While talking with the poet, I see again the eighteen year old boy, who, I learn, lives above the small theater.
I befriend him, and we talk for some time. He appears to be soft spoken, but his philosophy on life tells quite a different story.
He calls himself Pablo, and he has women scattered throughout the city.
This is all he really does, women. Some may see this as a trying act, sex all the time, but the boy is of a different breed.
Women are, quite literally, his breakfast, lunch and dinner. He nourishes himself with their female powers, their orgasmic energies. This is enough to keep him living each and every day.
The women all know this about him. They know they are receiving something from him as well. Not necessarily what some may call “unconditional love,” but instead, ecstasy… being beside one’s self with joy… moments of complete loss and freedom.
He’s just a boy giving women their innocence again, their truest, most natural curving beauty.
Every night, he returns home to The People’s Playhouse, to the storage room where the costumes are kept. This doubles as his bedroom. He fancies the costumes and tries them on, acting out the different characters.
Multiple women, multiple personalities. A madman and a lover, truly.
The Moon As A Source Of Energy
As I drift from place to place, I am visited by an old woman. She relates the world so gracefully together, she speaks directly to the heart of every human matter.
“When the moon gives a gift to the world, what might that be?”
I shake my head, unsure.
“The imagination coming to life, and not like the sun every day, but only for a period out of every month, and for that one period out of every month, our imaginations come fully alive. Like a woman, we are graced with a tidal wave.”
Her language baffles me, and she notices.
“Inspiration, my child. Now take heed, and realize your imagination in the world.”
The Art of Dreaming
I continue on with my adventure, and along the way, I bump into Pablo. We jaunt along together to a bookstore built underground, a place where artists and writers gather.
After speaking with many of them, I understand there is a female artist they all admire.
They sketch a portrait for me:
She lives in the hills, amongst the clouds. When she comes down to the city, the people can tell, for she has an imagination that takes over.
She covers their mental architecture with a blanket of her own dream and design.
When she is not sculpting her landscape of visions, she enjoys simpler arts like finding discarded wood pieces and decorating them in a tribal fashion. After admiring the little totems, she places them on display in public, wherever an area is in need of life and color.
When she is on her own, she feels most at home and loves to dance around.
She conceives herself being an artist in many exotic ways, and for this reason alone, she is unlike most anybody else.
Although, candidly, she considers herself an actress.
To say the least, I have the strangest feeling they collectively made her up.
The Man Who Lives In His Imagination
There is a man, who stays in his house, and seldom exits. When he does leave, he leaves to read his poetry, which he has practiced and written.
This is where he goes:
A small outdoor theater, built into a hill, with seats made entirely of concrete.
He stands at the bottom, holding a podium, and speaks to the empty seats:
One by one
people fill the rows
and as if by magic
my voice echoes through the streets
drawing the people closer.
My hands grip the podium near
my body emits a rumble
with every enunciation of a word
people feel my stories.
The sound
travels first
from my throat
to my heart
to my feet,
and it vibrates
the concrete
of your seats,
the roads
and the streets.
My microphone -
a stone podium.
For my voice travels not through the air
but drums a different beat entirely.
When he’s finished reading, I catch a quick moment with him, but we don’t have a conversation, he only tells me a story:
The House Of The Lovers
In their room, all day, they make love. Moving so far into one another, they turn into a scent of their own. Pushing even further, they taste of a peach unknown. Their heavy breathing, so deep and ecstatic, can barely be heard.
As I conveyed my poems, not through spoken words alone, but instead with vibrations through stone, so the lovers ripple the wood of their home. Absorbing the moans of loving, turning them into rhythms of fucking, the house is a-shake with pleasure.
Together, the lovers appear as a Grecian sphinx. Body of a lion, head and breast of a woman, wings of an eagle spread wide.
Down the hall live musicians.
As the lovers make love, so the musicians make music, and aided by the loving pulsation, they sing out their joy for the world.
Celebration And Peace
After spending a long, labyrinthian night traveling through the streets, and the buildings, and the thoughts of this dreaming city, only now do I hear their world coming fully to life with laughter and singing, dogs barking and instruments loving.
The people drum on into the night, stomping the earth with their feet, shouting and howling, dancing in feverish celebration.
The people do not disturb the peace with their hooting and hollering, they help keep the peace alive.
I join in with the festivities, and dance until I can dance no more.
The Sleeping Culture
As the sun seeps in through the clouds, and my mind starts to stir, I recall all that took place during the night.
I walk to a corner cafe, my legs aching, and order a breakfast of eggs, toast and fruit. I contemplate my new memories and all that I learned.
The only way I am able to come to terms with the images now rooted in my mind, is to merge with the dream, a special place where the passage of time is slowed, nights intertwine with days, and lifetimes are lived in moments.
I laugh, reliving experiences that feel all too real.
As I reach into my pocket to pay for breakfast, I shake my head with a grin. I pull out a slip of paper that reads, “Sounds travel, vibrations communicate, and in this way, we are able to learn from the beat of a heart.”
I crumple the paper up, but notice a poem on the back as well. It simply reads, “Sleeping dreams are real.”
