Back when his mother called him angel and his shoes were a size 5, he came to this corner to buy baseball cards and ice cream. The neighborhood Pharmacy was little different back in ‘64, a place to hang out and meet friends and watch the people and traffic move on by. It seemed the world was passing by this corner, while everything on it stood still and remained the same. Things change and people grow up, society has upheavals while one nationality moves out of the neighborhood and another comes in.

In this city of angels things changed quick and fast after the 68’ riots, it was not just the normal change of children wanting to move on to someplace different than their parents, but a wholesale transplant and removal of a people who called the area home for 3 generations. Based on fear and racism, people moved to the burbs, leaving only the adventurous, stoic and poor behind.

Glass now breaks, shots are heard and kids write words and images on the walls. Blood stains the sidewalk and no one hangs out or hardly passes by. There are ghosts here and also angels, though they are hard to see in the daylight when I visited, though at night, the corner once again, becomes alive.

He was a grinderman, one who cut metal to pay the rent and feed the kids, but never looked back to second-guess where life had taken him. A war was fought and a family was raised; yet he found no peace with the years that came after the storm. Metal was cut, grinded and sized for a need, much like his dreams that somehow became grist for the mill of the needful that we call a life of responsibility. Yet his child grew up and found what he had missed, becoming the offspring of the grinderman, expressing his dreams in ways that surprisingly came full circle, finding creative expression in metal sculpture that used that same material and tools of the grinderman. This time it was culture and not utility that called the hands that still cut and grind, creating a homage to the one who helped build a world now taken for granted, but not forgotten, like rusted iron still beating with a warm soft heart.

molded birth form
wondrous windows
mystical portals
numerical meaning
with or without
seeing is believing
belief with no I
one eye & I alone
…
looking…
…
waiting…
…
finally…
…
seeing…
…
…
u

Through security and onto the South Capital lawn, underneath snipers, surveillance camera’s and the watchful eyes of the secret service, I walked under globally warmed October heat to pay homage and gratitude to the living embodiment of the Buddha, at least that is what many say.

Ahh, the effulgence of white historic marble shining off the march of monks in sandals and tennis shoes, reflecting the burgundy/orange cloth to the wind while the media and Tibetans all came by bus, train, plane and automobiles. It was rumored that some even came down from the celestial planets in order to celebrate the 14th Dalai Lama’s acceptance of the U.S. Congress highest medal of honor, but that I leave for those who can see the finer elements I once thought was so possible to devote a life to.

They were all present, the right and the left, the minority and majority parties, even the President was in on the action as he sat next to His Holiness and even held his arm while walking to and from the Capital Rotunda. Celebrity rubbed elbows with the common man and refugee, as Tibetan Flags fluttered and kept time to those who waited patiently to see and hear the wisdom of their teacher, monarch and living hope of a tradition slowly being deconstructed under Chinese power and plunder.

It was not hard to notice that native Tibetans look a lot like the Navajo and Hopi Indians of the American western lands, who once too were overrun and endangered as a race by the same Government that is now recognizing the Dalai Lama for his compassionate peaceful approach to conflict and oppression, my oh my, times have changed, and even George Bush is applauding this man at the cost of harming relations with China…enough to make a hardened skeptic’s heart miss a beat in reflection.

Kids and musicians played while people danced and monks in robes chanted, reminiscent of Hare Krsna days and nights of yore, only there was no preaching or vibes of superiority, just gracious appreciation for hopes and dreams being recognized by the American political elite, sending a message to others that the time has come for this leader and his people to be allowed to practice their faith and culture in a land being raped by a brand of Capitalistic Communism called Chinese. No more talk of a free independent Tibet, just talk of allowing it to be culturally and spiritually free within the confines of China’s laws and constitution.

Compromise comes, compassion flows and people smile under the sun and snipers for at least one day of hope and possibilities. Aum Mani Padmi Hum….the hum and run of the wheels of spirit and politics, filled to the brim with Rinpoche’s, Pelosi’s and even a Bush. We were Richard Gere’d and Elie Wiesel’d, and that was OK, for the Dalai Lama was in town and we got to bask in his energy and vibes for a good portion of a day during a rather bad part of history—that seems ripe for change.

