Number Fifty Four ©

Atee asked for directions. They asked where she was intending to go. She told them that's why she was asking. They thought they were sure she could think of some place to go. But, she just asked them to direct her.

Finally, one of them decided to help her. This one was the only one truly concerned about friendship. Someone to travel through life with, someone who would surrender to the earth, to renunciate all weakness.

It was the power of the word that she lived her life by. When the word was quiet, she lived quietly. When the word was a shout, she lived out loud.

She borrowed a pattern from a butterfly and wrapped it around her wings.

Her friend was authentic and true in her presence. The ferocious panthers were calm around her. Some beings played drums as Atee and her friend walked past their settlement. Something compelled her to look at the mountain rising higher and higher. The transparent music kept her senses fresh and her head innocent, curious and pure.

Her friend suggested they stay and share a meal at their settlement. They stopped the drums for the meal. Atee was always in wondrous awe at the power of food. Her body was just food. Inside she was replacing her weak parts with new ones.

Food taught her her first lessons on balance. How much to eat to create as much energy as necessary and how to feel grateful and give back. Ultimately, she would provide food to the world around her. That would be her last meal. She would think of this sometimes after eating too much. The only times she was very serious was during stomach aches.

Her friend had joined the band. Atee felt so fortunate to have met everybody. In a day, all in one day. She wanted to start this day as new year's, or at least, as the beginning of the month. She thought it over while the paced, listening to the drum music. She decided she would start her life over from this day.

Yesterday was a past life. Tomorrow doesn't exist. Today was a new life. And such a struggle it had been already! And such a party, and such fun! Such excitement, so much to reflect on as she drifted off to sleep later.

To prepare to sleep, she would wrap the day into a knot, starting from that moment until the second she had awoken. She knew she could spend a long time preparing tonight.

Her friend played the whole concert with the band. They gave an encore. Atee was waiting for the encore in her life. An encore to her sleep and dreams. An encore for breakfast and supper, an encore for happiness and peace, an encore for pain and bitterness, an encore to love and friendship.

Maybe her whole life was an encore. Atee existed as the encore to yesterday. Everyday, she was called back to stage. They applauded but never criticized. There was nothing she could do on that stage that would be wrong. Everything that could ever happen to her was natural. Nature never supplied something unbearable.

Atee pranced onstage as a flower of eternity. She was applauded and was cheered on to give another performance.

She turned her face to the curtains and jumped backwards onto the crowd. They held their hands in the air and carried her like a feather. She closed her eyes and could swear on her weightlessness.

The world was looking for new ways.

New ways to express and be expressed. Atee was just a reflection of these shadows. She could stand only on ground. She could swim only in water. She couldn't jump without gravity, and she couldn't draw without a pencil.

It looked like nothing was going to change. She just rested her bones. The crowd passed her back and forth. She slid like a slippery ice cube.

Her friend woke her up and had to tell her of the perfect forms backstage.

Atee was outside her whole life. There wasn't anywhere else to be. Inside was just another name for outside the outside.

Atee and her friend were both ready for a wish. They thought of all the birthday cakes, wishing wells and shooting stars. They thought someone was destined to wish them.

Maybe they missed it, or they had already been wished. Maybe their asking was the wish itself. Their freedom may just be a wish. Their wishes may be someone else's wish. In this way, wishes were one. The wish already was, just waiting for realization.

A whole galaxy of stars went marching to the other end of the cosmos. But, one single light stood still, spinning itself a spiral. Some stars went back into space, others closer and closer. Becoming what they were not, wishes into wishes.

Atee was there when the stars entered the atmosphere. She was there when they came right to her. She was there when it was no larger than a marble. All the stars in the sky, just marble size. Nevermind what everyone had been told, Atee held it in her hand.

She walked down to the shore with her friend. She dreamed. She called out her friends name, they didn't hear her. They put their hand against the handprints fossilized into the trees. She took them by the hand and they stepped through the luscious, rich, green grass to the river.

Atee tossed the marble into the river. It floated to the surface and a star descended into the sky. Her friend tossed in a lemon from a lovely tree growing above them. Sunlight breathed life into the dream. Her star was hidden by the healthy, blue sky.

She knew this life was only dreamable once. She prayed others could be dreamable. That they could spread their beauty even during sleep to other dreaming souls. She knew her friend was only dreamable once. Who knows what would happen when she woke up. She wanted the stars to enlighten the isolated and the lost.

