Alive Within The Accident
None of us asked to be born. Delivered into someone else’s story. Start with parents: theirs. Born into our parents’ existence. And their families, friends, jobs, conditions. Captured inside somebody else’s circumstance. Glass of ice coffee on glass table. Spawned into epic histories of states, nations, corporations, individuals. Impact, alter, contribute to, blend with society’s constructions. Delivered into somebody else’s world, slowly our own. Here, have your own story. Here’s your story, Kid. Welcome to the city, the town, the country. I arrived on a different continent than my parents or grandparents. Dropped into another’s situation. After a world war, species-level state-level individual-level decisions. Begat within an existing narrative, dealing with possibilities, proscriptions, limitations. Tulip, butterfly, and rose. Birthed to the couch pillow, the TV, genre category, art existing before me, during, afterwards. Welcome to your run. We make our own with everybody else’s. The All-Mind.
Asked to be born. Willed it. Alive within the accident. Coffee on the coffee table. Food distribution production system, labor regime, money love market, waste removal, schools, cultures, songs, beliefs, expectations, roads, names, brand gods, Top 40 and the Pledge of Allegiance. Trending. Typewriter to Facebook Minolta to Canon iPhone from rotary. Cultivate within the paradigm. Blossom, harvest, leave behind. Lord, the Powerful One, born into that story. King, Owner of All we see before us, toiling the land for protection, Landlord Prince President Billionaire. Squeezed into yarn, here soul farming. Land you provided, shade and sun. Here woman and two sons. Care for your commons! As the first decision. Everything secondary to loving. We didn’t choose this chapter, these relatives, those spaces. But own action. Wake in the morning and rise. Act within collaboration, work within power, construct our own. Understanding the All-Thing.
We know those thoughts, driving to Boston to see mom, corpus, dying. In a bed view of concrete, glass, ductwork, footbridge they call the Pike. They’re doing their best. Circumstance dictated her decision. Lived a few days beyond her voice. Where to die. How to exist. Living choice within the accident.
Open Heart Surgery
Drove to Boston today with my wife and sons to see my dying mom. Don’t want to live life holding false hope. Just call it hope and keep rolling. She knows and God knows where we are. Even with a miracle, a temporary stay, she’s not moving to that condo taxes double in Amherst. Margins. They beat the pneumonia while her lung’s collapse with diabetes too there’s not enough strength to rise, to rise, to rise from that whipping bruised, can’t see hardly talk I’m tired I’m tired enough to rise from lying down with the earth.
I walked into the room alone. Left everyone out there. “Oh, it’s not looking good. It’s. Not. Looking. Good,” slightly shaking her head, eye patch over the infected one, tubes from her nose. Told her what I wanted to say alive. About marrying man with two kids gnarly divorce stepping in and raising us. Lovely, wonderful, giving mom.
Everybody needs to quiet down, mindful, present. World. You. Me. I Lord need to be present at the Wall. Standing on my line. With our time. Need to be.
There’s no way you’ve explored enough thinking about the end. The last breath. Mortally tired. There’s no way you’ve seen that line clearly. Imagined beyonds necessary. Everybody’s imagined beyond worthy. Listen to what people say about theirs. Check the well-articulated institutionalized after-fantasy. Is it cruel that we die? And, if so, why? It’s a miracle we do, and so why. If we know we die, what to conclude? What is the meaning of life?
To balance consciousness of death with living. To reconcile living death without going mad. Without being afraid. System in place for the final step. I’d believe your imagined beyond, too. Embrace you while you’re here. Our joy building final bravery. Our task to release into Love. Chemicals euphoric, I’ve seen heaven, Dad. Upon death, brain releases orgasmic medicament, floods the body, knowing final cries. Fade, fade, goodbye. Final cries to the imagined beyond. Reaching for a fictive bond. Tell myself anything to deal with this finality. Terminus. Who are we and what are we doing?
