The Art of the Resurection and other tall tales....

When I was a young boy
My mama said to me
There's only one girl in the world for you
And she probably lives in Tahiti

I stopped for a moment the other day as I slowly made my way up the steps, making certain that I didn't lose my balance between my clumsy steps and the cane landing just right. There is an art to walking with a cane that can not be imitated unless you are actually attempting to support your weight. A certain strut and shuffle that only those who struggle with every step can make a cane almost look glamorous. And yet without it a pretender simply looks the fool.

Between steps I looked up as if I forgotten my lunch in the truck or even wondered if I wore underwear that day and what my chances were that I would be taken to the hospital at risk of shaming my mother. That small moment allowed me a moment respite as my defenses were down and my senses as clear without meaning almost as zen a moment as any No Mind happening.

I realized that she would be teaching at a summer camp up north. The one she loved and gave her a moment of creativity and breath from when she normally worked and where I would pick her up.

And it is as quick as blinking I have forgotten her as I made my crippled way up the stairs. It would not be the only moment in which I felt her ghost, but it was one that I didn't chase it away with another thought, shutting my eyes in concentration, or in a heavy sigh and a lump to swallow. To write about her now makes her ghost feel just a bit more solid than most times. Being no novice to hauntings, I often time know what rituals to go through to avoid more contact with her spirit. Those who have spent a large amount of time with me have usually left me with small moments in which sad little smiles escape my knowledge and allow those with the quickness of fingers to record said evidence. They ask me why I made such a face and knowing that I speak in layers they simply expect what I say to make no sense.

Though I try my best to keep it
There really was no secret
Must have looked like I was dancing with the wall
No one else could see this apparition
But because of my condition
I fell in love with a little ghost and that was all

Why sometimes offer little peace in truth. It's the how and whens that help us understand the mechanics of the task at hand. Who and whats simply make us certain that such things have actually come to pass with knowledge of the players in the play. It is the whys that trouble us all. It frighten us when there are none or if the evidence we see does not match with motives and actions. It's the whys that haunt us the most even if we do know and it never honestly gives us the peace we seek. It only drives us to seek new eyes to find out the hidden meanings in the three letter word.

You're dangerous 'cause you're honest
You're dangerous, you don't know what you want
Well you left my heart empty as a vacant lot
For any spirit to haunt

It's much easier to wear my mask now. Oscar Wilde once remarked that if given a mask, man is willing to show his true form as long as he fools himself. At this point of the masquerade I'm not worried that I'm left uncovered at midnight, but I worry more on if it will ever be removed. I've opened much of myself this month that it honestly frightens me. I've sang in front of those around me without shame and learned to laugh with gusto and richness that does not allow me to hide and longer. And yet, with what I have learned throughout my time here is that I above all can hide in plain sight. That no one suspects one who stands among them with secrets to expose. My honesty is the best cloak to hide under now. Simply stating those what I know will only allow them to place me with the boisterous or to the side with those who refuse to pepper their tales.

hmmm....I should have really stayed an actor.

Then again, people would believe all I do is of a lie than the truth. And isn't the truth the hardest to swallow?

I got a woman, she won't be true, no no
I got a woman, wanna ball all day
I got a woman, stay drunk all the time
I got a little woman and she won't be true

Sitting now I think of her again. It's a trick as one remaining underwater for an hour or keeping someone's nose pinched in one's fingers. I've never would believe to pick up these dusty memories and think of her as of now. It's funny how love redeems. How it makes us be what they see us as. How our chest puffs and how we are able to challenge to world and dare the heavens to strike as we stare into the eye of what is. Such bravado always lets me play things fast and lose. It always let me believe that gravity may be suspended and that the moment when time stood still would always hold us. To swallow flame or to juggle blades with not a care would never stand up to this trick and how regardless sacrifices are made to unspoken gods and desires, appeasements between what can be and what could be, and for that sweet lie so many of us call Love, it always amazes us how a slaughtered lamb my rise again. Usually with no one asking how was it able to?

Question is, was it ever alive?

Is it my turn to hold you by your hands
Tell you I love you and you hear me
Is it my turn to totally understand
To watch you walk out of my life
And not do a damn thing

Sacrifices we make we always remember, but do we remember the sacrifices? Do we morn for them as well? Do we thank those we have given to the blades and flames without a second thought or do we have to reconcile with what is when we realized that prayers was not heard and another one is asked for? Perhaps it's just why I'm always weary of those who call again and ask to near me again with some sort of revelation discovered. I've always called myself a madman, yet never a fool. And yet the passing of a friends father has brought her into my life when I once believed that I've survive the alter. Yet to return once again to taste steel and flame once more? Would you call it Love? Foolishness? Mental disorder? The act of a suicidal martyr? Or just someone who needed to know if it could be done again?

Hey, I always said never do anything I would never do twice, right?

There are things we can't recall, blind as night that finds us all
Winter tucks her children in, her fragile china dolls
But my hands remember hers, rolling 'round the shaded ferns
Naked arms, her secrets still like songs I'd never learned

And yet, I still shuffle along and wrestle with the why. I have a sense that she will not return. Perhaps it was finally heard or mayhaps she fears that the third times a charm, but another would suffice much better. I still question myself on why I've done it knowing how it would all end. How the future never gave me a sense of peace, but of dread. How I stole those small moments as a man savors his last meal with long lasting joy, turning bone over in his teeth knowing that the moment it leaves his mouth the beginning of the end would be. Perhaps he craved the coldness of the blade and the freeing pain of the end. And yet, if he had to live it once more? If tomorrow would return only with promise of the end once more. Would he savor that bone once again? Would that meal mean as much as it did before?

I still question myself.

Especially, since I know with all I know now that I would do it once more.

Mad man? Haunted? Fool?

Could never have been love.

Right?

Go ahead and leave me.
I think I prefer to stay inside.
Maybe you'll find someone else
To help you.

I walk to the top of the stairs, only wincing twice only to discover the handicapped button to the door inoperable and the door locked shut. With eyes towards empty heaven I laugh silently at the moment and start to make my way down once more with the care of a frightened child and the daring of an old man. There are moments where I shall fly down these steps, but not today. Sacrifices are painful after all and one who would learn the Art of Resurrection would understand that surviving death is not the true feat, but finding meaning in the next death.

After all, life is worth losing for those we love. If not, at least for the whys.

Look at me still talking when there's science to do
When I look out there
It makes me glad I'm not you
I've experiments to be run
There is research to be done
On the people who are
Still alive.