The Impossible Dissolution of Love.

I had a vivid dream this morning sometime nearing the five o'clock hour. It was haunting and bittersweet and packed more punch than Hawaii, more spike than a game of beach volley, and more genuine pain than a real heartache. How about contemplating that between crunches of 5 a.m. raisin bran and a wicked strong cup of coffee. What the hell brought it on?

About seven years ago i fell in love with a woman and i said some things that commited me to a cause, intended an eternity between us. We swore up and down and everything we mused, except the words near the end, didn't come to pass. It took a long time to heal but as sure as a Manhatten martini costs ten bucks, the day came.

Seems that certain promises have a residual, lasting effect. I imagine it has a lot to do with actually meaning it or not. And i'm guilty of bona fide sincerity in this case; i meant every goddamned word. Perhaps for this reason it haunts me still. Does every one of us have a certain ghost that visits us without warning? At one point my ghost visited every night for three months running. She has the face of an angel and brings me to my knees. She dissolves hope and tears at my insides. And i awake embittered, embattled to panic, and that's it... I hadn't seen her in half a year, until this morning.

There were those books we were reading. The ones with Carlos and his Yaqui teacher Juan. The story goes: the teacher and pupil were seated near twilight on the back porch looking out toward the stretching Sonoran desert. The pupil was getting tore up on a bottle of tequila but failed to mention that in his book. Around this time the teacher revealed the presence of a certain being never identified by science: the 'mud shadow.' It could be viewed best at dusk, a breathless silhouette leaping on the eye's periphery. What does this being do? asked the young pupil. Well, answered the teacher, it preys on us. "We are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance." At this point the teacher laughed and laughed, while the student grew uneasy (and strangely infuriated) by this information. The teacher further explained that it would be ridiculous, and arrogant, to posit human beings atop the food chain. That, in fact, we ourselves have a predator that rear us as "chickens in chicken coops." And, that daily we are consumed in our places of work, school, or church. And nightly, in our very beds, in our homes, in our dreams.

I have always had a difficult time explaining my ghost in terms of a self-projected phantom, something i create in dream and exploit myself with. That just doesn't work for me. This other theory works better, but also falls short by its sheer scope of science fiction. Perhaps that's also why i kind of dig it. I know some jerkoff psychiatrist could have a hayday on this stuff.

Whatever the case, it forces me to realize that words hold physical strength. That they create and form that which we cannot see. And, the syntax of sentence and phrase, its due meaning, and reciprocation thereof can liberate or bind the speaker. Unspoken word: thought, can bring the same result. Hence, the promise even now i cannot break...


Sonora near the border...