Poemander

Ok, I didn't know how to make sense of something that shouldn't. Something that by design wasn't to make sense. 2am. I had another spoonful of chocolate spread – good. And not only 'good', it was vital: chocolate is vital to a striving human being, a human being trying to make sense... “Only tobacco is on par with the chocolate”, I thought, but couldn't say for sure because I haven't smoked a cigarette since I tried it a couple of times at the age of six. “Cet la vie”, the'd say, motherfuckers: turned a benign puff of smoke into a villain, go tax your own farts, hypocrite bastards.

No, the problem is not in a cigarette, drug or “unhealthy” food; the problem is in a stiff grip of a habit, the inability to manoeuvre out of it. This stiffness is a deadliest poison, the diamelterly opposite of “health”, “life” and “well being”. “Cet la vie” – how dead it is to proclaim such fallacy. Stiff, stubborn minds always beget stubborn expressions and then claim to know what is life.

Mind briefly came out of slumber. “Slaughterhouse”, a word flashed inside it together with the pictures of unsuspecting pigs lead there by their keen, a “traitor pig”. “They are 'unsuspecting' because of all that drowsy feed that they've been given”, I thought. I also thought that this would be a great name for a novel, but I didn't have a novel and I didn't want to sound negative or be tagged as a conspiracy theorist. Crap. Everything is written, everything is said, yet mystery remains, the magic of beingness remains undivulged and pristine. The more we incise and desiccate it, the more it eludes our senses. Life isn't there to make sense, motherfuckers.

A day. Sunny. “Life is the intent sent forth”, I'm telling myself, “Without the intent there is no life”.

I am pushing my junior on the swing, the sun rays are playing in his hair, he is singing a song and I know there is no life without the intent. The life is both, most fragile and most enduring. Most fragile if seeing from without and most enduring if seeing from within. It is a candlelight subjected to every waft of wind, yet it is a beacon of light relied upon by the pilots in storm.

Life is everywhere. There is no nook in the universe that doesn't contain life. What we, people, consider as lifeless space is indeed filled with the life-sparks, myriad of intents propping up the universe. Yes, the universe ends where there is no intent. We often do not recognise life, simply because our perception is not attuned to every kind of life, this is why the scientists are fruitlessly looking for “life” in the outer space and see it not. They are looking for “life” with the same biological characteristics as ours, but they don't know that the intent is the cause and the biology is the effect. Other “lives” may not have the same biology, they may not need H2O, carbon or anything at all from “our” periodic system. Looking for life we should not hold on to effects, we need to look at the cause, and the cause is intent.

Elders gathered around the fire. Crisp and cool night air quietly consorted with the stench of burned fur. They sat immobile, like the boulders, and only their thick shadows wobbled slightly mingling between the scattered shrubs. Their faces were stern like the granite outcrop behind them. Their eyes were fierce like the glowing embers inside the bonfire. Tjapaltjarri has already shown his worth, elders knew, but now was the time – his shadow was as thick as theirs. They began to chant and one grasped him by the head, the other prepared a spike.

From the first chord you could say that the violin was ill. Despite the mellowness of the tone there was this perturbing feeling, just like the invisible but hectic undercurrent in a slow-moving river which sprints beneath the steady flow anytime ready to surface and reveal its neurotic visage. Something was broken, something was clearly wrong. Jabbing deeper inside the flesh the spike jiggled from side to side working methodically to loosen the thumbnail. Piano surfaced, but didn't change a thing, only added to it, if anything at all. Flagrantly notes and chords were flopping down, smashing themselves onto the ground with the keenness of overripe mulberries. Crimson-red juice began to dribble down the elbow depicting a sacred motif of snaking dots, tinny and fat, on the surface of the ancient rock. The ornament glittered with visions fugitives dancing amidst the the tongues of unforgiving flame. One must have courage to dance in the fire, one must have courage to live a life.

Only the cello seemed somewhat requisite; like the old schoolteacher, grumbling about everyone's being disobedient, errant and not listening. Albeit, her complaints fell on deaf ears. Tjapaltjari held it inside all this time, even a fiddle couldn't help, but to relieve herself with a squealing falssetto. Not a single muscle moved and only a thick drop of sweat ran down his forehead. Another jab with a wrenching motion and the thumbnail got finally dislodged from the oozy red flesh – elders rejoiced. A trail of maroon dots – notes in stone. Each life is a dot, a musical note, in the snake of existence. Every spiral is a story of courage – only the brave leave a trace, others fade. Reveal the Tjurunga! Life will go on.