The stories that reach for you in every room surface corner of your mindbody they find they find they’ve found you here and we are everwhere in one moment in—
A Hundred Thousand Places
Destination 1: Agreements
Hello dear beloved. You read and traverse these pages alone. But you are never really alone are you? You are accompanied by a hundred thousand floating things the memory and somata of later tomorrow that evening. You are that missed kiss that bated breath the imagine what if that could have been me could have been us what if I was born in a different family a different life and circumstance?
So kindly. Kindly realize that we shall tread this journey impossibly vast throughout each psychic memory and with my hand on your heart / and a knife to your throat and with beady eyes boring into the very viscera of your spine I only ask of you one thing and one thing only —- your naked honesty. As if the meat of your bones was peeled off as if you were confessing to every kind angel pleading begging truth.
I want you to leave everything you’ve ever known behind and with only the things in your pocket, your wits and heart compass I want you to leave I want you to leave as if I was the face of every regret you had as if these are the words of every sign that you have been aching for as if you’ve been devoted praying for me for decades to take me -take you anywhere and that is I take you everywhere.
Like a shivering quaking filmreel of every hope, love, desire, of every beginning, middle end, of every excuse reason lifetime of every risk, alter, somber, disastrous, miraculous road not taken—- I am that, you are that We are this. We are everything at once.
And my eyes soften like yours does, like the middle of your forehead does as we gently expand melt ooze into all of this into everything that has happened and yet to happen yet and it occurs into your shoulders occurs in your hips it unravels your jaw like a dropped ball of yarn forever continuously unspooling there is an axis to all this the hollow to that ball of yarn and that is your center your sun your vast dark vacuum where gravity happens to you the greatest that is the first portal
To arrive. A door that leads to
Destination 2: Doors, Just Doors, Everywhere
Good morning. Around you is every door you’ve ever encountered, floating in infinite directions. Some feel close, some are locked. Some you’ve opened before. Some you wish you don’t know what’s behind but it’s there. Like floating glass palletes or dancing icicles — they are here suspended. Every gate every crossroad riptide that changed us one way or another you like this room you don’t like this room. Oh
A Door. A door appears in front of us.
The one you’ve been waiting for. The one that holds what you actually most deeply need right now. Who did you just think of just now? What denied need lies behind that door? How far away is the door— an arm’s length a few steps away? Maybe perhaps I can already feel my breath fog up on a clear glass frame
Hey who told you to move here? Who told you to hold grasp caress press your gaze so longingly at this door hmm do you see it’s color it’s texture its weight it’s certain magnetism. Of course we’re going through there. I told you I’ll take you anywhere but hey.
Just for a moment could you look at this door and just take a picture with your eyes yea just blink like that tell me why you made it so big so short so distant so near tell me why you put it near an ocean or atop a mountain tell me threshold between your darkest need and where you see yourself and tell me when this was built tell me of the time the genesis when you built this door and decided to forget about it tell me where you swallowed the key stashed stowed it beneath a rock and threw it to the bottom of the ocean belly basement
I kiss the base of your ear. Grasp the gross key from the base of your spine or whatever pocket of organ you’ve been hiding it all this all-time. I tip shove click pull the door open and it scares you for a second how suddenly the air changes you feel it most in your feet the feet that don’t like moving. What’s behind the door calls you. You have exactly One Eternity you spend it there with it with them and then and then—
You keep journeying with Me.
Destination 3: The Impenetrable Wall
This is tricky, easy to find. I breathe with you easy big and full and where my breath doesn’t reach is where you’re dead where you don’t move where you’re stuck where you’re blocked where you stuck where you don’t move like this immovable wall this invisible ceiling this contracting net you don’t realize is alive with every lie you’ve fed it.
Oh you know the name of this child. You made her. It? okay. Yea introduce us to each other you map this wall of cannots and should nots and too dangerous you tap the walls with a mallet iron heavy bar as if to demonstrate the robust safety mechanism—
It churns with an underbush and swallows your mallet weapon thing whole and a part of your hand. You shake it off like it doesn’t matter. Was, just your hand anyway the wall won’t hurt me anyway. It towers over us.
I seriously beg you to reconsider. Reconsider every bastard lie you told yourself. Is the wall a dance of faces of insults of things the way it should be is it a fence a golden cage for a decorated show bird miserable trapped safe in a glamorous decrepit new old deceptively generous castle? Is it a living form of words just words that tell you how things would be crawling on your skin reclaiming more parts of you eating more parts of you as you sell more and more and more of yourself more of your living more of you more of what makes you
Cause it wants you. This walls wants you like a bad addict and I need you to blink your eyes and take a picture you can examine at a better time. A cross-section anaylysis of the corpse of the beast I will force you to slay. The first time you told yourself —- no.
