A cage

There is a steel cage, the size of a house to your right, in a world of sand dunes and waterless   mountains. In the cage is a man with no clothes. No genitals. But he is not old. He is long haired, and young and wild and hissing. An aboriginal you think. He stares at you with jaundiced eyes as if stolen form the sun itself. This early instinct is confirmed when the Equinox tells you he had ‘followed you back from the conclave, trying to steal solar from your phantom body.’ You tune in to check and find all your sun systems still there, even though their original orbits has changed. The bald man, who is your counterpart, appears menacing now as he stalks up to the cage, his velvet black dress in the slow storm wind, a majestic terror that you are watching (like an art film) in the psychedelic sun. Heat waves, rattlesnake like dancing, bending and feverish in this open land but you feel no heat, no phantom body can. Your own footsteps, drag marks, are on the curving dust roads that lead to the house, and the cage. You look down at your feet again, caked in mud, and wonder where the water had gone. The whole earth looks so thirsty, a greater sign perhaps, everyone seeking to quench. The man in the cage is pacing, a reminiscence of tiger, a wild thing trapped and taunted openly. The Equinox is standing at one of the corners, studying the figure inside. You keep thinking of suns in that man’s eyes, how he wanted to steal yours. He’s staring out through the bars, back at you. “You’re still in your sleepers daze, sun man! Hahaha!” he spits in your direction, yellow phlegm caught on the bars, sizzling like acid. “Don’t listen to him” Equinox warns. “oh? And you tranny magus? You ‘re sick and tired of this cycle I know, died so many times yes? Your fifth cycle doing this? Trying to bring back the powerful Saul from the unlands? You got bits of him back here that’s for sure, but just bits and scraps like the food of the dogs!” Equinox stands next to you, “maybe you should go back to the house.” No. you want to hear this, it’s still information, it’s still details that fills in a bigger picture. “what do you want from me?” you   ask the prisoner. H laughs. “what do you want, what do you want. So typical! It’s what I can GIVE, magic man, what I HAVE. It’s what do YOU want!” you know it’s not a trick. There’s an element of truth somewhere in that cracked voice, that dried spirit pacing the cage.

   “You wanted a sun from me.”

“Only in exchange my dear friend! For me to get home.”

“I’m not your friend.”

“Ha ha ha, of course you are, I told you, you’re in a sleepers daze. You don’t remember, but I tell you, Carcosia beach, the rooster, the House of Andar, Ghos_Haus, NICOLE. You will remember Saul, you will!”

The bald man interrupts, “I think that’s enough. Let me find out who sent him. Wait inside.”

“See! He wants you to wait inside, be oblivious to your myth!”

“Don’t listen to him Saul.”

“HE’S the enemy, not me! I’m Mad Monroe Saul! We KILLED together in the war! COME ON! RECOLLECT YOU FOOL!”

“Shut your mouth bandit!”

The bandit in the sky. You suddenly remember him but not Monroe. Decades ago, maybe lifetimes, you touched the realms of the bandit. Nightside, star systems up above, they rode like the hounds across constellations, like the wild hunters, but from a different myth. You never spoke to anyone of them, but their life paths, it’s signature current, felt familiar to you. You turn to your companion and ask him politely to go into the house. “Let me speak with this bandit.” You say. Quietly, I agree with you and signal to him to do the same. We leave you with the man in the cage.



There are things you had taken from the dream states, objects that belong to your myth and story. But there are things that you cannot have taken, things that belong to different continuums. You learn, from the bandit, that these things could be yours, for the price of a sun. But you ask him what good   these things   are if they are not relevant to your own myth.



“all artifacts are relevant, you must find the context. To stay within your own system of connections and symbols, to work with what you already know, what good is that? Work with alien objects, open up new vistas, it is there that you will find the breakthrough to beyond your own   restraints, transcending what was already written, to write new myths, to develop new yous.” You know that The Equinox is watching from   the mouth of the door but you ignore him. You converse continually with the bandit. He is now sitting on the floor of the cage, drawing symbols into the earth with his finger. “I’m no longer who you used to know. Ma Monroe. I just said that out loud in hopes of triggering off your memory, but I think some other memory has been triggered. The bandits. Their myths are older than both us, combined, but they still take in new bandits.” He leans closer to you,” I’ve stolen things, not even meant to exist. I’ve got something here that I think should belong to you.” He closes his eyes and the air before him opens like a black hole. It is a white room, with an art installation. Four potted plants arranged n a semi circle is in front of you. Each of these plants are taken from four different worlds. The first pot has think like roots but growing out of typical dark soil. The stems are electric blue and some kind of current flows through it. You step close and realize its electric blood, crackling slightly with your presence. The end of the roots at the top are wriggling like larvae in water, tongues lashing around to touch something profound and distinct like your presence. It says its species is ‘Elondara.’ The second pot is a drug plant, you recognize it’s smell. Its the only plant that is familiar to you in the room. ‘The Black Flowers’, are stimulants for opening up the higher inner eyes of the recipients. You know that this is the bridge drug, to access the other worlds of the other psychofauna. The third pot is psychic combat. A mercenary group of disembodied spirits. They tell you their family name is Armishtah. They can tear through an army if needed, all under your command. The physical form of this plant is fruit like. Eight bowling ball like ‘seeds’ heavy and solid and dormant, awaiting your touch. The last of the plants is unknown. There is only a deep blue and red mixture of water, or thick gel. Something yellow glows inside, moves when you gaze at it, inside that light is a deeper black thing, throbbing, obscure, magnificent. It does not tell you its name. The four in unison allures, they are untouched and untainted by any other visitor. You are the first to this room, you and the bandit. Two of you sharing one common experience. They understand the bandit is just the transactor. He does not count as a contact. They await your choice. They do not mind being binded to you. All in exchange.



