The Endless Ocean

i am underwater, breathing through my nose hairs, filtering algae, plankton, microscopic minutiae that finds it's way into my deepest insides and takes up residence, calling my nooks and crannies home, painting the walls, redoing the floors, changing the curtains, if i should let it.

i am just another bubble floating to the surface, my body encasing an atmosphere of oxygen within my lungs, my insides where a world resides of all number of micorscopic countries and zip codes, mountain ranges and ocean floors, a thousand and one open doors and, most likely, a few that remain closed.

hair flowing off the top of my head like the undersides of jellyfish, soft and wavy like kelp beds in the wide swept currents.

it is hard to see in here and i am not holding my breath. floating to a surface that seems to elude me doesn’t seem like a destination that is very likely. i cannot breathe in here. what was i thinking? nose hairs...! one cannot breathe by nose hair horse hair dragon hair or otherwise- dead skin cell appendages floating from the top of my head, one thousand thousand of them floating towards the surface with me. the fact that I rise gives over the secret of the waves, that we are all trying to reach for the skies, even these towering tidal flows- reaching, reaching, only to drop back to the sea in a crash boom splash and into the deep, drowning in their own majesterial mysteries, spiraling currents and undertows.

Far up there, on the elusive surface that must accompany this sea, is it as silent as this deep where distant sounds come to me, wails funneled through tubes filled with soft and pliable memories, sounding sounds of distant nightmares and secret fears.

i can falter, i can flail. but nonetheless i can swim. one quick swig of this ocean and surrender to it’s notions and i am flowing in a different motion.

One Survivor Found, Body Floating Alone - Washed Up On Distant Shore.

The other shore never looked so sweet for the one i left, far gone and out, is lost beneath my feet. I was walking walking walking into the ocean, shoulda waited for my ship to come in! Coulda waited before I got in so deep I could no longer swim. I could only sink.

Arriving at the bottom of this sea I found suitcases covering me.

My god, I cried, but my words emptied into silent bubbles dancing towards a distant cloud and, when it reached that horizon, it maybe sounded, somewhere in the middle of the great wide ocean while you passed by in your usual kind of straight forward motion, possibly perchance you would have heard that undersea voice exclaim in it’s surprise: Did I have this much baggage when I arrived?

A kind and kind of distant voice inside of me nodded it's head and smiled and said, brother, it's nigh high time you opened your intentional eyes.

fire frees water from it's bonds.
water frees fire of it's charms.

drifting higher with each successive leaving, baggage that clung to me like spitballs to the ceiling falling away into the deepening green blue ocean below the above the submarine sand which can only be found between hull and land, where starfish cling to mysterious rock formations and fishes like swarms of bees around a hive dart with a one mind. Dive dive!

Rise
Rise
!

should my body wash up upon that distant shore where we saw golden glimpses of ever-more and clipper ships awaiting to ferry others fantasizing about finding a faster way across this endless ocean, should this shell, this illusion, this manifestation of all my mental acuity and distant futility be found floundering upon the wash between sea and sand, making no pearls out of this grainy beach but only slightly breathing, still alive but baggage-less, still heart beating in emptiness, finally, ready, at last, to admit to myself all the misdeeds, malintentions and misallignations of a thousand lifetimes past, and to finally, and at last, engage in the actual work - to really do what it is i set out to do...

to make it last and find some kind of sustainability

should you find me, please, leave a bit of water
i may be
thirsty...
if only a drop, a drop of your ocean...

that i may drink...

they say it is not the size of the ship but the motion of the ocean that makes the difference between seeing what is true and experiencing what is real. I know not what that means in the least, other than the fact that it makes no difference to me whether the ocean rises and falls in tidal waves or that boat be passing through the most placid of days - this dance, this madness, this mystery:

This madness set upon me at a young age. i thought it was me and the more i looked around, i thought it was everyone else - surely a sign of heightening madness - and, as I look back, it seems it only got worse. The people around me became crazier and crazier (except for my closest friends until even they took on the guise of ones lost in a maze) and me, i became more and more sane. If I read the papers, look at the headlines across the news, if i watch tv and, even for a moment choose to believe, if I engage in the britney jlo iraq iran quagmire stigmata right wing debate gotta buy gotta hate then i hope someone would lock me up, throw away the key and declare me an untreatable case.

No, no i would shout! Don't give up on me yet!

This saneness i experience, this sanity- it is such a peaceful sublimity of sensation- knowing i am a drop in the ocean and knowing the ocean is within my drop- that the width of my breath is reflected in the expansion of my heart.

This madness, it set upon me in the middle of my years, maybe in the summertime, when it all seemed so alive and, in the middle of my marijuana induced haze, it seemed like i could never die, i had been here forever. But those days are long gone and now, with the clarity that remains, this sanity, though deeper, has not changed.

Maybe it happened that day, I remember it clearly, when I stepped outside after painting and saw everyone of my lifetimes cascading through the air, a thousand and one stories to tell, all of them holy, and on a path for how long now? I could trace it back in that instant, it seemed, over two thousand years.

Another day, a night in fact, i bumped my head against the consciousness ceiling and released into the river of all eternal being and saw the bliss realm where the great unveiling was giving away the simple answers to all beings and it said: Surrender! upon the piece of paper that every being held.

It goes on like that with mental wheels spinning around mathematical computations and great visions arising around subtle intonations, my spirit dancing with a thousand and one realizations, endless endless effulgent creation! - what a dance!

Drying myself upon the shore, in an ever baking sun, browning like bread in an oven, I slice myself off a piece.

This is the true sustenance, this is the place of peace.

Endless dreams and endless truths.
The endless ocean can be swum without any shoes.