AURA HALO by ashley opheim

AURA HALO ASHLEY OPHEIM

AURA HALO in 12 parts into infinity nature part 1

positivity part 8 quick flower

i am here

space

part 2

part 9

new dawn

golden mountain

part 3

intimacy

oracle

the variations of symmetry

part 4

kiss

us plural realities part 5

part 10 the age of honey everything

everywhere

part 11

part 6

ay boy

wake up

part 12

part 7

centre

into infinity the sunlight hits the hudson river so hard the refraction blinds me. th

i climb onto the highline on the corner of 17 and 10 street to sit and watch the traffic move under me. the structures that surround me are an infinite series of squares and rectangles. the occasional floating lantern or eye contact with a stranger amuses me immensely, soft raindrops fall from the sky. it's hard to say whether the buzzing sensation i feel is an effect of the rain or just a conscious, static moment extending itself into infinity.

i climb on top of my mind and run away from everything i know. words are swords that soar. i buy a book with pink pages. i buy a bottle of water. ugh. a building bulges. this intersection protects me.

my thoughts are seeds. how life moves through me, and i through it. how gently your feet touch the ground when you have no destination.

my foot falls asleep under me. my hands move too slowly. i am distracted by the wind is so gentle. when i look up will the sky love me?

i find the standard hotel via a new york city map on my iphone after exiting the 14th street subway after eleven hours on a train in mid-autumn, a thousand dying colours in the trees. because the light. and it’s night when i arrive. the name of the hotel is a joke. haha, there is nothing standard about it. the hotel was dreamt up centuries ago by some brilliant russian named oscar or eero whose brain was attuned to future time or something. the hotel is a precise dream, on stilts. i’m immediately jealous of myself, as if i am not my self. the hotel is like a spaceship set for the stars, but married to gravity. it's as if i am invited to a surreal and brutal wedding ceremony. i had no idea i was going to be here. it's a long story. the hotel arches up two hundred and fifty six feet in the air and over the high line, a defunct eighty-year-old elevated freight railroad. the space is now a pedestrian pathway. it has been redesigned to be useful. the hotel jumps the train tracks, performs a ritual soft-core lap dance. arcs like a rainbow. my legs hold me up. am i the standard, glass windows and all? here, look inside of me. am i am? look at this garden between my legs. i have a hard time locating the entrance either because the lighting is poor or my eyes are bad :: the intoxicated corner :: a flutter of clicking stilettos :: tinkling crystal glasses :: deep and swimming nodes of cologne, vanilla and oak, and it’s a clear night, a dozen stars :: thursday :: screens tucked away in pockets, set to vibrate :: high-quality diamonds and oddly shaped chairs, tables and other surfaces that gleam under the low light :: a floor made of pennies. i enter the hotel via an opaque, glowy orange rotating door with invisible windows you push on. there is room for at least two more in my stall, but not many people seem to be going inside, just fluttering along the periphery. i walk into an uber frosty lobby smelling like patchouli and tobacco. i spill into the various mirrors that surround me. rich people like to be reminded that they exist or something. there is a sense of architecture, the crafting of brilliant minds. i am just flickering along its periphery in my own space and time. this place is already history. because the light. i am struck by a new feeling, like being on the inside of some malt beer in some bottle made of blood diamonds or something. like, hehe, where the fuck am i? hehe, i don’t belong here but i am.

i am here i kind of wish there was a time machine app that i could download to my iphone for free right now. i want to do things without thinking and without consequence. i was raised by a broken supercomputer. i was raised on an empty landscape. i want to go to a yoga gathering in a forest with a bunch of earthly humans who have glow in the dark hearts and feelings that shine right through their skin. i am always thinking about all of our heart beats. all day long. all day long i try to find that space between inhaling and exhaling. if i could give my heart a new beat it would be to a four tet song. i play a four tet song from my laptop and it’s so beautiful that i cry prismacolour tears. my tears are literally rainbows. i am not a tree and probably won’t be one in my next life. reality is a hologram. i want to go to a rave in the sky and dance with an aurora borealis. i want to braid wasp stingers into my hair and forget everything i know. i want to eat some magic mushrooms and trip out in the forest. i want to lay down on some moss and know that there are wild animals all around me. they would be there and you would not because you hate yoga and nature. ‘fuck nature, i rejected nature,’ you say. i want to have a revelation so i do. i am a flower. i want to eat berries straight from the bush and not from some stupid plastic box that i will throw in the recycling and forget to take out on tuesday night. i will hear the recycling truck roar by in the morning when the sky has orangey-red clouds floating in it and it is that hue that always makes me think ‘apocabliss.’ as in, apocalypse, but not. i am so sad and i am so happy that every second is a new possibility.

is buddha the Internet? i feel like a snow bank. what’s a snow bank? does it have feelings? do i perceive reality or do i create it in my mind? my ultimate reality is twitter and dirty dishes, which kind of feel like the same thing to me. if i wish hard enough, could i manifest some freshly-baked peanut butter cookies? could i turn myself into a rainbow or a rich kitten? can’t i just nap in the sun? can’t i just be a rainbow already? i make myself a coffee and kick the recycling bag very hard, but only in my head. it is still here. i am still here. i turn the radio on and off. i eat some berries from a plastic container. i notice a mirror is missing from the living room and wonder why. like woa i’m awake and oh well. like hello leg. god it would be horrible to get your identity stolen. it’s a shame we can’t all read minds because then this poem would be over and i wouldn’t need to write anything down and then maybe i could make it back to the forest before its gone forever. it’s a shame there isn’t a free mind-reader app i could download. oh god, nature is dead.

