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“Encounter the mystery of choice and what a myriad of shared souls must do to merge once again. ”
“Does a caterpillar consciously decide to change into a moth? The mystery of change is that it arrives after a series of small-self choices... ‘when’ that occurs can only be known in moments of presence. Outside those moments, the soul ‘forgets’.”
“Which ego-taming works best for you... nature, pain, joy, contemplation, near-death, risk, plant medicine, fasting, orgasm, meditation, music, laughter, extreme sports, combat, surfing, cigarettes, or a shot of whiskey?”
“Are Gustavo and Xavier really in a fist fight?”
“Present moment awareness brings all into focus. When it leaves, so does its knowing. So how does one stay present more often? There are many ways.”
Herding the Scorpions of Choice
Alice threw a handful of change on the floor, expecting me to pick it up like a street bum, accusing, “You think we’re part of your fucking dream, don’t you ass-munch? As if each one of us is a part of yourself, fit together in your pathetic shrunken head!”
I nodded in agreement.
Wanger needled, entering the fray, “You done think whatever you like. Xavier, your engine is idling but ain’t nobody behind the wheel.” Wanger added, “Herding scorpions again!”
I tried to laugh it off, proclaiming, “Shut the hell up! You’re all insane!”
An odd mood permeated the bar, a stirring sound of a glass being put on the table, every nuance severe. I sat in anticipation as to who would break the spell.
Gustavo broke the silence. “Xavier! Callate! Wisdom is noisy when you shut up, more so than any inbred screeching away on a fiddle.”
I couldn’t stand it anymore. I grabbed my beer and headed out, through the sea of overalls and neon beer signs, past the all too familiar faces of Crawdad, Ella, Jack, Alice, Wanger and Gustavo.
I didn’t say where I was going.
The Tavern door struggled to open against the wind as a splash of rain blew past. I took a few more steps without hearing it close. Then, from behind came Gustavo’s voice. I ignored him, hoping he’d go away. “You know Xavier, at least when I try to bullshit myself, I cloak it in the light of oncoming headlights, ones that are vivid and persuasive. I know this. I have to. After all, I’m you, pendejo.”
I couldn’t ignore that! “What, you’ve been playing chicken with yourself?”
Gustavo taunted, “Your souls trailer's on fire. En fuego bitch! I couldn’t tell you the truth. You would’ve stayed in your death.”
I kept walking. The rain was like acid.
Gustavo became more belligerent. “I’m gonna kick you in the cachuetes. I promise Xavier, the bloodshot eye of the storm will never pass if you don’t grab the wheel. You’re at the helm, El Capitán, and whether you think it’s none of my damn business, I don’t care. But you’ll do as I say, or we’ll fight forever.”
I was heading back toward my RV, tromping through the thickening mud. Soon enough, his lambaste began again. “Baboso, wake up and quit slipping like a drunkard. The real power you’ve been seeking isn’t the mierda which comes and goes with the flood - like your stinking Airstream.”
I had it. He’d burnt me, wouldn’t shut up, and was buzzing about like a Houstonian mosquito in a feeding frenzy. He was a scrappy sort, but no more. I stopped dead in my path, wheeled around and decked him square in the chin.
“How was that?” I inquired, as he extricated himself from the mud.
There were no signs of anger on his face, and that’s why I didn’t expect the head butt out of nowhere. Its tremor reverberated Slinky-like in the center of my head. Sprawled out on the ground, I shook it off to catch a dizzied glimpse of his mouth moving. And when I tuned back in I heard him saying, “Horned toad got your tongue?”
I was struggling to get up. His noggin’ must have had a steel plate.
“To make your head less square, it struck me… I should make up a stupid parable. But damn, you’re as stubborn as a brain-dead vaca!” he goaded.
I was trying to right myself but my hands kept slipping.
Meanwhile, Gustavo kept on, “To think I misjudged the fight you’d put up to protect your retarded sucio hombre self.”
