LIFE-CIDE (Very short and weird story)

Life-Cide

"A shroom-induced reading of Fineagans Wake
Had left him concluding his life was a fake."

He was an astronaut, fully capable, respected among his peers. But he never went drinking with them after work. He never resolved to retire. The concept was, to him, a bore. It's not that he didn't have concerns above and beyond the work place; on the contrary, he could never take it seriously enough to care about retiring. It was just a thing to keep him busy, a bad habit, a way to move through space. But he had found it was not the way to peace. It would never be the way to happiness, this moving through the motions, this locomotion for the sake of locomoting. It was unsatisfying food, without taste, without creative presentation. A poor restaurant with literally no atmosphere. 

He had not always felt this way.

He had picked the book up at the beginning of one of his not-infrequent psychotropic journeys. Far from being ashamed of his penchant for altered states, he had often credited his success as a scientist with his nonnative ability to see "outside the lines", to ask questions that did not occur to others, to suggest solutions to complex issues. It was these characteristics that enabled him to earn a place on the ship in the first place. And as he was not especially naturally talented as a thinker, he credited the presence of the characteristics to enthigens. The book "Finegans Wake" had started slowly, incomprehensible at first. But then he began to see. He saw the shapes, not only of the words, but of the concepts, the symbology. Looking up from its pages three hours in, a realization infused his cells: all is symbology. Life, as he had conceptualized it, was Nothing. And Nothing is Ever (as it appears). Nothing. Ever. Nothing. 

Coming down three hours later, he fell into a profound rest. He dreamt of moving through pages of print, speaking with ghosts of ideas. All was smoke, was All, separate and yet One. When he awoke, mouth agape, face tear streaked from the beauty of new comprehension taken residence in his bones, everything had changed. 

He went back to work, but it was stifling. He felt as if he were holding his breath the whole time he was away from his sanctuary, his home. Coming through the door at the end of the day, he would release a deep sigh, retire to his reading room, and get lost in peace. The crew was preparing for an extended mission. He knew he had no graceful way out of his responsibilities on the ship. Moreover, he felt the mission was a portal for him, a part of his personal journey as much as that of the crew. He would be there, out of curiosity as much as responsibility.

The mission commenced, and six months later the boredom and the false pride of the whole ship seemed to ooze from salty controls, corroded, lifeless. Men he knew and genuinely liked floated by like apparitions on their missions, minds simply gone, tisking and tasking, focused on one thing. One thing among so very many, infinitely so. He felt as if he could look through them. They simply were not available, not without interrupting the task. And then He would be the thing, and then the task would be the thing, and the controls would remain corroded.

He adjusted his space helmet. It seemed a prison. The room was all starched white and chrome. His boss floated across the room, looking at him. His boss was looking at him when he did it.

"A shroom-induced reading of Finegans Wake

Had left him concluding his life was a fake."

This was said over the intercom. It was said over the air, and through it. His boss mouthed it to him, speaking it aloud, and the controls also spoke it. It was written on the backs of his co-workers protective suits.

And he moved the latch to his space helmet. 

And you opened it. And you floated free of it, and the ship, and the rotting corrosion. And the ship was free of you, too.

This happened a lifetime ago.

--Eric Marley

February 2015

Father's Day Kayaking - Essay

Father’s Day Kayaking

I have to watch my own daughter die. In the vast machinery of What Is, in its twisted humor, I understand that anything I do to save her would only hasten her inevitable death and may well harm her further in the short term. I can’t risk that, no matter her fate. So I watch her get sucked further into the dark haunted River of the Illusion. Its insatiable eyes roll back in delight as I watch her brief light extinguished from my view under many layers of deception. It’s a great siren and a howling demon, and my daughter is on it. I shake my head. Her small kayak that is a joke for a river like this.  

I remember the moment she emerged bodily into this world. I saw the light in her eyes that told of worlds without end, planets and love and sunsets and sunrises and pain and joy and joy and joy and light and hope and union and connection with souls just like hers. The details I could never know, but they all left tracks on her beautiful, formless soul… all these tales from experience somehow,streaming in waves of light from the tiny, sighing and newly clothed bundle that slept on my chest for hours, only hours after she had arrived to this great River. Her connection with the ancient heavenly dynamo was intact and easily visible. 

Now she is far away.  