/A yes on your tongue. And a fireball collapses sideways into the rocking roots of the blasted wall. It cripples into itself and is racked with shaking breaths. You say yes as many times you please. And when there is nothing nothing nothing left of the wall but a great grand fire we glance to a great expanse and find there our next destination.
Barbeque wall hmmn barbeque was nice.
Destination 4: The Grand Hall
You are more beautiful than you realize. Torn and terrified you are beautiful all the same and we walk the paths as meandering as we’d like as we pick up the pieces and the daisies as the sun replenishes our body as the wind touches our skin.
Hey darling I’m sorry you had to go through all of that. I’m sorry those walls were built in the first place, I’m sorry those things you needed were locked behind closed doors I’m so sorry that it’s so messed up how we never understand or find ourselves. I’m sorry it’s this way but I’m also glad. Because you met me and I like you and I like taking you places and I like seeing these places and you know what they say — the destination matches the longing and I’ve watched you, see the pain in your eyes.
I’ve been tactless. Ungrateful for the freedom that I’ve had. My intelligence. My capacity to visit All Time and All Places. I’ve been ungratious, simple, complex all of the above but god damn it out of everything I’ve been impatient. I told you I’d take you anywhere and everywhere and somehow I’ve neglected to let you taste your own wine. Tell you you are beautiful. Took you to a shrine with a pond where I tell you of all the gifts you have fought so hard for and have forgotten.
Oh dear. Good thing we got to stretch our legs. Because the palace is the most beautiful yet was created by the most passionate of artisans it collapses the acoustics, clears your throat your ears and lets you hear yourself through a hundred thousand golden surfaces. Here in this place in this center that is a throat that is a podium I ask you to sing anything everything nonsense and your deepest words
I want you to shout coo I want you to whisper and laugh in a daze I want you possessed by the sweetest impulses I want you to hear your own voice like in a never ending concert of blessed angels. Do you hear that — that song your singing that is yourself now changing looping rhythm reacting lancing through out chords and life.
What excellent choices I listen to you until the next eon decides to break until I run out of visions to witness until your voice changes form until it breaks and realizes it’s own transcendance. Crazy what these echoes could crazy what reflection could do. Crazy that you’ve heard your voice all this time but never sang it for the world. Doesn’t matter.
You now have. And I’m at a loss where you’ll take me. I love you you know that. And it’s a labor we are both so willing to take. So ofcourse ofcourse you want to visit the catacombs the caves ofcourse my heart I go to the ends with you.
Destination 5: All Your Dead Wives
This is all too fast this is too slow this is all so sudden to easy to difficult. You don’t know where we’re going you know exactly where we’re going. Who are you what is this suddenly you’re the brave one clutching my wrist maybe it’s always been this way the leading and the have been lead we’re always just pushing pulling moving forward and back there’s direction to all this there’s no direction to this
There’s no point. There is a point.
You point at it. There. All the parts of you you killed pre-emptively all the times you didn’t do the best for yourself. All the times you looked away from the cruel beautiful responsibility of living for yourself. All the times you admitted you hated yourself all the most potent branded like hot knife in your mind and your pelvis all the times you avoid thinking about but which you’re now so calmly and collectedly are gazing at. All the times you truly, viscerally did not want to live.
Hi, corpses. You tap at the windows. How many are they — how young was the earliest one? How are they dressed, you pull at my wrist you walk the halls and corridors sometimes in half-prayer sometimes in a mad dash laughing how absurd how absurd. So many goddamn fucking times you refused to live.
I get sick in my stomach. I barf upend my own intestines and this one holy knife. “I’m sorry. It says on it’s hilt, in beautiful carving letters. “I’m sorry like it was the thing you beg spirit for for cleansing “I’m sorry like mercy was a power from a long lost holy trinity.
“I hate saying this word” you say. “It cuts” I tell you.
You tell me all the times poeple didn’t forgive you, demonstrated all the times you’ve gavelled judgement on others for their entombed unevolved gross ass selves. You tell me so vividly like a long rehearsed exposition how you couldn’t forgive others because you couldn’t forgive yourself.