It was odd to have the sky so dark at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, but then again, nothing seemed the same again after they declared me…well, I’ll get to that later. Though it was dark, no streetlights were on and the gypsy fortuneteller I passed daily on my way to the doctor was sitting on her steps as usual, yelling at me, “It’s out of order, It’s out of order!” They told me my problem was characterized by delusions of persecution or grandeur, so I paid no attention. I thought she gave me the finger but then again, so did everyone on the TV and radio…especially the radio!

I could not find Doctor Clerambault’s office that day, for everything looked different in the dark, nothing was the same. I did not want to walk back the same way I came, for the damn gypsy would be waiting for me, predicting that everything will be out of order. So I decided to knock on the nearest door and ask if it was OK if I stayed the night, for I had no idea when it would ever be day again. I knocked loudly on the stoop of an old townhouse that had this strange metal chime that tingled loudly in the nights air, it reflected the light coming from the inside to the house and it looked like hundreds of self effulgent hands—all with only one finger pointing up, all attached to a string that ran up to the top of the chime. Thumbs, index’s, ring fingers, pinkies and the middle fingers…all waving and hitting each other to the rhythm of Black Sabbath’s song Paranoid…or was that Pachhebel’s Canon in D major…damn, I get those two so confused, especially lately, it’s the only thing they play on the radio in between the DJ giving me the finger.

No one answered that night, or was that the night before when everyone answered…dang, I get so confused…yes it was yesterday that everyone answered, but when they did I could not say anything, for the fear generated by the hand chimes paralyzed me with anxiety that they would say no. No that’s not right, it was today, really it was today, but then again it could be the meds I’m on…but they seem like little round parasites controlled by the unseen forces of God, a God who is more terrorist than divine, the one who judges and knows all, like Doctor Clerambault, who liked to call me Emil Kraepelin …but that’s not my name, no, no, no…no way…or is it? I always thought it was Ozzy, that’s what my mother called me, well that’s what they say she called me. Who were they anyway?

Facing the pressure of a major freelance graphics job that was due in two days, I was perplexed by feeling stymied and blocked on actually doing anything for the job. Instead, I was feeling this restless inner want and desire to express thoughts and images that were knocking on my awareness like metal on wood, but had nothing to do with the job on hand. These awareness dents took their toll, for they were conflicting with the ideas needed to complete my paying work that was soon due. This inner battle was mentally taxing, making me very tired, so I thought I’d sleep on it and start fresh the next morning.

Very early in the morning, I was awoken by a strong sense of wanting to chant mantra’s on my old wooden chanting beads. It felt strange to suddenly have this desire, especially at this time of the night and after so many years of not doing it, so I figured what the heck, why not! So before I went downstairs to fetch the chanting beads, I went into the bathroom to throw some water on my face to get the wake up feeling that was sorely missing. As I rubbed my face with the cool water from the tap, I began to feel something like wet paper on my hands, when I looked at what it was, I was shocked to see that it was my skin. The skin on my face was peeling off like that of a too ripe peach.

“Shit…what’s this!” I yelled.

The more I rubbed, the more that it came off, revealing a dark reddish blue color of raw meaty substances. No blood was running, no pain was felt, so I figured no harm was being done, but my heart raced with fear and concern that something serious was going on here. Was I a leper?… Was I dreaming…Was I experiencing an acid flashback?

I wanted to wake my wife, but thought I did not want to frighten her at 3;37 in the morning. While looking in the mirror, I noticed cracks in the skin running down my neck and also up into my forehead. Not Good!

“Betsy! Betsy!” I cried at the top of my lungs.

I opened the door to step into the bedroom and wake my wife, but instead found myself free falling into space. Hurling downward into the darkness of what seemed like an old well decorated with Punjabi fabrics that smelled like the Catholic Church incense of masses attended and slept through a long, long time ago.

I hurled in a somersault fashion, over and over until I landed next to a couple having sex on my bed. Total strangers in the throes of doing the deed of procreation, but without that obvious goal in mind. They were unaware of my presence, right next to their sweaty gyrations of docked bodies doing what looked like a horizontal version of the sixties dance Watusi or maybe the Shing-A-Ling. I looked at my arms and hands in front of me and realized that there was no more skin to be had, just pulsating veins and blood vessels doing that reflected neon light dance one sees on rainy city sidewalks late at night. OK, how can this all be happening, was it real?

