STARMUD AND MOONWATER SIX

STARMUD AND MOONWATER SIX

 

letters to everyone in particular

 

              Stop chewing over other people’s ideas as if they were wads of used gum you found under the desk. Stop trying to taste the flavour of yesterday’s meaning by drinking spit from other people’s mouths as if yours had none of its own. Is the water hot or cold? Does it taste like the moon? Does it taste like the sun? Is there a hint of stars in it? Can you drink from your own reflection like the moon on the mindstream without getting drunk on yourself like Narcissus in an asylum? Or are you just another prisoner preaching liberation to the key as if it were the my way or the highway kind of enlightenment and everyone else were the lock?

              I can see you, little brother. I can look into the black apple of your heart. I can see the green star shining deep in its core like a shy embryo of who you wanted to be and haven’t become yet you’ve kept like a secret souvenir of your future lucidity whenever I cut you open into life with the mystic switch-blade of the moon. What do you think about that? Is it logical enough for you? Ah, little brother, you want to be a tiger of fire but what kind of tiger follows a map? Or trusts someone else’s nose? Hot nervous blood on the wind at night agitating the leaves. Can you smell it like a fire alarm? Are you tiger or lamb? Or just another messiah at the last supper of a judas-goat chained to the stake of your vertical threshold like a scapegoat tempting fate to crucify it with claws? Are you a real sphinx or have you turned your instincts into laws?

              I don’t mind playing Zen tennis with you once in awhile and getting off on the profound frivolity of it all. And I like to hear you laugh when you see how spiritually Chaplinesque you are in that silent movie on the dark side of the mirror that’s always on rewind. You like to be discovered in your game of hide and seek because you think everybody forgets where you were hiding and you’re amazed when someone stumbles across you naked and shivering quite by accident on their way to somewhere else. You’re sure it’s a miracle. And then you try to convert everyone else by urging them to come to your movie.

              I’m probably too hard on you most of the time but you can’t master magic by showing up at the ritual like a voodoo doll with a lack of confidence in your ability to cast a spell. But I’m not without mercy. And I know that Everyone’s a lonely place to be. I’m not into some kind of ego-game. I take no credit for lying to you so realistically about spiritual things. I can tell you I’m a window until I’m blue in the face. But you keep flying into it like a stubborn sparrow that keeps insisting it’s the sky. And that’s got to be hard on your neck. Why don’t you adjust your eyesight to what’s there instead of running around in this delusion of a holy war looking for bullets with good aim? Now have I said something healing here or have I wounded you again? Would it ease the pain if I told you I don’t go hunting unicorns with a firing squad just for the fun of it or would it only add to the mystery of the game?

              How many times have you sought me out and asked me for spiritual advice over the mystery of life having coffee? Usually you want to get some emotional atrocity off your chest you’ve either suffered or perpetrated on another. And what if I did say ok you’re just having another bad dream and wake you up? Would that make it all better? Would that heal the tormentor? Would you walk away blessed and culpable thinking you were the invisible man? Or would your chains and straightjackets find a way of wriggling out of Houdini like a snakepit? And even if you did get free what would that be but just another loophole in the rules of a negative power-base you’re trying impose on everyone who can’t see what I do?

              Dogen Zenji once said that if the medicine doesn’t make you dizzy it’s not strong enough. You imbibe the cheap highs of the little waves of your emotions because you’re afraid of the great depths of the ocean of awareness underneath you. Your knees go weak when you’re walking on water. You’re hanging everything on a lottery ticket of random luck as if it were a sign of divine providence that you could finally afford your vices. You’ve worked hard at achieving the means to corrupt yourself whenever you want to go out slumming with success. I’ve seen you humming like a bee from table to table bumming beer from the flowers by promising them you can turn their earthly nectar into a spiritual honey that tastes like money if they’ll only front you one for free. Excess outgrows the ecstasy of living and oblivion sets in like a gangrene of the senses when you overexpose them to the fire and the cold. And you can lose more than just your big toe if you don’t know by now that enough is more than enough. My mother taught me to lead my dick around not follow it like a compass needle in a magnetic storm. You come on to women like an open palm in love with itself but deep inside you’re shaking your fist in bed because you’re angry at the power women have over you. You want to be mistaken for a lightning rod instead of a weathervane but the fireflies can’t take you seriously and they know by themselves when it’s going to rain long before you can put them out.

PATRICK WHITE