in case the gravel melts away...from 2011, july

 thirty years in a space alien cult

come on, everyone wants to tell their story.
how did it start?

there was cute blonde. i was parked in the safeway
parking lot, waiting for my friend to get back
with the weed. it was freezing. january. suddenly
a knock on my window. very cute blonde. i rolled it down.
"can i ask you a few questions? about the mind?"
sure get in
i just wanted her phone number
the questions were intriquing, so
i  bouht the book.
for two bucks.
didn't get the phone number.
she told me she, too was a student.
at the academy of scientology.
thirty years later, here i am
sitting in a room on the beach
with  walls that match my eyes.
what happened to me
i read the book. straight thru
cover to cover, while i was smokin a joint.
did you throw a way the weed?
no, she gave me a phone number
to the academy. called and asked for her.
but she was studying. so i asked about the book.
thought it was interesting.
"come on down" said the woman on the phone.
it was on embassy road. walked into a beehive
activity all around . buzz buzz. i signed up
for a course. introduction to scientology.
twenty five dollars. shoulda known thenn.)
it took a weekend to complete. all the while
i learned about hubbard, the man, the engineer
his scientific methodolgy of control of the self.
there were words i  had to look up
in a dictionary. learned to form concepts in clay.
this was not my mother's sunday school.
in that first weekend, tone scale, emotional scale
affinity, reality, communication=understanding.
i'd just read the book.  i knew i wanted to be clear.

i saw her once more. she was busy. had a boyfriend.
oh well. there wer e other girls. only ono church .
one book. two days. hooked.


()***


people need to know about this stuff!
you gotta read this book, come down
to the academy. it's on  emabssy row.
my best friend liked it, but his mom
a jewish matron of the first order
saved him.  my own mom was hysterical.
she's called her, told her the horror stories
the kidnapping, estrangements, locked
up in rooms. i told her there was none of that
going on . i'd been to the place! she wouldn't
listen. i lied to her, told her i would stop going.
but i wanted to know what was in those
legal sized blue packs. the technological bulletins.
i wanted to know.
i lied to my parents. the phone calls kept
coming until she told them to stop. i lived
with my parents. the mailings didn't stop
tho the calls did. so i read the promotional
lits. i didn't lie to them. i stopped going.
i was nineteen. it just wasn't worth it.
mom was too grievous. she believed the stories.



(*)



about a year later
i was at a strip mall
ran into an old grade skool buddy
long haired to his waste drug addict
musician. but he'd changed. he was
short haired, bright, happy. hey man,
what you been doing?
he says i 'be been doing scientology.
really?
yeah. been living with some staff guys.
you should come on over!

the change was so dramatic, i had to check it out.
at the crib, there was a shelf of scientology books.
i picked one up. he said, don't start with that. it's too
complicated. you should go take the communication
course at the  center.
i think i will.
signed up that weekend.
introverted, depressive, drug addicted...
the change in tommy was so dramatic.
the confidence, the drive, enthusiasm
the sheer happiness he emobdied
a sensoe of belonging to something
he seemed so very alive.
i had to see what this technology was about.
mom was wrong. dad was wrong. the jewish mom-
all wrong. i signed up that weekend.




(*&

the com course.
you sit in a chair. across from you,
facing you is another person.
you have to sit there facing them
for two hours. do the training routines
tr0 -- tr4.
first  step
being there comfortably
with  anohter person
with your eyes clsoed.
second step
eyes open. feet on floor
hands on kneeds. knee to knee.
an osprey  flies into the tree
outside the window.
you cannot squirm
the coach across from you
will flunk you.
start. flunk. that's it. pass.
then you get to be the coach.
no smoking during course.
no unscheduled breaks.
when you both pass, you moved up to tr0
bull bait
now the coach does or says
anything short of getting out of chair
no hitting please, no touching
and you have to sit unflinchingly
unblinkingly, unemtionally
listening to the coach trying to get some
sort of non vulcan reaction from you
to pass.


that took a while.

i took home a book. scientology
book 8-8008 that night.
the attainment of infinity
by the reduction of the apparent infinity
of the physcial universe to zero and one's
own apparent zero of one's own universe
to infinity.

wait, would that one=zero.
lol. no.
are you sure?



i dunno. the book had all sorts of interesting
stuff, with no explanations. i became frustrated.
no proofs were included, no explanations.
all these interesting concepts and info
but there was no background. no underlying
rationale, no details.
esample?
the waves roll in the waves roll out.
the rain comes and goes. the  osprey
has long gone, though i got a picture of it...

esample?
i cannot remember. i can't put it into
words. one explanation seemed counter intuitive
at least to me.  a statement with no backing.
all these axiomatic datums with no skeletons.