Do you know how difficult it is to give your child over to the Pain? Neither the Biblical Abraham or God the Father have anything on me. After all, Isaac lived and Jesus was resurrected. On some level both Fathers knew their sons would be ok. This must be the case, as Abraham spoke freely with God, and God the Father must know all things. 

And then there’s me, the illegitimate stepchild of this particular Trinity.  

What I know of Creator I feel from Creator’s braille communion. And I still do not know, being immersed and possessed of a mind language inferior to Her messages. Moreover, in this place I am dispossessed of her foreknowledge. I feel her hand on my back, gently, truly comforting at times…but in the end, I am an anxious kayak instructor on the cliff overlooking the Class 4 rapid. I have navigated this river many times and am beginning to know it well. For the first few years of her life, we had conversations about it, he River's currents, beauties, mysteries and dangers. She was a good student; willing and talented. But we were unexpectedly separated by It and I now watch from afar, although providentially our eyes met briefly before she started down this particular rapid. I saw her. She saw me. There was that light again, just an instant of it, that told of fire and determination and spirit. Her adventurous and fearless soul shone in that brief instant, and the thread between us grew by just a tiny strand. 

But I know this hole. I know this hole. And I know she will have difficulty here. Without a doubt, she will flip. When she does, she will feel terror, alone under the furious weight. She will cry under the water, her human salty tears mixing gently with the rage of the river. And it will only laugh. 

But the same thing that is terrifying about the river is also the deliverer of mercy, for every hole ends. She will emerge at the other end of it. When she surfaces she may yet be within or close to the salvation of her own kayak and she may not be. She may have her life vest securely fastened or she may have neglected this preparation. She may gasp for air and then again she may not be breathing. She may curse God and the River and allow her kayak to float away and leave the River forever. Whatever her choice and destiny, it is beyond my control now. The teachings made of words and my experience had their end. I cannot take this rapid for her. The stern river is her Teacher now. Most likely it will kill her. But she, like Jesus, must descend below all things so she, like Jesus, can be resurrected to greater Life than she has the capacity to imagine while she is held by the current. If her fate and preparation allows her to live, another hole awaits, and then another. 

Yes, she will emerge. Laughing, crying, dead or dying, I will see her again. And on the strength of the last time we looked into one another's eyes, or on the strength of the first, she just may one day search the cliff to see if I am in the same place I was the last time she saw me. It is my purpose, mission and life to be here, holding this space on a lonely rock,in case she ever does.

May I not falter, for I am her father. 

Letter To My Christmas Tree, 2013 - Essay

Christmas tree, we need to talk. I am a single man in my late forties. Life has dealt me some disappointments, sprinkled among times of incredible joys, and what I think were times of real happiness. I am so thankful for those. The world is hard sometimes, it really is. But when I was young, my parents celebrated Christmas. Every year I could count on seasonal treats from my mother’s able kitchen, and I knew that on some family night we would be decorating the tree. I could count on festive lights and gatherings of friends. I looked forward to Christmas hymns. There’s something about Christmas music, but especially the hymns. I guess in retrospect I would call it a sense of wonder. I have no doubt that part of this wonder was because the onslaught of Christmas marketing we saw on television and, when we were really young, the Sears catalog. It’s how we’re supposed to feel, right? But it makes it no less meaningful to me now.

I went away for a while from you, Christmas tree. For awhile I plied my will, trying out my own Christmas holidays. Sometimes, I have to admit, I allowed some cynicism to enter in about Christmas. I boycotted the commercialism and the crowds of people in department stores disgusted me. There were some years where I didn’t have a Christmas tree at all. For a year or two I wouldn’t sing Christmas hymns because I wasn’t sure how I felt about Jesus.That makes me pause, right there. As much as the hardcore Christians, the real true believers would have me believe it should be, Christmas isn’t about that for me. It’s about memories. It’s about a time that somehow felt like rest, like another kind of salvation, like a life raft I could climb aboard during the rainy Oregon winters. It was the feeling of salvation that was wrapped up in the virgin birth; it was beautiful and felt right. From my vantage now it’s not important that I know everything about Jesus, what is true or not true. What I choose to believe is that a merciful God that is made of love is somehow related to me, and that that Being somehow knows me. In effect, that’s the Christmas message anyway, even if I don’t proclaim myself a standard Christian by any stretch of the imagination right now. Anyway, I'll still read the Christmas story sometime between now and Christmas Day, even if it’s to myself. I will have soft music in the background and the Christmas lights will be on. No doubt I’ll cry, and feel like I am climbing aboard a raft again, and I will feel tendrils of salvation reaching toward me like Mary’s hair might have done as she bent towards her only son. 

