Dragons always remind me of what is sacred. Much over-popularized in games and movies, dragons once occupied a holy place in the mythology of nerds. Part of the namesake of the most ancient of basement entertainments, dragons were the quintessential “better half” of Dungeons and Dragons. For every role-player began their adventure traipsing through dungeons, but few would ever lay eyes on a dragon.
Not for long, at least.
Dragons are the most majestic of lore. Kings of Fantasy. They are Benevolent Overseers of Moral Perfection, such as Dragonheart’s Draco – protecting the Knight’s Code and having faith in man. They are Malevolent Usurpers of Perverse Degradation, such as the well told tale of Smaug. But in each case, they are larger than life. Singular in their greatness. In 15 years of playing Dungeons and Dragons, travelling through countless countrysides, I can safely say I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve set (imaginary) eyes on one.
Each time, whether I was 16 or 26, it caught my breath. They were the pinnacle. The 7 figure salary of the role-player.
It is strange that they should be so, however. There are a slew of other mythical beasts just as strange and terrifying. If not more. Certainly, titans and sprites, pixies, and the undead should compare. Dragons, when stripped of their divine aura, are really just big lizards with wings that spit fire. They are made up of components other animals that we master and cage on a regular basis.
Fantasy, as a genre, has become more acceptable over the years. With it, so has the metaphorical inflation rate – dragons are far more common. It has eroded the divinity of the creature, while keeping its scales and talons.
But I like that. No matter how familiar a dragon becomes, it will always maintain its sense of nobility, presence for me. But I like that as more come to know draconic glory through tale and song, it becomes a more familiar beast.
We are dragons. Sacred by our own right – benevolent or perverse. Some of us sit on mountains of treasure that was never truly ours to begin with, while others fight for the glory and equality of our world. And as media spreads the word of our greatness further and faster, we are revealed as the fleshy contraptions of biology and chemistry that we are.
We have not become less sacred. Just more understood.
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Posted: October 5, 2013 by zacharyandgillian in October 2013
(Alternatively titled: Get Well Soon)
Over a hill of cascading yellow crops, the ground is ablaze with colour. This smile of nature reflects the sun, as a child’s reflects the beauty of his mother. The gentle dips of the land are dimples of a young countryside.
We are not sick forever. I would, could I offer a salve for your heart, give in abundance. How much more your wretched body – the peevishly defiant thing. Let me take you away.
That youthful ground is the perfect perch to see the clouds. Gently expanding, floating effortlessly against a blue sky, they are an oasis of the Muse. An upside-down ocean, the sky is married to the promise of adventure, and the birds sing. Onward, clouds! Hurry! Enjoy our secret pleasures of speed and distance! Travel the world! But those gracious fluffy things simply laugh, and happily remain. For where else will flying dreamers rest their feet?
I think your body learned its wry petulance from you. Your spirit is ever a cheerful rebel; a sophisticated anarchist. How could your body not sarcastically return what you offer in everyday osmosis? Your rousing independence. Forgive it, its sins. It knows exactly what it does: its rallying cry is a confirmation of your strength and freedom.
And, like your soul, it will soften again. You will not be sick forever.
Peeking through a kaleidoscope of cloud is the only way to enjoy the garden. And this garden, through these cotton candy clouds, framed by a smiling landscape, offers honest beauty with no desire to compare. Ornate gates offer entrance, though no fence exists to suggest otherwise. A single rusted hinge squeals to the entrants declaring beauty in humor. The inspired laughter of innocents inside also affirms the opposite. Amidst a rainbow of colours and pathways, a single plaque on a lone pedestal offers a word:
Here.
Rest, and get well soon.
The Earth is the most graceful person I know.
The art of Grace is a subtlety. It is neither deception nor equivocation, and yet it is not truth. To be achieved, it requires a misdirection of multiple parts.
Firstly, the person on whom the subtlety is acted must take a perception that is true. Often, it is believed that grace includes only that the person believes it to be true, but that is a cubic zirconia. A gold-digger’s grace; mere deception. The truth of the perception received must be real, both in the mind of the Graceful and in actual fact.
A skill of real grace is revealed if the perceiver does not, entirely believe the truthful fact themselves. A master will leave an amateur perceiver believing they have perpetrated a misdirection of their own design – that the Graceful believes a falsity. A complete reversal of reality, not by design, but by the weakness of the perceiver. A veteran perceiver will more quickly turn to doubt than confidence – a modest humility or a selfless skepticism. But the truth-in-fact, and the truth in the Graceful’s mind of the perception must remain.
