The Sycamore

Formulating past broken nights of sanguine finabulators. Reckoning fish-weights accepting missives from embassies out past lawless half-breeds. Bleeding noses. Fell down from the beech tree. Ronny Totmann. Runny Titman. Did it to prove that I was lying when I said that it could never happen. It did happen. He made it happen. Sacrificed himself to devalue my word. What a turd. The toady of what’s-his-sneer. And then the even greater malignance of neighbour Adam. A singular event that stunted all growth. Tarnished all memories. Ass-stench and licorice-taste. Yet forgiven, perhaps, in a ceremony at the forest temple. Candy crushed. Howling. Demons devouring. Flies sucking blood. Full chod action. His skull pounded and buried at Golgotha. Washed by the blood...

General doubt. Cosmic Cartesian doubt, but without the rebirth. I think I am what? And that melts, decays, drifts away. Upon reflection no I is found. Yet there is reflection, perception, something flowing, something attempting to get a bead on...what? A flow spiraling around a flow. Poe’s maelstrom, the sudden flushed toilet of civilization. But in fact it is far more personal, more intimate, right under my nose, part of my breath. Breathing walls conjoined with disintegrating emotions, terrifying memories, armpit sweat, bad posture. And then flights of near-ecstasy, almost a calm, almost an eye in the storm, almost a foothold on truth. Then another stumble, another blow to confidence.

Fide. Faith. Fidel. Religion, ideology, science, fact, certainty, balance, reason, strength. All is vanity. And all this time I’m trying to suppress a fart. But then there’s that jasmine vine growing up and out from hell-knows-where among the banana trees with the promise that in May, for a couple of weeks with luck, there will be the fragrance of heaven on the breeze. And that beauty is also me/not-me.

Sartre and Huxley were both on mescaline, but one went to hell and the other went to heaven. Haunting giant crabs versus the corduroy slacks of the gods. The nausea, I think (but not am), is the more interesting of the two states. Seasickness on solid ground. Like the thousands of aftershocks which followed in the wake of 3/11. Another earthquake? Or is my inner-ear balance fucked? Or am I drunk again on this 400 yen Prince de Bao red wine that’s supposed to be a viable bulwark against radioactive strontium poisoning? Who says this? I don’t remember. Watch the street lights. Are they shaking or is that tremble coming from me? All is liquid, undulating. The only effective antidote against universal seasickness is to jump with a whoop into the sea and drown.

Drowning with panic is drowning with the illusion of self still intact. But give up. Observe motion without analysis or struggle. Acceptance. The undertow takes the offering and deposits it smoothly almost peacefully within a few strokes of the shore. Sputtering and hacking on the rocky sand, but senses still aware, still alive. Praising what? Who knows, but there is something to praise. A mysterious thing to rejoice that is beyond all doubt, that escapes doubt, not because it is me, but because doubt itself comes from the same place as the jasmine vines & the beech tree & earthquakes & nausea & tears & memories. When it blooms everything is in question except that its scent, nearly of decay, will also quietly fade into the wind and be lost for a while.