She was under a single star.

She swam into the water, she descended into the sky. She took the sun and dropped back to earth. She held the source in her hand, all flowed out. Atee knew her friend could feel it.

The sun was a lemon, the sky was a mirror.

The impressions she received were fish in the water and the stars in the sky.

The angels tumbling down hills and splashing in the puddles were the children who would never die.

She had known heaven to be right within that lemon. A heaven grew for everybody.

Number Forty Nine ©

Atee rested on a high place. but couldn't jump. Somewhere she wanted to jump, somewhere she knew it would happen. Somewhere the light switch was off, somewhere she couldn't see her head in the mirror.
She stared straight down. It was heavier than she was. Maybe she could float, like a boat.

She turned away. She hadn't reached the top yet. Higher she would endeavour. Trek into the heavens. Atee looked up, up and away.

Multiple springs bubbled with gas. Atee would never see them. Atee would climb back down. What had taken a hold of her, brought her back to a high place.

She looked out over the bottom. If she looked straight ahead she could neglect this drop. It wouldn't eat her alive. She allowed dignity to slide off her shoulders.

"There is no going back now" Atee whispered to her ears.

No manifestation of her own could save her now. Not a single ghoul or soul could swoop down and lift her again. Not a cloud could fall, not a sky to cry for her.

She put her eyebrows together, and stepped. She lost her sense of goals, her orientation was liquid flowing. The pit welcomed her. Atee was dethroned from her high place.

It would happen again. And when life stroked deep, warm breaths through her, bells wouldn't ring. And when a soil field felt hurt by her, when she didn't reach to make an open relationship with an open, empty hand, a presence would reciprocate a slash of negligence and blindness for her.
When tunnels collapsed before her and bridges turned to ashes, she realized she was wrong when she thought she could always say "I can". Sometimes, she knew she couldn't.

When a desert brushed footprints of hers away, when a blizzard erased her tracks and rain washed away and sponges scrubbed away, she would land like a branch from a tree.

Over precious rounded stones. She saw the process of erosion, she felt it like attrition when she ached. She felt herself rounding away, smoothing and polishing. Like a stone, she carried herself like a locket, or a ring or a jewelry box.

She spoke and everything was busy. She closed her lips and the roots absorbed more nutrients. So soft, this presence catered to her, just as it touched everything, all the others and all the "not yets".

A knock on her door summoned her to come home. She knew she would arrive late. The lights would be low, the music would be dying.

Her prism was incomplete.

Atee wiggled into a cozy, baby sweater. She sipped coffee like her grandmother. Trees outside the windows filtered wind to jingle chimes through the passage of an open door. Colored glass bent light, grandmother looked silly with a multicolored face.

Together, Atee watched two falcons hunt and prey.

Atee would never forget to be receiving to blessing. Atee reached a gloveless hand into the fountain of inspiration. A little now and then kept her heart in a spiral of passion. No corners or edges.

All on one, Atee designated a team captain from the best looking specimens in her garden. A brown beetle and a swarm of bees. "How will I ever get these two to compete?" She thought.

She wouldn't take a leadership role again. Electrifying hears and minds she could leave to the military.

Ahead of her sense of self, an endless angle. She couldn't get out and measure it, she was an unmoving, static vertex. Just one among infinity.
No sides, no curves. Just a hanging tiny circle to the upper-right of a number.

With a pair of scissors, Atee could do some things she wouldn't dream of.

From hand to hand she could experience existence. She didn't need a sundial or a bucket. Filling something with emptiness, she could sell it to a hole. She carried dice in her hands, she lived out loud, she bathed in sun juice. She punched sorrow with her knuckles, she ate with a spoon, she read in the darkness.

A belief in forever distracted her from the forever now. She sat under an apple tree, with a basket to catch the falling apples, philosophizing about apples. "What to think?" She should have asked. Instead, she thought of the core and the skin as she sliced it with a blade. Too much energy she wasted altogether under a simple tree in the midst of light.

Even as the earth gave its charity to all of space with its vines and grapes, stars continued to explode and forget to care. Outside the beautiful sphere the earth provides, is a non-sharing volume of chaos.

Whatever was tickling Atee was just enough. She fell onto the ground, she screamed with laughter. Her head disappeared. She looked like a dancer as she tried to escape whatever had its fingers poking at her.
It stopped and she opened her eyes. It felt like the first time. Where everybody was, was in communion with one another sharing and enjoying the company. Her breath returned and her grace poured out.