Secondly, the person on whom the subtlety is acted must take an old perception as original. This is not to be confused with making the previously unperceived, perceived. For that is a makeup. A harlot’s grace; mere equivocation. The truth of this perception must have come previously, true in the perceiver’s mind by some other affirmation. It is only born-again.
The skill of real grace in this case is revealed by the weight of the revelation. A master will leave an amateur believing that the perception is entirely new; lightning from the sky. A veteran perceiver will instead believe that it is a phoenix; a thing once dead but breathed life again, wearing new feathers.
Thirdly, the effect of the perception in the first step must be to have the perceiver accept the proposition reborn but unsaid in the second. This is to be an obvious step, but not one that follows from necessity, and so the Graceful must follow through. It is easy for the perceiver, left unguided at this point, to consider these two perceptions as separate instances, and so immediately reject the second as brilliant, beautiful but ultimately unsupportable. While the arrogance of the amateur will complete the process, a veteran perceiver will quickly recognize this. The skill of the Graceful is defined in their ability to provide the bridge.
It is then that the Graceful has communicated that which is true, with a statement that is true, while never claiming any ownership to the thing at all, and offering the platitude of ownership to the perceiver, without cost, should they so desire it.
The Earth is an incredible source of Grace. How quickly we perceive the truth of nature’s beauty and bounty – so ever-present and self-evident. How easily it ignites all of our feelings of human passion, spirit, and glory – with an inexplicable newness, every time. And surely, even the skeptics (and surely the humble!), accept the two as connected. If our soul shares one ounce of that splendor, how could that brilliance be rejected? We, who are made in His Image, are at least to that extent, Gods ourselves. We, who come from dirt, share all the romance and perfection of that dirt.
Perfect Grace is the impossible art of providing a positive by proving a negative. It requires the expression of a truth through the provision of an infinite number of independent and unique truths. The Earth offers the single answer of its nature to billions of perceivers every day. They, no matter their own acceptance of it, see the truth in it. In turn, they see the value it offers them and their own humanity.
The Earth, every day, proves a negative.
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Posted: August 25, 2013 by zacharyandgillian in October 2010
The most valued “road trip” possession I own was never mine to begin with. It’s a stolen possession – never meant for me and, as I am skilled in my sins, never known to its creator as missing.
As time would (always) have it, it’s now also a relic of a time gone by.
It’s a CD. At one time regarded as the evolution of a “mix tape,” this CD contains a careful selection of 24 folk-y, whimsical tunes. No names auto-populate into iTunes when it’s tossed into my laptop. The artists are largely forgotten to both the old and the young – it’s an obscure collection known to a particular age group. And, save for their 15 minutes of fame, these artists were really only the admired of a select few. To be honest, I don’t think I could even tell you who they are.
The disk’s surface is blank, with only the demarcation Fav’s scrawled in black felt marker. And when I put it into a CD-player, I know three things:
1) I cannot remember for the life of me what’s on it.
2) I’m going to enjoy the next 24 songs
3) I’ll have my best friend beside me.
The first time I encountered this CD was in the passenger-side seat of my friend’s car, driving a road-trip across the province. He opened his glove compartment and there lay 7 or 8 CDs. All labeled in his perfectly enigmatic hand: Folk, Laid-Back, Jazz, Home…. We listened through them all, including Fav’s. I can’t say that there was anything that stood out about this CD more than others. He certainly didn’t covet it more than the others, suggesting that its name was a category of a bygone time. But we listened to it just the same.
Now, years later, having been through road-trips, jobs, living situations, and a litany of other experiences together, we’ve parted ways. Of course, we live in a world where “parting ways” is a ridiculous sentiment. Social media, smart-phones, and cheaper-than-ever transportation ensure that we’re never really separated. We’re together at the click of a button (and an overpriced internet package).
But, that same media has a single shortcoming – it can only help us fill in the future.
On a road-trip, one is reminded of the stoicism, longevity, and raw, rich beauty of the world around us. And that beauty is a generation of its history. It is certainly a reminder of the grandiose importance of existence – of our generating new memories and new experiences. (Indeed, that’s the very nature of a road-trip!). But if someone is really watching the scenery in between watching the traffic, they cannot help but be impressed upon by the sheer beauty filled in by those experiences long since passed.
24 tracks of my favourite friend. Our past. Our history.
I live in prized countryside.