i have a thought of organic light. visions of meat and post-transgendered-prostitutes and meat and the ghosts of junkies and bones and the meat of the past—how we have devoured it all. i am so sensitive to these things. i am greeted by a young, good-looking receptionist who wants to know my name. i have almost forgotten it entirely. i am distracted by the holes in the wall. the guy asks for some id. i find my passport. it’s tickled with plastic jewels, remnants of glitter and tobacco. i hand it to him. he is looking at a computer screen that is out of my view. what the fuck is on that computer screen? i feel a stirring inside of me. hehe, this building is a giant, clear erection. i am somewhere between architecture and infrastructure. i stir. my legs are stilts. the scenery is heavy and dark. i am inside a room made of molasses, pure dark chocolate and dim lights. there are holes and mirrors everywhere. hehe, this is cool. i am getting into an elevator. everything is alchemy. hehe, my bag is made of rainbow threads and my backpack is made from the skin of an animal. there is a lucky rabbit foot dangling from me somewhere. i stir amongst the marble, within this complex space. it with its own design, mine with my own. my green leather boots have holes in their soles, shhhh my suede purple jacket is stained. but surrounding me is a fascinating light. this hotel cost two hundred million dollars to create. i create something from nothing everyday. hehe, i am a delicate collasus. a star seed is a spirit that willingly comes to earth to enhabit a body while they spread a message of love and light. hehe, the light is made of love. hehe, i am in a celebrity hotspot. hehe, i have a halo made of love that makes good things happen to me. what should i tweet? ‘i feel like i’m dreaming.’ elevators are very intimate places. i attempt but fail at making eye contact with anyone. everyone is wearing various shades of black. i attempt telepathy but no one is ‘open’. i have minus $2,000 in my bank account. hehe, i have been living off of rice for months. the illusions of grandeur. weird things keep happening to me and i keep doing weird things to the world. a woman holds a small, nervous dog and whispers the floors into its ears that nervously twitch from her breath as we ascend. three, six, eight, eleven…she gets off. a serious man checks his watch. a slim, attractive blonde stares at her self in the mirror the entire time. we are all aware of each other, right? or am i the only one that pays attention to things outside of myself? in the elevator there is a video stream of some other-worldly work of art. the only thoughts i have on the video are ‘heaven' and 'hell' and ‘i’m in it’ or ‘i’m not in it’. when i arrive at room 1624 my key doesn’t work. i try using the card in its four various

postures. no light. red light. no light. red light. no light. no light. no light. blinking green. woa.

the view is two things: cellular and cubist. also a million other things, a circuit board. it is a new feeling, like glancing inside your computer and realizing you are it. hehe, it's like i am on the jetson's or on a cruise ship hovering over new york city. wtf? i throw myself against one of the crystal clear floor to ceiling windows. i throw myself all over the city from the top. hehe, nothing separates me from the city but this glass. i lean against the glass and i don’t fall through. i don’t fall through. the entire room is windows and light. illusionary space. because of the light. because the view is a real dream. rooms and spaces. rooms and spaces. illusionary space. illusive space. it is mine forever as long as i can remember. as long as i can understand and be understood. an advertisement for an expensive champagne dangles from the side of a building. i forget the name of it. a failed ad. the wifi is FREE :) things are free when they’re free to move through and out of various rooms and spaces. i want to download this perspective. the room costs seven hundred and seventy seven dollars a night and has a view of both the city and the hudson river. the property cost eighteen million dollars. someone somewhere is paying for it, but i don’t have any sort of connection to it. i’m just a spectator, i think. maybe not. i don't think. it’s just something i happen to be a part of. i think. mr. balazs, what am i a part of? hehe, i stay in your palace for free. what do i look like from the outside? i yell FUCK down to the earth coated in cement and sprouting strange digital flowers. the pane of glass i am drawn to is the one that has a window, a shaft of outside. seven feet tall. it may be unsafe but who cares? i live on the edge. imagine if someone slept-walked to this window and somehow developed ways of unscrewing screws without tools and accidently stepped into the sky? then what? screws without tools! accidently! sky!

everyone i can see ‘down there’ / outside seem luxuriously distant. there is space between me and the ground. hehe, am i floating? woa, my legs. there is space between my legs. i am above it. i turn to the objects in the room. every surface is lacquered, shiny. the room, in reality, is very small. but it doesn't feel small because of the light. a 37-inch sony bravia flat screen tv with hundreds of channels and movies on demand. a sony ipod docking. a lexon cube alarm clock. a philips cordless phone. the bed is topped with a twoinch featherbed. because the light. a down duvet. 400-thread-count egyptian cotton sferra linens. mike, wearing all black, appears from another dimension shouting ‘I AM MY OWN SPIRIT ANIMAL.’ he collapses onto the bed cloud and plays with the dimmer on the humming lights installed over the bed installed on some brown wooden panels installed on a wall that curves. he calls out “LOOK, I’M ANIMAL COLLECTIVE.” it’s a joke and i laugh outside myself. i experience a thousand good feelings at once. the faucet in the open-concept bathroom spills water all over the black marble floor by design. we decide to abandon the hovering cruise ship. mike leaves a half-eaten sandwich on the floor outside our door ‘to fuck with people.’ we wander down the hallway with the printed carpet of hands attempting to grasp one another. we board the vessel downward, into the hellishish of the elevator. through the orange glass. past the floor of pennies. we descend onto the street. we are back at the same level as everyone else. it feels weird to be levelled. i can feel the chaotic vibration of the periphery. mike interrogates his iphone. we twist and turn along streets that bend, not knowing our destination. meat packing meets high fashion, west of greenwich. we find a liquor store. mike chooses the belvedere vodka. he pays with a visa card that has a uber-cute and colourful rendering of a panda on psychadelic drugs or something. the panda looks happy. hehe, the panda is on psychedlics and listening to dubstep. arriving back at the hotel i take a moment to peer up between the standard's legs. she is divinely feminine. i enter her again. my legs hold me up. am i the standard, glass windows and all? here, look inside of me. am i am?