Number Twenty Three ©

Sa was standing on the beach looking out over the sea. He felt so alone. Everybody was alive on the other side, the city was bouncing with activity. The beach was vacant, desolate.

A small boat was sailing across. Just the boat, nobody was in it.

The sky was grey above the beach; rainbows and birds danced over the city.

Sa dug his toes into the sand. He dug his feet into the sand. The sand wasn't grainy but smooth and silky, like round pearls. He continued to slip his shins into the sand.


Sa lifted a shovel out of the sand and began digging with it. The sand kept sliding back into this hole. He imagined this hole to contain a treasure chest.

He lifted the treasure chest out. He dropped it beside the pile.

The treasure box opened, nothing was inside. Sa crawled inside and let it shut, let it move back into the hole, let the sand fill the hole, let the shovel disappear.

Sa layed in that treasure chest so long that he lost track of time. He was living another life, by this time. Before long, that life had evolved into two lives. Again it split, into four lives. At each decision the life would split.

It grew exponentially. Sa was alive in uncountable lives. Uncountable families, memories and sensations. Sa no idea he was still in the treasure chest buried beneath the sand.

Sa was so many places at once. Slowly, but surely, his lives began to simplify themselves. Some light had been shown, many problems were peeled away. Confusions were being lifted and things and situations began to line up. Through millions of lives, this light was bringing clarity. Everything began making sense. His problems were silly. All of the trillions of conflicts were being resolved, all of complications just drifted away.

All of his lives were so vivid and fulfilling. Each one compelled more of his attention than the other. Sa disrupted the balance and put a tad more attention to just one. Instantaneously, one life dropped.

Sa scrambled to save it but several other lived were lost in the process. As he rushed to catch a few of those, they only vanished upon touch, they disappeared right before his eyes. Many more lived dropped away.

He didn't even try to save them. He whispered goodbye to all of the families, all of the friends and lovers he was yet to meet. He whispered goodbye to all of his mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters.

Lives fell all around him. He wanted to cry, but couldn't, not in front of all these memories. He didn't want them to see him this way. Just as everything was turning bright, he began crying.

The lives fell into piles all around him. The piles stacked so high, they formed walls. Sa couldn't even see above them.

He was surrounded by walls growing even taller and thicker. He stopped wanting to cry. He began feeling claustrophobic. There wasn't anywhere to escape to, his hands were gone, his feet were gone. He couldn't find them, he couldn't even find his eyes, or his mind. Everything was lost, even his life had fallen, even his dreams had fallen away. Sa tried to fall asleep but he was already sleeping.

Whatever compelled Sa to climb out of the treasure chest, would baffle him forever. It must have been his utter hopelessness, his complete lack of all freedom of action. That was the last time he ever got lost beneath the sand.

Number Forty One ©

Sa saw Atee floating in the water.

The sun was smiling upon the whole beach. Atee knew Sa was trying to swim to her and, kept laughing to herself when the waves pushed him away.

Sa was so close. And then some dumb kid's float would get in his way. Or a fish would bite his leg.

Atee wasn't even floating that far from the beach. Sa was just a poor swimmer. She kicked, splashing water at him. A wave came and pushed him under.

It wasn't until then that he realized how deep the water was. There was miles and miles below them.

There was a glowing orange fish below, sparkling the water around it. It had crystallic scales, Sa wanted a closer view.

He swam directly below Atee and stared at the creature.

Atee looked around for Sa on the surface, she waited for his head to pop up.

Sa followed the fish as it guided him to its school. He could see it off in the distance. They came in all colors and forms.

They all floated around as if they knew Sa, and were expecting him. Maybe the orange fish was a recruiter.

"There is so much diversity down here" Sa thought. Even what he thought were pebbles and stones seemed to be breathing. Fishes with wings sailed and swallowed worms living in aquatic trees.

Sa marveled over the hugeness of everything. Not only was there a massive volume of space awaiting to be archived with millions of beings, but there was so much business. The pirate fish ate the moss before the stone carrier fish could hold it in between its fins and use it to build a stone home.

Sometimes a large ruling class species would echo orders down to the rest. Sometimes one of its own would rebel and begin attacking the ruler. All the smaller workers would then go into hiding for protection.

As Sa scanned the sponges at the bottom, the ocean floor began popping. Bubbles rose and the stuff the floor was made of was displaced. Some of the sea creatures took notice, but not enough.

