Robert Colpitts

“You wanna know what?  You wanna wanna wanna know what?  You wanna know what?  Do ya?  Do ya?  Do ya do ya doyadoyadoya?”

Faith and K-Box are standing in line.

“Shoot kid.”

K-Box beams.  “I LOVE YOU!”

Faith smirks.  “Love you too kiddo.”

K-Box steadies herself for another round, and percolates.  “You wanna know what else?”

Faith says, “Of course, I do.”

“Love is easy,” K-Box begins, “but not when sex is involved.”

Faith pats K-Box like she is steadying a sand castle.

K-Box, encouraged, continues, “So I am glad that we are not having sex, because I can love you and love you and love you and love you forever.”

Faith leans right, and peers down the line.  The entrance to Egypt keeps its distance.

K-Box wonders why there is no wind.  And the desert doesn’t seem so bad after all.

“So silly,” K-Box says.  “Do you know what is so silly?”

Faith smiles.

“Do ya ya ya ya ya do ya do ya do ya do ya?”

Faith smiles.

“Do ya do ya do ya do ya do ya do ya do ya do ya do ya do ya do ya?”

“Ok, kid, go ahead.”

“It is so silly that at a day’s end, we are so different from the day’s beginning.”

The woman in front of them moves two steps.  Faith steps forward two steps.  Some wonder why why why why why?  Faith does not.

“From ourselves at the day’s beginning.”

Faith takes a pack of gum out of her pocket and offers the pack to K-Box.  K-Box takes a piece, opens the wrapper, places the retangular solid in her mouth, and chews.  Faith puts the gum pack back in her pocket.  Faith does not chew gum.  No she doesn’t.

The sun of the desert is nowhere to be seen.  K-Box runs in circles.  Faith, steady, waits. 

Arrival comes in twenty years.

They make us quiet.  Waits.

Icky bikcy boo.  The cat got stuck on you.  It then became a tree.  So much for all that steam.  Spend some apples too.  Icky bicky boo.  The cee and kay are you.  In reverse of doom. 

!~Mood~!

So begins the life of the sea storm.  It twists and mingles and stamps itself as everything it always wanted to be and more.  The picture of the perfect ___________.  As in moon beam.  As in shining, whining, here-I-spend-plant-seed-love-watch-me.  So begins the life of the sea storm.

Then the sea storm it becomes something like an ant with an elo(elephantine)-ego.  It too spins, but into a paragraph that cutes itself to pukes an’ lies.

I am a flipping disaster.  Like so many words, I hop oh so hop, and should be proud, but I am barely holding it together.  A cracked frying pan.  Too many tents in my campground.

Sea-storm dies; it butterfly-ies.  Dashing to-and-fro and opening envelopes (if it rhymes, it stays, ok?)  The delicate wings of the butterfly are then eaten and then apologies to the lifeless body, expurgate through belch, sometime later, pigeon shit.

If you say hello, I’m lost.

I am a dead beetle, black, stinky, and doped.

Well, more like, I am so stirred by every breathing f-bot that I…

Like so much frenzy…

Should

Schiiiiiiiickttttttt!

To endless nothing:  to no more thought:  to mindless emptiness: to silence, stillness, and dust:  what is the quickest way to the grocery store, and do you know if they have a bathroom I can use?

And then, she said, in dulcet sighs, “Why shouldn’t my corseted breasts stir you?”

So, which part of that is real again?  The I’ll-ignore-you-now-but-lather-my-body-all-over-your-eyes-and-make-you-wish-you-weren’t-so-close whisper, or the belch mark left on my toothbrush?

The trumpet, all alone, eating an apple, waiting for sundown, so he can wander home the long-way-’round, well, like I said, he eats an apple.  What he doesn’t know is what lifetime-number apple he is on.  His best guess, at this moment, is 10,458.  It is a terrible guess.  He is barely at 500. 

The color
Blue
Turned
Yellow

Was it blue
Or is it
Yellow

All I
____
Was see

Such a
Curse
The eyes

Was it red
Or was it
Green

Am I right
Or
Cursed

Is there

In the
Long
Long
Sigh

Goodbye

Tell me
What

“Come here K-Box-the-Fox,” requests Faith.  Park-like generic setting.  Muffled sounds here and there.  Loud kids running with nowhere to go.  Charming all around.  K-Box looks scared, by the way.  She doesn’t necessarily trust Faith.  I say necessarily because I can.  Obtrusive, unnecessary, and redundant fleshy modification is all the style these days.  I would tell K-Box to eat that and shove it up her new winter cap, but I am nicer than that.