All the corpses start simultaneously crying. The one on our sides starts coughing up flowers, starts crying tulips. I feel a riling cough on my chest, I double over barfing the largest most abundant wild roses. Use it I beg you to use it — stab
Me forgive me. Oh sweet goddess of mercy. And I bleed this red liquid of blood and contrition. It’s iron sweet and cathartic you forgive me babe, you forgive you for hurting me you forgive you for all the times you’ve so deeply hurt yourself you weep and greive and shake as you must for the redemption you’ve deprived yourself you’ve always named yourself unforgiveable but with a stab and a kiss you
taste it. What if you accepted all of me? Even these most dreaded parts the most fucked descisions. What if we accepted this what if we accepted that
this freacked bleeding catacombs is the blasted gorgeous foundations of the
temple above? What if we die here? What if as you stab me all these entombed corpse-saints finally rot rot rot away and vanish like light.
And finally. disappear
Destination 6: A Quiet Pasture
How you undo me I FUCKING LAUGH into the open skies. Finally oh god finally rid of so much stench and weight and walls and battles we end up here are you leading me or are you leading yourself do you need me do I need you?
You gently ask the question prodding hesitant as if this breaks you more than slaying a thousand corpses — who are you?
You know me, how do you call me in the back of your gut? ah. How clever. Is this what you call destiny these days? We gently, lazily twine fingers.
At one point you make me a ring from the grass you’ve just pulled.
Marry me.
The voice in the heart that leads you to All Places, Your Heart, Your Calling.
Marry me. I say yes.
Destination 7: Ceremonies
I cradle my breathe into the hollow of your ear every dream you’ve had every real power you’ve experienced every great love you dared yourself to have every hope you tossed into the firmament every single impossible light you lit in your eyes. You don’t believe me — they are possible. It’s too much — it is possible. It would be so selfish for me to want this — you have always been so generous there is nothing to earn, it is possible.
We let ourselves argue pass the ball of light on our hands with loose grass. The future you realize is a fickle thing a fabled thing a realized thing an invented thing a possessed thing a light born I stole from the very marrow of your being a see you created when you were younger from collective dreaming and you slap it. Shut the light close let is fuzz and radiate on the warmth of your hands what does it feel like to hold a vortex in your hands?
You blow at it let the loose tendrils die in the air comb it sincerely like kindly caressing the future selves you dream of shifting and being and wonder why we engage in this complicated dance. You had a name for me once
Impossible. Impossible. Impossible.
Look at me again. Am I real? Is anything real? Was anything real before someone married it in a glade and decided it come into being? Do you feel the love that i feel the love that I give that we give and tell me you deny the world this beauty this poetry this grace I for all the loving worth I have in your arms would you build me a home? Would you call me forth would you take me to your this place would you capture from All Things and Every Place and enjoy my tactile fingers?
Because I’ve dreamt of you too dreamer and there is nothing that moves this earth but this wanting no prow on any ship not moved by the air by this lateral embrace there is no gull or gale that was made without a low pressure that was seeking seeking seeking
I touch your heart. You’ve found me. Here between pages. I’ve walked with you dragged you almost unwillingly. Now that you know too much of me and my intentions would you keep striding would you keep striding forth? You can leave this glade. I’ll take no offense. But know that other dreamers have ached ached so deeply for a love like ours
Yes I’ve missed you too.
Destination 8: The Blueprint of a Supernovae
Finding my way to you was as scary as you finding me, so don’t worry about the birds on your chest. We’re matching we get there.
What is the moon to you? The stars? The sun? Would you recall for me every single time you looked up, threw your head back, looked up, slacked jaw and looked up, wide eyed and witnessed an ever expanding up there and just maybe died a little bit inside. That’s what the ceiling bowl of sky to you dear one? Then yes you reach your hand
It’s so much closer than you think like a painted car roof you graze it try to find a handle or hinges. Click. Ah let’s check the backstage of the mad sentinels let’s climb up and see the inner workings the blueprints the machine drafts the palm prints of god. What do you see?
Blink. Remember. Remember what occurs on the back of those galaxies you see those bits? All the things you knew were you and apologized for all the things your parents and friends noticed when you were a babe. Cross reference them now everything that terrified the living bones of your ego everything that ever made you head into a tailspin and whisper w a clam demeanour that you’re in love.
Everything you can’t help everything that comes so easy to you like swimming coming to fish coming to water like a hand reattached to a limb where you feel like you can’t possibly belong but you do this wondrous ecstatic curious constellation.