Gustavo’s face turned to granite. “I should’ve beat your ass from the get go. Quires combate? I’m the real Luchador!”
My daze faded as he continued. “Knocking some sense into your head allows the horned toad to shed its skin.” Then, reconsidering, “Uhh, maybe they don’t shed their skin? Caramba! How about it pushes the real you to the edge by luring the caterpillar to turn into that moth, the X’avier I know into the one who's always present... X’Tzu.”
He stood too close, and that’s when I kicked his knee out. He fell and I went over with him, one hand holding his neck, the other laying into him with a few ring-brandished fisticuffs.
“How does that feel…” I jested.
I hit him again!
“How dare you present reality within a pandering parable! One, I never asked for.”
Out of nowhere, he bit me! I let go to escape his bite. My arm was free. I rolled twice, and got to my feet, rain-soaked and muddy.
Gustavo threatened, “Cagado, penicillin is in your future! Until you bear hug the nature of that moth, by fist and fury will I pummel. I’ll rip that mask off your face and expose you to the audience!”
We circled around each other, balancing precariously on the slippery ground.
Gustavo’s eyes were reptilian, I imagined his words rolled off a forked tongue as he hissed, “I’m gonna whip your ass something fierce.”
Now that was a good idea... use a whip! I drew my belt out from its loops and whisked it around to gain momentum, targeting his head. He ducked the first pass but felt my wrath with the next go ’round.
He lay unmoving.
“Great, a perfect opportunity to go home and sleep,” I said, thoughtlessly dropping the belt on the ground and heading back. Though it was raining and I was a mess, there was no hurry. The rain was intense enough to wash the mud off. The slow ramble took me past our infamous prize pigs, the chickens two by two, the zonkey, and right past the mutant two-headed Jersey that should’ve been shot at birth. I veered after the first enclosure to pass the piglet-feeding pen, and that’s where Gustavo was hiding in ambush.
I don’t know how he got there before I did. I thought he was on his back in a bed of mud.
Gustavo leapt from behind a trough, with the belt I dropped, if only to strangle me with it! Around my neck it slipped, my legs flew into the air and my back hit his knees.
“¡Ahora escucha! Until you open your eyes to the reality that smites with the power of ten thousand angry burros, this belt’s gonna constrict the artery flowing into that malignant growth you call a head!” Gustavo shouted. “Now Xavier, you’ve everything to lose. Isn’t reality the most violent mind altering substance, its unmasked power bristling and deeper than the cesspools of imagination stretch. Place indecision in a headlock, utilize the guillotina to crush fear… act now. Fear only exists in the future, and the future lives only in your imagination. Take risks that mean la ocasión de la muerte. If you were dead, it wouldn’t be any different than what you are now! Who has more authority than me, the one who’s embraced the power of darkness to reveal, remedy and destroy? Goddammit! ¡Lucha! Fight!” Gustavo demanded.
I twisted and turned, trying to get my fingers between my neck and the belt, but his garrote held. I was losing breath when a light-headed daze took over. “You’re going to kill me if you keep this strangling up.” I squeaked.
“Pendejo, did you know it’s Chumba who’s el Luchador malvado? You know, the evil wrestler. Even when he appears innocent, and seem to have no acts of commission, his omission is stacked higher than the KLDE radio tower.” Gustavo announced.
I squirmed in a last-ditch effort to extricate myself.
“En esta lucha, this fight, the reasons behind many atrocities are hidden, and the acts that must occur in response are choices only the selfless spirits can make,” he proclaimed. “Wretched gusano! Do the simple things that make a difference, don’t react in expected ways to their provocations, and let them use their energy against themselves. Keeping your mind unbothered will turn even the most buff wrestlers into sniveling babies. You see, you’ve already had your fill of raging hot habaneros, and all it did was make it painful to wipe your ass. So now, let your opponent, which is you, run right past at full speed, do a side step, and watch him fall head first off the side of the ring. Let the bastards fight themselves… like perro enojados enraged by their burning culos,” he yelled.