“Come here K-Box-the-Fox,” you recall Faith saying.  K-Box creeps over to Faith cautiously.  Her face, twisted raw innocence, cortorted puerile modesty, misty wonton pinchy-ness, is ugly as a duck at this moment.  Normally, she is a–eh, but what the heck, let’s stop getting excited and talk about what HAPPENs.

The elder Faith puts her arm around K-Box.  She boldly states:  “Here is how you see the nature of things.  Wait.  Eventually it emerges.  Let the world speak.  Let the world act.  Do not intervene.  Do not negotiate.  Just watch.  And then, woom bam slam bash shush poo nub paroo, suddenly you were present for it.”

K-Box does not know why she is being told this, and asks Faith why she is being told this.  Faith points at the wall in front of them.  “Walls are brilliant.  They have one powerful message:  ‘I am a wall.’  So, when you see a wall, you see a wall, and that is that.  But, when something has one powerful message, and it reasserts it over and over and over and over again, you know that there is something behind it.  So pay attention. Through the cracks in the wall a water drop will seep, or an ivy vine grow, or a bug crawl.  To a person who accepts walls as walls, there is no water there, no ivy, no bug.  To a person who waits, all is present.”

K-Box sees a dog in the distance and starts watching that instead of listening to Faith.  Faith is completely obsessed with the wall in front of her and does not see K-Box wander off in search of the dog.  Nor does Faith hear K-Box scream, “Doggggie!” nor observe the dog attack K-Box, nor see K-Box’s defense of K-Box’s life with verve and passion and skill and lined up pow-pow.  Scuffled-up, though–dirty, some might say.  Bloodied.  Faith still staring at the wall.  K-Box collects some of her blood in a bowl–a bowl she took from the bowel of the deadly dog.  She flings the blood–splash linear streak all over yuck yuck wall. 

Faith sees the blood.  She cries:  “You see!  You see!  If you are looking for it, something will reveal the nature of the wall!”

K-Box is unimpressed.  She says, “No it doesn’t.  It reveals something about the nature of you.”

Notwithstanding the debate, and old bit of advice:  Hmm.  I forgot it.  Oh, yes.

There could be, in the great strands of sunlight that hit our face, blades of grass that, blanket-like, wrap us and hold us.  Suppose, then, that these blankets claim obeisance to care while crushing us.  I suppose many cats feel this way.  Yet the dual nature of the sun speaks and claims.  The words surprise us.  They reveal so much, but then again, so little.  It is not only the WAY, but also the SUBSTANCE, and it is best we listen carefully while not paying attention; that is, if we want to understand everything.

The thing about it all is that we’ve always been here before.  So the sun gets the shaft.

So, I say to Faith (somewhere you enjoy):  “There were two things.  One was witnessing the irony of the stories of my mind, and two was witnessing why there is nothing wrong.”

Faith says, on cue, good girl, “Tell me about the first.”

Yes, I have been prompted.  Yes, Faith is beautiful.  Yes, I am in control.  But you know that.  And, ah ha!  Here I go!  Now I come out and say it!

“I sat and started contemplating stories.  Every now and then, a sentence, spoken, comes into my mind.  While sitting, most of these thoughts are “appropriate,” like students in a class who know not to talk or ask questions unless it directly pertains to the lesson being learned.  Despite their ‘appropriate’ stance, these are stories, and I wanted to see the nature of them.

“So, right at about the instant I decided to see the nature of the good student stories, I heard one student-story say, ‘I’m going to discover the nature of these stories.’”

I wait for Faith to be impressed.  She touches my knee.

“Yes, that’s right.  Let me break it down.  I saw/heard/was the story, ‘I’m going to discover the nature of these stories.’  You see!  Very funny!  The story-telling mind is always active, always trying to participate, always trying to be helpful!  However, the closer you get to just being present, the more these thoughts are going to pretend to be ‘being present’ just to be there and keep things together.  Isn’t that funny?  How subtle these stories are at times!”