I shouted to the strangers locked in passion on my bed to stop, but they paid no attention to my concerns, which did not matter, for they soon melted into this pool of buttery yogurt substance that reminded me of the liquid poured over Hindu deities to bath and purify them. I was then surrounded by Hindu priests gathering the substance in conch shells while chanting prayers, before they began to pour the substance over me to my dismay.
I shouted “No you assholes, I’m no God, no deity…stop it…what the hell do you think your doing?”
They stopped pouring what now became obvious was nothing more than human semen mixed with urine, blood and human skin…my very own!

I got up and ran toward my attic and the door to the roof. It was snowing and cold out, but naked as the day I was born, I ran anyway onto the snowy roof and headed for the edge that lead to empty air far above the street below. I stepped up on the ledge in full leaping form and put my hands in front of me like as if I was diving into a pool, and off I went, soaring, ever so higher and higher, like to the lyrics of the old Sly and the Family Stone song being played over and over, gonna take You higher, higher and higher, while getting smaller and smaller, feeling hotter and hotter—like a comet. I streaked through the sky leaving trails of light made from my burning skin, blood, semen, thoughts, memories, identification, worries, attachments…up and up I went.

Far below, a little boy wakes up by the sense of something important being missed, like a favorite TV show or sleeping too late on Christmas morning. He gets up out of bed and looks outside his window, looking up into the sky. Far above, a streak of reddish tinged white light washes across the sky….and in an instant, little Greg gets on his knees in prayer, just like his mother taught him, for when you see a shooting star, you’re supposed to make a wish and then a prayer.

“Please oh please dear God, when I grow up, I want to make pictures and stories for others to read and look at, please don’t let me work in the factory like my family does…please oh please…make my life like a dream…a good dream!”

He was born to see the future, though he rarely looked. Up ahead, there it was, always available but seldom seen. He could feel it though, like the cool breeze that comes upon you unexpectedly on a late summer afternoon when you open the damp basement door. The whole experience is very similar to standing in line for something mysterious that lays ahead, though somewhat out of sight. Someone in front of the line suddenly looks back and your eyes catch, just briefly, but long enough to know...that what he sees you see too. The image becomes clear in the mind, you suddenly know…but without saying anything to anyone else, for you have learned to keep such things to yourself. That’s the way it is…at least for now.

Pink is the color that most men do not like to wear, akin to large sunflower prints with pretty bees printed onto their shirts. Man oh man, to only be a pretty man who has no care of perceptions to the public self.

What of the man who turns inside out only to find illusions of self melting into millions of particles on the hot sidewalks of paths less taken? No snoring to the glory of manhood, while the patriot Republican with the perfected hair sprayed coiffure whose lapel displays a metal American Flag is in need of a lightening strike. This man is wanted in certain states for collusion and lying under oath never taken seriously enough unless it pays well for self-interest and monetary survival.

Pink is the color of basic cognitive processes unraveling at the sound of light, which passes before virgin eyes unnoticed, and if by chance a glimpse is caught, it will explained as swamp gas or an illusion of the opposing party. March men, in pink uniforms with bows and glitter, carry your guns close to your bosoms, the ones un-milked and laid bare in muscle magazines and on beaches near no water. Could wars be fought by men in pink ballet shoes laced to the ankle? Manly men who swear, smoke and drink from bottles without nipples…warrior men, holy men, intellectual men, in groups, in meetings, in perceptual limbo, gnawing at change in disbelief that their new color is pink, like a flamingo in heat with one leg above the hot sand in the Florida Keys, waiting in line at the Copa, arms around each other but with tears in the eye.

Quivering men with killer eyes and closed fists, all in pink, marching in formation to a new nation filled with varying color and political conceptualization. All hail to the veterans of foreign wars, who follow the order from above to do their unquestionable duty in pink Humvees carrying silk bullets and velvet bombs of love. A pink percept on the brink of discovery, so burn your political party banners while grabbing your sexual organs full of wrinkles and folds, making it hard enough to burst through the walls of illusional misgivings and onto the pink wet crevice of waiting creative energy, daring to be different but at the same time strong.

The daunting task of men and the color pink. History records, but the present is absent in a future without pink, the color of real men, exposed, raw, untreated, no preservatives, no clothes, no guns, no rulers, no gurus, no war, no mo, no way, not now, no o…oh no!