i write down the wrong address for the arbutus records cmj showcase/ third year anniversary party featuring eola, majical cloudz, tops, doldrums and blue hawaii. instead i wander into a poetry reading that also turns out to be some sort of mask making party in a small gallery that is painted sky blue. there are fluffy imitation clouds on the walls. it is hot in the room and cold outside. my body and mind are in a state of confusion. i am alone and surrounded by people. a guy is reading in front of a tacky, lit-up cross. there are people scattered and sprawled out on the floor. he is reading a poem that keeps on saying that ‘when we die we will all be strange fucking hippies’... he is saying we are all going away from ‘here’ very soon. i want to ask ‘excuse me, what do you mean about here?’ i take my jacket off. he reads a poem about a gypsy and only manages to catch the aesthetics of her. only. no wait, he was reading a dorothea lasky poem and it makes sense coming from her. i find this out later. i leave before i know where it is i am. i am always leaving before i know where i am. while i am walking out the door, i stumble into a giant lineup that i later find out is for for a free ghostface killah show at the music hall of williamsburg. the only track i know by him is called ‘ass like that’ or something. hehe, ass like that. there are maybe 500 people lined up around the block. where am i? where have i been? am i going, and where? and am i coming too? i arrive at death by audio, running into jane and dave from TOPS out front. a bunch of my other friends from montreal are inside mixed in with a bunch of strangers. the words SHIT FACTOR are painted on the wall behind the performers so that when eola begins to sing harmonious nightmares into the microphone it all feels so… yeah right… and painted tigers death hums diamond pyramid checkerboard floor. his vocal chords hit certain resonancies that send shivers up and down my spine. he explores, basks and rejoices in the possibilities of his vocal chords. it is patient music. everything feels like its dragging.

plural realities now that you have retracted i am going to breathe water, which is the opposite of drowning. how we exist beyond our skeletons is truly some sort of miracle that should be overlooked. gestures of love are extensions of self that resonate through others. you were just in time, i was just about to explode everywhere. i was wanting to be discovered. i was transfixed by the light in your eyes. the full moon lasted for months. everything felt instinctual. everything flew out of me and into you. ‘come run away with me to that distant distance where whatever we imagine being there will be there.’ i was amazed at how you reflected me. forget the eroticism, i am trying to articulate the death of a feeling as a simple way of going faster than the light. i want to forget now, or something. ‘don’t touch me,’ you said. ‘i feel passed over,’ i said. ‘we are dangerous visionaries,’ you said. ‘we are back where we started.’ ‘no one can touch you and i know why.’ a rainbow is caused by reflection. i move through the night alone, sudden and exact. i try to be everywhere at once and i am moving so fast through the night as i pass through vessel apartments i am moving so

fast through the night trying to be everywhere at once in rooms filled with a hundred blinking friends and i feel like i’m losing and it is only spring. you turn your face away from mine so that i can’t see your eyes. you are so lucid, matter-of-fact, describable. your uncluttered events. the bright nowhere. the transferal of energy from one to the other. we do the opposite of what we feel, thinking it will bring about a different fate. did you know good love feels like water. watch me breathe it. velvet water. watch me breathe. your love is an ecstatic death wish that transmits an energetic tension so palpable that it is somehow a conservation of energy. i have forgotten the feeling of us touching. your charisma even, your physical presence. i have forgotten the pleasure in seeing things as they are not. nakedness gifts us with a representative power, coupled with the ablity to intercede for others. a rainbow is not a physical object and cannot be physically approached. we came so close something closed between us. how you moved me! i am in outer space now, thank you. i am here in outer space, it’s fucking beautiful. i am radiating out of my constellation. i am on mars making hologram sand angels. i am making a perfect shape here with or without you. ‘things only appear to be, but they are mere impressions,’ you say. ‘fuck your skepticism, let me make you feel different.’ ‘everything was beautiful and funny, there was a golf course right beside the cemetery and it was really sunny.’ ‘let me reflect.’ ‘our bodies are the soil where our brains are planted.’ ‘i am an infinite ball of love.’ ‘come be on mars with me.’

‘come spread these dead seeds on this dead land.’ ‘come breathe water, which is the opposite of drowning,’ ‘come do the opposite of drown with me.’

