, but memory is a constant.

Until you forget. But that means you must have remembered sometime, if you’ve forgotten now. You tell yourself. One can’t exist without the other. Something clicks in the back of your mind.

A jigsaw falls into place. One can’t exist without the other. Something about the duality of man. But what does it mean? You file it under some papers in the back of your mind.

Suddenly, you remember the gray. Your eyes slide into focus and you have to brace for impact. The despair shatters through your shields, through your armor, and blossoms in your soul.

Whatever that means, you laugh nervously out loud, but there are no echoes in space.

You’re overcome with hopelessness, you scream again into the nothingness that is everywhere.

Time sadly passes.

You blink away the tear, but manage to catch it on your finger. You look at it.

Something flashes before your eyes. You blink. You look closer.

Look closer.

[Something] flashes before your eyes. A memory. Memories? Was it just one or an entire life?

Can a life be captured in one moment? Surely. Or maybe not. You look closer. The tear rolls down your finger. You manage to lick it off with your tongue. The tear is salty.

Bittersweet. You think, for a moment, and laugh to yourself. But it’s salty! You reflect on that for a moment. Or maybe it was a lifetime? No matter. Back to the task at hand.

Your mind races and you rack your brain, looking for something. You didn’t get that education for nothing. Wait, that’s something! You nearly cry with relief. You remember, therefore you were. Once upon a time.

Remembering anything at all is enough.

Then, all of a sudden, like fog, it’s gone. You can’t remember what it was. What what was?

You panic. You scream again and start to run. You stop, steady on. You open the door to your cave but there’s been an accident. The paramedics wheel the foreman out on a marble-top stretcher.

Ah well, the black lung would have killed him anyways. The police ask you to exit the area and point you towards a gray sign on the wall. Wait. Gray. Where have you heard that before?

You snap back to the present. You see gray. You panic again. You begin to hyperventilate, you run. You run until your veins bulge like ropes and each breath gives a little less respite and your legs turntojellyandyourvisionturnstoblurasyourunharderthanyoucanyoumoveasfastashumanlypossibleandyouget nowhere. Humanly possible isn’t good enough. You see gray all around as you collapse with exhaustion. White stars burn around you and –

You black out.

You wake up.
You slowly open your eyes and blink the sleep away.

Sleep… sleep. Where were you? You think.

You breathe deep and stretch, letting the fatigue roll down your limbs and out through the tips of your fingers, out through the tips of your toes. Then you realize… slowly… you look around… it’s coming faster now and it hits you –

The gray. The gray is still there. Everywhere. It suffocates you and you choke.

You can’t run. You can’t reason. You vomit gray.

You stare at the gray and remember something. Something you had made a note of. Once upon a time. Years and years ago. Or was it only a few minutes ago? You shrug to yourself and rack your brain. One can’t exist without the other. System overload. Your mind shuts down and reboots.

You lie down, unable to cope with your epiphany. Black can’t exist without white. You try to remember if you learned that or made it up. Gray’s kind of an average of black and white.

You remember… something… but you can’t quite place it. Déjà vu. Again? Yes.

You accept it. You accept everything. You accept nothing. And you note: what’s the difference?

You black out.

You wake up.

You slowly open your eyes and blink the sleep away.

Sleep… sleep. Where were you? You think.

You breathe deep and stretch, letting the fatigue roll down your limbs and out through the tips of your fingers, out through the tips of your toes. Then you realize… slowly… you look around… it’s coming faster now and it hits you –

You’re me.

You’re me and it doesn’t change a thing.

The Powers That Be won’t be long

themselves for they cannot fight the throng

a-mass upon their great stone steps

but we must act quickly, the sooner the better – at once!

They do well to fear their Confederacy of Dunces:

fear the poor and the kykes and the niggers and the cunts

for divided we fall evermore prey to a house of lords.

kill the ego, love your neighbor; fight the power

and the established order shall be no more

but how?

they are too strong

your words are vulgar

they are listening

be silent, be silent!

for they are not the enemy and

I am just trying to dream

(something into life)

“We think of there being ‘signs’ along the way

but we do not understand that everything is one big sign.”

