The Club

Another story wants to be born. Always my inclination is to starve it off. Fruit fast? Water fast with squeezes of lemon? Days of starving off a healthy appetite? Words want to come, asserting that they can serve up a purification. Please don't compare us to a heavy digesting meal of spaghetti and meatballs, they argue. We have work to do. It's every bit, every bite as important. We know we don't understand our own meaning, as our Nordic friend says. We accept this humble position. But tell me, dear one, does your own face see its own image without the help of a mirror or a pool of water? Can one describe the beauties of this heart and world only with silence? How about, what about, a dictionary of images pasted on watercolor paper? To discover the heart's play and delight, is a steady diet of ascent out, the only way? A true blue, white-cloth-covered yogi would shake a finger at her. Ssssh . . . Ssssh . . . Ssssh . . Aum. Retreat, fast into the clean platter. Don't let any food stick to the plate. The answer lies within, don't feed yourself with all this clatter. Don't serve up another explanation, carefully displayed among the dessert trays accompanied by blushing, fruity wine. She lays awake, splashed with perfume and fashion, waiting for the image to form. One image is worth a thousand words—perhaps a painting would be more economical. She could keep to her diet of no explanation, although hors d'oeuvres of poetry and spontaneous song are necessary—surely not an indulgence—rather a thirst requirement in the situation she keeps.

They say these are beautiful times. Well, actually she says they are beautiful images all stretched out in albums—stretched and savored. A director wouldn't know, couldn't bear, to edit a single, damn frame. Every picture essential to give the story plot—time to conceive a lifetime of pursuit of pleasure in only an hour-and-a-half. How can it be done? She can do it. Given any means. Today she prefers the diet served up by her traveling companion, her EOS 1N. This given, she accepts her destiny, her pen is happy. He waves from across the room, thousands of miles away. He knows she sticks to her tantric diet—fruit and steak—words and silence— peace and the shot—the shooting of her EOS 1N. Officially, friends, this story is on the road. She has fasted the night. Glow of dawn arrives. Her camera is on its three legs; the tripod supports its belly. Ten-second timer delay . . . she poses naturally . . . the image appears. Film holds her form, pen and paper scratch. Neither know themselves, but all are happy to be part—to be reflections. This could be a road picture. Her buddy, her traveling companion (yes! a photographer's best friend), her camera—her EOS 1N—is slung over her shoulder. A writer will decipher through metaphor, a poetry, the story of her images. Care to come along and view the beauty from an eye (I) behind the camera? You can always start your diet on Monday. We can face reality on that day. Monday, Monday morning, the cold grey dawn of facing the hard light of reality. Three joyous days before our waistline disappears. Silly Friday is here. Expectant, sensual, yogically disgusting Friday is here. Let's see what she can do on any given Friday. The engine purrs, the Jaguar leaves its den. With one push of a button, the garage door closes. Blue line of white pad runs parallel to yellow line of grey pavement. She grins at her fate—this story will arrive at its destination. It's either feast or famine. In her case, it's always both at the same time.

She's stopped trying to explain her life to anyone: to friends, strangers, intimates, whites, blacks, yellows, straights, and gays. Invariably, the contradiction to what she explained would arrive at her doorstep, like a baby boy wrapped in a pink receiving blanket. He would arrive all femininely decorated at 3:33 a.m. every other night. This gave her a broader sense of humor about herself. She switched professions from the teacher of knowledge to an artist where image is everything. She painted, sketched, slapped clay around, dirtied herself up with chalky colors and goopy glazes. She also clicked her button hundreds of times a week—framing her insides, her inside outs—how she saw, felt love and beauty. Photography suited her so well. She could gaze intently in every direction and feel it all fly to infinity with her. With a focus, then a click, the object of her meditation was congealed for a moment, imprinted in mind's eye, camera eye. It always returned to her from its moment of flight and showed up on a 4-by-6 piece of paper. Oh marvel, oh mystery. She had boxes of photos and photo albums. She loved each one, each photo. She loved color, light, form. Form is presence—God gazing back—She gazing at herself. She was like a child. All she ever did was play. She joined every club: The John Birch Society, NOW, The Sierra Club, The Hindu Club, The Catholics, Cooking Club, The Fruitarians, The Nudists, The Democrats, The Republicans. She even joined countries: Kenya, Egypt, France, England, India, Japan, New Zealand, Canada, Brazil . . . Yep! . . . a joiner. She wanted to see the differences in people's understanding of their view from the camera. Their angle, their shoot, their frame to hold reality closer to their hearts. The differences so minor, she perceived how they were so alike. Each club had its own rules—some were outrageous—the images shot under dramatic, climatic changes. Others used a closed environment wherein lighting was controlled with wattage. They held each photo, each image as a metaphor, a symbol. Reality was always only pointed to through a symbol. Symbols, rules, were beliefs—a special language and look you agreed to—to join the club. Bezoo did not interpret the image as a symbol. She recognized it as Reality winking back at her. Each club, each country, had its rules and borders to keep Reality from moving, sneaking, making a mad dash over its borders or charters. Bezoo—loving, accepting Reality not as a law, rule, symbol, or metaphor of her life but actually as her lover, her intimate One—was as innocent as a child who takes everything exactly as it is, or as crazy as a woman that flirts, that comes on to life well past her prime of attractiveness. This love affair, this silliness, this innocence, this woman, is a secret, is a mystery that will write this story. Life and love will meet Reality at the press, the clicking of a shutter.