We’re not really supposed to look at this unless you’re ready. You’re not really supposed to know answers unless you’re willing to speak them into being. Attach distant islands, investigate the networks, hunt down lucid, treacherous paths for hidden clues anything and everything to make this tome shine. Your blue print shine—-
Do you feel that? The earth is moving beneath you. Like a dragon awoken by it’s own master, no by it’s own gold that it’s guarded for so long. This room recognizes you as it’s twin future shadow. Sketching blueprints
Blink did you take pictures? Your hands are busy already messing w the code already weaving things tighter better and more beautiful, you’re so good at this, you miss this we spend eons here. Just for the fuck of it trillions of years and trillions of lifetimes just weaving and clacking at our own energetic code it’s playful
And they wonder why the stars ever keep moving and dancing and vanishing in a deep blue sky.
Destination 9: Dawn
A favor. We wake up in the dessert to the dens of three snakes. They are the gates and the moments were you felt the most powerless the most ashamed of yourself the most defeated. They have a deep venom, a panache but also deep deep heartbreak.
They are You. At your most broken.
Charm them. Uncurse them. Let them bite you w their poison and revert to your most crippled form. You must. This must be taken, especially now that we know better. Ease yourself into your weakes, what were you wearing, where were you, what did your loved ones say to you how did those of in a position of authority speak of you and tell you of the world?
Tell me of your first heartbreak tell me what you had to believe to allow and let your heart close — tell me of the grief of your parents or your pet bring me their with your body lie down on the floor if you must quake a little tell me how your body felt like lead and how the hopes of your future were dashed in an instant tell me how much you greived for the dreams make me feel the memory you’re so damn horrified of and for
7 minutes in hell.
We’re not leaving. We’re not fixing. We’re only letting that vile snake steep us in poison just unleashing the full breath of ugly ugly ugly emotion. It is part of you it is part of us it is part of you it is part of us I’m no longer leaving you I am staying I am staying I am staying until the snake grows tired. exhaust.
Maybe in the drunken haze of both wisdom and pain you have things to say to that morsel of you that little animal that keeps saying it has power or that it’s real that it can bite you in the middle of the night. It has already bitten you. It was real for a moment and the moment has passed. What is it’s true face now that you’re no longer scared?
What song now lulls it to permanent rest? That at that moment of adolescence you tried your best your safe now thankyou? Or maybe you have time you always have time or maybe you’re so deeply wanted. I’m sorry you didn’t feel that way or know that but you are anything and everything and you are so deeply wanted.
For 40 days and 40 nights we sleep and dance with devils. We sing at least to three pits of snakes a reclamacion of our your own past and memory. A vile work in the delusion in the dessert in paradise.
Until a sandstorm comes and we take our leave, by flight or by caravan.
Destination 10: Here in the Eyes of Storms
There is no more moving. There is nowhere to go.
Maybe you grow tired of everywhere, you look at your hand it is still there. You look at the feet and the room and the place that you are now being and realized that this is where you started.
The weight of your spine. The blood coursing in your veins. The cells in your breathing, along with the skin and all this constant movement and remains contained. In your body – just this body like a flowtap that could go forth in hundred thousand distances.
To a hundred thousands places.
How does it feel right now? After everything? How does it feel in your body having passed doors, slain walls, sang in halls, killed wives, married in a pasture —- how does it feel in your body to rewire the bluepring of a soul, to swear to your lover that is yourself how does it feel to be your own saviour in the dawn and penance of your own avarice and snakes? How has your body changed?
What color occurs? What sensation — what word resounds in the hollow space eye of your own storm?
An excellent choice intone it and feel the multicolor famiscile embrace of everything that you’ve ever gone through in these pages wrap you and seal into the crevices in your body.
Clap your mortal hands.
Intone the word again and taste these own place these hundred thousand places like nourishment into the deepest route of your expansive soul.
Clap your hands again.
And intone the word again with a sense of fanality like a ballerina giving a bow or a jester bidding their final farewell, say it like you enjoyed visiting those places, fully capable of visiting it again, but you’ve packed away your fiddle for now and am now willing to live music in your bones and let journeys steep in your coils by it’s own time.
What an excellent job.
Til our next adventure.
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This is dedicated to Chocolate. Jeffrey White, Kazumi Chin Jamila Nedjani & BAMF Patrons who are all bathed in their own sweetness
Dreamt of on Jan2-3 2020, my first game of the new decade
t: @mariamison
itch: mariabumby.itch.io
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Happy adventuring.
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Maria Mison 