Faith laughs with me.  Good girl, Faith.  Good girl.

“That led me to the second discovery.  I contemplated whether or not we ever disappear.  You know, like when a story grabs me, and my mind runs with it, it feels like I went somewhere.  But did I?  Do I ever really disappear?  Ah ha!  The truth is is that I was never really there!  Well, not in the sense that I imagine myself to be.  I was never really the grounded self I thought I was when I started doing all this looking in the first place, and even if I trip along with a story, I am there when I’m there, and here when I’m here, and all the time never there in exactly the way that I tell myself I am there, because there is this and there is that and when this tells the tale of that, that is not there in that way. So, in this way, there is no way to NOT be present.  You cannot help it.  You are always present because all the time YOU were not present.”

Faith looks like she has a question.  I mention that she only has a question because I would like you to have a question, precisely, this one:  “Yes, then what is the point of the entire thing?  Why look for the nature of thought?  The nature of story?  The nature of the mind?  Why if I am always there do I practice or look at all?”  (You sure are playing along nicely.  The part of the dedicated, passionate student is hard to take on, but I thank you!)

I answer by handing Faith a cupcake and braiding her hair.  “It is because we believe our own stories all the time.  They run amok, and cause us to do all sorts of things that make us and others suffer.”

Faith laughs.  She has coffee with her cupcake.

“We just have to see the nature of it all so we don’t get crazy and confused.”

Gotta keep it light.  It really is quite funny when you discover it.

“So, when you stop leaping at every thought, chasing every dream, running from every pain, then, well, then remember that that is just as not you as the not you searching for the nature of all that other stuff.  And then, remember that you were always present for all of it, because you could never not be.  You just listened to too many stories.”

Did I say I had to keep it light?

Sam walks into a video game store.  He asks for jelly and gets called a noob.  He laughs.

Sam stares out the window, mind baking on wait wait wait when?  Sam, you know, big-lipped, broad-eyed, has all the testy belittling freshness you ever wanted from a shy white fella.  He sees Faith walk by.  He crawls out the window and screams, “Faith!”

Faith turns.  Then a flash.  Dystopia.  Flash.  Elysium.  Flash.  Donuts everywhere.

Sam wakes up.  He doesn’t realize that he was dreaming until he notices his mind saying, “I hate everyone.  I hate my life.”  Then he doesn’t remember his dream, but recognizes he was dreaming. Then he digs into his mind, eyes scrunching bunching boring, attempting to force memory out of its hiding hole squeak squeak squeak. Boring.  As in boring into the earth of his mind, not boring as in searching for tomatoes.

I wonder if Sam knows that I am hiding in his underwear drawer. 

I hear a knock on the door, and I hear Sam clump-clump up to the door, and I hear the door squeak-squeak, and then I hear K-Box say-say, “Do you have a pencil I can borrow?”

Silence.

Sam:  “Sure.  One second.”

Sam comes straight for the underwear drawer and attempts to open it, but it will not open.  I am too heavy, too thick, too round.

Sam:  “This drawer seems to be stuck and very heavy.  That is where my pencil is.”

K-Box is not so much confused as concerned, “I’m confused.”

Sam explains:  “You see, a long time ago, when I was a minor child, I was minding my own business, playing with two blades of grass.  I placed those two blades of grass onto a small rock while I searched for another blade to be their friend.  Well, would you know it, down comes a windy wind, and my two blades were never to be found again.”

K-Box questions fitfully, “Does that always happen when making kinky grass?”

Sam is sad.  Sadder than after the dreams.  He asks for a hug from K-Box, and K-Box gives him a hug.  It is a friendly, lovely hug.  Sam cries.  I want to tell Sam to stop crying, but I don’t want to be discovered.  When he does stop crying, he does stop crying.

Time passes.  A lot of time.  You know, like the amount of time it takes for the bus to come.  I feel like screaming, “Hey!” but, again, I don’t want to be discovered.  I realize that I like being found and I don’t like being left to rot, so I really almost scream, “Hey!” but I think it is also a sign of weakness.  Time passes, and the feeling grows and wanes and then I realize I am in pain.  It is not so much ambivalence that causes my madness, it is the hunger for anything and everything different.  So human is this feeling that I again want to shout.