Without any further warning, the entire section of ocean bottom erupted. All of the surrounding water ejected into the open sky. The blast was so incredibly loud, Sa thought it may have shattered his bones.

There was so much water in the air, some of the fishes were still able to swim around.

The water continued to rise, Sa saw Atee high above him. He wondered when they would begin descending.

Atee was still flat on her back as if she was still floating on the water. Maybe she was, Sa couldn't tell.

He was ensnared in a air pocket, alone. His own free breathing zone.

The mean fish were still playing their cruel tricks, biting unsuspecting, innocent swimmer fish.

The sky became diluted in color. And then Sa noticed another patch of water had been blasted into the sky, as well. That body was now between the sun and himself, channeling the light.

It was then, when Sa noticed that all around him, water was rising gracefully higher and higher into the sky.

The predatory birds had a good time, easily snatching their meals.

Sa thought this would be a good time to swim up to Atee. Somehow Atee knew because she had rolled over and signaled to him.

Sa kicked off the surface of the water which formed the floor of his air cell, and dove upwards into the water.

It was like a maze. And every fish clique owned their own quarters of the ocean. Sa didn't want to intrude on any of their business.

He had to take a long route and go around many of these aquatic clans. By this time, he was lost.

In fact, he may have un-noticingly entered an adjacent water block. It was hard to distinguish between swimming in the ocean above sea level and under sea level. He couldn't even tell that they were all ascending anymore.

He saw a paradisial tropic tree secreting sweet sap for young crustaceans. Sa swam over to it. As he got closer, he saw many more of the same thing behind it. It was a whole row of utopian shade givers. Somehow, it was all just perfect. Because, the sun was indeed shining upon this place particularly. The pale, sensitive creatures took shelter under these generous canopies.

Sa kept swimming too see what else existed that he wasn't aware of.

He saw a beach. All of the water, literally, splashed against its tender face of sand. Sa wanted to call for Atee but, its hard to talk underwater. Maybe she would show up on her own, despite his efforts. "She has a knack for that" he thought.

Sa noticed there wasn't anything on the beach. But, then he realized everything here was water breathing. Sa and Atee were mistakenly involved.

The water grew thinner and shallower and Soon his head poked through. He took a whiff of the warm, thin air. He had forgotten that he was still high above where the air had been thick and full. Sa kind of liked it, he felt playful from the beach but at peace and accomplished like at the summit of a mountain.

It was nice to finally feel the sun's complete warmth, he thought. Comparatively, it was cold in the water.

The sand was soft and smooth, he had the sensation that it was royalty sand and he was the prince. Maybe there was a castle nearby. Sa didn't even bother looking around.

He only looked at the non-rising water. And then he saw Atee floating there.

Without hesitation, he swam out across the water. He knew she could hear him because she turned her head the other way. He splashed water on her. She skipped her fingers across the surface, flicking water back.

He swam underneath her and waited for her to look around for him. When she turned her head, he let himself rise to her opposite side. He layed flat on his back like she did. She looked back to the sky. They could both feel each other peeking out of the corner of their inner eyes. They didn't ask any questions or think anything. They just felt the world press in against them and then release, pulsating with the energy omnipresent.

Number 16 ©

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Invisible Number 16
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Sa and Atee once met each other for the first time, again, during a dream their first nap together.

Sa was atop a tree. The tree was shaky and it spun Sa in circles. When he looked to the sky, the spinning stopped and Sa nearly awoke. But, he didn't awake because the ground beneath him was too small too ignore. As he stared longer down, Sa's vision zoomed in and everything was larger, as if he were actually among them. Sa lost himself in this experience. Sa was no longer in his own self but an outside observer.

The beings on the ground mingled and sold pretzels and soda and stared up at Sa in his sole tree, thousands of stories high at the top. Atee was buying nachos.

Sa's vision travelled over shoulders at something else's will, not his own. Sa would have faint relapses remembering falling off the tree but, always the scene would rewind and his body again holding onto the top. Sa dove into a hotdog and was almost chewed by a child. Luckily, he came through the other side and everything was new. There were no beings on this side. Sa felt like he was falling again, but he quickly imagined a ledge to land on. Sa's fear forced the ledge to crumble, his stomach jumped and hung itself in the air while Sa fell. Sa's vision slid down into his free-floating stomach. It was like a waterbed. But, another ledge must have manifested itself because Sa's waterbed bursted and Sa was taken away by the current. A inflated raft-float was beneath him and exciting, exhilirating, breathtaking waters layed ahead. The sky was so open and receiving, the water gentle yet fast, urgent and immediate. As Sa came closer to the edge of the drop, a giant valley the size of the grand canyon was before him. Time had paused for just a long enough moment for Sa to leave his body again and witness the magnificience of this landscape. From all around the canyon water flowed to the center. Like steps, a giant circular, round bowl, each step a majestic waterfall larger than Victoria Falls.