i meet up with jorge at some dance party on kirk that we quickly ditch to wander to another show that we have to enter from the back of a bar. it’s literally a hole in the wall. jorge is wearing a frog pendant and a necklace of glow in the dark stars around his neck. he crafts ‘dark pop songs’ when he’s not watering plants in corporate offices for a living. there is a strange medusa-like sculpture hanging from the roof, it’s tentacles glowing neon. a dude is walking around in a black jean jacket, his arms tucked inside so that the sleeves are limp. there are maybe fifteen other people there. two girls twerk on the dirty floor. they are guardian alien goddesses. there is no toilet paper in the bathroom. i drink water from the tap. we leave at five am. on the way home we pass a street called onderdunk. jorge plucks a leaf from a gingko tree and hands it to me. ‘this species of tree is as ancient as dinosaurs,’ he says to me. in front of his apartment there are three huge sunflower blossoms. he hands me a couple of their seeds. the sun is now rising. he hands me a mint leaf he retrieves from a miniature garden near the door. he sticks his key in the keyhole and turns his wrist. we walk up two flights of stairs covered in imitation malachite linoleum. he shows me through the rooms in his apartment. he tells me it used to be a knitting factory. all of the his roommates have an affinity for good novels and ethnic tapestries. a buckminster fuller dymaxian map rests on the table beneath a box of dishware. on the map the earth appears more connected. i meet a cat named king kong. jorge and i lay down next to each other in his bed under separate blankets. he doesn’t try to kiss or touch me or anything and i’m glad. while falling asleep i half-watch a russian film he puts on his laptop. a man is holding a rose in one hand and a flame in the other. he is burning the rose alive. he has a peacock head shoved in his mouth. the art of falling asleep forever. a woman with eyes like mine is weaving silk from thin air. her mouth draped in it, spilling red guts all over the sepia tone of the film. lalalalala i dream of silk. in the morning, without touching, he describes a vision he had of a purple light in the bed. everything has been purple since i found out how to open my crown chakra. i’ve had to let go of everything.

wake up who are you when you wake up? the night is very far away, but it is still there. where do you look when you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t? what do you see? where else do we dream but wherever we are? i hear the rain and i look to see the street. it is wet. what i canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see is what i want. where will i be when we wake up?

i laid down in ryan's bed and looked up at the ceiling. his room had previously been a professional dark room so with the door closed and lights off it was pitch black. what is up with me being into boys who always end up not having windows in their rooms? ryan turned on the light and it was red. i was glad he didn't turn on a fluorescent light or something. lighting is very important. ‘it's so weird you're here,’ ryan said to me. ‘like first you were there, and now you're here.’ i didn't know what to say. ‘yea... mmm, pretty weird.’ ‘hey you want to see my burning man jacket?’ ‘fuck yes i want to see your burning man jacket.’ ryan went to his closet which was at the opposite side of the room as the bed i was laying on. i felt very far away from him. i felt confused about the shape of his bed. it was in the shape of an upside-down, inside out L and covered in a dozen blankets. he arrived with a fur coat. i got up out of bed and slipped into it. it felt nice. there was something powerful about the way i felt. there was a certain weight to it, a certain exotic… next thing i knew ryan was on top of me, peeling the jacket and then my dress off my shoulders and kissing me on my lips. i kissed him back like i meant it, but didn't. i started moaning when he pinned me down on the bed. i tried to make my body as much like water as i could. next thing i was on top of ryan and he was inside of me. his penis was very large and it felt nice because it was so deep inside of me. he grabbed my waist and wriggled my hips in circles around his cock. we cummed at the same time. i spent the night beside him. we affectionately cuddled. he felt like he’d been beside me for a very long time. he felt like a lover. but in the morning he was not. he is just a strange man i did not know. i plugged my dead iphone into a charger i found near the bed. i went through his books which were lined up on a book shelf directly outside his bedroom. he had a pretty good selection. a bunch of esoteric books. one murakami book. there is an enormous wooden desk with a couple computers on it and lots of desk space. floor to ceiling windows flood the room with a new york shade of grey. it is one of those pseudo sunny, fucking hot kind of days that are hardly bearable. ‘do you own any poetry?’ he scanned the numerous books. he gave up quickly. ‘there is no order.’ ‘i like it better that way.’ ‘i don’t give up quickly.’

i climbed up and out of one of the floor-to-ceiling windows in ryanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work studio and smoked a hand-rolled cigarette. i sat on a cement beam that overlooked some trendy-looking restaurant or something where no one was except some guy who was smoking and coughing. i left abruptly. i walked carefully over an enormous silken beige rug. the rug was blatantly expensive and offensively boring.

jorge and i are discussing fractals in a garden. we are standing amongst kale leafs with the prettiest, purpliest veins. people i don’t know are standing around listening to new-wave reggae, eating fresh garden food and smoking high-quality weed. there are four fruit trees in the yard. everything is contained by the fence. hypnotizing birds fly their perfect patterns over us, flashing the underside of their wings at the sun. burning amber. how far can we see if we really try and where will it take us? the earth is a garden, mr. president, solar energy isn’t an ‘alternative source of energy.’ it is all living things primary source of energy. six o clock and the sun is going down. soon it will be sooner. after sharing some fried plantains, jorge suggests we try staring into each others right pupils for three minutes. i bail at one minute and forty-four seconds. i see the entire universe in jorge’s pupil. i meet ramsey from LA, an awkward but charming man in his mid-30s. he introduces himself as an art curator. i fascinate him in thoughts of mirrors and reflective surfaces. his type are too easy. he bums like half my pack of cigarettes off of me. i meet alex with purple hair at twilight. ‘what planets do your avatars correspond to?’ alex asks, offering kale chips and fries. ‘i’ve never thought about it…’ there is a girl playing the cello under early christmas lights. she is wearing a blue touque and a black cut off tank. everything i experience is a visceral response. i envision a rainbow of love around me. from now on i will go where i am needed. someone shoots a nerf gun. the foamy bullet makes a gentle arc before falling to the ground. you see before you touch. a neighbour shows up yelling at us about the outdoor show that has gently unfolded. for anyone inside the fence, it had just felt like a natural progression. i don’t like to be reminded that there is an inside and an outside. alex with the purple hair positions herself up on a pillow on top of a large speaker box. the lights are off and there are a couple candles flickering in various parts of the room. alex strums her banjo. ‘cheers to being surrounded by idols and listeners.’

