No full stop until the fat lady sings

This story is very long and is better in book form to be opened at any page. Part one of many...

This story is dedicated to all the joy that came my way.

All characters in this story are fictitious and have no resemblance to any person living, deceased or dead unless they are a ghost.

Revised and edited by my very own hand.

I sat in a very peculiar diner to count my change and fell into a dream and saw through the eyes my spirit on its journey home.

This story is a karmic, yogic guide to be opened at any page when the need arises.

FORWARD

The burning tree is ice cold to your touch and flies in the face of all you know; but it is not to be feared for it is but the doors of your perception opening in the lovely tree of your mind.
The choice has been made, now follow it with courage and don't look back; your footprints in the sand are being washed away in the rising tide of your understanding.
The big scary, if it comes, is only your mind trying to come out on top, let it go and dive in deep to the fun.
And because it's all so subjective, no-one can tell you a thing more than your own consciousness can know in any moment so jump right in and blow your horn and say: "coming right through here," and you won't miss a thing; but after the come-down, wait a while before going again.
And don't be concerned with any flashbacks; they are only the pathways in your brain firing in love to remind you of where you have been.
So here's the user's guide to British antiques on the verbal wire where the seaweed of your burning desire sits on a chair with a view to the ocean; but if in the after-hours of a good scarper the jum wobbly bites you in the leg, don't go asking: "can you scrape the bones from the heart of this that was last seen tripping under the big sky," because you'll get too many answers that won't mean a thing; so don't go there if you know what's good for you; and if you are what you've always been in the fantastic amazing: WUW; and they say vitamin C brings you down from a bad time of it; but I say a bucket of empty is easier to be filled with all the good things around you, such as: the spaghetti western on your wall or your flying hand full of colours across your eyes or the hole in the wind you fall through to the other side of your life; and why would you ever want to come back or come down from somewhere so beautiful; and of course you can fly, but do it from the ground up; so fly from that place of your fantastic and watch the sorrow depart to where it belongs and do let the light get in through the wound of its absence.

CHAPTER ONE

The tipper's railroad of personal redemption or the gang of thoughts waiting to get in or maybe the twist where fate laughs but well, really, if it's not subjective it's copied; but sometimes the trip is big enough to let it go and when you've done enough you'll know, that the place you started from will meet you in the end, and all you can do is say it once again, until you've said it enough; but I thought I knew too that they have come back from their ego death and are now split, one in a hammock and one on the beach talking to survivors so I will ask for a sandwich soon if I dare to as a limp dog comes to bathe in my shadow on the outskirts of its nature, it ignores what it doesn't understand in all it knows by the big ocean where I have ordered a sandwich from the dragon's daughter who is spitting fire everywhere so maybe it will be a hot sandwich and perhaps talk like this, "prepare to defend yourself," said the sandwich when it came full of the black burnt cauldron but I ate it anyway as I was too hungry to refuse a little bit of cinder and when I was finished I had to hang on to the seat, which helped not one whit in the fiery belching that launched me into the air, but when I came back down I wrote a letter of complaint and asked if they could hold the spice next time and then someone cackled from the kitchen as I held my breath and ran for it and later, in the inset of Brahma I had to stand up for myself against the air conditioner that worked too well and tried to blow me back to where I came from in a half speed song of making that wasn't going over too well to hear: "pardon," said the houseplants that cured the air of all poison, while outside of this the girl with the soft skin hid her snigger behind the bushes that hid her snigger and then two hot peaches of surrender in a painting of small red lips gave an announcement that it was close to bed time but out there on the wrong side of the tracks was a response that wanted to go to the liquor store for candles to light her way home; anyway, when the mummies and the walking dead came everyone disappeared quick like and no more was said about it except on a sign pinned to a post was the legend to watch out for the eagles and the turkeys that would kick you in the head when you wake up the day after but "suggestion is powerful," said the suggestion that was powerful and