so i went back to tommy. asked the old staff member
david. higganbotham. he  laughed. o you can't read that.
you skipped too far ahead!
ok, well, give me the explanations.
he gave me the pheonix lectures.
out to germantown. mom was not in the picture.
i was living with joanne since my apt
was now a bong factory.  i layed down on her
gold pile capet and began to read
the explanations to 8-8008. he  blew my mind
on the carpet where she blew me.

consideration takes rank over the mechanix
of matter energy space and time.
o like, perception is everything?

no that mest are the result of consideration.
beingness has fallen so low that our only considerations
are matter enerty space and time and that this
is a condition that needs to be rememdied.
begin with as is ness. creation and vanishing.

so if i could  create this coffee cup, exactly as it is
yes, it would vanish.
wow, i can make things vanish? so i practiced on the
ashtray that night. thinking of all the reasons why
it shouldn't vanish. like, it's not my ashtray. and i need
an ashtray. let me make that hair on the carpet disapear.
i  wanted to as is the  hair. so  i did it like he said.
and it vanished. it fucking vanished. o. my. god.
it really vanished.
sold!  i don't care what mom and dad say.












*()&&^&^


ahhh enthusiasm  . convert. a zealot is born.

a  couple people at the church came up
to talk to me about joining staff. free training
free auditing. the courses aren't cheap.
but compared to today, 1976 was bargain basement.
i did that for about three weeks.











^^^^^^
in 2011, the  coast is wet today.
the shark fishers next door
say this is the worst season ever.
maybe it's cuz i put a shark repellant spell
on the water.  maybe not tho.
i don't remember doing it i just
keep being happy that no one's been chumming.

online  the political poles line up.
socialistic social studies books
battled by tea partiers no taxems.
one sides vs one sides. save the planet
vs give me freon. nationalism vs globalism.
sigh. we're dumb n they're smart and the  fiddles
of war start up. protectionism. sad ism. the gulf
beckons, her fingers swish and plop.

alan watts said the point is not what it means
but how it feels.
did you disappear like a sufi?
like the drum circle .
meditation is not about improving.
i tried to tell you that. the trick of words and numbers.
but i  told you is your reply
there is no time. '
then bring back the forty
minutes i just spent writing
and everything that disappeared
with the crash.



*(&


khad an audience to which i once wrote.
now that's gone and so the writing seems
misappropriated, wasted time.

but i wanted to capture the way fireflies
live in the water and blaze on your legs.
the  light of stars stored for me to throw
over and over in the darkness, here between
venice and naples where  what i wanted to do
all my life, was see phosphorus use
me as canvas.   if i did nothing but swim
in that all week, the trip is worth it.
what am i saying? i  haven't rented this room
you have.  i supply food.  the trip
is worth it.  sunset this evening a bit of blah
purples limned with white.  a streak of mauve.

we are  above the rocks. flies circle  us, land
on the screen. i forgot a swatter at the store. goodwill
had none and i didn't bring mty wallet
into publix. you like the new slip i got
wish i'd wear it in public. twenty years ago
i would have.  today it's a bit risque for this body,
rippling into old age, playing battleship
with  hardons. i'm not an indeterminite age
i look just like i'm trying to fight it.
but i'm not.  i  have always dressed like a slut.
influenced by cher, i desing peekaboo and see thrus
for you to salivate over.





*(&&&


today the waves are  how they were
when we were here, without the man
we both wanted. how could you be so
circumspect while i was inconsolable?
what made you think he'd come back
to me after having you?  if only you'd
told me then...well i guess 2 months
of waiting for the news wasn't so bad.
it was the way you both made me feel
as if I was the root of the problem.
and in  a way, your way, i was.
it would have been so easy to move on
without  my niggling presence, my desire
for the  "why" of it. my blindness to the answer.
as it is, i'm  not sure i have moved on.
i still want that feeling i had when
i believed your love was real, not besottment
not drunkardly, but fully viewed
accepted, given to this old woman
who loved you unlike any other.
do  you understand what you took from me?
innocence . i waited forty years for falling in love.
i didn't know what the beloved suffers. i'm still sorry
i put that on you when you were unable to give it back.
but the person you are now doesn't care. it barely
touched you, because i barely touched you.
the  gulf stretches and beats itself against
the rocks below this aerie. if i went swimming
i  would be pounded to death. oregon's seas
were n ot this wild, only colder.

her ex thinks i made that drive in order
to reunite with you, if only for a moment.
that i  visited where you live was an accident.
i  thought by going where i went, i'd avoid
being close to you. yet when i saw that i was
less than an hour, i contacted you, dared
you to meet . you said you would, then
did not.  it didn't really surprise or hurt me.
not in the way it would have before you
tore my heart out and served it to her on  
a poetry board. it's not my fault she didn't
like the way it tasted.  