His grip constricted until one of the most unlikely events occurred. Without warning, a sloppy wetness startled him.
He felt it between his legs!
It was one of the piglets inserting its snout to get a whiff between the clefts of his behind.
“Hibrido!” he screeched, trying to keep his hold, but not before I was able to slip under. While I was trying to turn around, he managed to get me in a half-nelson, and forced my face into the reeking pig’s offal. I contorted from the stench.
“I’m not done with you Xavier, and you’re fighting like a viaja, an old hag.”
I turned my mouth to avoid inhaling more rottenness.
Gustavo continued, “When a temporal soul realizes it’s a temporary human, or in your case, somewhat human, it can stop pretending its separate. Admit it. If you refuse, I’ve got a huge and painful trick up my briefs! You’ve the authority to move beyond excuses.” Gustavo agreed with himself. “Yes, condemn! Condemn your plastic faced self and move on with the new you.”
“You’re going to pay for this!” I snarled, spitting out gunk, and almost breaking his vise before I slipped. Again, he jammed my head into the mud.
“That’s it cabrón. No longer will you hide without getting your ass kicked. I don’t know if your nail biting comes from thinking your ugly face will be judged when the máscara is torn away, and I really don’t give a donkey’s ass. You better get used to eating mud!”
Using the slimy substrate to my advantage, I bent my shoulder until it was close to popping out of joint.
Gustavo fumed. “You’re paralyzed by my half-ass half-nelson because you refuse to judge your bullshit self. Ah… God... your justice isn’t murder, it’s assisted suicide of something that should have died a long time ago.”
My arm straightened far enough to get it behind his neck. But as I pulled from his hold he rolled me into a headlock, and it dawned on me he’d become my adversary to illuminate my real enemy. After the whipstall of getting whooped, my perspective was like clear running water, the kind found between the torrents, sparkling with a clarity, scope, distance and quality it didn’t have.
I hollered into the pigpen, “I’m responsible to act!”
I granted myself permission to tuck my chin into his headlock, dig my fingers into his eyes and jerk his head back, and the audacity to be measured by my own standards. No longer paralyzed, I didn’t need the intervention of a piglet’s snout to save me. No longer would I leave the judging to an external force. I had the authority to embrace the creation and destruction that made bedwetters tremble. Conflicted, I wanted to work him over for the beating, but didn’t want to kill him. I twisted his wrist with the power of a steroidal ape and forced him to the ground.
As his teeth clenched and body became immobilized, he muttered, “Xavier, we ride the same spirit. Only our names are different.”
No longer did the thought of snapping his arm bring a smile. I let him go.
I knew I couldn’t be made to camp under the stars of actuality if it wasn’t what I wanted. But I had to choose. If I didn’t, I’d have him jumping from dumpsters, dropping onto my back like a tick, and grabbing my ankle as I walked by storm drains!
“Xavier, the belief that the competition of Wills is all there is, is no different that being incarcerated in the Matamoros penitentiary; each inmate loses their choice, as well as the sanctity of their rear end. Thinking a playground is a prison is like es un pollo sin cabeza—a chicken without a head.”
Standing like a Texan-MexiGreek mud wrestler, Gustavo threw his arms into the air, a scrappy statuesque mongrel, and did his best Jim Jones impression to the small crowd watching, commanding, “A few decades seemed like four and a half billion years. As wily young chicos, do as I do, that we might climb from the sludge…”
The showers let up and there was a break in the storm. A moment of hesitation filled the rain soaked scene as lightning stroked the horizon.
Heads held high, we were released to spar to the death, the one of our false selves. There was the right blend of laughter, awe and sorrow in the realization. Jack and Wanger walked off into the rain. Ella and Alice followed, disappearing down the path toward the prize animals. Crawdad lingered before tromping towards the creek. It was just Gustavo and myself.
Lightning shot into the nearby sky, electrical finger-sparks reaching upwards, fiery tongues lashing about the atmosphere.