"ok, ok, what's all this noise, I'm wide awake now with it all, " said the rustic farmer who looked like Charlie Chaplin and was in his bed wide awake with it all but Zen was tired of it all and wanted to go home so she jumped into a taxi and sped off out of all of it and that was that in the night of stupid questions that had no meaning; but over in the big pickle, the banging of the drum was underway where the mindless robots in their unthinking said: "we have obligations to disappoint you in your dreaming of all you want;" but out back of this, the mustard machine was working overtime and smoking where the flowers grew through the weeds and dustbins of old ideas that were stacked to the sky and still trying to get me into heaven as images and appellations came and went and like the receding tide, left behind what became washed up at the shore of my mind and as the waves at the edge of the ocean, they lulled me to sleep and "halleluiah," said the sand of the next dream coming into being, "more room for us;" and so the night passed uneventfully, one flavour after another into a soup all mystical and strange, never later than never into the forgetting where the soul flies in its nightly unfolding until one day I found myself in a strange place wandering around hopeless and lost so I took out my chisel and chiselled it all onto the rock of the cave I was in but I could not go on and wandered around the crypt without hope; life was meaningless, but in a box by the front door were a dozen bottles of beer so I opened one and drank it straight down, froth and all and then I opened one more and before long I was feeling my old self again, so “time to eat,” I said and slipped out into the night taking two bottles of beer with me where I met two-hand Mary who was fuming because the left hand of god had hit the review pages of sparkles review and she knew there was going to be trouble

so she hit the streets to put some distance between her and all her angst and as she flew around a corner without paying attention she bumped into a tall dark stranger who bumped into her and she screamed, so the tall dark stranger said: “why do women do that;” to which the woman said: “what;” and then he said: “have a beer,” but two-hand Mary was taken aback momentarily until she rallied herself and took the beer and looked into the eyes of the mysterious man and almost swooned and decided she would go with him tonight even though two of his teeth were a little too long and pointed, but then she was no plain Jane herself and then a vampire for all occasions happened where once upon a time there was a wish list that had a vampire attached to it and every day the list got bigger and kept the vampire busy fulfilling all the wishes but one day the vampire got a job as a butler and seemed to fit right in to the haunted house he came to and found his duties were many and varied and he had to be available for all occasions but he was very pleased and decided to stay there forever and be the best vampire butler he could be but the wish list was still as long as his arm so he decided enough was enough and threw it out of the window and a big wind came along and took it away and that was the end of the wish list and this part of the story which is not the last chapter yet but it could be where the night calls the women in their veils who walk the back streets, as you do when you're lonely and looking for comfort and so this is where I came across a picture of a lonely window with a lonely bed and I thought, is this how my life will be, but I was mesmerised by this picture that had come along and I also found an old bucket to kick with all the time that I had but then time played me a hardly remembered song from the long time ago of a place far away and taken from a thousand poems, where, yes, every day was the best, and so I remembered and now I am surrounded by the magic that is in my heart so I wish you well on your journey through this day, much love and some say: if it's going to happen then it will happen and some say you have to work really hard at it, while others don't say much at all, but I know you can over-think these things, but I think that if you do what you can with what you have then you have done all you can, and the rest is up to serendipity

and where does the mystic come from, is it in the desert, because if it made me rich then I would say bring it on, but the night is for dancing and the time is now and the tales taste well I think around the campfire here on the border with no man’s land stretching out before us all, where the last of the ideas of this expedition have set up camp to study the phenomena that has got everyone so curious, that large black mosquitoes, immune to everything fly into the food and drown from exhaustion as the deadly death keeps killing everyone dead and the cure for it keeps working as every moment is breathed the first and last breath but complaints rise up; questions are asked: where do they come from with moments of suspicion to say: the Chinese, they’re invading and then reason restores to say: but the Chinese have helicopters so why would they use big mosquitoes on us, to which everyone becomes confounded by this piece of logic and in the silence the mosquitoes can be heard whistling Dixie as in the darkness beat my heart and in another room beat another; they say all things are joined and maybe they are but that doesn't make much joining so let me tell you about a star far away where can be seen the tears of all the lonely who have died and gone to heaven; they lie there for no one and they will lie there forever for the angels cannot come here in this rain and perhaps they cry in theirs but in the end it matters not if you are here or not if it matters not to you; if love has gone it matters not