so yes. being  geographically ignorant,
trying to forget how i  played your role
in the next love affair, treating the boy
like a fling, like ships passing, like staunch
this wound with your skin please,
i  made it seem to my world that i chased you.
i'm sure she watched. with horror or forgiveness
i cannot guess. perhaps  vindication? i  spoke
with her only twice.  viper. i  couldn't trust her
and did not want her to use me . i am not
to be used without permission. open me, drink me.
because you see, YOU did not  come to the beach
with us. you couldn't pretend that it was nothing
fucking her ended us, for you. as you knew it would
for me. and YOU could not tell me. because she
had told you not to.  the schemata of your heroism.
perhaps she  had a more continental view of it.
perhaps for her, fucking was merely a physical thing
even with you.  did you ignite with her as i had with you?
i think you did. sadly for you, she didn't return it.
that's what happens in rebounds.n

and so now, i don't care if you love me or not.
l love myself.










$%$a3

yes i love myself.
then why do i let you
no. then why do i do this
to myself?  if what i am
is sexy why do i need you to tell me?






state of the mind

woke up from several dreams
trying to find you but
you only appeared peripherily
though your kids had a bit part.

why do i still want you?
i dont think i'd believe or trust you...
i think part of it is the man i love
and i do love  him, though am scared
to go there, is so flighty. but he admits it.
he's told me all the stories about his loves
the girls he wanted, the girls he dumped.
and so i don't think of him as mine.
temporarily. i know he's watching the girls
on the beach  and i t makes me sad.
though why his love of beauty and sex
should make me sad is the conundrum of women.

in this i am like other women.
in a lot of things i'm like other women after all
i AM a woman, ain't i?
my daddy wanted a boy
i'm sure i disappointed him but
so did the sister either side of me.
i've been reading philip roth's
sabbath's theatre. the mastery
with which he covers an old man's
desires and reflections, actions
and epiphanies, thoughts and dreams
even if only of suicide.

i feel like
if given enough time
i could cobble from my mind
an approximation of  old woman
on par with his tome of old man.
not and the sea. i think it outstrips
hemingway's portrayal because
it deals with a whole man, who has
no redeeming qualities. and isnt' that
what a human is? no redemption
needed. from what have we fallen?
the state of animal grace?
to whom shall we be true if not our desires?

or is that the *definition *of animal ?
base state of existence. eat shit kill fuck die.
if de sade didn't say that, he should have.
i think nietszche  said it . in linear time
he was later than de sade. but in the now
they are concurrent. and that my love
is how time was killed, and that my love
became the we.


and now let me describe this scene
from the outside.

a flie circles in the sliding glass
doorway. behind it, waves slosh
between between  white diamond
slats that seperate the balcony from air .
the sea is every green in your eyes the sea
is  blue under cloud filter.
sea without sky an aqua marine. sea mesmerized
 wite caps and hazel.
can we move on? but the sea
is so gorgeous! (and this is why, my love
i have not written to you as i promised myself
i would.  she   silences me with encantare
 the siren we've been warned against.
0 young man ,the  sea...)

 a ship that does not sail
  only rocks when the wind pushes
the vertical blinds around.
its  hull :  rusty rocks, iron clad stacked
meters wide  amidships to windward bow.
hurricanes have washed the beach
that kept her from the sea and now
they daily kiss . she tongues the ragged hull
cleaning sand from the  wrinkly crevasse.
she sails and sails and moves
not a meter.
 a man and woman
sit atop her, and above them
a roof, two rooms, a head and a galley.
a tree  perches outside the balcony
digging  wooden claws into the rock.
one branch wings across the view
shading the  couple  from what sun  cloud
cover permits.  she stands and looks
to the north, where the torrid sea of the past
three days begins to calm. a small sh elf
of sand can be seen under the tide.
a set of stairs leads down the rocks
abruptly ends before the sand.  yesterday's storm
tore the final plank from its moorings so the seas
approach seems slightly treacherous, over rocks
and bubbling gulf, however navigable her twenty
year old self knows it to be. but she is not twenty
anymore. she sighs. caresses her sunburn with aloe vera.


lights a cigarette.






*(&66


the couple are having a discussion .
the subject is reality. what is the fundamental
basis for it? she believes a oneness, fractal games
with sleep, which she thinks of as awakeness
contrary to awakening which would vanish
the sensory perceptions which she cherishes.
the unknown perterbs her. how else could we be
she asks, than here and now?
he wishes to embrace his godhead. feels degraded
in these limited vessels. wants to know all form
and formlessness, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipowerful.
why do you want to spoil the fun? she asks.
if you know the outcome, why play the game?
i want other games, he replies.
this one tires me  with its limits.
your limits~ sh e  insists.
that's what he said  . but he also  hit
the event horizon.
go toward the light! ~ she mocks.
he nods, slowly.~ we all do. that's what
i've been seeking to avoid this time around.
i' remember when i torched that planet
for daring to play nuclear games. i lost
my temper and just blasted it out of existence.
a lot of beings were pissed! that's why i'm stuck
in this karma, going over and over towards the light
wiping out knowlege with reprogramming
that puts me right back here, in these degradable bodies.
gaaah! i want to break that cycle.