she lights a stick of incense as a birthday gift to some boy who is present. she takes her shoes off. ‘the next-door neighbours are spies.’ ‘i take back what I said about scaring people.’ ‘people get younger and wiser every year.’ ‘i love the way his light illuminates his innards.’ ‘insanely.’ ‘prismatic, honest, real.’ it's not ok to speak while someone else is speaking. fiction permits this from ever happening. alex sings a song that makes me think ‘amber sap purple naked earth.’ ‘the earth wants a body.’ ‘i had this dream within a dream within a boundary preaching empowerment.’ ‘this is the part where we roll up a joint.’ ‘what are your favourite colours?’ ‘purple greenish purple every colour green turquoise darker turquoise green coral salmon steel grey reddish orange poppy burgundy peppermint green fresh persian blue. haze hologram afghan white fire dandelion blue hawaiian lotus galactic pussy.’ i have a weird vision of being born forever in some world called zebulon this coming-up thursday. visions of sonic lemonade, fast feminism… words are spells. violet turning violet. ‘i had a dream about this weird creature that was some sort of chimera with an owl face and leopard fur,’ jorge says to me.

:: i am a quick flower :: twilight at nuclear river :: we are laying in a field of garbage beside a nuclear river. we are staring at an advertisement for a shiny red car. we are alive, but hardly.

the sun is on fire. a woman shows up uninvited and starts pointing her camera at us and clicking. click click click, my heart.

you send her away and she gets in her shiny red car and drives north. she drives into the sky going click click click.

things donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t make sense. how she is able to do that is beyond me. how anyone is able to do anything is beyond me. i wish the world would have a global orgasm already.

i ask you to imagine you are a papaya tree and that someone is cutting you down. you look up at the sky and you are silent. you ask me to imagine i am an orange and pink sunset that someone is crying under.

i ask you to imagine you are a raindrop navigating the sick soil for a root to nourish. i ask you to imagine you are all the raindrops compiled into one. i ask you to tell me about the space between inhaling and exhaling.

it is now raining on us. itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all over our faces.

i ask you to imagine a gigantic raindrop is about to fall on you. i ask you to imagine that you are the gigantic raindrop and that you are about to crash into you. under the burning sun we are both imagining we are desert flowers and that it has just poured rain on us.

the sky is on fire and the light is incredible. it makes me want to kiss you everywhere. i want to swim into the sky. i kiss you and i want to be a raindrop.

i want you to come and have me on the other side, you are a place i have not been.

i am a root. i am a quick flower. i am a shiny red car. i am on fire when i kiss you.

you are 90% water or something. i am on fire and i am spreading. click click click, my heart. i will be the flame if you let me be the water too.

being an artist is like playing in a circle of dirt surrounded by perfectly groomed grass. on the subway kids play on iphones while parents stare, delighted, over their shoulders all my friends are doing photo shoots for trendy magazines. i sit next to a skinny punk with bleached pink and green hair. i sit across from a boy in a jean jacket with gold glitter nails, koolaid purple hair. beside him are two girls wearing geometicshaped earrings and sharing earbuds. th

someone is playing bongos on the corner of 13 and 9 street. i pass a young girl on the street. she has whiskers painted on her face, a little dab of pink on her nose i bum a guy a cigarette in the middle of the street on a flashing hand light. he calls me a legend. i walk through a park. a mother is trying to take a photo of her daughter hugging a tree. the mother is saying â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;look at the camera, look at the cameraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; because her daughter has her eyes closed and is smiling, feeling the embrace of the tree move through her. digging, searching. girls stumble around in high heels on cell phones, waiting for a connection. the mother takes the photo.

he referred to his room as ‘the cave’ since it lacked a window. on the walls were old comic book clippings, a red tastle that stretched from one corner of the wall to the other, an old birthday card from an ex girlfriend, a wad of my gum that i had stuck there one of the first times we had slept together, and a bunch of polaroid photos which were all orange in hue. many of them had been knocked off the walls by me. they had gathered dust on the floor for the entirety of our love affair and then one day they had disappeared. him and his roommate were playing a game made for more than two players. i didn’t want to play. the game was based on trading cards and involved a dice that was constantly being rolled. rolls a 6. rolls a 3. ‘nothing.’ rolls a 6. ‘you still want to build those things?’ ‘i can’t.’ rolls an 11. ‘an eleven, eh?’ ‘we can definitely trade with one another but, aw man, ohhh yeah that’s right, yeah.’ ‘maybe I’ll just do that. no, i can’t do that either.’ ‘you need four of the same?’ ‘i think so.’ ‘really.’ one of them goes for the instructions. one of them holds a bunch of cards. ‘the cards are resources.’ rolls a 6. ‘you don’t want to do anything obviously.’ ‘nope.’ rolls a 6. rolls an 8.