CHAPTER TWO

so when you get to the top there’s only one place to go and that’s down, unless the elevator gets stuck in the middle and then you could go either way; and now can I bore you with a tiny euphemism: that’s all folks, but then an old ghost came along and I had to run into the trees and hide behind a bush with whispered chips and a disparate gang of hooligans who were making whoopee while catch-us-back-Charlie was doing his 3 beers, and from the class of 43 that never made it someone called out: "swine, let me go," and then, "what!" said the witch of whispers to an orange biscuit in her hand as a pesky mosquito flew close and touched her cheek, and they say you cannot eat an orange without peeling it or dream unless you're a dreamer, well I say you're as old as the hills, which makes me as old as the mountains in the mosquito bitten night where I am driven so, and so shivered the witch of whispers to herself and then the witch of whispers laid a heavy hand on her heart and sighed a long deep sigh and then went off to boil an egg; but when we came to the mad border we were exhausted, Zen and I, too tired to fight the closed bloods in their raincoats and their weird scrutiny, a scratch-bone where the fear is too hard to open the heart; so we were processed as eager as ice cubes and rubber stamped to continue on our dreaming trail, but the multi controlled mind machine was eating us up to listen to more of this, and as you look you are pulled in, said the drunken scuba diver to all the passing shadow around him, and then in the left hand of a second-hand angel in the doorway of a window of broken dreams that was making sandwiches of the blarney intentions floating about when the order came: a bowl of mortal coil and a Zen cake to go, chop-chop, said the mortal coil on the hop, so six strapping youths broke the sound barrier to carry this out and a young girly sniggered under the wallpaper of it all while polishing her fingernails, “hey ho,” sang the head chef in her boudoir of old chip grease; it was just another hectic night in the rubber spoon to purge the grail they all would chase; so saying is all as a dozen leftover burnt donuts cried for redemption and a barn owl screeched in the dark outside and an old ghost turned over in his grave at all the noise and the neon sigh flicked on and off: burnt toast, burnt toast, burnt toast at the drunken scuba diver with the bends who stumbled by on the sidewalk, going nowhere, until under the light of a lamp-post, Jesus Christ, back from the dead at last was doing an old fag and was almost done when the drunken scuba diver hove upon him;

immediately Jesus began to preach his sermon; “WTF,” said the drunken scuba diver; “I got religion and I'm born again,” said Jesus Christ; but just then a cart horse, pulling a heavy load clopped past and one of the wheels came off the cart and rolled right over Jesus and squashed him dead and back he went to the grave and that was that for his second coming; “That’ll teach you,” boomed god from above in his control room; the drunken scuba diver who was sober now hurried on from all this family trauma and tried to remember where he lived and patted his pockets for his keys so he could get in; “no more mushrooms and beer mixed for me,” he said and passed out of this story into the plural of the next idea of the apple bone custard thing but the head chef was not a top chef but she was ever hopeful, so every day she would experiment with a new dish and serve it as the chef’s special in the back street restaurant where she was the head chef and only chef; and then a shipment of bones was delivered one day from off the back of a lorry, cheap-cheap so she threw them into the pot to make a stew, but when she looked around for more ingredients she could find none except for a bowl of apples and a packet of custard, so these went in too and were cooked up and stirred until ready then served up to the regular customers who were there because they couldn’t afford anywhere else and it was a hit, everyone loved it and before long the restaurant was crowded with happy sleepers and at three cents a bowl was good value, so she sold her secret recipe to other restaurants and became rich and retired a happy woman and danced in the dust every day;