A rose by any other name, does not, in fact, smell as sweet. I’ll concede to Shakespeare only that the smell would be the same. But sweetness fair Juliet spoke of, she smelled with her heart.
And the world over speaks of Montague and Capulet. What is in these names? ‘Tis, as our heroine’s wisdom suggests, not their anger, their love, nor any other part of their tragedy. But a name is something. And in it is something else. For we would not have heard of such love, nor would it have had such celebration, were Romeo’s body to find a different name.
I dare to suggest, to such a beautiful Juliet, that her greatest and only beloved would have thrown away perfection itself, were he to bid his name away as she wistfully commanded. And that is certainly was not what she wanted.
But how could she know? How could she know that what made Romeo so perfect was not merely the intoxicating loin-spark of his lust, nor the scandal of his endless reach? In his name was the forbidden fruit. In his name was the very marriage that made him perfect.
I have tasted a name. I have tasted many. I keep them, like one would keep good books – on the shelf of a mind, where a heart can go from time to time to remember what it’s digested.
I have names that are fun games. Simple memories. I have names that carry the mantle of my deep anger and disappointment. And I have names that conjure the impossible. Names that have changed me.
I even have one or two that are legacies of emotion.
We all do.
I don’t think I should like a rose so much as if it was called something else, though it might smell just the same. What’s in a name. What’s in a name is whatever I give it. Whatever you give it. Whatever we give it. And that gift is never nothing.
Shakespeare did not give the world 2 names. He gave 2 names the world. The world of love, of suffering, and of beauty.
And he let his namesakes be humble for him. But they knew. They knew like I know, and you know. What’s in a name is far more than any one part of a (wo)man. It is where we’re coming from. It’s what will go forward. It is where yesterday’s sunset meets tomorrow’s dawn. It is where tragedy and comedy join hand in hand in constant orgasmic resolution.
It is where everything is important. What’s in a name.
The shadow has stern lips.
A kiss from those lips is both treasure and travesty. For in the sweet seduction of an evening serenade there is a sadistic self-exclusion. And she is exceedingly efficient in those ministrations. Her lips extract her pleasures meticulously.
At first, it seems as though she promises nothing and implies everything. A passer-by is wooed into becoming a lover by the exceptional cool amongst her poise. She does not dance. Nor sing. Nor laugh. Nor embrace. She merely is, and she bears a chill that is neither comfortable nor cold. But she feels reminiscent of something that one might have wrapped themselves in, once upon a time.
She has no soul. She presents no eyes to gaze into; a journey to discover her character is an endless and fruitless thing. Unlike the Abyss, she does not proffer an endless evaporation of her lover’s efforts, and reciprocates no twisting of the seduced. She is merely a candle flame in the wind: out. Through such a condition she consumes offerings of spirit meaninglessly. Almost as an inconvenience to her existence.
Her nose rejects the claims of mortal men. They have no dominion over her. It is only here that she can be said to have any viewable personality. It is in her sense of scent that she provides haughty certainty: That she is all at once desirable and unavailable. To grasp at her is to attempt to redeem claims never made. One cannot own the air she exists in, as surely as she herself cannot be owned. But both smell sweet with promise.
Her skin is a dream’s love. Untouchable, it is the pale of non-existence itself. It conjures an image in ever mind that will never know it. It is singlehandedly the most hypocritical of the shadow’s features. For nothing has more presence within a lover’s mind than the tender skin it wishes to caress. And yet, nothing is less tangible than the form of the dark beloved. Here, yearning is born and borne.
But, though the lover carries yearning and desire into unrequited madness, the shadow remains unmoved. ‘Till she herself is consumed into midnight’s bosom, she offers nothing but stern lips and silence.
Somehow, the flower reminded her of the passions she had left behind.
That’s what made her stop, but it wasn’t quite right, and so her thoughts made her stay and examine the sight with more intensity.
The flower stood tall, the strong stem shooting straight up from the under-brush. This was a being that was well beyond the roughage below, and it knew it. The stalk that supported it was firm and thick. Prepared to carry its burden with the decorum it deserved, it held against the sun and sky. The wind itself would offer no threat. It preserved poise.
The petals, if you could call them petals, were razor-blades of colour. They echoed in the memory as sharp, intense blooms of a dedicated process. They stretched out towards the world, save the precious gathering in the middle, which protected the initial bud with both duty and beautiful dignity. They would not allow the precious center to be revealed a moment too soon. And so, slowly, literally one by one, they peeled back. Maybe only one or two would let go today. Certainly only one let go very tentatively yesterday. The world, they demanded as they clutched, would have to be patient.