<p class="MsoNormal">“and what is it you want from my system”

<p class="MsoNormal">The bandit smiles, nothing cunning here, just a smile of knowing that perhaps he can finally return to his home.

<p class="MsoNormal">“The intercessional sun. It’s a dormant system inside you,   there’s the priest Vincent, the siblings of which the girl is dead and awaiting burial. The mother spirit N, and the boy Jacob. His uncle is within another system inside you so giving up the nephew is of no concern to your mythology.” You remember this arc. The watchtower Angels, the red candle, the invoker, the Family name of LORE. “It’s one of my earlier myths. You want me to give it up?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“You no longer need it Saul! You’ve evolved! There are a many other great systems waiting to awaken in you, these psychofauna, this room of installations, its only small but paramount part. So many other orbits you will include in your constellation. Listen within and you will hear that it is true…all that I say, all that you’ve seen, is no illusion. It will work well with you, this that I’m gifting to you, in exchange of course, like I said, for the intercession. I need them to finish my transition back. They will be of a great service to me, as you will be because they currently serve you. Let them go unto me Saul. I ask you nicely from a man who also wishes to go home.” The image of the room closes and you look across you, to the   man in the cage, who is now settled down and quiet, you look at his body, frail and covered in mud, lines in his face etches long eons across the skies of night side and you agree to the exchange. There is no longer a need to feel like you’re following the courses in the house, especially the other figure, The Equinox. The sleep is lifting, you feel less vague, less unsure of the in between states. Something had crystallized during your conversation with The bandit. You feel empowered somewhat by this event. Instinctively you know the rituals, the closing of the eyes, the opening u p of the air before you. You turn your gaze inwards to your agalctic core, you see the trajectories, the movement of the suns and the planet that bears your sigil and your signature. You penetrate the flow, the turning of the stars and find the dormant memory, the intercessional planet. Andrea. That was the name of the woman who was killed in action during the red candle episode of your many lives. Her body is lying in state now, in the great valleys of the priest. You see the spirit mother there watching over her consort. You the man Lou-curse, the brother of Andrea. The amadause   family. A deep part of you that held on that myth is released. Worldlessly they are thanking you for allowing them to be part of your myth cycle. One by one they enter the pyramidal vehicle of transitions, into crystalline lights. Into the grid door. The bandit raises the sigil of the room, bamboo looking lines in mid air, the color of trees on earth. The crystalline image grid is before him, the sigil of the room before him and then the images cross, into each other, temporarily crossing energies, magnetically pulling away from one body of myths to another. The exchange is   powerful and esoteric. Liens cross and doors open and worlds coincide, separate and reunite with new masters and families. A new star is borne within you. One more artifact leaves the bandit but he receives a ship to sail home. The cage is dissolving, slowly before your eyes. The sun appears to be setting, there is no more thirst and dryness around you. A wind ha picked up, the earth feels a bit softer now under your feet though you phantom body cannot fully experience such materiality, but you know, you know the landscape is changing because of this exchange. The sounds of the wild hunt echoes from across the skies above. You hear horsemen, gallop and hound, wolfing, howling the mantra of diassociation. One of the bandits is going home. The cage vanishes. The man with sun in his eyes is no longer tensed and dynamic. He is at rest, a deep altering countenance is upon him. “Thank you old friend.” He says, and those are his last words from the last traces of his visage as the wind carries away every trace of the event. It ends and continues.

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<p class="MsoNormal">Objects in the house have changed location. There is a new fire burning in the hearth, a hearth that was not there before. Something ignited, something set free. The equinox seems pleased, believing in the process, believing in the events that has transpired. Night time has fallen, there is no more the sound of grinding from the unknow place. The Equinox is in a black leather sofa reading the book you had brought back. “the contents have changed, in your book I mean.” You nd, you understand. Landscape, book,   layout of the house, everything shifts after such an exchange. You begin to understand the dynamism of the actions, that each course shifts other terrains. This is how the world transforms. You know it is time for the sleep. For the travels to the other places and you somehow know that your mind will be a lot more aware of what goes on in the other place. You sit upon your bed, you lie down, you feel a different kind of blood coursing through you, you sense the lights from a distant city, becoming clearer, you feel the pull and power of a night you recognize clearly, you hear he voices you are meant to hear, you sense the people you are meant to meet and believe in the myth you’re about to re-create.

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