so if you go into a back street restaurant, ask for the apply bone custard thing and bon appetite to you but you know that if you go back in time to the Buddha or even the Jesus you wouldn’t find a Buddhist or a Christian anywhere while these two were alive or even anything written down about them because it wasn’t until hundreds of years after Buddha died and a long time after Jesus died that anything was written about their lives or what they had said and one of the reasons was because no one could read or write and there wasn’t any paper available, except for a select few and so everything they said was remembered and passed on by word of mouth and you know what happens when you whisper a phrase to someone and ask them to pass it on to a hundred others one at a time, the one hundredth person has something that is completely different from that first person, so I'm just wondering if anything they actually said or did was remembered for how it really happened because it may have just been their followers far down the line that said what they wanted to say and have you believe, so unless you actually had their message in your heart, whatever that was, then how would you really know that God is anything else but what you've been told;

well in the vintage wine of the church goers there was a certain lack of principal about this but not to be outdone in their thinking they kept on doing it even though it brought the bells of routine into their lives which made them all mad as hatters and stuff like that but God, as a rubber duck was floating away in the big pond and could not be bothered about it; let them go their way, he thought, and so the wine of their routine took their brains away and they became sheep for the slaughter for the power mongers who would use them for their own ends, but God said: "enough," and that was that, until the mice crawled out and began again, all over again in their dark holes under these pendulum sighs and really, do not say America, say instead: those responsible, for America is the body, and those ones responsible are the black-heads on it and to purge them do not rub in cream but cleanse the body from inside of its poisons and the black-heads will go away; but enough of dark holes that many have gone down, we all know that those roots go to a rather quick wedding where Mrs Julia Asher Mac Gregory had more on her mind than what could be passed off as a simple headache and so too was her husband somewhat afflicted, being on the jag end of a five day binge, but on the surface, their problems could be mistaken as similar in nature and not altogether unusual in a newly married couple thrown together at the last moment with barely an introduction to break the ice and quite why they allowed this union to go ahead was the question of the day as both of their families were not without means and in fact were well off by anyone’s standards

so if they had known then they would have put a stop to it somehow; but they didn’t know and so had no part to play in it, but that would come later when the news reached them; so it was a rushed affair with two taxies pulling up to the registry office door with a quick nod on the steps up, then on to find the best man and the ring and then the process of the marriage itself to the “I do,” and the hurried kiss and then off in a single taxi for the honeymoon leaving the justice of the peace and the best man scratching their heads at such a whirlwind wedding, but such is life; people do the strangest of things on the spur of the moment to regret it later when the reality of the situation hits them to leave them aghast at their frivolous actions so sometimes you have to ask what is the real problem; I men, what’s the real problem, really; there are a lot of extremely intelligent human beings on this planet and I do believe they far outnumber the ones in power who it seems are disliked intensely and even violently by some, so why can’t something be done to replace the ones who are making a mess of it all for most everyone on this planet and put people there who can really clean things up; why cannot we do this now; perhaps one such as Jeremy Corbyn;

why do we have to wait as they go about strengthening their power base; there are far more of us than them, in fact they are an insignificant number and their power base is an illusion they perpetuate you all to believe and if we all know this and don’t have our heads buried in the sand then why is it that we do not do what is needed to change everything overnight for the better for all of us so we can all thrive; so I say again, what’s the real problem; is it apathy from too much fluoride; fear, from their scaremongering coming at you all from your TVs etc; or ignorance, from their false religious doctrines; are you all so sucked in to the illusion you can’t see anything but what you are all told; and are you all so ill and sick form their drugs etc you have not the will left to live; I see you all caught up in your Christmas dreams and petty desires that are not even your own; so how did you all fall so low; never mind, round and round we all go, fighting their wars for them, buying into their lies and learning their lessons, buying their goods and making them richer, being taught in their schools their agenda, following their religions and trapped in their political beliefs; you are all dying too soon, so best to awaken to the beauty buried deep within you and don’t wait anymore because it is time to wake up; and which club are you in and how do you speak to your contemporaries in your disguise and do you use dada speak to confound them; if you’re a computer geek you’ll be using info from your hard drive to share between your motherboard and your software and religious ones will be graced with angel speak and bible talk full of blessings and gratitude, so they say and the spring onion brigade will be full of good mornings and have a nice day, while the doom and glooms and end of the world will grunt at best and the institutionalisms will talk about their prisons while the government will speak politics and of course the actors will talk in the margin on the empty stage;