‘fun. thanks for stuffing my 6 up.’ ‘that’s how winners are made.’ rolls a 6. rolls a 7. ‘umm.’ he looks at his cards. ‘mmmm. ok, i need two. i need to get rid of half my cards. oh man. okay. so. 123456789 sooo 5 cards. So 3, 4, 5… ok. ‘you can keep one. it says round down.’ rolls a 12. rolls a 9. ‘going to the desert, just trying to stay symmetical on the board.’ one of their strategies is symmetry. rolls an 8. a victory point. rolls a 6. i have some faded stick on tattoos on my arms: a barbed wire wrapped around my forearm, a thorny rose, a tribal dolphin thing, a yin-yang. later we set out to have a bonfire on the mountain. as we are walking up the road i pick a white wildflower. ‘it smells like shit,’ says the loser. and it did. why do some flowers smell like shit?

golden mountain [with Moonbahn] everything is made of gold the fountains show us this the numbers never change entirely their solidity speaks all truth the mountains show us this our native tounge becomes obsolete the architecture of rock softens me the texture of our waves unite folding, the sky buries our words the condensation :: our amphetamine i am an astral amphitheater, our temple quotients of colour are our definition quantum mountain, golden fountain stellar nebula, rancid wave gradients of sun hue, shoulder boulder told her of a spectral folder showed her an illuminated block told her that i was drunk met the things i thought were gone spoke from innerts of flames benign introspections of paths, the forefront waiting on time the cyclical station motion from ideas of growth warping humanic desire and hope beads like spells spilling, spelling, sinking crashing, capturing, captivating seeing, was there, saw, unknown being, i felt that, was, unidentifiable what did i see when i felt what i saw, identifiable flying object people of parallel, tounges of adjacent eyes of connectivity, the colour of empty the colour of fullness, the mountainous

dichotomies of oneness deconstructed the crumbling, the careful, the carnivorous the unified, the undefined, the constant the caress of crumbling cities, of bricks building bounce for all of bricks buckling dance for all nowhere else, for no one mountainous, evergreen flow of entrancing means eyeballs gush ears bleed music begins without warning, it swirls with more purple than green green sounds come later when purple is finished purple first banana, green optional undefined banana the dark meets the white a melting plum a sinking orange submerged cucumber flavoured tofu of Wednesdays the Saturday operating system channels of what we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to know evergreen channels of melted candy swirling, spilling, sinking, spelling sĂŠance of cyclicle providence of robotic vessels fruit as evil robot currency robot currency as a necessary means to aquire pleasure cold robot hands as the warmest thing within reach the icy smoothness of metal fingers made me the person I am today, without that, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d still be basking in sunlight without a care in the world, and frankly, who wants that? without a care in the world i am a mountain but who really cares? cold, robot wings robot hands. robot nose. robot robot

cello oohâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, pluck pluck, sustain, bowing, release click click, pow, plunk, vrrrrrrrmmm glide feel vibrato in our hearts for our eyes, one more for our hearts, one more text 5-1-4 to find more invisible hands clapped through the sky plop plop fizz fizz oh what a relief it is to feel the pull of the sky in a basement with a low ceiling to feel the pull of a mountain fizz for our hearts, one more alas, serenity takes its essense touch takes a sonorous gold and mutes it blow slow mountain peak fountain seeking

the variations of symmetry i get my nails painted hologram diamond somewhere on myrtle. between irving and knickerbocker a margarita machine is broken. i eat a salmon omelette while the sun rises somewhere on houstan or the bowery or something. i watch a boy fire dance on ketamine in the backyard in the morning glories on putnam avenue. he looks happy and free. i have a vision at this place called wallet, where i experience the musical equivalency of constipation. lazers grope light. noise train. pushing the limits of perception. throwing drone into the nothing sphere. pushing the velocity to ultimate. in starbucks an obese woman in leggings walks in and out the door without noticing me. she buys a venti frappucinno and has a bruise on her cheek. i notice her. i feel like a washing machine on an iphone. i meet a girl who the previous night had puked on her bandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s t-shirts while high on mushrooms. she hatches butterflies in her downtime. lilacism. broadway junction. manhattan. succulent proverbs. vision of the golden, bobbing cat in chelsea. west 14th street. i am at 222 23rd street. i am looking for a bathroom, but can only finding an at&t and endless ladders. sun showers. siamese connection. rainbow reflection. tempted to connect. reflect. feeling alone, feeling free i smoke my last cigarette in a sun shower. i carry a singing bowl around in a paper bag while thinking about resonating the broken jade i ascend into a basement somewhere else on myrtle through a choir of bells coming from the top of my head, chiming. pentacle tattoo. finger scars. flapping polaroids. talons claw i eat over-priced korean food across from a place called infinite mandala or something where i play a sixty-eight dollar singing bowl that resonates right where i need it to in the korean restaurant they are playing k pop music videos on a flat screen tv. i am served some appetizers that confuse me. my water is constantly filled so that i never reach the bottom. i use chop sticks but am brought a fork and a knife half-way through my meal for some reason. i am hypnotized by the tv for the first time in years. glittering indigo in the dark. musky wooden basement. data bank. glitter on brown skin. bluepurple explosion. projector illuminating. someone levitating with a balloon. helium. double whiskey on ice. a little spiralled piece of metal on the sidewalk. double whiskey on ice. a globular cluster. an inside-out purple shirt.

i am awoken by morning traffic. i walk around bewildered by the city and how everyones shadows are connected to them i lose my magical necklace somewhere in bushwick at some guys place who makes holographic porn. i lose my passport somewhere in brooklyn and walk around for a day alternating between feelings of ‘fuck’ and ‘this is an awesome feeling.’ volumetric pixels, floating images. each part is in itself a whole. each part has all the information of the image. sequencer. post i-tunes. feeling cocktail. others feel bad. i show up wasted to a party at 23 meadow. i think i may have lost touch with my consciousness. on the cab ride there i sit in the front seat with the driver and he softly touches my shoulder. i say DON’T. i party at a spa under an underpass. i dance around to electronic music in a white bath robe. i leave once the free drinks run out. bones and feathers and mountains and seeds. in the subway i stand next to a metal beam. i am merely just observing my life in williamsburg park i meet john who meditates near me while i nap in the sun. he plays his singing bowl and rubs his coral beads together and breathes heavily and stands on his head. i sip from my beet juice tequila concoction and accept some dream-inducing flower power herbs from him. in my notebook after my nap i write mantra seeds frequency circles crystal reverberations sacred numerics repititous harmony. calm. give me breath space love compassion patience focus concentration harmony flows from me to you. ask more questions. later i dance in a goth bar under a loud smoke machine. everyone appears to be on some weird drug. girls in fringe and black lipstick. a disco ball. monster in paradise. gypsy blood. flow light radar. flow. deli sandwiches and coconut water in the morning. american spirit. a day out of time. sandalwood. pearl bar. tequila grapefruit cash machine. i miss my metro stop and end up in a beautiful green graveyard. something inside of me said yes when you texted me your zodiac sign. i was eating pumpkin