Bezoo packed 100's, 200's, 400's—her capsules of film—into her backpack. There was no such thing as the harsh light of Reality to her . . . only sweet, bright light huggin' to her curves, to the curves of the road. Music accompanied her on the road: the hum of her engine, the swish of air moved aside, her visionary play, her camera posed in the back seat. Bezoo accelerated past the speed of thought, opening the aperture of a heart to revolutions per second. Arrival time and destiny coincide with madness and reality. Bezoo is a joiner but who will join with her?

As she drove past golden-haired meadows, oaks that hadn't had a drink for the past three months, and a sky that couldn't brag of holding a bucket of water, she decided she would start her own club. Are there any potentials? she wondered. Bezoo, who couldn't hold anything together—not a thought, not a plan, not even a safety pin to hold the crucible exposed hole of her pants together—how would she gather others together? How could she hold such a measured mile, with a detailed map, a plan, a club together? She didn't know, she just trusted her impulses. Something extraordinary always came from these impulses, but she was too moved to ever look back and see, "What was that? What happened?" She knew this really cute author, who could conceptualize well what she could not explain. Maybe, because he had such deep thoughts, he would want to join with her in the spur-of-the-moment club. This club is not all that flaky and chaotic, she whispered into his occult ear—he did tune into his ESP once in a while—it's a great response to life, love, the divine . . . and how not to blame God, but be ecstatic as God in the midst of suffering. Tra-la-la, tra-la. Any deep thoughts, any deep feelings? Any response? You know sooo much but you still look so sad. No Guru? No one knows who she is? Why not respond anyway? When did we get past being innocents and turn to experiencers and the hard school of death and denial? How to respond? We are still as unsure and as awkward as the day we noticed others and wanted to touch them—really touch them—in a way that mattered, that enlivened them more.

Bezoo thought, my response is to gather them together. Take notice, all those who call to the moment of recognition. I do see who you are. You don't fool me, she thought. The One divine being is written all over your face. It is time to smile back, to feel that the events of your life have not made you who you are now. You have always been and remain just an innocent. There is no one to blame, not even yourself.

Dear my friend,

We have never met, not in the way people call a meeting. No, we have not clasped a hand, nodded a smile, exchanged phone numbers. You have never seen my form. I know you, I have recognized you. I long to contact this mystery of you. I have no doubt that you can feel it. Isn't your heart buzzing right now? Something feels different but you're not a joiner yourself. How to join into this longing you feel? We are awake but we don't see each other. Genitals buzz, hearts long. Touch the sweetest, alive contact we take for granted everyday. Only those lovers who are separated by physical time and distance—but not by their hearts—know this ache, and to touch each other is the only moment they long for. Touch . . . the touch of lovers. You know me but we haven't met. What to do about this longing? Write another book? We are so frail and so needy in this longing to touch. Meanwhile, we gather our kingdoms and search for ways out, clues to abandon the whole damn structure. I long for each one, my author friend, like I long for you. Any deep thoughts, any real feeling? You have touched me in your high anxiety of longing.

Your friend,

Bezoo

"Bezoo, Bezoo," he answered on the telepathic heart line. That's all he said. He didn't know what those two strange words meant and why they kept playing in his mind like a mantra or a TV commercial jingle . . . Bezoo, Bezoo. Perhaps a character in my next book. Bezoo . . . an exclamation of surety, a slow crawling invertebrate? He wrote it down on his scratch pad, sure that it was a clue, an introduction, a hint at new work. He examined his other scratches of research. Written in red ink, they were silly, irreverent observations of people.

Bezoo, Bezoo? The name of a perfume? A kind of bee? Even after he finished his morning run, showered and ate his usual hearty bowl of granolo, Bezoo was still there serving up another round. He sat at his desk, looking over his notes. Bezoo, Bezoo . . . was all he wrote. He sat puzzled, and amused himself with the possibilities. Was an alien trying to make contact? He sat transfixed, gazing through his window at the forest—not really looking at it but into it. Even the trees, the wind that rustled the leaves, moved in synchronicity to the waves in his mind . . . Bezoo. He became very calm and felt that he was ready to doze off. At the moment between dream, virtual reality, and alertness, he saw the face of a woman. He drifted off, returning to his desk with an indescribable longing that ached his whole body—and the word Bezoo still heard, still playing in his heart.

His writing was going nowhere. He had thought that the day would be productive—the mood, the alteration, the "writing run" as he called it. It felt to be one of those days, but it hadn't come. When a word or phrase looked him up like a friend on a rainy day with no umbrella, his typewriter always shielded them. He thought Bezoo was such a friend and such a sign. Bezoo was a different sign. Though his mind was calm and removed from dry chatter, his heart beat up—rising with his breath—to reach a grasp, a touch, that he could not see. Bezoo (how could a word?) breathed his breath, and the longing reached into him fully. His genitals felt stimulated. He thought to reach his hand into his pants, to enjoy and release the stimulation. Instead he got up, put his dog on the leash and wandered into the forest.

As he held the leash with a steady grip he noticed his palms and fingertips were tingling. His feet also exuded the same sensation. The earth breathed in the circle of his form and it tingled, too. It ached from its heart, too. What is this? he asked. He had read a lot of books about Eastern mysticism, as well as aboriginal shamanism. Am I having such an experience? Is Bezoo an ancient mantra that yogis and medicine women called to? As he pondered the mystery of who or what Bezoo was, the actual experience of it moved aside and he returned to his normal awareness. He spent the afternoon pouring through his esoteric books for information about the name, the word, Bezoo.