Solid Lines of Broken Glass

The oval has its advantages and disadvantages

As long as it is runnable outside (and my broad definition of runnable is a ground without blatant snow or ice), it provides a labyrinth of sorting that removes much of the chafe and challenge of the road or sidewalk.

The first few laps are the blood vessels reacquainting themselves with what it feels like to truly open to the demands in front of them. A steady white ache in the legs that burns quickly, then transfers up into the airways; heart picking up speed, lungs quickening.

This is the gross of the gross, the top of the colander as the shakedown and sorting unfolds. It stays up top, fading a little, as the next levels drop

down

And we're into the world of breath and heart and muscles and time and mind. Not as in your face difficult as the first level for sure, but there are subtle demons that more or less pull out their deck chairs and settle in for the run. There is a stridency here, in spite of the laizzez fare attitude. Time is clearly the ring leader. Even when all else is settling into rhythmic trance, Time has but to raise the baton and everybody else is backseated to the push, pull or discomfort he decides to manifest.

This too, can be shaken down staying up top as the even finer level of the run settles down.

Will and Itent.

Two brothers, these: Will the stable and predictable; Intent, the well meaning but sometimes fragile of the two.

And below these

Is.

Follow the non-linear linear tangent, the laser line from the finest level of oval the the intuitive level outside of Oval.

This would be fine weather sidewalk barefooting; salted face and saline sheet pulled from the stars to skin surface level; portable shade slipping down the olfactory awning, sear and pull, sear and pull as steady as a commuter train as I roll on slightly downhill to the turaround point until

diamond in front of me; image sharpened by the dull of the shades, a shift out of harms way, followed by a decision tree.

To the left, intuition, IS, run without fear but without direction.

To the right, hierarchy and structure, linear thought, the steps that might deliver me safely from shredded feet.

Inevitably, the left wins. It HAS to win, if I have any hope of navigating these lines of broken glass. And the lines collect and disperse like water through a creekbed; swaths scattered by an invisible reclusive gem gardener. Each sparkle a part of the mandala that will be pushed and pulled by traffic and weather and feet and wheels and paws and dust and time. Each sparkle a little cutting machine.

So it's a chosen path to NOT think. To be, a little thanks with each step that no damage has been done, a little hope with each following step that no damage WILL be done. Each lift and pull of the nekkid foot a whirlpool of belief, faith, hope, and a little fear...

Mantra beyond mantra, just trying to be in the arms of the divine, knowing that karma and fate and will and luck and disregard are all playing a part, drifting like billowing silk over the melting tar and embedded ego-checkers, until I'm through.

IS as intuitive grappling

IS a place of No-Thought and being.

Still in the world of the dual, but inexorably bound to the non-dual.

Because 'Is' is the non-dual, another form appearing and dissolving in and off the oval.

namaste

Rich Paulsy is a Coward

Now, don't blame the messenger.

I sure as hell didn't put it up there, rip it off the side, convince it to run through town or take on a life of its own.

Let's move back, shall we.

Cold morning. Rain sheeting the windshield, but the ignition is off now. Just the radio and the fan to keep the steam off the inside of the windows while I wait for my train.

Early? No - false alarm, that's just a freight that rides a parallel line with mine.

They can be noisy bastards - come and watch the platform and see how many people have their hands over their ears as the screech of metal on metal gives the second and final notice that the train is HERE, get ready, all aboard kids.

But when they keep moving, all good, just a thumble runder of wheels on steel, load shifting as one two ten 100 cars go past, metal snake making its way left to right past to present to future. Lot of writing on the side, me thinks as I watch the beast trundle by.

And THAT's when the strange shite starts. Rich Paulsy is a coward. Straight and narrow script, stick letters, and as it moves from my present to the future (to my left, in front of me, to my right). And out of the periphery of my vision -(you know the space where ghosts and intuition tease you and flirt with each other) I see movement. Careful now so as not to derail the happenings - no pun intended. Peripheral vision happenings are very cat like - you know, the little feline coming down the hall, you approach with clippers and intent, and if that intent is borne of your headlight vision preceding you, the cat will pick up on it and take off. Same with the peripheral vision - if the happenings in that space even suspect you are about to focus full attention front and center on them, well, they just return to form and the shows over.

So I'm careful. Mood supports my intention, grace I guess, you can't control these things - sometimes it either works or it doesn't - but out of the side of my vision I can see the words start to peel off the side of the train - like one of those kids tattoos coming off of its backing and now its completely off, fluttering like a leaf towards than away from me and now

I can't help it, I've got to have me a look-see. And what I see is the words wrapping themselves into a running form - not exactly human, but close to, and running. Full out sprint now and I've been made. Rich Paulsy is a Coward makes eye contact with me (it's two 'i's lighting up and tracking me like a laser pointer) then disconnect and it runs as fast and as hard as it can into a building and

fuka

It's now up there. Same script, different location.

Train hasn't stopped moving throughout this whole event, I squint to see the container car it came from and it looks like the writing is gone there...

But this is one of those things that lives in the spaces, that can only be acknowledged by grace or luck (maybe luck IS just grace) and doesn't need to be quantified or verified - I just KNOW.

But, as if to underscore it, there's another performance. And another.

Letters are flying off of the train now, Heisenberg's graffiti cleaning service front and center and now they don't seem to give a rats ass if I watch or not.

It's a strange dance now, kids. The alphabet is out in front of me in a tornado whirl, a carnival merry go round of fantastic proportions, words forming and dissolving, a linguistic trinity creating sustaining and destroying (but never really destroyed, just back in the soup) and the colours are there, and the Sounds. The sounds of the mechanics of creation, a deep hum that is marching band and solitary voice and terrible thunder and falsetto cry of a bird on the wind all threaded together in a fantastic cacophony that finally

Explodes

And the letters with it. They DO know they've been made. By me and a couple of others with the i's to see. They explode and cascade down in the city, splattering against building sides and sidewalks and bins and cars.

I close my eyes to hold the vision and the bright burning after image is collapsing on itself into a single three lettered word that ties the city together north to south east to west

aum.