tempura on 3rd avenue at this place called yakitori taisho. ‘gone with the wind’ you texted me. and then me floating down the bowery and up a fantastic flight of stairs and opening up, i am a sunflower. on your rooftop there are circles painted everywhere and when we sit inside one on opposite sides it is like we are a living, breathing yin yang because we are. the variations of symmetry. we are frog eyes, existing in two. the variations of symmetry. devotion devotion devotion. past neptune to the aquarium. if you are the outside then i am the inside. and the tanks bum me out. waving coral hand. moon jelly. sparkling gem meadow. starfish i let the ocean hit my face and think about you while eating a piece of cheese pizza. on the subway. headed to jamaica, there’s nothing in my way

in the west village i have time to focus on the food i’m eating while i’m eating it because i don’t have access to the internet. i want my consciousness to rise out of a lotus like it’s coming out of a coma. i am eating kale, brown rice, cabbage, broccoli, beans, carrots, celery, squash. i am dealing with a hangover. i wander into an eastern temple with idols for sale that all look the same. i use the bathroom at an overcrowded mcdonald's. where is one supposed to be comfortable and go to the bathroom in the inner city? a dog shits, the smell of it flounders the air. someone does or doesn’t pick it up. i watch kids play in a cement bowl, they naturally run in circles. they befriend each other. one of the kids falls and the other pretends to fall to make the other feel better. little girl falls and cries and the other feels bad to feel bad. noticably distressed mother figure beside me yells ‘don't do that’ from the periphery of the circle when her child begins to poke his fingers through some holes in a thing. he is peaking in. ‘DON’T!’ don't is a dirty word. i am walking by the free people store thinking ‘sponsor me’ the new freedom tower twinkles like starlight in the distance. somewhere the statue of liberty is standing in some shitty water. we only need these symbols if we don’t embody them ourselves. beaded curtains in windows. twinkling, alive, shimmering shimmering shimmering. the electric garden. i feel furiously stable. like a cloud is blue. i watch an ad for mascara on youtube

the age of honey i am just chilling and waiting with my third eye open. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;GET IT IN, JUST LIKE YOU WANT ITâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; some drunk girl yells at me while hanging out the front seat of a cab. what is inside and what is outside? damn it, what does a girl have to do to shine in this country? i do not desire to acquire. i take my first photograph of the season. three flames. i think about the petal arrangements of flowers. the spacing of leafs on a stem. everything has a pattern. pattern is not stasis. it moves. pine cones. snowflakes. what does the turtle see when he goes inside of himself? fear is just a false threat that we create to protect our ego. where do my thoughts and feelings fit in? sound develops life. i appear to have an affect on people. the flower, the bee. we are entering the age of honey and dimensions of chromatic scales. the most efficient shape requiring the least amount of energy is round.

vipassana means ‘to see things as they truly are.’ riley had just gotten back to montreal from a vipassana 10-day medition in northern quebec. i had just quit smoking upon returning home from new york city, but had agreed to riley’s suggestion that i let him and a friend come over to take part in a casual tobacco ceremony. ‘so you can only talk when you are smoking the tobacco, and if you aren’t smoking you must be absorbed fully in what the one speaking is saying.’ i was the last to receive the tobacco. the tobacco tasted earthy and the smoke was heavy in my mouth. i closed my eyes and felt myself floating up towards the ceiling with the smoke. i was the smoke. ‘i am what i consume.’ after a few more rounds we were in a space of connectivity. we agreed to try telepathy with one another. riley’s friend went first. then riley. by the last round it was my turn. nothing extraordinary had happened yet. we had begun by trying to pass names to one another, but riley said he had a better idea. him and his friend whispered to one another. we were sitting in a circle facing one another. i suggested we hold hands. we had agreed that the person being channeled would speak as they were being chanelled, as opposed to speaking after the experience. i closed my eyes and took a few slow, deep breaths. they began thinking about the same thing at the same time. i immediately had a vision of the flag pole in front of my old elementary school. it was the flag i kept seeing. the ‘f’ of its shape. ‘i feel a major lack of connection to the higher energy levels in my body. like, there is a roof over my energetic field and i can’t freely go where i want to go. i feel restricted.’ they stopped thinking about the same thing at the same time. i opened my eyes, letting go of their hands. they looked excited. ‘ok, let’s do the next word.’ i closed my eyes, took hold of their hands and took some more deep breaths. they began thinking about the same thing at the same time.

my entire body began to buzz with an intense feeling of boundlessness, of being completely free and open. ‘wow. this is heaven.’ any feeling of restriction was lifted from me. there was a rainbow of light around me. i basked in the openness of it. swam with it a little. hehe, i was experiencing pure bliss. i eventually opened my eyes, beeming. ‘that was amazing,’ riley said. ‘do you want to know what the two words were?’ ‘the first word was fear.’ ‘oh, wow, that makes sense. i kept seeing the ‘f’ and the flag and those feelings of being cut off from something.’ ‘the second word was love.’