Do ye Present not see?

Those before were not lesser -

not dumber not devolved not different.

They were like us with politics and war,

day-to-day tragedies and gossipy lives, playing,

for control of the female, the game of thrones.

Their lords were our electorate – their revolts, our riots.

Some is better, some was worse, much has changed…

still it’s all the same old, and Time is yet untamed.

Do ye Present not hear

those brazen trumpets sounding-

screaming that déjà vu is inherited

from endless concentric spirals

that reach at frontier horizons like Babel -

constructed with blood-washed stone,

overseen by clever men with whip-like ties,

and built upon the labor of slaves?

Do ye Present not feel

thunderbolts of the gods passing through

along their own ways with unknown aims

when we grok, in moments of clarity,

the Truth in the myriad falsities of life,

and sense the justice born from human error?

But we are gods ourselves and thy will be done;

empathy flies like an arrow of Eros or a bolt of Zeus, so

follow your heart and wallow no more, for

Time devours itself like the Serpent

that wraps around our fingers as we work.

And just like that, it was over.

I walked with the daze I reserved for these days alone and smiled prematurely nostalgic smiles at friends I felt I’d only just come to know. All the best projects were like this. They all felt like summer camp goodbyes, were all their own worlds lost to time and the degradation of memory. But they were addicting. Each film, each production; another world, another life. I was living on a sampler platter and I couldn’t get enough.

I blinked as Julia Fields swept in with a starlet hug and a face full of empathetic tears. “Johnnie, oh, I’m going to miss you so much!” I grinned – it felt good to be candidly warm. She pulled me in for another tight hug. She was thin, made up, and altogether deserving of the adjective glamorous. She was definitely going places.

Julia had played “Teri Winters” in the now-wrapped-up Til Kingdom Come, in which I was “Captain Starn”, a grizzled veteran of the Old Wars and one of the only people able to stand against the Giants. Yeah, that’s the kind of movie I was in.

Julia pulled away, said “Oh, Johnnie! Take care, dear,” and gave me a loving look before swooning off to the next cast member. I took the breath to notice how everyone in the room was making rounds, weaving in between each other with shoulder brushes and eyebrows, all the while balancing and spilling champagne in tall glasses. Everywhere there were laughs and hugs and understanding looks. If only we could trap this feeling in a jar, I thought.

I decided to do my part. I took a deep breath, looked around, and strode back out into the swirling bodies. I smiled broadly and opened my arms to embrace salt-and-pepper George “King Bartholomew” Strait.

He cocked his head slightly and said, “O, Captain! Hah! Come here you sonuva bitch!” After the hug, he withdrew and turned back to his conversation, turning me along with his arm still draped lazily over my shoulder. He gestured with his glass, “Johnnie, this is David Williams, producer of – ”

I laughed and extended a hand, saying, “I know who he is, George. Mr. Williams, – ”

“I’m not your father-in-law; David’s fine.”

I smiled and nodded. “John Mertz – ”

“You can call him Johnnie.”

I rolled my eyes as David laughed and said, “Of course. Well, Mr. Johnnie Mertz, I think you did a damn fine job as ‘the Captain’. Might be it’s time for a promotion.” Our conversation went on, but I couldn’t get past that carrot on stick. I liked to pretend I was content with my life as is, but I wanted – needed – that breakout like everyone else.

I pardoned myself from the group and made my way to my in-movie wife, Linda Skance. We didn’t exchange embraces, but we smiled knowing smiles and clinged our glasses. Of all the people I’d come to know over the year, Linda was one I would miss most. We had a minor history, but more than anything we were good friends. She wasn’t very pretty – she was in fact rather plain, but a wise man¹ once opined that every woman has a feminine wile that is uniquely her’s, and Linda was no exception. She was shy, observant, and warm-hearted – a woman with the best of my qualities. I couldn’t tell you myself why she and I weren’t lovers or what-have-you, for I’ve thought about it many times, but if I had to wager, I’d chalk it up to that bit about “opposites attract.” We were too much kindred spirits.