Who are you? What is this, what is this, and where do we go after. Where is the line. Do we hope to stay? I’m tired, I’m so tired.
“It’s too bad I’m not going to see that baby,” she moaned it. Speaking of my brother’s first due in May. I’ll see her for you, Mom. We’ll see the baby and give her all your love, all the love you would have given her, and tell her about you, about your love, your life. What is this? What is cancer? More than a few women in Heidelberg developed similar strains. Dad and more than many said it was Chernobyl. If you know Central Europe and know we weren’t allowed to play outside or touch the grass or drink the water right then, there, then, if you know it’s not a step away from possible.
Doesn’t look good, honey. Her nephew brother’s son my cousin driving from New York, my brother flying from Cleveland, my brother and his son my nephew flying from Asheville. Picking them up at the airport in Providence at midnight. When it’s supposed to be thirteen degrees and snowing on Tuesday driving to Boston. Will mom still be here on Tuesday? I don’t know. Will I receive an emergency call tomorrow afternoon? I don’t know. We walked the Pike to see the Kidney Nobel again. My boys have been there twice. Oh mom, this isn’t fair. Mom, why do we die? What’s it like, that close. Like it is now. What are you thinking? Not really thinking. Are you afraid? Have you reconciled? Are you preparing yourself, or does it come naturally and, at last, thoughtlessly? Is death easy or difficult, are you in pain, struggling? Some sort of cruel joke! And if we Know, what’s the point of knowing? Must be a reason rises from knowing expiry, developing cosmologies. A Finding, a Place, a Position, psychologically, neurologically, a settled understanding. We discovered consciousness so that we could . . . transcend? Know death in order to do what in life? In order to have what sort of conversations, write what kind of books? What’s our communication?
We walked from the Towers on Sunday quiet parked on the 4th floor to the coffee shop across from the private school. With Dad where I walked with Mom during his heart surgery and she couldn’t move a block without resting against a post; mailbox; concrete wall; her collapsed lung, while dad recovered from bypass. Heartbeat, gaining strength, mom fades. Not looking good, honey. It’s. Not. Looking. Good. Peered out at me through one eye. Showed her a picture of the boys framed and some cards they made. Her spoon shook with broth; fork quivered macaroni, heading to her mouth not making it.
Works on Paper
“I mean, right?” Precarious declares next to his cliffside studio . . . thing going to fall like frats on Del Playa. We all in this together, he reminds. Pokes snow boot toe. Decide the Thing, he nods an acknowledgment while clearing space for his friend Humbleplot.
Mudslides and Butterflies
What would you say about them before the 101? About wealth, class, Montecito? Way before Oprah they married. Celebrated anniversaries, Precarious knows, before the 101. Chill damp Central Coast nights, down jacket, walk to Butterfly Beach, cross railroad tracks, quiet to the wall, stairs, sand. Hike toward Stearns Wharf, or away to Carpentaria. Water wind storm erode bluffs near petrol idols and history buffs. Swim the pool before the 101, still cold when you emerge, way that air hits wet skin. Seriously unlike Florida. Before the 101 sliced through, left rich people on Coast Village, fine cars, super houses crawling hills no matter fire, earthquake, mudslide, before Oprah.
They’ll claim it’s paradise with or without the freeway along parking lots and hedges, bordering the palace, walk the bridge now to utterly, you’re paying for something but it’s not the 101. Precarious pretends, hugging that cliff, that automobiles and trucks perpetual no lull not even 3 a.m sound like waves breaking land.
Recline next to the pool anyway, or in the lobby, ignore engines tires-to-surface screams to satellites. It’s okay, fantasize, imagine the 101 isn’t there. The state gone, too, and laborers, immigrants, taco trucks, housecleaners, teachers - none exist next to your drink driving north sound reverberates gut. Nostalgic intoxicant of California before orange groves, movie stars, dry hills. Mudslides and butterflies.