So I search for the pencil Sam was going to get, but all I can find is clean underwear.  I think if I put on all of his underwear, the pencil will appear one way or another.  Stuck in this drawer I cannot move my legs or arms, so putting on all the underwear requires herculean focus and effort, but I accomplish the task (go go go nimble shoulder blades!).  The pencil is somewhere between the 15th and 23rd layer of underwear.  Wearing that much underwear is very uncomfortable, but I feel like a cloud.

It is still silent.  But what is in that silence?  Is pencil passing better than wondering?  Could the K-Box and Sam be doing more than hugging?  Could they be FONDLING?  Could they be FORNICATING?

I squeeze my buttocks, and when I release them, the energy launches me slingshot-like through the upper layers of the dresser and me hit ceiling hard but land on both feet, and there is K-Box and Sam digging a hole in the floor with forks.

“So THAT is where that silence comes from!” I coo-coo.

K-Box laughs.  Sam is blushing.

This is what happens when three immature lovers act on impulse.  The problem is, now we’re stuck.  Until Faith lets us out.  That will be a glorious day.  I will make K-Box the ambassador to Portugal, and Sam the Supreme King of Ireland.  I will do something useful that doesn’t take too long.  We will speak of each other in the newspaper. 

There is nothing to talk about, so I grab a fork and help them dig.

Talk about:

Weather
News
Movies
Philosophy
Politics

Or, dear God:

Make something
Up

Just:

Be nice
To people

Painters
Writers
Musicians
ALL!!!

LOOK
FOR
GODS
SAKE

Look
To the elders
Their spirits
Emulate

Your
Dead-eyed
Washed-out
Gaze

Sucks
The
Life
From
Art

Build a
Temple
Holy

Or go
Watch
TV

And…

Pie is good too.

Do you march when you hear trumpets?  No.  No you don’t.  You’ve never marched.  Not when you’ve heard trumpets.  You might have marched when ordered to do so and there might have been trumpets there when you marched, but you never started marching because of the trumpets.  So, we’ve established that and agree upon it, so what?  So what, you ask?  So what?  I’ll tell you what:  it is about time you march when you hear trumpets.  It is about time you dance when you hear music.  It is time to to to to to to to to…

Faith is washing dishes.  She is doing it in the grand old style of the ancient lost ones.  She is doing it with a deadness in her gaze, like she has washed out her brain.  She is washing a dish with the kind of fervor unbecoming of someone holding a soapy spongy sponge.  She goes from there to the counter, to the shelf, to the cabinet, to the floor, back to the living room, over to the bedroom, back to the kitchen, to the front windows, to the back door, to the old bedroom, doing whatever and however I want her to do it, and all the while, oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh, all the while resenting so dearly…

Faith would, if she had her druthers, stand on a pulpit and say something like:  “What in the world are you thinking?  No one is going to do it for you!  Don’t die every day and then die like that!  You piece of wimpy gelatin!  PIECE OF WIMPY GELATIN!”

So I don’t let her speak, and I make her wash dishes and clean the house.  The thing is, and as it always is, the house is cleaned in about an hour and a half, and Faith comes up to me and says, “What now, hotshot?”

I am confused.  I think, I remember, I search.

“I cannot think of anything else for you to do.”

Faith smiles, but then decides to use the time she is going wash dishes to learn French and she hires a pig to clean the dishes.  The pig does the dishes and sweeps in 5 minutes.  When she learns French (the pig), she (Faith) is promoted to a position that works with the Paris office (not a pig sty).  She has her own bank account (Faith), and does whatever she wants (pig and Faith), whenever she wants (same), and, not surprisingly, she does pretty interesting and nice things like rock climbing (definitely not the pig). It is a shame she didn’t learn how to do that earlier (ahem). Why it takes up down who what where verb verb verb SOOOOOOOOO long I don’t know and where is the impact?

Before you criticize me for moralizing, let me say something.  Faith, if she were here, would KILL me for telling this story.  Right now she’s wrestling bulls in Spain.  I don’t need to tell you how odd that is, but it is not odder than what a lot of people do: KILL THEMSELVES THROUGH DEATH POSE WHICH IS NOT A YOGA POSITION.

Ergo, you deserve better.