chakra is a sanskrit word meaning wheel or vortex and relates to the seven major conscious energy systems in our body. these systems are the motors of our bodies, if the body is likened to a mechanism for moving such as a car or an airplane. felix and i had been seeing each other out and about at shows since his recent move to montreal to study sound. the first night felix and i kissed was after a sketchy after-hours party at this place called tarot. i had black lipstick on, which i imagined as being some sort of makeout repellent. he kissed me outside in the rain. he didn’t seem to mind the black lipstick all around his mouth after, but he also couldn’t see himself. i rubbed it off for him. that night i invited him up to sleep in my bed. when i woke up my entire body was buzzing with the feeling i had felt during the telepathic love session. hehe, the telepathic love session. it was sunny outside. we made love. he came at the end of my orgasm. each chakra has a certain colour and frequency ascribed to it. these wheels of bright colours harmoniously spin when we are healthy and happy, creating a rainbow around our energetic bodies. each person moves at a different speed and moves in an independent direction according to natural laws. relationships produce a phenomenon equivalent to the brilliance of harmonics. felix showed up around 8:30 pm. he asked me how much i wanted to take. i didn’t know. i asked if i could look at it. there were two different designs. one was a black and while geometric pattern and the other one was a colourful mandala. i decided i wanted to split one of the rainbow mandalas. felix cut the rainbow mandala into two perfect triangles with some scissors. we each picked our triangle up with the tip of our index fingers and touched our fingers to each others tongues. i closed my mouth and felt it begin to dissipate on my tongue and become part of me. we were sitting on the floor. i was burning some expensive fair-trade incense. i think we were listening to four tet’s ‘pink’ album. i layed down and cuddled next to felix. we chatted, waiting for it to hit. everything in my room slowly began to sharpen, the details of everything became visible. the music began to release colours that i began to tap into by closing my eyes. felix and i seemed to develop a way of communicating without speaking. i got up and danced for awhile. i began to grow conscious of how loving my body was, how diverse its movements were. i fell onto the bed giggling uncontrollably next to felix who told me that he couldn’t stop looking at the little cactuses on my desk near the window. i looked at them and burst out laughing again. they were so funny. hehe, these funny tall green plant beings. hehe, i loved them. everything was dancing because it was alive. we sat facing eachother in lotus position on my bed. i leaned forward and rested my head onto his ankles, the crown of my head suspended in the space between his legs. i closed my eyes.

the visualisations i had been seeing were exponentially more vivid and enchanting. my energetic body danced through shifting mandalas and fractals and swarms of galactic starlight and rainbows and pure endless love. hehe, i was a completely gorgeous array of colour. hehe, i was a rainbow. i felt fuller and more complete. i perceived felixâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s energy as being part of me. we were one. our bodies literally felt like the same body. i was on the inside and he was the outside and together we were suspended in that space between breathing and exhaling.

ay boy ay boy, what is at the centre of the flower? you make me feel like a flower. ay boy, i am the centre of a flower. my fingers and toes are eyelashes and words are petals. every word you speak is a rare sonic jewel. fuck. i canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t wait until i can see you again. ay boy, when we kiss i can hear the aurora borealis sing. they go weeeeee and shhhhhh. our eyes are telescopes into the cosmos. i am kissing the entire world when kissing you fluttering, eye lids, stubble, collar bone, cluster of freckles, ay boy, your ear lobe. rib, following, shoulder, boner, spine valley, dipping. there was another earthquake last night. ay boy, i donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feel frightened by not knowing things. our eyes are microscopes looking in on the kaleidscope that is love. ay boy, your eyes are beds of moss and your tongue is a pine tree and my mouth is the sky. ay boy, our bodies are gardens. come lay down beside me. the colours of the flowers in late autumn are percularly bright. they all bow their heads to the light. i will literally put my petals through your long golden hair. my hands and feet are petals and i ooze nectar. today is the day of the dead. ay boy, lay me down in your river bed. i am a pedal, push me. i stick my hand into your golden animal and i am in your wrath. ay boy, talk to me in technicolour again. your eyes change colour throughout the day. ay boy, the ultimate poetry is intimacy. i put a braid in your hair and suck on it. i am so full of patient, amber ambience. come with me to a place without money. ay boy, when we touch our force fields are harmonious with one another ay boy, we are lights physical form, wow. with you i feel like a flower being rained and shone at the same time. blonde long hair and blue eyes staring at brown eyes and brown long hair staring. blue eyes receiving brown eyes, blinking.

fluttering, dipping, kissing, following, blinking. every space is sonorous and has a breath and a tone. every time you blink it’s a way of keeping some of the light out. ay boy, i will hit you with my spirit wand. my heart is a wave curling over the sun of your blue scorpio eyes. turquoise circle tattoo. capricorn rising. ay boy, take me to the glittery mountains wherever they are. i am wanderlusting. take me to forevermore and let’s make a hut together full of tapestries and cushions and candles. ay boy, your invisible spectrum is divine. libra mandala, algorithmic aura. with morning eyes we observe the radiance of the new world that is made entirely of us. how quiet it is. a blinking halo. ay boy, all will be one will be one this year. this winter wings and ice will be one in the world. wings and ice. one will be one. the universe is wide open. our centres are the same place. the sun and the moon and the white hole we can’t see. ay boy,i am going to fall asleep while listening to whale songs now. goodnight.