Jorge: The Other World

*

So that other world people talk about -- it's not other -- it's right here -- I can kick it like a stone. It kicks right back. It's not a hypothesis or something you have to visualize. Here it is.

You know that guy who fell or was pushed off my ship? I saw him on the street just yesterday. But I don't care too much about him. I mean -- if transcendence is available -- then I'm going to focus on what is important. The one who has spread it between visible things --that One just has my heart. In awe -- speechless. So that's why I bump into things.

*

Jorge would wake from dreams and know he had just been there. In that "other" world that made the mesh of this one. And how he knew wasn't that the dreams gave him access -- no, not at all -- dreams were shallow tokens mostly -- but they just didn't have all the blocks and careful denials that waking life put up -- as if to prevent itself from feeling the closeness to heaven that simply was -- that pervaded this "closed" world of ours.

It wasn't "other", people just wished it to be.

*

Looking back at my childhood I'd thought of it as a Garden of Orthodoxy but that was wrong -- anyway thinking wasn't the mose of access to it -- although thinking took place there. It was more a matter of releasing breath -- thanksgiving and gratitude its open door. This was a door that had no frame.

People willed the door to be closed. A question of simplification. Easier to live and not to wonder.

*

Jorge stood at the door to the noisy gym. An odd kind of worship happened inside there, comparatively involute, very intense but somewhat futile. In the back corner -- where they stowed the free weights for die hards -- the Zen warrior lifted and lifted his million billion ziggity thousand kilograms of transcendent pain -- grunting with the sublimity of the effort -- and up the heavy structure went. Iron in the air, lifted with praise and joy. Nearby, the Nazi's wife on her treadmill sorrowing. . Everywhere half-naked models and ancient near-dead beings toggled past each other without touching. There were scenes of terrible blood on all the TVs. When J tried to move through the corridor a hand touched his shoulder -- the hand was "ice cold" like a Coke. He turned to face his dead godmom, his beloved stepmother -- Estelle.

Whispering.

You must believe me, boy, I am so sorry. I didn't have a clue what he was doing to you.

Not knowing something is the worst of the involuntary sins and those sins are the worst anyway, the worst of all, not knowing, with no way to repair -- there is nothing you can do. Except to have listened -- except to wait. To say: no matter how happy I am I must be missing something important to have. Then to look around.

Dying to rectify the injustice.

Jorge, I didn't look around. I didn't notice what was there.

And I can't seem to shake this off. The feeling of no way to fix this now.

*

A philosophical question: where does the "other" world touch this one? Surely they touch within this feeling of queasiness, of vertigo and unease. Wrongness swirling through the halls. Jorge felt the familiar bottomless clamp seize him and take him utterly. It reached from the bottom of the bowels up to the heart then the head. There was an elevator falling through space that had no floor. He fell in cartwheels or cornrows -- like poor Quasimodo -- yet he didn't move.

You must say something. You must try to speak.

Estelle, he said. You did nothing wrong. I loved you and still do. Estelle, he said.

I was just the way I was, Estelle. All he did, that man, was to bring it to the surface. It was there already. You were a perfect mom. I had no complaints.

Estelle.

Estelle, he said. Dry throat trying to speak. Air that wouldn't come into the lungs. Estelle, he said. He turned to say more but she wasn't there. She was dead of course, had been for many years. What remained hanging in the sterile air was perhaps nothing but unresolved guilt, first hers, now his.

He continued his trajectory now into the lockers. The college boys strutting -- their pubic furs held aloft like a flag -- shuffling behind them the old warriors aching inside every step, their balls clacking when they walked -- ancient memories condensed in the steam -- loose ugly hairs crawling on the floor -- history everywhere, clogging everything. The room almost unbearably concentrated -- and in the very near the ever so near distance, the sound of the water falling -- stroking the air like a giant guitar.

*

Poem frag: The faith of a donkey

*

My fear was without privilege --
my fear was simply fear, no longer was
the sign of my having been singled out
as special, spiritual -- fear was just fear --
a shiver in this matter beings were --
one more vibration that gray flesh
gave off -- a shiver -- nothing more.
But faith reduced grew stranger than before.

*

The preacher's reversal

*

In early times, when Paul tried to exercise behavior control, he did so in order to promote faith in God. At this moment, when a Southern Baptist preacher works to promote faith in God, he does so only in order to exercise behavior control. This for them is what faith is for.

The sin is huge. Preacher, if this is not true of you, then prove it by your deeds.

*

Fire prayer

*

The fire was to test and try him but didn't seek to kill him.

One day the Zen warrior walked into a centering prayer service in the middle of town. The people didn't know him but they didn't say anything. The leader struck a chime and the people closed their eyes all as one. Time passed silently.

One was alone but not alone. On the inhale the rich suburban air came into the belly. it was different from the air in the town next door. Safer, slightly less mixed. No taste of gunpowder.

In the warrior's belly it turned into fire.

Could the other people hear it crackling?

Was it burning only him?

Why did it make this noise? why so much noise?

Where the peace? the contemplative calm?

Could he even remain sitting in this chair?


Fire fire fire. A thing shaped like a word. Consuming the stomach, eating whatever it found there.

He exhaled it with a rough unruly noise.

Lord, find the way to make me more chaste. Just a little more chaste.

And the fire in its fiery manner said nothing in reply -- nothing clearly. It continued to burn. It and time passed simultaneously, one harrowing thing.

The warrior took another breath. Silence. Darkness.

What were the other people doing?

There was an Audenesque cough in the distance. A second one.

A car passed a million miles away, slipping through the charred space.

Darkness. Eyes closed and thus open.

What were the others doing?

Where was God in the fire -- the fire the fire?

God was the fire but was also not absent in the thing that was burning. He was patient as the warrior was not.

Another cough and then a very loud sigh. The warrior heard a sort of shifting as though somebody was moving.

Had the others climbed out of their chairs? Were they moving around?

There was motion in the inhale and then in the exhale. Something stirring.

If he opened his eyes would he find all the others crouched around his chair staring at him and wondering who let this queer into the room?

The inhale was tense and suspended and important. Insistent. The fire burned the fire.

The warrior opened his eyes. God stood in front of him watching him. There was no one else in the room. The stare was nothing but fire.

Who are you now? the vision asked. Are you indeed one of mine?

Speak to me now, instantly. Do you wish to be one of mine?

*