so when you listen to people you can soon know which club they belong to by the threads of their attachment that leads back to their core membership in that and their continued use of such speak, dada, dada, dada where you will fall, and with luck you can choose when but you will not know when it will happen, it could be soon, like an unexpected relative who comes to you to kiss you on the cheek as you slip away to gone and do not think you will live more than this moment for that is where the fallacy gets you and keeps you in its grip, but you know there is a place where you can fall forever; so here's a letter full of blind men to chew on while you are waiting and don't hold the horses because it was a letter full of blind men and angst where a one legged dog was howling and two pieces of lime floating through my mind with steak and chips, easy on the mayonnaise there;

oh must I bandy words with every beggar and throw sticks at every barking dog in a lemonade custard of a thing and can anyone tell me the price of time in these things where the up is star-full and clear bright and so much huge big full of moon which has a direction like now, a silence clear; but I have a book of maps and they all lead to the same place, written for me by a little man on a black horse of silence who came round one time and drank all my wine I said and then I thought about putting the heckle on and then I thought about not putting the heckle on and then I thought about something else, like a belly full of bullies; yes he stuffed her full of bullies, and none of them brought a white flag and the invasion took over her body to make her look like someone else until one day, of all those that came, one came back a king and said: to the sea to be free, that’s where I will be or in the air without a care, an impossible dream; and in all those doors, opening the door, it is always so; haven’t I said oft in bed, I stand by the shore where gulls cry and cry as waves lap my toes, and the wind over my face, all I can take so that’s where I will be, in the sea where I shall be free but then I thought about other days long gone where one door was cut short and painted chipped blue, another door was off-white like about ten years, and the eight panel door on the ceiling was done in brow and ripped posters were stuck askew on everything and a rebel was an icon and bright lights of course were spotlighting like stars on the used fixes strewn haywire on the floor; but after the music had stopped its iconoclastic thing all over everything, some voice lay down something about killing with something ambiguous found only on the edge of darkness; the edge was all around the floor, drifting in globules and in spit stares, flame-proof hair-does, computer hack nightmares in secondary paranoia but this was only another night in Dooms-vale; and many came that way, but nobody left early; and some came there from suicide, some others only made it there in the end and a dark cloaked kiss of death came around in between times and frightened the hell out of anyone who had any left to spare; oh those were the days,” said Zen to no-one at all;

“yeah,” said no-one at all who was a thousand miles out, shouting: here I am a thousand miles out, riding a twin cylinder motorcycle I've bought with the last of my money and the road is an eighty mile an hour blur beneath me and a howling wind is tearing at my clothes under the big sky and I'm trying to leave it all behind me but wondering what her name will be as I ride into a city and look for a place to stay off the road; and I remembered that long ago in our rush to doom with Zen a downing wind came for us and we ran into the downing wind, a wind that crashed through us some kind of apocalypse that froze our souls and paused our feet in despair under a black starry night; we only looked for what was ours, even after the wave was gone, yet something was left so we tried to make it our home but we couldn’t quite come to believe in it even though we tried so eventually it grew too late, we’d made our story; some called us the lost ones, others dismissed us out of hand, but we blew free for a while until our fate dropped us beside a grail that crushed us even as we crushed it, it downed us and now Zen’s face is following me.

End of part one of no full stop until the fat lady sings

Images from Pixabay