Stay on the Trail
Precarious knows the Beginning and the End
Gonna stay on the path for a while longer, thank you, On the Trail this one life, thank you very much. Onward, you see. Forward so to say a trail through the woods, back to the trailhead, keep walking away from that shit know what I mean. When we continue, away from that other place, away from the dirt the hole the end. Think I’ll avoid the easy way to the cemetery right now on this day.
And yet. The trail leads to the cemetery or its equivalent in nature or outer space anyway. The Grand Cemetery of All Things. Dopeness of the All Way! And so, sigh for sure, might as well turn left immediately and stroll to that final rest. The road leads straight. You might think it’s winding, appears so, but it’s an unbroken line. Ain’t going to miss it, ignore it, run from it, deny it, outsmart it, delay it, even as you face forward and commit. We’ll keep going, if that’s okay with you.
Or/and, can we separate this sameness? Better, where does the same thing separate? Where, even in identical twins, does sameness diverge, where’s the point of uniqueness, of non-sameness? Can you tell where sameness ends, find that juncture? Can you describe it and define it? Where the duplicate actually isn’t and the world exists there. This similarity between identical, the space between words and ideas. Gaps between one thing and the next, expressing infinity.
Classifications help us ignore the abyss, the emptiness between things. We explore the definition of the word, its meaning, can explain the difference between two concepts, and talk about those differences. But, in a sentence, or list, or conversation, can we reveal the precise moment of rupture, where words differ in absolute terms, and there exists the perpetual abyss? The gulf between ideas. The chasm between understanding, isolated Words as divine. They remain separated forever.
Alternatively, can we identify the sameness between the differential and the separated? We avoid insanity by naming everything. We evade confusion by markers, these signs. Signposts in a life lived, our ancestors our inheritors. Signals from birth to death, way stations on the journey from here to there, touch them, hold them, caress them, share with others. Hello, our sanity. The recognition we demand. I recognize myself and you within the unrecognizable. Our words are prayers and symbols of hope. Our words beacons in absolute darkness. We find our way, we are found. Signposts on a mortal adventure we cultivate.
Running From The Apocalypse
What is Precarious going to say about Running from the Apocalypse? My thinking as I approached his farm. Water breezes as you dream, 77 degrees, soft. “This is Hawaii,” I said. He shook my hand, stood shoulders square, much taller than I am, and mused - you could see thoughts running around catching memories. “Hawaii’s a little more humid,” and then we walked past heaping compost and lobster fertilizer through the gardens: raised beds, lowered beds, embedded beds, gates, fences, water hoses, spigots, watering cans, couple of scarecrows, vegetables all kinds, plus herbs, flowers, his grandmother’s phlox from Wisconsin. I asked him how he acquired so much land - pastures, meadows, waterways, a freaking mountain. He looked at me like, Do some research.
“Keep it from the white man,” he said. “From Nestle stealing our water, chemical company toxins in our genes, pharmaceuticals buying acres for an industrial park, the Department of the Effy Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, hydroelectric harnessing tides - aimed grander than Grand Coulee! Nuclear plant looking for a new home kicked out of Vermont, Prez building hotel for oligarch hangs near Newport, highway politicians fighting me in court desperate to jam freeway right through native soil, ExxonMobil already ships oil in deepwater ProvPort pipeline tanks around the bay ooze-up Barrington, which, by the say, praying to increase oil consumption in southern New England run another pipeline through here to eastern Connecticut, following Ten Rod, and even a fucking brewery wanted the water.”
Precarious paused, looked at me, “Gots to battle, man.” He turned, brisk toward the forest, entered on a path I never would have found and we came to his studio.
“Did the cops follow you?” He asked.
“No, made it clean.”
He nodded.
“Your latest series . . . It’s dope.”
“Thanks.”
“So, I came to ask what the Running from the Apocalypse series is about?
He looked at me. “Dude, seriously?”