Sa's body was struck by a tingling shock. It resonated all around Sa's skin and settled to his spine. It was soothing and kept recurring. All the urgency to act left Sa's soul. The whole force compelling Sa to work towards something was vanquished. Everything was enough, in fact, plenty.
As Sa was centered in this feeling, time began to play. The current pushed all the water off the edges, millions of gallons a second. The noise echoed so extraordinarily ominously, Sa felt he was out of place, as if he had been sent back in time to the making of a planet or to the extinction of a species. Within him,an irresistable sensation of being out of place, yet also,this is home, this is the only place to be, nowhere else. Sa was so tiny, his raft just the perfect size and as he noticed it, many other beings were relaxing on their own rafts. It was a tremendous, profound, super-significient waterpark.

Sa was pulled back out of his stomach, out of the other side, through the hotdog and back to eye level with the tourists and sight seers and photographers, journalists and other entertainment media.Sa was reminded that his body was still way high in the tree. His vision looked back to the sky. The sky began moving away and the tree grew higher. Both the ground and the sky moved away from him. Sa was being placed somewhere in the middle of them. The world was growing, the universe expanding. Sa felt like he was shrinking but knew that the space between spaces was only becoming more.Sa looked down at the ground even further away, the tree didn't even spin or wobble anymore.

Atee stood at the bottom, the only one not interested in the Sa-Tree spectacle. She sat on a bench and ate her nachos and watched all of the flowers bloom larger and larger. The bench she sat on grew larger, the distance between her and the beings around her grew larger. All of them were pushed even farther away. She looked to the sky and the clouds were being fragmented as they were stretched too thin. The sky was peeling apart. Each layer, each skin, each a new hue and new tones. Lighning struck and the flames grew. The flames began eating the tree. But the tree grew, but the flames grew. The media's interest grew, anticipation and expectations grew.
Lightning struck again, two bolts struck one another.

Atee was the only one watching the lightning battle itself. Everyone was looking in one direction, nobody even turned around to see.

Sa looked over at Atee. His vision moved over to her. Everyone was looking at Sa but Sa hadn't put one eye to them. Sa could feel the heat of the fire and imagined it extinguishing but, it would not be so. The collective will of all the beings was dominant over the will of Sa's. Sa didn't really mind much anyways, just seeing Atee, although miles below made Sa feel less lonely. Atee must have felt someone looking at her because her eyes left the feuding thunderstorms and was directed right to where Sa's eyes were. She knew they were there although she couldn't see them.

Lightning struck a third time and the tree split. The wood splintering, the fire falling, the bottom half of the trunk fell to the ground. The top half was floating off the ground. Sa clung to the top still gazing into Atee's eyes.

The newspeople didn't want the top tree to fall, they wanted it to burn. The fire was dangerously close to Sa's feet. All the blood from Sa's limbs travelled to his feet. And with it travelled Sa's perception.In fact, the perception left its feet and went through the flames. Inside the flames was nothing. It was all an act, the true nature was just jealousy. The flames were just expression of jealousy, nothing but an illusion. Inside it was not even warm or burning, just silence.
Sa kept moving through the sap of the tree. The ghost of the bottom tree still remained, enough for Sa to reach to ground.

Sa moved to the bench and eye level to Atee. Sa came alive on that bench. Atee still staring into Sa's eyes, but not anywhere near the tree. The tree was gone. All the people gone. All the people, gone. Sa and Atee sat on the bench. The lightning gone, the sky gone, the expanding spaces, gone.

Sa's sight left itself once again. It went straight ahead in one direction. It went to where Atee was watching Sa. Their perceptions met each other between their eyes. And kept moving. Sa moved into her eyes and looked through and Atee looked through Sa's eyes. They both saw nothing, they blinked and they saw themselves, they blinked again and they were together.

The sun was high above them. They awoke, both already entirely awake, facing each other. Both together, as themselves.