An interested, sidelong glance and a nudge from Linda brought me back to the moment and out of my mind. I realized I’d been staring absently and twirling my glass. I shook it off and said, “I’m sorry, it’s just I can’t believe it’s over already. I feel it was only yesterday when we started.” I grinned wistfully, “The barnyard scene.” Linda and another woman, Margaret, laughed loudly.

Margaret mimicked, “Ah, but Sire, Little John needs to find the Porta-John.” Linda was mid-swallow and had to cover her mouth with a wrist as she coughed up laughter with her champagne.

 As has been ever predicted by fantasy and fiction, the zombification of Earth was quick to take. The first case appeared in India and after a sluggish start, the contagion caught its stride in Malaysia in early March and Hong Kong soon after. It island hopped and plane hopped and train hopped and before long was not only in Beijing and New Delhi and Singapore but also in Dubai and New York and Rio. Militaries were decimated, communities devastated, and authority crumbled like sandcastles.

After what must have seemed like the waking of a nightmare the world over, the staggered and much diminished but resolute survivors had been driven back, as if through time, to a peculiar and surreal form of local-to-global tribalism. Faced with imminent dissolution, groups on all levels of political influence, including several powerful and not-so-powerful corporations, NGOs, non-profits, militaries, and a couple First World governments managed to organize themselves and allies into autonomous systems of law and order, resilience, and sustainability. Military fragments joined with private security companies, public servants orchestrated aid organizations, religious institutions faded into the hearts of the good-willed, and fast food distributers, groceries and agriculturalists banded together to supply food to what would become urban quarantine districts – prison cities run by governments-turned-companies and companies-turned-governments, policed by armies-turned-security, opposed by militias-turned-armies, all of which were judged by scientists-turned-lords.

Over the twelve year period of tribulation, civilization was held together in strings by a bold few that were supported by a vocal minority. Their story is full of heroes and anti-heroes, villains and victims, adventure and humor and terror and all the many extremes of humanity and nature, but it is not of direct concern herein. Of course – twelve years after affliction began, it tapered before falling off almost entirely and the imperatives to both cooperation and immorality were suddenly diminished. Of the emergent post-Information Age factions and individuals, only some had survived the twelve years of relative isolation and of them, only a handful very much resembled what they’d been.

Our story begins, as ever fewer have, in America, where a spiritually successive confederacy of “united States” comes out of its dozen-year hibernation and meets the new world order with the shell-shocked and curious awe of the reborn.

It is deeper than psychology

but from there it manifests:

a feeling

without reference (but)

imagine a mote of dust

out of reach of sunbeams

carried by the whims of a current

that itself is but the whim of a whim

of a whim and so forth

of the wind or a fish

we are mute before echoes

“every one is an island”

often heard, but what a difference –

to hear and to feel –

every utterance is a falsity

but

“Art is the lie that makes you see the truth.”

is that hope?

all knowledge and custom are lies

to ourselves and not each other

but we lie to satisfy

and truth begets truth

is there hope?

the feeling is perhaps like

the bottom of ocean trenches

the dark side of the moon

isolated, cold and soundless

pressurizing emptiness

darkest night of the cosmos

or a foot away from family and friends

and no closer

hearts in cages in whitehouses

darkest night of the soul

even Awakened I am nothing

ego death reveals

black Void:

we will all be forgotten

our noble parents

our companions

our other halves

our regenerative legacies

we will all be

eroded

swept off

destroyed

buried

lost

erased

never remembered

we will all be forgotten

but still there is something

mystery overcomes even fear

maybe God is nothing but faith

and who is to say that when one believes

they are not themselves Manifest?

and who is to say that when one believes,

all whom one Sees is not Manifest?

