There are
Three parts
Of OM

AHHHH
—Open mouth wide
Release fully
All breath

OHHHH
—Narrows lips
As if to whistle
Focus sound
Drop pitch

MMMMM
—Close lips
Smiling, similar
To satisfaction
After eating

Then silence
Before repeating

>>>

My back starts hurting, usually, when I am seated or standing for a long period.

Why am I seated or standing for a long period? To work.

Why am I heeding the call to work and ignoring the pain in my back?

>>>

Self-conscious

I do
Or say something

As I would
Alone

Without realizing
I am not

>>>

A handle pokes out from under the blanket draped over the daybed. I put the pan beneath the bed before I went to sleep last night, in case of an intruder.

Usually, I write well when I take mushrooms, or at least more creatively. I lie here, on pillows on the floor, having taken them once more, waiting for something to write about.

When I take mushrooms, I sit, lie, lounge, walk in circles, but mostly just wait in between bouts of writing. WHY CAN I NOT DO THIS SOBER?

Mushrooms remind me how to live like a child, but then I go back to living in the adult world. They treat me like one of them because I look like one of them. I often want to do things that are not customary in the adult world, either because they are just not usually done or because the law explicitly forbids it. When walking on the sidewalk the other day, I was curious about a shrub. But I could only see its leaves. I was interested in the trunk and the branches. I thought to get down on my hands and knees there on the sidewalk to have a look, but then these other thoughts came marching one after another into my mind like soldiers. One of the soldiers said, the sidewalk is dirty. The next said, someone will see you. The next said, you are not dressed like a gardener. And so I went, walking on down the sidewalk, not knowing what I would have seen if I had lifted up the skirt of the shrub.

I finish one piece of writing. I want to continue on. I have more to say—things I thought of while writing, but they were unrelated or otherwise wouldn’t fit in the prose, because of the technicality of it, and at the moment I was writing, they wouldn’t fit presently, so I carried on with whatever else and my other thoughts waiting in the queue were forgotten. But I have now remembered some of them! Alas, they are only parts. Their beauty was, and still is, in their belonging to and being placed in each of the appropriate stations inside of the whole. Now, I must forget them, maybe forever. Whether they will return to me, in my mind, is up to forces greater than me. My only choice in the matter is either to hold them and have them as they are for me now, or to let them go and know, twofold—that they may never return to me, but also that new and different others may come to fill their absences. Consistently faced with his choice, how deep shall I go with any one thought? How much time shall I spend with her? Does she have more to teach me, more to say? Or might I learn more from others—different, younger ones? Are my wishes the only ones to be considered in this matter? Now I am thinking no longer of thoughts, but of my relationship with my girlfriend.

On my knees, on the rug, I become aware of the classical music playing. I close my eyes, raise my arms in the air above my head, bend them at the elbow, twirl my fingers, curve the side of my body into a bow, and dance to the music—slowly, softly. I had a thought that someone might be watching. The possibility that someone might be watching made me ask myself, should I be dancing in this way? And now other thoughts come of this. First, we are at a cabin in the woods, just my girlfriend and I, and it is unlikely that anyone is watching. Second, if someone were watching, why should I dance any differently or stop? Third, why is it that someone else watching makes me consider whether I should or should not be doing something? Not even them ACTUALLY watching, just the THOUGHT that they MIGHT be makes me second-guess the way in which I am dancing, alone in a cabin in the woods. Perhaps it is too feminine—the way my side bends into a bow and my fingers twirl. I am a man. Should I, therefore, not be dancing like a woman?

As a writer, I think of myself as such—as being one, a writer. When I write, if it seems like it might be becoming a piece that will be well-received—like a young boy shows early athletic promise and might grow up to become a great baseball player—then the thought that it might be so interrupts me while I have not yet finished with making the piece whole. I think to myself, what if so-and-so reads this, or if they publish me in such-and-such magazine? And then what will that mean for me? Riches, fame, and all the other gifts that are usually given to the main character in a story that ends well. But it interrupts me, this dream of glory, as I am still in the act of making the darn thing.

