In the Cabin…
The night was a haze of visions.
A majority of my memories centers around a cabin in the woods. In one storyline, it was the setting of a romantic assignation. Up in the loft, I rolled between milk-white sheets in the sparkling rays of the morning sun. He had already left the bed. I inhaled his scent and savored the lingering sex in the air. My body was like a sponge for the delicious indulgence of pure sensation. Every touch was a secret luxury. When he returned upstairs, the light danced off of him like fire-water. Each ripple of his perfectly cut body was accentuated; the way his skin shone caused my eyes to retreat back beneath my eyelids every now and again. Sadly, I cannot remember his face, but every fiber of me knows him, my Lover, as The Morning Star.
At the next flicker, the cabin has changed, as the inhabitants have as well. I’m a little girl, no more than ten years old. I see a tall man lumbering through the cabin in a state of dismay. He is not my father. I hold my doll tightly to my chest as I watch him pace in front of the roaring fire. The walls reflect red flames woven between menacing shadows. I am silent.
The scene shifts yet again. Where my doll was a second ago there is now a suitcase of sorts. The pacing older man has become a sly devil of a charmer. His eyes undress me as he places my bag on the chair nearby. The wolf’s tail, poking out from underneath his unbuttoned, oversized, collared shirt, flicks with pleasure as he lunges in to taste my neck. My hand reaches up the back of his head, tugging at his hair and caressing his pointed ears. Between my fingers there’s fur or skin as one transitions into the other and back again.
The red walls seem to close in on me, and I can see the monsters that have emerged from the shadows. They stand beside me and behind me with their hands on my shoulders, acting as caretakers. The door slams behind the pacing man as he storms out into the night. I am left with the monsters… that dry my tears with their large, scaly fingers. Sharp nails run gently through my pigtails as I hear attempts at soothing tones through rough throats and guttural voices. I am offered a seat on the lap of a 15 ft tall, black and green, bipedal reptile with large brown scales running down his head and back of the neck like Mohawk dorsal fins. Once in his lap, he rocks me to sleep in front of the fire.
The same cabin is now a mess of clothes, empty boxes and overturned furniture. Investigating each room, a story assembles in my head. There are two children’s rooms, a master bedroom, a den and kitchen; this was a family’s house. A young girl left many stuffed animals behind in her hot pink room. A young boy didn’t manage to grab his action figures before the family hurried out. What happened to them all? I can only see speculations in my head. The only obvious details are a struggle, a hasty escape, and the unlikelihood of return. But then, I hear the door. There stands the disheveled mother with both her ragged children.
Our tryst is cut short by the sounds he hears in the distance. “Sorry, Love, I’ve got to go,” he says as he pulls his pants on while still eyeing me hungrily. “What is it?” I ask as I sit up. He nips at my lips, and I feel a cold nose on my cheek for a second. “Stolen car. They’re after me.” The Wolf peeks at me from behind the Thief’s skin. He throws on his green jacket and tosses me a key before he opens the front door. A paw sweeps me off the bed forcefully and pulls me into his body. Our faces collide in unchecked hunger; one more deep taste before he’s off. “Meet me again,” he growls as he motions to the key.
Medium
I see the rays of sun hit the earth like liquid gold waves. I live in an impressionist painting. From far away, the colors dance and flow in and out of one another; they copulate within pupils, using cones and rods in foreplay before merging in the mind. Close up, the violence of the knife assaults with color and the delicacy of the brush nutures whimsical forms.
Beings that I recognize shift through the soft lines and contrivance of light and shadow. I shift as well. Every movement casts a different color; no one frame is the same. Sometimes the world looks that way… still frames conveying motion through speed of sequential appearance. The coherency of the story depends upon the order of the frames. At times I like to reach out my hand to touch the picture, grab the corner and then shuffle. The human mind will seek out patterns regardless of the shuffle.
I could make a story out of the simple observations of the play of Light. (Perhaps one day I will. ) Photographers capture. They have choices: present as is, present as seen, present as conceptualized, or just present. They allow the subjects and objects to reveal their own stories. Whether they hold your hand through the positions, abstractions, concretions, lines and effects, you, as the viewer, make the final call of the scene.
