dreaming in parables.
I was a curator in an old, forgotten art gallery in my dreams last night. This upside-down painting of a girl caught my attention. I can’t tell whether it was her charm or the fact that the piece was upturned that made it so particularly striking but whatever the case was, I aimed to correct its presentation. As I pulled it off the wall, the girl jumped out of the painting. She lunged at me, whispering in a harsh urgent, tone. “There’s nothing wrong with this painting! It is not upside-down, I am. I hide in the painting because art is the only place I can live without being turned over.”
Took my meditation out on my front door.
the golden-plated rule.
In our youth, while our minds are still spry with umbilical juice and our behavioral patterns have yet to endure the repetitive conditioning of anything close to a decade, we are urged to abide by one principle, the ethic of reciprocity: treat others they way you want to be treated. Do unto others as you would want done to you.
If moral codes were home furnishings, the golden rule would be a vintage lighted mirror. An idealistic centerpiece, demanding self-sabotaging levels of self-awareness, glamorizing all that is unnatural and muting all that is carnal, accompanied by a wardrobe you will never be able to afford and is perpetually dusty.
As we age, we discover how easily surfaces get scratched, the horror of objects lying still, how our personal need for frivolous enjoyment can so easily supersede anyone else’s holocaustal agony, karma’s willingness to forgive the bad guy, how Santa is really a slave to the Federal Reserve, the pointlessness of politeness, how most of the things we can buy on food stamps don’t have any nutrients, and it becomes more & more glaringly obvious that all that glitters is not gold and in 75% of all cases, (75% being the most believable number used in fictional statistics) may not even be glitter.
We cannot treat others the way we want to be treated because we don’t know who we are, have yet to negotiate what we deserve and are hardly cognizant of the transformational impact that our puny, mortal, ten-fingered treatment could possibly deliver.
In the dim-controlled lighted room of our morality, behind our embellished mirror of starry-eyed youth, we find that the golden rule is no more of a rule than it is golden. It is an hopeless idea, a kamikaze suggestion, a curled-lip expression from an under-aged, sexually ambiguous girl.
Treating people the way we want to be treated in our young age is a distraction to discover our individualized desires and come to terms with our worth. In our adulthood, explore the golden-plated rule: we treat others the way we have been treated.
Hurt people hurt people. The humbled, humble. The falsely inflated, falsely inflate. Those who find themselves broken, find everything broken. Boring people bore. The fulfilled find a way to fill whatever isn’t full. We are the meaning makers, equal parts creators and created.
It is never too late to look in the mirror and have a happy childhood.
Mreeuh Chang
Three Wishes
According to my Julietta, wishes made on wishbones only come true if the other person keeps the other piece. I recently did matching tattoos of wishbones on two of my closest friends and myself. In the words of Gwendolyn Brooks, “We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business: we are each other’s magnitude and bond.”
Before the session, we all wrote things we wished for each other on our own pieces of paper. Surprisingly enough, we all wished for the same things, just with different wording.
“May you never be without the company of soul mates. May you never get lost. May you never stop wandering.” -My wish.
I’m the one in the purple.
My sister Julietta’s altar. I run with witch doctors, high priestesses, shamans, and alchemists.
“May you never know the lonely bed of wasted time. May you never see the universe’s end. May you never know killed bodies in the street. May you never again lay awaiting discovery. May you never know what it means to be found. May you be protected from false prophets offering to raise you from your deathbed. We have seen false magic at work, and the white man’s magic at work, and the magic of jealous young girls. May you never know false magic—magic that pretends. magic that does not groom or heal. magic that feels good on the tongue, but is void. Magic that has no knowledge of impossible or between lives. Magic that is not firm or ripe or whole. May you be protected. May you be the firmament. May you never be mistaken for the burning bush. May those who love you never worship you. May distant daughters bring you fruit and afternoon stories. May you always know the rain forest as wet. May other earths welcome you. May you be protected when my hands & heart & tongue are not enough. May you only know a full belly & may you only know many lovers.”
- “A Mothers Prayer” by Kima Jones
“Deeply I go down into myself. My god is dark and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.” — Rainer Maria Rilke
Cincinnati Love is like the river that never stops flowing. This is right next to my apartment building.
My dying grandmother in Korea sent me her old diaries. These were all bound by hand. I come from a long lineage of writers.
I’m trying to put my current portfolio to shame by the end of this year…
