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(elsemore's denoucement)
> was pulling a banner which read, "...
www.theverything.com
(evelyn takes over)
They were quiet for a very long time.
A buzz of white noise seemed to be slowly prying apart the peace. Flo's hand on his forehead made Ansel close his eyes and try to ignore the hum. As it grew, however, it became unignorable. He opened his eyes, squinting at the brightness of the sun on the sand and on the water.
Flo's green eyes smiled at him and he noticed that her lips were an especially exquisite shade of fushcia. He shyly glanced away from the desire he felt while looking at her mouth but her caress reassured him. He again looked up at her face when through the lines of her red hair he noticed the blue sky. He noticed wispy clouds making shapes. This was always a favorite game, see shapes in the clouds. One cloud was shaped like a face with large hollow eye sockets. "Wow," Ansel pointed up and Flo moved back to take
a look. "A face in the clouds."
Flo leaned back to look and just then, in the blue of those hollow eye holes a pair of seagulls suddenly appeared. Each bird took an eye slot and for an instant, the face flashed consciousness on the couple on the beach.
"Did you see that?" Ansel asked, knowing that of course she did and was struck just as he was by the image.
The white noise was all this time growing louder and just then, as the wind swept the face away from the sky, a small airplane approached. It was pulling a banner which read, "...
(nener's turn)
slow down
make your wish
open
It felt like Flo wrote the note and only put more confusion into the moment. He sat . Just sat right down in that alley not giving a damn about delivery trucks or staining his pajamas. Reading the note one more time....slow down......make my wish he thought ......we all close our eyes to wish and for a moment he thought about that. He wished, opened his eyes, and his yoga breath released. Flo was there.Sitting in meditation on a long stretch of white sandy beach.Too hot for pajamas. The sound of the water put Ansel deep into a trance and he practically floated to Flo.Moving as if in slow motion he lowered himself onto the blanket and nestled his head into Flo's lap.Closing his eyes and filling himself with sweet air ,warmth and sweet Flo. She began to run her fingers through his hair and he had never felt anything as exquisite as this. They were quiet for a very long time.
(eric's turn)
the walls rose like a dream snuggled in the morning hours of sleep- dizzying and comforting at the same time. in his mind, he found the image of a short, ugly fellow (did he smell whisky?), and realized, quite reluctantly, that he was really beginning to miss Flo. he wondered what yoga position she was in now. quite suddenly however, the image of the man from picadilly reentered his mind. the man had one of those handlebar mustaches, the kind that you have to buy wax for. bemused for a moment, he thought-- it's a good thing it wasn't flo who had that mustache. or was it her who had it? well it didn't matter now. where was all this headed? to the Verything? ansel had no idea. and so, with a shrug and a heave, our boy hero dragged himself down the cobblestone, under the towering walls, wondering when the hell somebody would write about cute nurses again.
(and lunaboca returns with this)
>and put himself square in the middle of....
Piccadilly Circus. Which was odd, as he had distinctly been thinking Pantagonia.
The smells and sounds of the London street market were overwhelming. Hell, after a few months on the Fox Ward, the smells and sounds of his own house were overwhelming. This was like landing on Mars. A cacophony of street musicians, hawkers, hacking smokers, cell phone bleaters and auto horns rose and fell like a Dante symphony. Ansel stood amongst it all, stock still, a skinny, fuzz-headed archangel.
Suddenly he felt a pull on his pajama sleeve.
"Pardon. Err. Yes now. You were looking for something?" A short whiskered fellow of indeterminate age and distinctly whiskeyed aroma was shoving a handbill at him.
"Uh-- no-- well, I don't think so-- I mean, no thank you." Ansel tried to wave him off. Not to be discouraged, the grizzled man rolled the leaflet into a tight cylinder, popped it into Ansel's startled mouth, and disappeared into the crowd.
Ansel stood staring at the tight knot of people standing where the man had departed. I am going to close my eyes, he thought, and wake up back in my room. Or at the hospital. Or something. This is clearly a drug-related delirium I am experiencing.
And he did close his eyes, but the very real nudge of the becoming-soggy handbill against his tongue convinced him to reopen them.
He was no longer in London. At least he didn't think so. The noise was gone, and the crowds, and yes there were smells, but different: exotic ones, faintly spicy. He was in what appeared to be an alleyway. Tall brick walls on either side. The road also brick, or cobbled stone.
