I Know Nothing

Walking west on the caliche road, it was soft and somber, the half man half woman that is winter dropped her smooth belly on the valley as she has for most of the past month. Strange and out-of-body, I ran, then walked, trotted backward, weaved back and forth. La luna was up there high, bathed in blues. There was an entire family of blue to the east and north, sad but steady, calm and quiet. Alarms rang in my right ear, the only sound on the vast desert. It is a moment that leaves you alone, able to walk into the curtain of air, not a stir, as if on the glass surface of a leaden lake, no oars to rip the skin, no body to plow the depths. And I have no expectations. Things are good in some ways, trying in others. I'm never sure when I'm walking this road, and surety tends to the ridiculous underneath the baby sky of crisscrossing pastels to the west. The river is just over that hill and down that far wall of cliff, but tonight there is no destination or goal. I'm torn and deadened, hopeful and weary. Confused. Swimming in the cold water rises to me as something that would unmask me, unwind me, unravel the knot that disappears when I am in motion, and returns when the door to the civilized world reopens and I step back in. Calls to make, letters to write, psyches to juggle, spirits to caress, magic serum to deliver, work for money, work for hire, work for legitimacy, and spinning up and up we go; I gotta sufi myself the fuck out of here. You know what I mean? And breathing, a bubble inside of the chrome tube of time, sliding, looking for the end of the line where I'll be dumped out into the lake like a pearly waste product. Waste products floating on an unexpected lake, below mountains, near sharp nipples of desert bumps, afraid to touch anything or be popped back out into the hum. Human elements, darting around inside their amber lit houses, trying to reform, recollecting in a bathtub, listening to the sizzle and seethe of other elements in heat, wanting to reach out and find the floating device and slither under the door and out over things, stretched out, vast, unhinged, buttons popped, clothes slid off, swathed in today's newsprint as a time capsule bomb to be dropped when you land. I must admit that I know nothing. I am listening and I am empty, can't tell right from left, right from wrong, right from form. When I hit the point of the road where I knew I must turn back, I ran again, ran hard, harder and faster than I have since September 7th when I mangled my ankle sliding into first base, hung over, breathing heavy, stamping the loose dirt. 5 months. It is starting to feel supple. There is regret lodged on the inside, and that still feels hollow, the bone speaks to me in broken tones like a pen on spinning spokes. And it may always speak to me. But, still, it is almost ready, as am I, to explode, to launch as if I was wrapped in a thousand rubber bands and somebody slashed them from head-to-toe with long knife and I was slingshot. Dogs call from the distance, and the smell of crumbled and sloughing earth mixed with pooled water climbs my body to my nose and I want to crawl in there among the sage. Hmmmm, bury the head in the clay mud and let it be a sheath over all of me. Moon, should I? I don't. Instead, I continue down the road and the western sky doesn't give a shit that I know nothing, not one shit. It goes gaga and leaves me swallowing hard with feathers and swirls, waves and curls of first cranberry, then hot raspberry, then that occasional-if-you've-been-very-nice-I'll-thrill-you electric salmon (thanks Ivy). Clueless, I dig in my back pocket for my cell camera, and stagger into the mud ditch and up into the crunching snowdebris, looking for the everything shot. I take here, take there, pushing the button, capturing what you can't capture, breathing a little heavy, excited, threatened. It's all unexpected, but what the fuck did I expect. I'm not really happy, but neither am I sad, or disappointed or anything. The sky does not give up. 45 minutes has elapsed since I left my house. I wonder if I'm still in the bubble. I don't think so. My mind flashes to posters on the window of the World Cup. An Apache medicine man is doing a sweat lodge ceremony and giving spiritual guidance somewhere, soon. Bands with friends of mine in them are playing everywhere at the same time all weekend. A full lunar eclipse approaches and there will be a gong ceremony. Roses are being sold for Valentine's Day by an acting troupe of developmentally disabled magicians. A woman promises to help blocked artists flow once more. I want to do, and buy, and be everything. And I am nothing. I want to see movies, but first I want to learn to speak telepathically. Blogging is not nearly enough; neither is email or IMing or facebooking, or talking on the phone. None of these things can be done in the bubble. I want to get up way before dawn tomorrow and know something. The clouds of red make the sage stalks black, shaking silhouettes, and that is something. A bomb waits inside to lay waste to what has been me, and the aftermath is a man exhaling.