by LJ Frank

There are corporate, government and medical archives for everything in alphabetical order beginning with the aphrodisiac of power – there’s nothing like having an affair with the executive and be assured of no assurances, for the files end with fantasies of the gods of war.  And, recently upon hearing my complaints about the world’s state of affairs and my aging body trapped in a still youthful mind, including the hand that I had been dealt with in life, a dear friend counseled me and confided that she had a gun and offered to shoot me at no charge.

I get most of my paradigmatic ideas after going to bed, adjusting my body and yawning, then a thought enters my head – this ritual also occurs in the early morning hours as my mind is waking up from a chase scene in my brain, whereby I found a briefcase full of money and so headed south off a highway next to the coast and after stopping to pumping my own gas to the chagrin of a vocabulary challenged  attendant, I felt a hand on my shoulder and woke up only to discover I was now walking in the rain and found myself on a beach where I camped under an umbrella hurriedly writing words in a foreign language while feeling something odd closing in on me.

I knew a woman who delighted in being both submissive, and dominant, and all the while believing in an invisible Force who she spoke with on a weekly if not daily basis.  She was concerned that this Invisible Force seemed to be rather insecure in that He or She needed to be worshiped today and forever.  She admitted the Force was only hearsay as no one was ever witness to an actual appearance except in their Mind’s Eye. The woman was real at least as far as I could discern. She also realized belief can achieve awareness and self-disclosure and yet for others belief when explained seemed to blur the edges like cataracts that blur our vision, and we end up seeing things best as if using a telescope pressed against the eye, but then miss out on the surrounding landscape. I suspect she may have on to something.

It was a familiar city. There was much whisperings about net worth on the patios of the bars. And while sitting at a table and drinking a house wine I received a hug by a black stocking and high heeled woman dressed as a nun, and realized this could be a religious experience I had been seeking and with deeper meaning rather than a kiss from a person who was from a podcast celebrity though I cherished her voice. I figured the privileged may be born or marry into wealth, family and associated connections while the rest are sold on the idea that they too could achieve it by pulling themself by the conceptual bootstrap though that too is a fable perpetuated by the rich with raw talent, aggression and willingness to walk over others being the exception I supposed, but the chalice of truth occasionally contains vinegar.  

A colleague once asked, “have you ever played with the devil…” and I thought of all the people I have met with puffed up chests, masks covered with smiles and indeed never found a devil to be a good intellectual shag. Although, during the midst of the rendezvous with Lucifer as she called herself on that day, she also claimed we were all just pawns of the autocracy, so we kissed before she returned to her cave like dwelling on the side of a hill overlooking the bay. Of course, I should add that in the process of my afternoon stand I was offered The Ultimate Aphrodisiac, of which I discovered was not money or power but rather something else altogether, but I was not dressed for the occasion.

 I’ve speculated whether the human heart has become like a pendant at the end of a chain around the neck moving in concert with the turning of the head and affected by a vision of what is real only when in a stationary position, that we catch only glimpses of now and then.