Gustavo instructed, “Part of you knows what to do, and that’s why you’ve gone to the creek and past la vaca de dos cabezas, the two-headed cow. Present awareness needs no reason, allowing our bar buddies to walk away without being stuck like rats on glue traps”
I’d opened the book within - where I found the lesser monkey’s purpose was similar to reaching inside the jar to grab a cookie, and then being unable to figure out why their hand was stuck. Finally, I looked away from the rising ‘beer bubbles’ of thought, the befuddling mystery of those lost within the beer bottle. Inspired action found between the bubbles was always correct. So simple, one of those purple-butted baboons could get it… and probably had.
I’d entertain awareness for movements’ sake, participating in rodeos, riding real and imaginary mechanical bulls, and throwing out non-random ring tosses in the blowout of all stagnation and boredom.
Accompanied by the sound of deep guttural relief, lightning exploded above.
Gustavo had a crooked smile and a dollop of bloodied saliva at the corner of his mouth. It bubbled as he spoke. “Chingaso, we’re the unnecessarily divided Will of an awareness curving upon itself, an unfinished dream, the breath of attainment without completion. But now we’re drenched, sopping wet in the night. I’m not sure if I’ll miss you, to never live those lies again. No, I won’t, because now’s forever and you’ve finally arrived.”
“I know. Let’s never go down this dead-end again,” I agreed.
Gustavo thought it over and mumbled, “And now X’avier, you need to make a decision if you want to remain X’Tzu, for the words are furiously in love with their delusion and fond of their spiral eyed compadres.”
“Yes Gustavo, today we risk that so called ‘death’ for placing the essential nature in a carnival display case.” In his usual grumble, he added, “For carnival baratijas perish and most leave life undone, it’s not too late to end the dream, and begin a new one.”
Abrupt movement in the skies and a bolt of lightning shocked the landscape. For hours or eons, what seemed a dream might only been minutes.
There came a long pause.
The white became gray, then darker until velvet black. The sound of my footsteps seemed submerged. I was walking, but blind to my direction. I slowed to feel the ground and noticed images steadily gaining prominence. I saw my Airstream ahead, the finest of roadway domiciles, its’ shining exterior casting a reflection of my approach as the rain unfolded into sheets of water.
Suddenly, the moon elbowed the clouds aside and was shining upon my trailer. Like a sleepy eye surrounded by a ring of ice crystals high in the sky, its diffracted false iris pretended to watch. Through a hole in the clouds I could see the constellation of Orion, missing the stars that made up his sword. I walked through the rain and up those stairs.
A heavy weight lifted as I enjoyed the splattering sounds of water dripping from the roof. Exhausted, I made my way to bed, its soft comforter welcoming my entrance. Once I hit the mattress, it was as if I’d never left. I’d proceed to the place where sanctuary is attained—that soothing dark bath of deep sleep, silent and still.
Reclining, I was pulled into the vortex of slumber, my eyes struggled vainly against its irresistible force. I stepped into alluring sleep. Comfort, silence, immersion in the deepest parts consumed. On top, the reassurance of blankets, an internal motion inside my body, the calming that’s realized by the deeper part of a soul, a throw back to when we were in the womb…
“Competing desires must seek resolution through navigation, negotiation, agreed compartments AND in some cases... combat. This is how to become one with yourself.”
“Masks, personalities, roles, and manifestations can be fun to wear, as long as you know who you are underneath.”
“Courageous spirituality leaves you open to harsh judgment by others in ignore-ance. Are you willing to shift relationship with choice, action & consequence? ”
“How’s it that judgement is a symptom of ego, yet agreeing with other’s self-judgement is wise assessment? Consider... when judgement masquerades as compassion, is that love or ego? ”
“X’avier becomes X’Tzu. X’avier forgot there was an ‘outside’ of the carnival (the metaphors of ‘bar’ & ‘playground’). X’Tzu is in the Twin Inferno state; one foot in & out of Playgroundia, residing in the present and playing with ego as a tool of enjoyment.”