He removed the handbill from his mouth. Unrolled it. It was a blue piece of paper, empty except for some tiny type in the middle. It read:
www.verything.org
------------------------------------------------------------
(this in from morgen)
It was a magic mirror, and if he breathed just so and kept his leg wrapped 'round his neck at just the right angle, he could create any virtual reality his merry mind could conceive. Ansel, being a sober lad, pondered carefully. Sports cars, mountains, babes, air guitars all presented themselves as distinct possibilities. At Flo's gentle urging he exhaled slowly, inhaled so deeply his tummy challenged his pj's waistband, and put himself square in the middle of....
(halski pipes in...ed.)
Ansel stared at her. "Where am I?" he asked.
"Why, you're in the apartment just below your apartment," she said. "My place is directly under your place, so your coming here would put you . . .hmmm, by my estimation, in the apartment just below your apartment. Welcome,welcome. My name is Florence Pishky. Nice pajamas."
Ansel looked at his pajamas. They were absolutely nice pajamas. "Thank you, Miss Pishky," he said.
"Oh, call me Flo," said Flo. "Shall we begin?"
"Begin what?" said Ansel.
"Why, yoga, of course," she said, and she put her right leg over her head until her ankle rested on her left shoulder.
"But . . . but I'm wearing pajamas," said Ansel.
"Perfect," said Flo. "It's my speciality. I call it Pajamayoga. Sit down, young man." And he did sit down across from Miss Florence Pishky, (that's Flo to you), and stared at her. She had long red wavy hair, and her green
eyes were truly swimming like happy Jell-O in a grooving bowl on the dashboard of a car going down the road while listening to the finest boogie music. "Now, then: lesson number one. Breathe."
"Breathe," Ansel repeated.
"Yes, yes," she said. "Breathe. It's the most natural thing we humans do. Go ahead, pajama man. Take a breath."
Ansel inhaled. And just as he was about to exhale, he looked behind Flo and saw the most amazing thing.
(sweet evelyn's turn)
Black emptiness yawned below him. He fell.
Dizzyness, disorientation, and loud sounds of destruction all vied for Ansel. Yet he kept his sober center and he was asking himself, "what the...?"
He landed in the flat below. Sunlight glowed into a cheerful room with big fluffy furniture. Aside from the sawdust and fallout from his descent, the space was clean and fragrant.
A pretty young woman was stretching her body on a mat near a jungling houseplant. She looked up at Ansel, who was brushing off his pajamas, and smiled sweetly. Her eyes were dancing sparkles, green and wide.
"Oh good." she murmured. "You have arrived."
you can't really call them lies.
this walter mitty life can be so
wonder bread, when
really, underneath this big blue jumper
i have a black velvet bra.
my sensible shoes are made from the
tongues of 16 tibetian dragons
(humanely harvested after natural deaths).
what i have found is that behind these
baggy eyes is another pair, and they
are PIERCING. people shift uncomfortably
when i enter the room, even as they
yawn. i have ways of finding everything
out. i have ways of living seven lives
at once. i have ways of turning tofu
helper into the sweetest summer cataloupe.
in your dreams, you say?
in my dreams, i am living right here,
right now, and you are all here too,
and we tell the sweetest stories.
stealing dreams
it all comes back to eye contact. and you don't even have to be in the same room. you look and you see something you recognize. a part of you that needs saving. a part of someone's genius they forgot. naomi shahib nye talked about it-- about finding ears that already know.
and is it fair, really, to ride coattails on someone else's shooting star? you remember being on that dizzy ride-- the flames that at first just warmed those cold parts of you that hadn't been touched in years. and later those same flames, burning you out. you think you can save someone else the trouble of the crash, you think they can skip the broken part and go right to the breaking through.
you understand the deep pull of the nodding off. who doesn't want the sweet dark dreamtime, where everything falls away, and for even a 20 dollar time there is the oh! of release. where there is no lonely.
open palms to find the dream there, shivering. your dream, his dream, our dream. all the same, no different. one spoken, one sighed.
shake yourself. it's time to be awake. to learn to sit with all of it, the fire and the ice. to not be afraid to feel it. there are many ways to go into the dreamtime, even with your eyes wide open.
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