I worry that I can only write well when I have eaten mushrooms. I don’t believe this is true. I think I write well even when I have not eaten mushrooms. It is the READING that is different after having eaten mushrooms. Everything I read seems to be right and true, fantastic and new. It seems this way whether I have written it or someone else has. When I am writing, I am also reading what I have written. On mushrooms, what I am writing sounds wonderful. I have had this experience several times—eating mushrooms, writing, deeming it well-written. Thusly must the belief, first, and worry, next, have arisen.

Now, as an aside, being an aside because I believe my previous thought has concluded well where it has, still, I might add: I have read, while on mushrooms, what I wrote, while NOT on mushrooms, and found it to be the work, not of a genius but, of one relatively advanced in their craft. I have also read, while NOT on mushrooms, what I wrote, while on mushrooms, and found it to be the work of a lunatic who aspired to write, discovered mushrooms, thought they might aid in his writing process, ate them too often, and never stayed sober long enough to master the intricacies of the craft, which can only be learned by long hours of bored, tedious, and frustrated trying-and-failing, interspersed with reading the greats and wondering—of some of them, why can I not write as well as this myself; of others, are they really as great as everyone says they are?

While writing on mushrooms, many thoughts come to mind while I am already engaged with writing a specific one. Some of these I can forget easily, as they showed a little promise of extraordinariness. Others, those that show more promise, make it difficult for me to decide—between cutting short my current engagement (writing a thought that, before, what the same as this other one than I now consider, a question mark) and ignoring it to delve deeper where I am already standing, up to my knees in disturbed dirt, digging deeper still, to find any stones unturned. They linger, like a first taste that forbids a full bite. With one hand they wag a finger in front of my face that says “no, not yet.” The other hand they hold out, palm facing up. They are asking for something. A price. The price I must pay if I wish to bite into, chew, and mull over the thought to which I have not yet committed. The price is the one with whom I am already. Both, I cannot have. I must place the one I have, still an infant, into the upturned palm. I will never know what the youngling might have grown up to be. But, oh! Here is another, newer, brighter. If only shining its light to attract, if the flame cannot stay lit, if it proves to be no better than the one I had before, then I will go searching once more, and again—the two hands: one, wagging its finger; the other, an upturned palm.

I feel that one of us will win, and the other must then lose. Why must it be this way? I read recently that, based on our evolutionary predispositions, the man desires to spread his seed far and wide, while the woman wants to retain a man to provide for and protect herself and any children they may have together. Is this true? How can I say? But let’s pretend that it is. The desires of the man and the woman are opposing. The women cannot retain the man while he continues to spread his seed. Or, maybe … Already I see margins of possibility in which the man and the woman, in the context of a monogamous relationship between them, must not necessarily be opposing forces. Alas, here I am on the ground floor, writing my own thoughts, while my girlfriend is upstairs writing hers (I can hear the keys clacking on her keyboard), and we are breaking up. It’s not a surprise. We’ve been talking about it. At one point, she wanted me to pack my things and leave that same day. Somehow we ended up here together in this beautiful cabin nestled in the forest of Northern California outside of town called Elk. And I return to my beginning question: if we are to separate, why must it feel like one side is winning and the other is losing? Because one side chooses to end it while the other wants it to continue. There is the opposition: one wants it to end while the other wants to continue. In this situation, both cannot have what they want. Unless, maybe the relationship can transform. One wants it to end, but maybe it doesn’t need to end on the whole. Would the other be okay with a few modifications, in part? Could the relationship still live on, after the modifications? This makes me realize: relationships are always transforming. Because they involve individuals who are always changing. What happens when one changes in a way that the other doesn’t want them to? Then it becomes complicated. She asks, were you this way when I met you? How could I not have seen it? All my other relationships were the same way. Blaming—me, herself, past boyfriends. But the facts remain: people change, relationships transform. Now, the question is: how do we navigate the transformation?