Christmas tree, your smell fills my house with Christmas. It fills my heart to full. It fills my mind with memories of friends and families. I am grateful for all of them. You are a gift to me, Christmas Tree. Thank you for being here tonight. 

Heartsoul - Essay

We are not meant to walk here on this earth, in this plane and place, behind our intellect. We are not of this world. We came here as embodied spirits to walk behind our hearts. The heart is the traditional seat of the soul, not the mind. The heart, or HeartSoul as I call it, helps us navigate this place as we are meant to do. The mind is meant to function as a rudder. The Captain, our Heartsoul, is the one to steer our bodies through these seas. Another metaphor: the mind can twist the door handle and open it just a crack, but it is the HeartSoul that must choose the door and decide if or when to walk through it. Sometimes a door that is pushed slightly ajar by the mind, even under the direction of the HeartSoul, is never meant to be walked through. It is enough in some instances for the door to be opened enough for a peek. In contrast, when the mind/intellect/ego chooses which door to open and pass through, we find ourselves without inner stability. We are not talking about worldly/cultural stability. After all, we can see how our spiritual heroes (like Jesus, Ghandi, Mother Teresa, St. Francis, the Buddha among many, many others), lived lives that looked disastrous contrasted to the comfort that could have been theirs had they simply made choices more in line with the accepted norms of their respective times. No, the HeartSoul will steer us into waters that are often deep and brooding, stormy and seemingly dangerous. But when it steers, peace pervades, a deep sense of wonder and well-being that, when we are aware enough to sense it, infuses all Doing. The mind, on the other hand, would open doors indiscriminately and walk through them all, or open the doors that make mental sense at the time according to the emotions that arise in the instant. This creates the deep instability and fear upon which this culture feeds. I meditate to practice pushing the Controls back into the hands of my Captain, my HeartSoul. So no matter what my life looks like on the outside, the Peace that is an overriding characteristic of the nature of my eternal Being will be ever more present. I don’t always succeed,but I am getting better at it.    

Pleaser - Essay

Pleaser

You were not born a pleaser. You stood in your own truth at the moment of your birth. Your first breath was likely exhaled as a complaint, a demand for a different situation regardless of anyone else’s desires in the room. And you got what you needed. But as you grew, you came to understand that your wants would not always be met, no matter how you cried, begged, vandalized, or retaliated. You learned that those physically stronger than yourself would get their way, no matter what. Furthermore, you found that life went easier for you if you pleased those in “control”. So, you learned to give away your choices to those that would determine the ease of your life, and you began to call your ease, “happiness”. As time went on, more and more people stood in line for you to please. Finally, you found yourself wondering what your own truth was, what you believed, what your own feelings were and where your happiness went.

So here’s what you did: you took a nap in the middle of a work day. No one knew it but you. You went to your car thirty minutes before lunch time, put the key in the ignition, drove to a park, parked in the shade, pulled out your favorite pillow (this was a premeditated act) and slept like the dead for almost ninety minutes. This was because you hardly slept the night before out of nervousness about the nap. When you got back to your office, your boss asked where you were just before lunch. Your heart fell crooked but you calmly said, “I had to leave early today. I can make it up tomorrow afternoon if you want.” He frowned and shrugged. “No,” he said, “I just wanted to know if you knew who’s anchovies were in the refrigerator. Those things are starting to stink.” And he walked away.

Now it was your turn to frown. That was it?

The next Friday you went to the movies with your friends.They wanted to see some new action film but you wanted to see a chick flick that you knew would be the kind of pathetic cotton-candy that would be panned by every able critic from LA to NY, but you didn’t care; Michael Fassbender was in it.  

You spoke up. “I want to see “Love in Manhattan.” 

No one was used to you speaking in any kind of contrary manner; they were all used to you just "being happy”. In other words, doing what they wanted to do. It turned out that of the eight people in the group, four men and four women, only three men ended up seeing the action film. All the women wanted to see what you suggested, plus one man because he was trying to impress one of the women with his sensitivity. Afterwards, everyone met up and got ice cream and ribbed one another about their choice of movies. It became one of the more enjoyable outings the group ever had.