What was inside must be very important to them; those strong little petals.
She looked closer. The petals looked strong, but their texture was the very memory of sensitivity. Uncurled and against the world, they were fragile. Almost uncertain, and certainly brave. The world was a place full of potential danger, and while their colours boasted brightly, there was an inner weakness to them, that made them soft. She imagined that, in a different time and place, on a different flower, these petals would long to be brushed against the nose of a little giggling girl.
Very carefully, she let the very tips of them kiss her cheek. They were princesses all.
As she felt it against her skin, she realized that this flower did not remind her of the passions she’d left behind. It reminded her instead of a private part of her. The part of her that had never forgotten those very important passions. In her day to day activities, inevitably there was a hope here and a dream there that was not realized. That had to be put aside in favor of responsibility and obligations. But those things were never forgotten. When the rest of the world demanded something of her that she could not refuse, she merely put her passions away. Away in hopes of shining another day, when the time was right.
This flower was a hidden little reflection of herself. Holding on. Slowly, carefully, bravely, blooming.
That was why it was perfect.
Photography by: Gillian Berger
Writing by: Zachary Webster
The first time he listened to God, it sounded like springtime rain sprinkling across the bare toes of his soul.
It was not the first time he had heard the sound of divinity. He had heard it all the time. In the sound of Sunday morning church bells, and in the allegories of great writers and subtle performers. He had heard it in the back of his conscience before he kissed a married woman and whenever someone pointed at the sunrise and said “that’s why I believe in God.”
Perhaps the first time he remembered hearing it was in the voice of his angry mother when he was young. Normally, when she was angry at him, she would shout and scream and go red in the face. But there were a couple of times (exactly 2, in fact, for he kept count) when she did not get loud. The first, when he was six, he had coloured on her favorite painting. He had no idea that it was originally her grandfather’s, his great-grandfathers, and one of the only remaining items that she had of his. Her chest puffed up and then down just as quickly, as her mind took in the ruined picture. Then her eyes deadened. And when her mouth opened, her voice was a calm, steady, and unwavering tone of discipline.
He had heard it in the background of life, like the baseline to a song playing in the mall while you’re shopping. Like the landmarks and tourist attractions that exist in your own city – all the ones you know exactly how to direct tourists to but have never made a destination of yourself. It was like the TV show that was always on whenever you went over to someone else’s house.
But hearing and listening were two very different things. When he heard his mother, he heard only that he had hurt her. He was too busy looking to the consequences of his actions to really listen to the sound of actuality that was happening in front of him. He was also too young. (God says to be like the children to adults, but what can He say to children, save perhaps “remember what I sound like.”) He merely heard a message, the way a computer receives a code, and interpreted it to his benefit.
And to his credit, interpret it he did. He only ever hurt his mother like that one more time, and even then, only completely by accident.
He had, all his life, tried to understand this “religion” thing before. He’d become infatuated with it since the first time he heard a friend explain it to him. It filled a hole you didn’t know you were missing. He didn’t know he was missing anything in his life. He didn’t feel like anything was missing. Still, he wondered what could be this thing that he could be missing, and so he looked.
He attended church services. They did nothing for him. So he quit going.
He attended a bible study or two. They were fun, very academic. But the TV was still on, and it wasn’t his. It felt like he was at the mall again, and while they were all shopping through the emotive intellectualism of their religion’s finer points, he couldn’t figure out what this had to do with the background music that everyone was listening to and everyone said was “so important.”
He read a book. A book about someone who saw God in everything. It was a good book. He thought it was better than THE Good Book. This is where he got the idea that he must be missing it the way locals miss local tourist attractions. This book explained that once you do see the divine, you can’t stop seeing the divine.
He tried prayer. He prayed with others, but that felt false, so he stopped doing it. He prayed on his own, but that provided him with no response, so eventually he just forgot about it. He did talk to the sky once in a while. Mostly while waiting for the bus, or when walking in the rain. But it was more like talking to an imaginary friend who had super powers, rather than a God.
He cannot say how, or even exactly when, it happened. He described it ever afterward as a kind of happy accident. Like a picture with two images, he focused on a search for God with scholarly devotion, trying to discover the detail that would shift his understanding and reveal this other gap-filling image. And yet, all he saw was God. God here, God there. He began to know the baseline so well he could conduct an orchestra of God woulds and God shoulds.
