Wednesday
The veil closes, the veil opens. We see...a little bit of the truth with each passing day....The window of our eyes beholds a landscape of jeweled sky and bitter darkness. Passing with each unequal breath I lie in bed too tired to sleep. La Koro Sutro plays in the background and my mind falls into a blissful numb quiet. The veil closes, the veil opens. I saw death as a background to all the music I've listened too, in life the most lively moments, death haunts us like a wicked man in a dark suit who refuses to pay admission. The veil was once a shaft of light that came like a sad drop of something perfectly ordinary
and yet totally magnificent. It came to me through the glass doors of my studio, the one in Santa Cruz where I wasted my childhood trying to survive among trees that strained to see more of the sky. In that time childhood was perfect, undamaged. Blissful and devastating. I lived on tea and watched television dreaming of travel. In some of my fantasies there is a man in a tall dark hat, he is coming for my dreams. He is between the frames. He comes to smoke and drink in my shadow. There are many ways to slip beyond the veil. I dreamt that the house I used to live in was like a prison for my soul and that I could never escape the specter of my mother, her dark eyes full of hate in my waking dreams. That dream haunts me still in this the 30th year of my living....here in my home in Richmond, I think that the veil closes for us when we try to see through it to the other side. My ancestors came to me one day and said nothing. Dark shadows they were, lords of the deep other side. They came and I went into the kitchen and made a sandwich. Never know the last meal you might have. I suppose all darkness comes from within the part of space we can't see. The veil closes. The veil opens.

Thursday
Here at Luggage Store I sit in the house of the veil, life continues a slow rumble of cars and foot traffic.
The hookers and pimps and drug fiends alternate with wayward tourists. I live between the road and the sky. She is blue today. People live here. I live here only on Thursday, the rest of the week I live in Richmond. Between here and Richmond is a bridge across the eternal landscape of my dreams.
I wait. Between the lines of the roads. I breath air and smog and think of nothing but the man in the hat who haunts me. Across the street is a polish sausage place. Next store is taqueria can cun…Musicians drag their stuff upstairs. Magicians all…against the backdrop of the city, screams and howls and sirens, they make sounds that defy explanation. The brutal, the magnificent and the despairing all have a home here in the Luggage Store.
The man in the hat offends me. He talks to me in the bleary sounds of SF in the evening. The stalking specter of his memory overwhelms me as I sit here listening to yet another musical cacophony. Who is he? My fear, my terror and my anger. I named him the nameless one, He is my rage and fear of death.
On my travels through the city I have found many roads I was too afraid to take.
Sometimes the gargoyles that guard the gates to hell are human.
A light shines through the window.
On the other side
Of the glass.
Brightness appears
And disappears
I feel like a moth
My soul burning in flame .


Friday
“God does not place dice with the universe…” Albert Einstein
This is a different Friday…one of those slipstream days that falls between events of note.
I am encouraged by the sight of the sun and the stars being in the right places in the sky.
Today the stalking darkness is filled with the aroma of fresh flowers and
Cut grass. I long to stretch my fingers between the sheets of light and touch the reflections of God’s angels. Life is sweet and dark, like rye bread.
Inside this house I feel at peace. My wounded soul flew away and came back an warbling jay of joy.
The man in the hat is far away he is making war for somebody else. His significance dwindles as a metaphor. What does he mean anyways?
This is Spring, death haunts us in the fall not the spring. The Easter eggs are still livid with paint.
My cottage will stand. The cruel dark prison is forgotten.
The new homestead is solid.
Love lives inside the potentiality of soil and the earth reclaims my sadness. The man in the black hat goes to ground and rot, fertilizing the soil with his image.
He is not death, he is fear. All fear must subside and die. All illusion passes into other illusion. Such is the dance of existence. This mortal soul loves and loves the Earth well.