I thought I heard her crying. I couldn’t tell if it was just the music or if she really were up there whimpering, sniffling. I got up and walked over to the steep steps (almost a ladder) of the old-water-tower-turned-cabin. I grabbed the railing and climbed up. There she was—her caramel skin in contrast to the white sheets, her curly hair slightly frizzy (as it gets when she’s been rolling around in bed). I asked how she was doing, if she was okay, or something like that (I forget exactly what I said). We skated, as we tend to, like those water bugs, along the surface, before descending. Then she told me that she HAD been crying. I told her, oh, I’m sorry, well, that is why I came up here. Then she said oh, did you hear me? You couldn’t have. It was only a tear. I wasn’t sobbing. I told her about how I thought I had heard crying in the music. We marveled. I must have FELT her crying, somehow, even though I wasn’t actually hearing her. She was crying because she read a few pages out of a book she found on the steps by a Vietnamese author about how he was thankful for his mother and for memories of when she would take him to the mall. My girlfriend’s mother is Vietnamese. I suspect that is why she felt a closeness to this particular book. She said, “I realized I want to cry more. I want to have things in my life that make me cry. Not just shallow melodrama. You know? Like (and she preceded to describe what she meant and how she felt in words that were perfect, but all I can remember is …) things that make you feel like you’re on the brink of being alive.” The moment was sublime, terribly so. I, knowing our relationship was ending, one tear already on my cheek and more welling. Her, being beautiful in her body as she always is, but then also the depths and intricacies of her emotions, as well as her lexical prowess to communicate them. The trees through the window behind her, bending in the wind, a glint on the glass making their green look red. Ah! What is a man to do? Other than audibly call for his deity, cry more than he already has, and shield his eyes, only to pry them back open, unveiling the portal to his heart, inviting in the moment that is more than can be captured by any artist, no matter how skilled, nor how numerous his forms. Only I, as I was in that moment, the material world as it was, chakras balancing, energy fields in opposition, formless feelings floating, angels singing—all conspiring to torture me, as if all the potency of life were distilled down into one drink, one swallow. As soon as it touched my lips I sputtered and spat. If it were spread out and watered down, so that I could have had time to process, make rational, cram into my own understanding—then I could have taken it. As it was—me, her, and the trees through the window behind her—I had to run. In this case, I slowly descended the steep steps, holding onto the railing. It took some willpower and a great deal more conditioned concern for my bodily well-being not to suddenly fling myself down them as fast and as recklessly as my heart and soul were fleeing. But no matter the manner in which I did, I ran, nonetheless. I ran like I always do. I ran like a thief into a field clutching above my head the bouquet of flowers she had given me, petals flying off of them as I went. See, I’ve never been able to stay put there and just listen to her. As soon as she starts being beautiful (which is immediately, and always) I run away with derivatives, hand-me-downs of her to render into my heart, so that others will pay me, praise me, or whatever will validate the male equivalent of female beauty. I do this, even as I am somewhat aware that I am running in a wide circle, the path of which is laden with obstacles, deceits, let-downs, repetitious exhaustion, self-loathing, and various other trials which must be faced by a man working his way up through the world to be worthy of a woman at the top—all of this, I persist in putting myself through, even as the woman of my dreams lies here in bed asking me, why will you not listen to me? Why will you not come to bed? Why will you not stay?

*** This prose above has the same idea as the poem, HER HONEY. I need to return to that poem. The idea is there. It is true. But it is not yet well-written.

When I forget to breathe, I cannot make up for it by taking rapid deep breaths, which is my habit. I failed, was resultantly worse off, may even suffer lasting damage, but there are some mistakes in the past that I can’t set right presently. I can only learn from them and avoid making the mistake again.

I am realizing, now that I’ve come down from the mushrooms high but still writing, that STAYING PRESENT is important for writing well. This is a partial answer to a recurring question: why do I write better on shrooms, compared to being sober? When I write sober, it usually goes like this: I am inspired by some sensory input, thought, or feeling, and then I formulate an IDEA thereof. I thus interrupt the otherwise seamless flow from stimulation to words, by having an IDEA of the stimulation before I begin to write. I end up writing about an impostor, the intermediary idea. While on shrooms, I stay present. I write about whatever comes up. And I write honestly, rarely second-guessing.