And then, one day, he stubbed his toe.
His girlfriend had left him a month ago when she found out that he had made out with a married woman. And he was now moving out of the apartment that they had shared because the lease was up and he couldn’t afford it on his own. He was angry about something else entirely (as it turned out, there was nothing worth watching on his TV) and turned around the corner just quick enough to stub his toe on the corner of a box. It was heavy, containing a bunch of his old porn magazines, and didn’t budge against the meager force of his little toe.
It really, really hurt. He let out a string of curses, including but not limited to “God damn it.” And then, in his pain, he chuckled thinking to himself that God would not have damned it. If anything, God endorsed it. He let it happen.
He sat there for a moment, on the ground. Next to the box. On his un-vacuumed floor. His toe throbbed, the pain fading with each pump of blood into his foot. God let this happen. He was here, in this moment, with his stubbed toe because he had put that box there. God let him put that particular box, full of those particular things, in that specific spot. Because he was moving. God let the landlord decide that the rent needed to go up, and God let lots of people know that this spot was available for rent. God let him drink too much 2 months ago, and let him give in to passions he probably shouldn’t have. And God gave him the dawn to encourage him to fess up and say the right thing. And God let his girlfriend walk out the front door the next day. All the while, his imaginary friend in the sky merely walked along and smiled and never asked why. But it was all the collective reason that he was there. On the ground. Next to the box. On his un-vacuumed floor.
That’s why God wouldn’t damn it.
He smiled. The image changed. Listening to God was not about seeing the picture of His image. It was about seeing what was made in His image. And what was there was, quite simply everything.
His toe felt much better. And it was true – he couldn’t help but listen all the time after that. When he stretched in the morning, or when he bumped into an old friend. When his morning coffee wasn’t quite right, and when he hit a red light right next to a church. When he saw sunsets he didn’t look and point – he closed his eyes and felt the breeze against his skin.
When someone asked him what it was like, he didn’t bother telling them the story about an unknown hole in your soul being filled up.
No, he just told them it was like listening to the rain.
We all have two voices.
The one with which we speak in,
And the one with which we write.
One for our outside whims,
And one for our inside plight.
One is the mask we wear to polite occasions,
To the campfire hall and water-cooler conversations,
But the other walks the flesh with sacred posture,
Indulging in naked persuasion.
The subtle difference is not of art,
It’s not of doing, but of heart.
Because when I speak in the moment, I am alive,
But when I write, my spirit thrives.
My inside voice is not the inside voice used by little kids,
The kind that is used for quiet discourse between 9am and recess.
It’s the kind that’s inspired by “God bless,”
And inspires “God, yes!”
It is the sound that remembers the spirit of Shane Koyczan and admires the poetry of Shakepeare;
That is finally finished with hoping and dreaming,
And instead has started pointing and screaming.
“What, the fuck, are you doing?
“Don’t ‘just breathe’, just seethe! Don’t let the anarchists of emotion force you to secede,
“Your mind was meant to teethe.
“Let it bite down on the boiling bile and bubbling joy.
“Take a lesson from Troy.
“The world should move for love, and die for the part.
“When you stop ‘just feeling’ and start thinking with your heart,
“You think smart.
“Our soul is not two roads diverged in a Frost’s wood and we one traveler.
“We can travel both. Arm in arm. Hand in hand.
“As surely as your life is attached to your birth,
“Your heart is attached to your sense of worth.
“And when you let your logical mind be a sword for your lust,
“You encourage a soul’s trust.
“Take the goddamned power you feel and put it in the palm of your hand.
“Each moment is a grain of sand,
“Which you use to build your castle, your bridge, your wall and your brand.
“And 10 fingers grasps so much more than 5 can.
“Ecclesiastes may come to blow it away,
“Yes, it is true.
“But to hell with him, is all you have to say.
“Yours will be the best vapor on the wind.
“Don’t stay crystal clean; a house of tin,
“Redefine what it means to fucking sin.”
My outside voice sounds like whatever you hear,
Whatever you know. Whatever you fear.
I cannot control the sound that comes from those vocal chords,
Those proper vibrations meant to send my expression toward,
The object of my desire.
I cannot determine whether I sound like Barry White or a cute little kid with a Ninja Turtles kite.
But my inside voice sounds like the morning’s first breath of fresh air,
where the dawning sun and virgin sky brightly declare
that there is meaning.
Because there is.
What do you sound like?
A Tale of Two Artistries 