Not yet…anyway

It’s a perpetual problem, like the second hand of a clock that just keeps rotating.
The guru thing keeps popping up its ugly head like a voracious game of whack-a-mole.
Utopian dreams of wide eyed youth propped up by promises of eternal spiritual life.
There is the older wise man on a low throne, who is worshipped like a god.
You give up everything, not just your socks, but your thoughts and dreams too.
There is now an absolute truth, proven by books and a tradition thousands of years old.
You rebel against your culture, your family and yourself.
You now conform to a new family and culture, making yourself new.
You become one of the chosen ones, you are now saved—now go tell others.
Then the dream is shattered by lies, hypocrisy, crimes and false leaders.
You leave the family’s house while still commuting to their Sunday dinners.
You still write to your latest dad, and attend all holiday events.
You give your money to the distant family, in hopes of fulfilling your new faraway role.
Then that is shattered by more lies, hypocrisy, crimes and no leaders.
You go away, no more writing, no more visits, no more holidays.
Then the letter arrives, asking for forgiveness, telling all is well and turned around.
Please come back, please help out, they are rebuilding the house that collapsed.
A plea for a new final community of hope and dreams, please donate to help the cause.
How many more times must I be confronted by these hopes and dreams of a new Utopia?
I have no more to give, unless you count my giving up—as something to give.

He came up to me quietly, asked if I had accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior in my life so far? I said of course, for Jesus is love, compassion and forgiveness, and I accept those qualities…so I must accept him too? “No, sir!” he said, “You have to formally accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior in order to be saved by his grace, would you like to do this at this moment?”

Sound and image became clear energy and propulsion could be felt at the feet…takeoff was imminent...at least that's the impression of the boiling anger that I was channeling after listening to what was being asked of me!!! I have heard this question so many times in my life, but it had been many years since I last heard it. It immediately triggered a statement I read on a discussion board earlier in the day, where one member said that there was only ONE WAY to approach Radha, and that was through Raganunga Bhakti or inner revelation. ONE WAY…why is it that anyone who thinks that they have found and practice the one true faith or religion in life with certainty, that they feel compelled to tell strangers the ONE WAY to anything?

I turned to my Christian interrogator and said that he is a very lucky soul to have asked me this question on this particular day, for he now has the chance to dedicate his life to Allah and the real one true faith meant for mankind! I then asked him to gave me his address so that I could send him a Koran with commentaries by one the highest and holiest Shia Muslim clerics living in Baghdad today, Muqtada al Sadr!

The love of Christ became absent at this point, perhaps it was never there in the first place, for I was called a heathen lost soul and worst, a traitor to our beloved country! I waved goodbye and gladly walked away to my remembered destination, but now wondered again about Radha, and that supposed ONE WAY to her heart!

I heard loud squealing car brakes and a blasting horn fill the air as I turned around quickly to see what was happening. A car that was going the wrong way on a ONE WAY street had just flattened the Christian proselytizer who had asked me if I was saved! I ran to the accident scene and realized that the man was only grazed on the leg but in a state of shock. I helped him up from the pavement and he immediately went for the bible lying on the street and picked it up, when he lifted his arm and threw it at the car window where an Indian woman sat looking very frightened. He then let out one of the most profane obscenity laced outbursts worthy of any stressed truck or cab driver on the road today. I got on my cell phone to call the police but he then lunged at me screaming “You goddamn terrorists will find yourself in the burning fires of hell soon, for the end-days are coming and you will fry with the rest of these rag covered deviates!

He started to run away in this strange hobbled fashion shouting about the Lord and terrorism, carrying his tattered holy book. I asked the lady if she was all right, which she was except for the shock of the moment. The police eventually came and we gave a description of the man and a report of what happened. They gave her a ticket for going the wrong way on a ONE WAY street and told us that they would contact us if the man who was grazed filed a report.

The strange part of it was that the woman’s first name was Radha and the officer who took the report was of Hispanic decent and his first name was Jesus.

The synchronicity was overwhelming and somewhat frightening to contemplate, but in some ways it all made a whole lot of sense while standing on the edge of enlightenment on an inner city street —that goes only ONE WAY!