As you lay in bed that night, a smile crept across your face. “What else do I like?” you said in a reverent whisper. And you began to name them, the things you like. 

Looking outside onto a glistening city street, you said, “I like the desert more than the rain.”

Continuing, you said, “I believe that God is not a white guy in heaven. I don’t know what he is, but it’s not that. And whatever God is, it’s made of more love than I could ever understand here.”

“I like helping people. I don’t want to spend another minute making a corporation money.”

“I think my mom was really, really wrong when she said I would never make a good wife.”

And finally, with a smile you said, “I want to eat a tiny bit of chocolate every day for the rest of my life, and on my gravestone, I want it to say, ‘She Ate Chocolate, And A Lot of It.’”

You laughed, and this time you had no trouble falling asleep.

In later years, you came to realize that when you stated your truth in a group setting, it was hardly ever an original thought. Sometimes it was, but more often than not it appeared that someone else had the same idea but was going to be content staying silent. When you spoke up, they did too. Alliances and friendships started, some fleeting, some profound and lifelong. Most importantly to you, you found that by standing in your truth you became acquainted with the Giver of All Truth. You began to feel for your truth to register in your heart before you spoke or acted, underneath your own desires to be right, under the emotion. It’s not to say you never made mistakes, that you never suffered, that you were always right. But what is certain is that you were committed to standing in what seemed true to you at the time, to the best of your knowledge. This has given you tremendous freedom to move wherever your Truth does. Therefore, you were teachable. You were by very definition, humble. But that doesn’t mean you did not speak with searing directness at times. The first time you debated the benefits of ecology over profits if they are ever at odds, you wondered if you had been too merciless in your presentation of hard facts. You went home, feeling that you had been correct. But had you been right? You sat in the dark of your new home in the desert and watched the lightning play over the distant hills and smiled. Nature, and hence the God of Nature, must also state their truth with force at times. 

Following this thought came another. “I am from Nature, but I am not God. God can throw lightning bolts if God wants to and great destruction can occur. But even when the desert burns, it has the capacity to once again bloom.” 

You considered this. “If I ever feel I need to speak my truth with the force of lightning, I will make certain I leave the ground fertile for more thought and more discussion, because I can’t know all things even if I walk in my truth.” You lived that way since that experience.

As more years passed, you found that walking in your truth made you more childlike than you had ever been. You came to love truth and sought it from many places. You saw how it fit like puzzle pieces whether it came from the East or the West, and that fitting them all together was like assembling a jigsaw picture of the face of God. You began to walk slower because it felt like carefree, like childhood, ...plus it hurt your creaky knees less. People, old like you and young like you had once been, of many differing political and philosophical bents, counted you as a friend; not because they agreed, but because they knew where you stood, because you were honest and because you listened with intent to really hear them, just in case you might agree after all. 

“She is fearless," they said. "She has no problem admitting she’s wrong because all she cares about is the truth, not her ego.”

We came to visit your grave today, the four of us left from that group that went to the movies all those years ago. Our respect for you is immense. You’ve helped each of us from making mistakes that might have altered our lives for the worse because you said things that were hard for us to hear,and hard for you to speak. But you loved the truth more than your feelings. Other times you made us laugh at ourselves and at you, too, and see the humor that courses like holy blood through all things. You were always honest with us and with yourself, even when it hurt. We are grateful to have known you. 

And we are all eating a bite of the chocolate we brought before we place it gently on your headstone.           

Jealous Kind - Essay

Jealous Kind

I don’t believe the Bible is anything but a political document. I can’t tell you every step I’ve placed my philosophical foot upon to come to this conclusion, but I am satisfied with it. It’s involved books that are Biblically both pro and con, indigenous myth and spirituality and my own observations - a veritable swamp of fact and fiction pointing, as far as I can tell at this point, to the idea that the canonical book we call the Bible is suspect at best with regards to teaching us the machinations of God, let alone recalling the words of Jesus, let alone the “verbatim to the comma” way it is held in reverence by those that would take it literally. Worse, in my experience many Bible believers appear to feel they can come to know Jesus through the Bible itself, as if it were a kind of celestial telescope into the mind of God. Madness;both the mind that is illustrated in a literal interpretation of the Bible and those that think it is somehow the Way to God. 

