I have come curiously close to the end, down
Beneath my self-indulgent pitiful hole,
Defeated, I concede and
Move closer
I may find comfort here
I may find peace within the emptiness
How pitiful
It's calling me...
And in my darkest moment, fetal and weeping
The moon tells me a secret - my confidant
As full and bright as I am
This light is not my own and
A million light reflections pass over me
Its source is bright and endless
She resuscitates the hopeless
Without her, we are lifeless satellites drifting
And as I pull my head out I am without one doubt
Don't wanna be down here feeding my narcissism.
I must crucify the ego before it's far too late
I pray the light lifts me out
Before I pine away.
So crucify the ego, before it's far too late
To leave behind this place so negative and blind and cynical,
And you will come to find that we are all one mind
Capable of all that's imagined and all conceivable.
Just let the light touch you
And let the words spill through
And let them pass right through
Bringing out our hope and reason ...
before we pine away.
- Keenan, Reflections

It was three o’clock in the morning and I stood naked at the floor to ceiling mirror of the townhouse, watching the street outside. My body covered in a thin sheen of sweat from the thick humidity of the South and it made the moonlight give my body and the tattoos a metallic shine, each move of skin made the weaving snakes and skulls on my skin move just a bit, like a shroud of protectors. I heard the rustle and turned back towards the room.

It’d been about a month since I finally had gotten up off the floor of the fucking basement. The rustling sound had taken me back to that. I’d spent the good part of a month doing nothing but forcing myself to work out and screaming. For whatever reason, no matter how much I wished it not to be true, the girl I’d never truly met had been my anchor in this world. She had in so many ways, provided the idea that there was hope. Hope had been taken away. I made myself bleed, I made myself starve, too weak to kill myself, I pushed myself to the brink, no interaction, no distraction. And finally, I was passing out and weak from exhaustion.

It was the voice of Renshi, back at the Monastery that had woken him, and it made him smile, how comical it was to have that voice be the one he heard. It was that whispered tone over a gravel road. He was aging hippie with the voice of one too many smokes and way too much screaming for another encore of China Cat Sunflower.

“You must make peace to find peace”

At the time I had a hard time believing that it was possible. I couldn’t solve what I felt, what I was, what had been done to me, that would never happen. I saw a miserable old man who regretted giving his life to a pursuit of endless pleasure, who had pissed away his days on acid in a field staring at the clouds. Only now as he got older, he was trying to make sense of that pain. Some how fix it, and he had. I wasn’t him though, and god knows I tried, I tried to do everything he said, I wanted that peace so fucking bad. I tried to let go of what I was. I listened to every fucking story about a crane and a snake and the proverbial wisdom. I spent countless hours beating myself into a corner to try and fake that smile. And that’s why I smiled now. I realized for the first time, that he didn’t want me to fix what I was, instead he wanted me …to embrace it. Instead of burying the things inside; to bring them out and wear them.

Even there, cheek to the cold concrete I felt warmer, as if a wave of emotion came crashing down. Every family destroyed, every woman pimped out to the films, every girl I fucked, it was…it was to escape this fucking pain, and I let go, and let it hit me. It was as if someone twisted my insides into knots. Pulling and yanking, I vomited, and started to cry, wail, eyes shut, the resounding FEEL of it, pouring over me. I could see the trunk move, the little boy pushing it open. He cried too, he was wailing and tired of being ignored. The days of wearing out my body had worn out everything else, there was nothing holding him back. The temper tantrum raged, things were thrown, the endless stream of tears, forcing me to look at him, his bloody pajama bottoms, his bruised face, and the endless suffering ache to be fed, the hunger. Before, I could destroy someone to keep the boy from getting to them, and now…he wouldn’t be ignored. I could see all the pieces, the gruff enforcer, the conniving bastard devil holding him up, they stood next to him, and told me, politely. They were running the show.

I spent days after that, feeding myself, both through meditation, through food, and by writing. Two thick leather bound journals, spending endless hours scrawling in randomness. I wrote beliefs, I wrote reflections, I let that dark angel my mother cultivated write its psalms. I filled page after page, story after story, word after fucking word of the truth, the reason for life, the purpose of our pain, the place it holds within. It was a manifesto to the broken.

I began to see the purpose, why Hathian and why now. Hathian had to learn, the people here, they had to be woken up, one by one if necessary. They needed to taste the enlightenment at the bottom of that fucking basement, the taste of mildew hanging on every fucking bright star. I was awake….

I walked over to the sound of the rustling. I looked to the large dog’s kennel, makeshift to accommodate something deserving of more comforts. Naked I knelt down and smiled to the girl inside. My laughing in the middle of the night, my stare into space had woken her. A girl I’d found earlier in the week, strung out in an alley and naked, a whore looking for a fix. I had told her then that I would help and she was too strung out and damaged to say no. She was starting to ache from the need of the drugs. She looked at me with a fear, but I knew it was not me, but the unknown. I told her then….

“Nobody can touch you unless you will it, unless I will them to, you are safe, those wired walls protect you, they protect you from you, and from them. Your hate, your anger, they stop now….”

I spoke low, in a tone that stayed level the entire time, and I watched her, I continued to say things, things I’d written down in the journals, sharing my pain in a way that would put her in touch with hers. If you asked me later if there was a point where I did truly believe my own words, I would tell you I believed them all, and though motives are never entirely pure, he watched the girl stabbed in the chest by her own guilt and fear, not of what I had done, but what she had done. She stayed there, crying and sniffling, wailing, shaking and begging for drugs for another two days. I did not give them, I did not give in. I simply gave her water, told her she was beautiful, and that she would be alright. I was promised many things, and I never took them. I simply waited.

She asked to be let out of the cage on that night, and I smiled. I had left several times and she never came out. I had not posted guard or threatened. I looked to her as I knelt there now, over the cage, naked. I smiled slowly to her as she cried.

“This cage has never been locked….you can get out when you wish to”

She looked at me untrustingly and reached out with a shaky thin tiny hand and opened it, pushing the fastener open and pushing the door open. I watched her lanky body crawl out, all legs and back, and then watched her walk to the bathroom, closing the door. I heard the sounds of a shower, the moan as she cleaned herself up. I took that time to lay out her clothes on the couch near the kennel, some he had taken from the place she was squatting while she was sleeping. Cleaned and pressed….and when she stepped out, naked and wet I simply smiled and again, told her she was beautiful. I did not watch her dress, but simply sat, quietly allowing her the space. My eyes only catching the blurred shadow in the dusty glass of the windows. I heard her say thank you…and I turned to her, assuming she would leave.

I watched her lower herself to her knees and crawl back in the kennel, closing the door behind her, and for the first time in many nights, she slept until the sun came up. I was awake the entire time, watching the sun rise over the buildings. Picking up the phone I made the call, the message left from months earlier from a friend….

“Yes, its time to get some work done, that job you said you could line up for me at the University? Yes…yeah, set it up. I think I can do some good there…”