Storytellers put a blindfold on you and say “Come with me.” Many have enjoyed the element of escape inherent in stories. Although, just as many savor the element of truth or confrontation they deliver.
Mediums are utilized to send messages and illustrate ideas.
I mix mediums. The experience… Life is a medium… as anything can be.
. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .
me·di·um, defined
-
) or me·di·ums
A Tree, A Temple, A House
I walked into a world that shifted at every blink. The way the light hit each object created a prism of reality reflected back. Each scene was of ruin, debri, decay, decomposition, forgotten lands, fallen idols, broken dreams, lost keepsakes and the unborn. What was identifiable to me:
An old woman by a huge, gnarled, dark tree. Her hair was silver-white, floating strands that seemed to be always obscuring her face. She sat at the base of the tree. Sometimes I walked within the tree, through abandoned tree houses and faery dwellings. In the darkness, I could make out vague impressions that resembled memories from childhood stories and the homes of fantastical creatures. Did the woman speak to me? I can’t seem to remember. …Shift…
Temple ruins. The scene, cast in gold light, seemed all too eerily quiet. Statues and walls were in pieces on the ground, worn and rolled over. The most intact stone piece was a statue that I could make out to be Lucifer. It stood proudly in the center of the weathered temple. I walked alone silently. …Shift…
A composite image of all my dream houses. Sometimes I was in recognizable areas of earthly houses molded crudely by dreamwarps. There were hallways that once held my doom. Ceilings that I couldn’t reach stretched higher into the sky. Old apartments that I once inhabited disintegrated before my eyes. There were places I once called home, refuge, prison, or an arena. I saw places we met before to talk or explore, to dream or die, to sleep or celebrate. …Shift…
Tree… Temple… House… Temple… House… Tree… and on it went.
In the Temple, staring at Lucifer through gold rays, I was given a cartoon to watch.
I remember feeling heat as I saw a cartoon of a few of the apostles walking through temples with Jesus. In this cartoon world, Jesus and the apostles were greeted by 3-5 townspeople that had no clue whom the men were. They all stopped and made some small talk. The apostles started to talk of how Jesus was very important and would later gain many followers. This interested the townspeople. They had a business that was involved in sculpture, casting and/or statue making. They asked to cast him. (Very Holy Mountain)
Jesus huddled with his apostles to discuss. Judas obviously loved the idea, as his eyes got wide and cartoonish symbols flipped through them like a slot machine. Jesus laughed about it and refused. “It is obvious that these people know not who I am,” Jesus said. “Judas, why don’t you get cast in my place? Tell them you are me; they will never know the difference.”
So… they cast Judas as Jesus.
I was back in the temple, looking at Lucifer; his shadow cast toward me with the red sun hanging in the background.
I was back in the House, falling through my memories and visions.
I was back at the tree, sitting face-to-face, sometimes nose-to-nose, with the old woman; her eyes seemed clouded over but serene.
“Machine in the Ghost” by The Faint
there’s no ghost in this machine
i make my own mistakes
we seem like skeletons with bone head beliefs
history’s been crucified
humans supernaturalized
we hope we’re not alone
exploded stars and space debris
taught itself to make some things like us
was that all?
what was there before the bang?
how did nothing come to end at once?
let’s ask the atheists, the astronauts,
the mystics of the amazon,
the priests, the cults, the witches, the pope,
the crystal ball, the fear of god,
the tarot cards, the dowsing rod
theologians, alchemists, black magicians, physicists say, know,
say, “we don’t know”
cults arise from ego
sick with poltergeists and demons
tune your TV to the snow
watch the first thing ever known – it’s always on
when nothing’s over what was there?
how did nothing come to end at once?
let’s ask the atheists
let’s ask the astronauts
let’s ask the priests, the cults, the witches, the pope,
dice, the monks, shaman, the nuns,
buddha, the holy ghost, satanists, the philosophes,
meditators, pyramids, mathematicians, acid heads,
theologians, alchemists, black magicians, physicists say, know,
say, “we don’t know”
cults arise from egos
sick with poltergeists and demons
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