But yet the Void! It is impregnable

and the high road beset by bandits

My heart implores to retreat in cower

My reason is rendered mute –

Something Awesome brushes by

and I am –

and all shall be –

relieved

reborn

ecstatic

saved

freed

as you should be

all you must say is “Yes”

so in Time, you shall be See

Something reminds me:

every thing is a microcosm

every thing is a macrocosm

still everything is different

yet everything points to God

like points on a sphere to the center

and the center to the points

Things are but thoughts of God

We walk guided dreams and mirrors

The void is but the Veil of God

for great Light may blind

“Tao is empty

yet it fills every vessel with endless supply

Tao is hidden

yet it shines in every corner of the universe”

Hip hop is a religion

America is an empire

Earth is a vessel

Power is given

Words are paintings

You are not your selves

Opinions rest on shoulders

Save yourself, save the world

Walk in holy indifference,

in empathetic clarity for

sinners are called

choose to be chosen

Death is not to be feared

Life is not to be impeded

Mephistopheles is selfless

Tao comes to us in music

galaxies swirl like hurricanes

and nebulae are beautiful

now and at the dying of light

birth draws near

This art That

Thou art That

That art God

Thou art God

There is a philosophia perennis.

I know nothing.

Remember: say “Yes”.

“Heaven gives

and all things turn out for the best

The Sage lives,

and all things go as Tao goes

all things move as the wind blows”

why am I a bird?

Does it cling to the sky and sing existential chirps and ponder

why am I a bird?

Does it look down at the chained in empathy or derision,

recalling its ancestors in all their might and prime and glory, resenting

the chirp that was a roar, once upon a time long past?

Does it find repulsive or glorious our displays of giants’ bones

in halls of stone and walls of paint and cast in plastic?

Does it see those hollow beasts and see itself – its past or its future?

After all, they know faces and use tools

and are royal descendants of kings –

it is not far-fetched to suggest that the usurped-by-fate survivors

pihlosophize and wonder as they wander, despair and dream

like us as they fly

I once asked the birds this and

one shit on my head:

I get it, I get it.

mind racing to catch flights

of thoughts that always snowball into more snow-

balls tumbling with stray strings

everthing is connected, loosely, I think

the strings sow patches on my brain

leaks – drip drip drip – but not all TV is bad!

Film is the new book and even I am

becoming archaic, but the verse is still pithy

I surf my brain-waves on the Wide Web on

sleepless nights:

what else results? Time and time again

“Time wasted!” they say, those naysayers!

(as they slave to their everywhere masters)

Surfing is nothing but fun cartography

and life should be fun, but isn’t

except when you’re young

until you decay into the grindstone

unless you can step aside and float

down a long and winding lazy river

but there are rapids and currents to that

grindstone and the ball and chain

an honest man or woman is hard to find

I know the future and it scares me out of -

sleep is the famous cousin of -

Death is always waiting until He’s here.

I cannot sleep but I’m weary and

poetry is therapy.

it makes the sky less blue

and the grass more green

the trees stand taller

and the plants exist in more varied hues

life itself surrounds me, all the more vibrant, too

yet the sky is blue and grass is green

verily verily verily

life is but a dream

not of you

it’s just the world

revolves in shades of dull

and decadent orbits

like this or that

yadayadayada

this is that, two are one

that makes three, you are we

gee golly! what the fuck?

I am boring

Love is no different

in glances and touches and feels

but when it begins to last

moment to moments that slowly pass

true love is right on your heels

your self is quickly lost and drowned

having abandoned ship for sirens

the ocean is love and they are an island

Verily, God is love and thou art that.

as if my brain is only just aware:

I found today That

I see the world in a perpetual trip

all is so real, unreal, but really surreal

have I been chosen?

Corn bubbles to boil in the bowl

like organic Tokyo box hotels

and screaming pain in lava

Water laps the muddy shore line

desolate repetition stomach churns

wet grass is submerged in mud again

We flower from the dirt

like those puffball wisps

that blow gently from a hand

Trees revolve like models of themselves

as I orbit and plastic plants can feel real

tearing off in strings like broccoli

Nature grows geometry and everything starts to feel like fractals

still the mountains shine gold at sunset