I am forced into the position of believing what feels right and letting the rest go. This is an easily maligned position to take. One might say if any is true, it’s all true and if any is false, it’s all false. Of course this position is just as easily maligned. Half-truths, mistranslations,contradictions and metaphor are the property of both spiritual and political documents of any kind, and that is not arguable. In the end, it is up to each of us to determine how to treat the Bible. And in the words of popular songwriter Neil Peart, “if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” 

Here’s what I do think the Bible is: a start. For one, it introduced me to the man Jesus, even if I am unable to accept him as anything more than an ascended master (whatever that really means). He taught me that it is ok to be homeless and that some of the greatest people that walk the earth are.The way he lived is amazing to me. He wasn’t born into wealth. In fact, his situation was far from it. But what I do glean and feel I can trust from the book tells me that he walked away from what he could have had in the way of earthly comfort. He made enemies of every significant power that might have made his life easier had he capitulated just the tiniest bit. But he refused. Instead,he often didn’t even have a place to sleep. Instead, his spiritual leaders plotted his death and got the Romans to carry out their thinly veiled in justice in horrific manner. 

One episode from his life seems metaphorical to me. The event may actually have happened as it is reported in the Bible or it may not have, but I am going to take a little liberty here. I suspect whatever liberty I take is a lot less than what has already been taken elsewhere in the book.  And at least I am admitting it’s not the way it was. However, I am suggesting that my metaphor might be the way it is 

The event I am referring to is told about in all the gospels except Luke. You may be familiar with it. The biblical account has it that Jesus showed up in the temple at least once, maybe twice, and found people doing business there. He overturned tables and said the businessmen had made the temple a “den of thieves”. John’s account has him enforcing his will with a multi-thonged cord. The fact that people were transacting there doesn’t appear to have been the problem. Rather, the type of business that was being conducted, that of changing money, seems to have been the thing. Apparently,then as now, it could be a situation where it was easy to be less than scrupulous. (If you don’t believe that changing money can be less than a fair transaction, trade your pesos for dollars in the San Jose del Cabo airport. I did that once. Once.)

So here is my metaphorical license. The moneychangers are the keepers of souls. Look around, search your experience, and tell me that we business people don’t sell our souls in a sense. At the very least, we are forced to make ethical decisions that disallow our full participation. It may be deciding to spend more time with family instead of getting the drink after dinner with the boss,or verbally disapproving of a particularly violent merger, or any number of business ethics conundrums. This is not counting those decisions relating to daily commerce (do we really want to know why our clothes are so relatively inexpensive, our food, our natural gas?). The culture itself has no such filter. It has no mind, conscience or bottom. It is up to the individual participants to provide these. Money itself makes the culture of an insane world turn, mainly because it is so easy to adore.

When I read the stories of Jesus overturning the tables and generally kicking ass on the businessmen that were enslaved by the culture of the day, I picture myself as a child in a cage under one of those tables. I picture you too. I imagine Jesus wreaking havoc not so much in the name of jealousy,but in the name of finding me, and you, and all our friends, and getting us away from these guys that only care about money. I see myself has having no hope until I see his mighty feet come into view, and I hear commotion, and my own jailor swear and light breaks upon me as loudly as the busting vases that made his table look so nice from the outside. 

And then I see, in my minds eye, everything pause in mid-air, still. My tormentor’s bulging eyes show frozen fear and his veins betray severe distress and anger exploding from his body. I see kids that had moments before been climbing out of cages or running for the door. But for this moment,all is still except for me and Jesus. The tabletop removed, I watch him gently open the latch without the least anger or frustration. In attitude, he almost thanks the lock for the part it plays. And then pushing aside the top of the cage under which I am trapped, he places his hand inside and reaches for me. I see my child’s hand reach up. And I comprehend that in some way, in some misapprehension of the concept and role of Time, each freed child has this experience and this relationship with him. You, too. We’ve all been released individually.It is only my perception that shows them leaving the cages alone.  

I admit that I don’t know what to make of the Man from Galilee. I don’t see him as the Bible paints him in most instances, but I do see him as a liberator; a liberator of those that are beaten down or feel themselves so. Of those that feel trapped, that don’t know what else to do, so they strip, or whore, or drink, or fight, or wander, seemingly lost.      

So although I am in no way a standard Christian, I still believe in Jesus. I know him. He visits me and I feel his presence. And when he does, time stands still, and the earth holds me like Mary once held him. And he frees me, and helps me stand. 

And we walk out of the temple of the angry, of the captives and the captors, hand in hand.