Serious Drugs
Precarious on the road, nomadic lifestyle some say, dipping daily into non-square behaviors, including experimentation with many substances not advisable for someone aiming to impress Squaredom. In the realm of confessionals - a grand literary and artistic tradition, of course - his relayed by four things. First, sight, or vision. Second, the Idea seen within the thing. Third, capturing and sharing the combination as best Precarious on the cliff can. Fourth, laboring for the divine. As noted elsewhere, means working in the dirt as a serious monkey for the original idea as handed to us from God. Please, open to multiple interpretations, knowing he’s atheist. Mostly Precarious seeks three things on his walkabouts: inspiration, beauty and humor. That’s it! All definitions, of course, according to him. That’s the point, really. Walks the streets with the tools of his trade. Those he already had and found objects. He no longer begs but commands. You try dragging your skin of bones around with everyone looking at you. Or nobody noticing at all the midnight rambles. What possesses a person to walk from here to there? What’s the chemical behind curiosity? Knowing, too, that no matter what you think about yourself he’s the Most Ghosted. Rolling with it, “following the love,” his phrase, he finds the singing voice offered by the spirits of life itself. “Transcribing perception into discourse,” Foucault wrote about the history of languages, the archaeology of knowledge, and the order of things. Adding a voice to the pile, reinterprets Precarious Birch.
Otis the Elevator
Next time you step into an elevator look around, down, toward the numbers panel, and go “What up, Otis?”
New School Faculty
Precarious reached over the page into darkness. His arm disappeared to his elbow. Dreaming, he saw art and teaching. Dreaming, light and shadows. Not sure of This or That, but he knew one place provided release (from society and context), power (personal and communal), and joy. If the Thing does it for you, said therapist with a view over chimneys tiles clouds, why wouldn’t you do it again and again? Well, exactly, thought Precarious. What about fear and comfort? What to know about dialectic? What’s the work doing, where’s it going, why do you breathe? Precarious closed the book, lay on the strange bed, visualized creation in its own purity. Out in front alone, far beyond other voices institutional or individual, clawing, clutching, denying, controlling, polluting. Stay here, his whisper, right here.
Friends
Haven Maplewood Being
Seeing being balance boots and boom-bap, seeing noticing. As an action, when the thing happens. Always with us, creativity. Forever our spirit seeing. Noticer! Spotted the train through the forest from a mile. Across bogs like that time toward West Berlin, toward Lithuania. Roll between the madness, there the train, clack chunk the dope quack. From here, missing new politics of the end, dissipate covenant, yet still we must live. We abandoned known to unknown long ago, along the border. Roads through land, slip across the Ohio, tunnels to Victoria. Spinning the noticing engaged within innocence, purity, freedom. We take care of one another, give to one another, nothing else. Where the Foundation provides, holds us firm and helps us upward, alive, our light.
Hello From the Almost-Dead, Or, Art Inspires Big
Precarious Birch tries to quest Mass MOCA at least once a year. Find a flat on the stream, that converted barn, footbridge over mountain’s release. Post-industrial conversions provide lessons. Strolling curious various halls, corridors and courtyards inspires Precarious with life-affirming flower. Like a spa for the soul. As a two-week stay at a retreat for a cleanse, IV injections of possibility. Renewal. Creativity baths like in Baden-Baden, sulphur and salts. He inhales works displayed in the middle of the room, hanging from ceilings, decorating walls. Set to tinker with time and space, a residency, building visions for others. Making art for the self, for the rest of the world. Humans generate sacred spaces for expressions of faith, understanding, assurance. Hello from the almost-dead, we give birth to these things. Oh. My. God, there’s hope after all.
On the Road in Maine with Carly Simon
Precarious remembers his mom singing in a red Opel before he was tossed from his babysitter’s house for bystanding a tussle in the after-school dirt involving the babysitter’s son. His mom, now without a babysitter for the rest of the school year, cried and he felt like ass. Apology didn’t save the gig. But he was free to take the bus home and hang alone! Maine has some world class art museums, pink granite and loons on Moosehead Lake.