In between rapture and reptilian, I declare myself immortal, imbibing dark tasty brews in the back of some smoky bar ... a treat of an evening's libation in the hometown ... Swirlington ... with the smacky clack of billiard balls as they whack and scuttle down the chutes ... I Declare Myself Immortal! Fastened forever in every direction and honeyed in the sweet nectar of this very moment ... my friends Layla and Gem sitting next to me talking ... The Temptations crooning over the speakers ... ambient noises of bar glasses and conversation, the bar not empty or full, half heard remarks break like waves on the shore of my earscape, coming forth, receding, No, I didn't know, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, you should just tell him. A woman sitting at the corner of the bar strikes a match and brings it to the tip of her cigarette. Inhaling as the tip glows, shaking the match out, a curling cloud she blows ... looking over and seeing me watching and writing she smiles. The moment glistens. It stays both bright and vivid and it continues.

Layla leans across the table and asks what I'm writing.

A book! I say.

A book? What about?

Its a book about you and me and immortality and fathoming the ever-changing realms of consciousness!

Does it have any good sexy parts?

It just might Layla ... We'll have to wait and see ... It's really just starting right now.

Can I read it?

Of course, but not yet.

Why not?

You and Gem are playing pool ... remember?

Oh yeah ... Hey look, we're up right now ... Let's go Gem.

Okay, says Gem, amicably.

The sights outside the witnesses' eyes make up the whole of he or she. The two together make a harmony that is at times discordant and chaotic, and at other times grooves symphonically like cellos and violins, or Lovers, or dolphins and the sea ... Immortal I Tell You!

It was the tiniest thought last night, as I was laying myself down to bed, fluffing my pillow, for my weary head longed for a comfortable pad of fluff. Moving some fluff from one space to another, I changed the shape of the fluff, but the scope of the pillow stayed the same, and I lay my head down and was thinking about that.

Also I was thinking that particular night about a part of me that had been born just recently ... a new hunger, you could call it ... a new part of me that I was discovering, that I was feeling very strongly that night ... and that thought led me to think of an old part of me that had died away ... a part of me that just wasn't there any more, which I recognized only by its absence ... parts of me had been born and others died away, but there was a constant me running throughout all this dying and birthing...

All these thoughts swam in my head like a school of fish, creating a bigger thought, which, like a shark, fed quickly on these smaller thoughts, and became its own strong swift entity ... a theory, if you will...

Life is the polar opposite of death, much like black is the polar opposite of white, much like a screaming fighter jet is the polar opposite of a playful acoustic guitar duo. And I'm sure I'm not the first sentient poet ever to think this, but there seems to be a steadfast law when one is dealing in the realm of polarities; one cannot exist without the other. Black must have its white and angry fist must have its gently waving flower. Therefore, if we hold that to be true, then we must see that the line between the two polarities must have its UN-line between. The division must also have its conjuncture.

Life and death then, have a place where they are not so separate ... a place where they mesh...

And that was my thought, which was not in those words yet. It was only a tiny seed of a thought that germinated in my sleep and grew all day and flowered in my mind.

Eventually I just couldn't take it anymore and told Layla and Gem that I had to go sit somewhere for a minute and write (for the gears in my mind needed stillness to be able to move). Layla suggested this place so that they could play pool, which they are doing.

Therefore, poetry not withstanding, I conclude ... as much as I'm mortal ... as much as I'm flesh and blood (currently slowly deteriorating, scribbling frantically, sucking occasionally from this delicious walnut brew, sitting in the back of this smoky bar in Swirlington), I'm also living purely in the whiz-bang sparkle of the eternal moment ... in the timeless now.

The Now that was when Eve bit the apple. The Now that was and is beyond mortality when Buddha first reached enlightenment ... the moment Inanna first sat in the Huluppu-Tree-Throne by the banks of the Euphrates, and the world became hers ... or a moment of Divine Dullness passed on a day no historian cares about ... the same moment, as some branches of science will have us believe, that the universe banged itself into existence from some pinpoint of rather dense matter ... the same ever-fleeting Now that you are reading these words! The same oscillating Now as when my pen inked it! The Now of the full moon wine dance that lay secretly throughout all of our dreamings! The Now spread over the whole globe that is forever unending!