you want to be god?
yes.
but you are.
yes, why don't i believe that?

because you're  still playing the not know game.

sometimes she feels like a siren herself
singing fleshy songs about eternal truths evident
in the potshards decay. why indeed? god exists
here and now. what more proof do you need?
you have made the stars shine, you are the laser
light show of phosphor across flesh in the dark
waters of midnight, you are the shark
chasing the glow.
andthen they went swimming.








thewireless detector is a tease
as yet my connection
has failed everytime i try to use it.

now connected.
ca n't find the server.
fuckers.  my ironic gods
my sadistic motherfuckers.
i feel like this will be the last time
we do anything like this. the first
the last. such milestones.
you know the first but not the last
even while you're in it.
like the last time you visited the  trash board
or the last time i will. eventually, everyone stops.
it's like a game we all got weary of.
how can family feel that way?
dysfunctionality is the spice of life, isn't it?






*(&77



i know that everytime i weep
i weep for me. and everytime
my laughter is my joy

a year ago i couldn't sit this way
stretched over vinyl slats, a keyboard
in my hands, feet raised off the ground.
permanent i  was told. degeneratve.
and the bone no doubt
sits, still, on the next, no cushion
between them. smashed like a fave pillow.
but i've been numbed. what do you call
a metaphor that's the thing for itself/
how the nerve gets hit so many time
it simply ceases to function. perhaps
in one great agony, perhaps a fade
a sparse visitation just to remind you
i'm not dead yet. you write me now, every
six to eight months. when ever i call the lust
of forty nine, the freedom of children grown
time on the clock yet, the flesh still willing
whenever i evoke that mastrey of desire
the moon diana sent because i asked



786
WHAT cha thinkin
about scientology

really? what part of it.
how i thought hbbard was different
but the reality wwas he had health
problems, mental health, physical health
he wanted to be a god. gave it his best shot.

*(
two pelicans float by
over the  anemone sea
wing to wing riding the draft
down  to water.
what pelican's mean to me
i cannot say anymore. i see in them
flight, loneliness, the sheer edge using
the wind to  move foward into
the next instant, a gongesque message
i can only decipher without words.








&*^

so you were thinking of  hubbard
not the church.
yes
you knew, know him intimately
how many thousands of hour of tapes?

a thousand. but how many thousands of pages
have i read. the word. black and white. his wisdon...

for example

consideration takes rank over the mechanics of
matter energy space and time.
explain again consideration
what did he mean by this?

thought.
mest are the result of agreed upon thought.
reality is agreement.

consenual reality. that's definiely taken
root in our thought patterns. everyone's trying
to manipulate  the wniverse with mind.

how can we keep our own buble universe
intact int eh merged?

i still think the trick is to do it un consciously

life is a game

and when you win?
play another, sometime you win, sometimes you lose.
be , do , have. hubbard liked having things
knowlege control responsibility
thetan mind body
space energy mass
e
the imprints roll of his tongue, out of his mind.
it only confirms to me hubbard was caught
in mest as much as any of us.  he knew no secret.
no more than watts with his laughing
meditations no more than mooji with
his eternal question. no more than the beat
of the drum circle, the loss of the self in writing
the way of the dharma , evaded.







(*

can we cure man of his insanity?
can we unlock the locks that keep us
from being gods, let us escape from this
phantom trap, the plato cave, how can
one trap such a being that has no time
no position, no mass, no chains?
how do you trap such a being? get it thinking
that its in a jar.
and how have you done that?
o that would take a lifetime to explain.
but don't you have more than that? if you know a secret
by all means, reveal it in your diogenese  self.

 


(*)&7

my cock is numb.
massive sensory overload.
like the phosphoresence  worn
out by the  week's storms.
then we shall not fuck for a  week.
or we shall get you a new pussy.
that one down there, in the black suit
and smooth tan? will that one do?
she would do.
close your eyes. i'm  channelling.







&*^%%



i owuld be a bird.
the smallest finch
the largest albatross.
i would be bird and flight and hunger.






IOU

the sea turns aquamarine
near the shore. further out
 summer blues, plumbago
morning glory.  sunday boats
cut across the vista, white striping white.
tomorrow comes the working world.
this bubble of now burst with traffic
and soldering irons. problems to be solved.
i want to work, but not at that. give me
money for this and i'll write more cogently
more topically, more more more till
you will beg me to shut up for a moment.
go have a slice of pie.









frt61:10 PM 7/10/2011\


huh, another date stamp. didn't do that either.
but it's my last entry from the beach and once again
this netbook is sayin i'm connected
\\\\ooops. nope.
 such a tease.