Floating

In a daze, what is a place, what is a time? I am in Georgia. I am in a city. People live, eat, breathe, walk around of their own free will. There are tall buildings, and cars that drive at their master's will, headlong around the next corner, oblivious of future destruction, fuel-life, or breakdown. Laundry hangs sodden. Flowers grown and wilt in their boxes. Gravel rests against the curb, skipped there by a passing tire, but not skipped upon by a little boy. The Gravel will wait unexpectantly. Maybe rain, maybe a disconsolate shoe, maybe another tire will move it. Only an outward force can change its position in space. And I, do I move, do I wilt, do I know what's around the corner? Do I have will to move or do I wait for a shoe to kick me too?
This day I float.
There is a cablecar in Tbilisi. It rises in an unbroken sweeping arc all the way up a mountain. One wonders that there aren't more supporting towers in its mile length. One wonders if that single cable can hold you up rising all that distance above the trees below. But wondering does just about nothing good for you, as discovered on my way up and down the elevator in my building every day. And so the city falls away beneath us, the noises, the bustle, people at play in their favorite activities of self-importance. The best one of these is standing around doing nothing. As if there is nothing of importance for one to do. Nothing, just stand still and wait for death.
The cable holds.
This day I float. On the cablecar, floating above the air, and this day floating, it was as if I needed to hold onto the ceiling bar to keep myself from disappearing with the clouds. The wispy cirrus, far above. Did I know an airplane was broken down on the runway at this instant? No cirrus clouds for them today. Only for me if I didn't hang on tightly.
A church would have been nice. But the Soviets built this district and the Soviets didn't build churches. All the churches are in the old city. But we found a new church, just completed last year. Inside it was new, outside it was new. The people there were new too. Newness isn't deepness. But I'm floating, the icons on the ceiling are interesting. New. But they look old like someone knew what they were doing.
The cablecar is almost to the top. Giorgi next to me is a stone carver, his cigarette is almost out, and so is our conversation.
There is a cablecar in Tbilisi. It climbs a mountain to a lake called Turtle Lake. In the summer it must be hopping he said, there's a tiki bar over there, and a floating stage and everything. I see a lake. We buy a drink, we walk, I wish we could float. There is magic in floating, like in drawing. No telling what will happen. An element of instability, uncertainty, as the pen touches the page.
Who is a Coyote Teacher and who is God?
I draw Mount Fuji and the Monastery of Saint Columba in the mist of the lake. They're floating too, like me.
The Soviets loved culture, but knew how to warp it tight, burn its ash, falsify. There is an 'Ethnographic Museum' on this hill. They've built a replica Svanetian tower on the hillock above Turtle Lake. How out of place it is here. Where are the mountains, where are the warriors, the enemies?
The tower is floating, unseen, unused, out of place.
We climb to see it. We climb a fence because they've locked the gate. No more ethnographers allowed, only floaters. The gate is locked and so is history.
The last cable car disappears down the mountain, but we don't notice. We stare at miniature buildings, hugging hillsides in clusters of fifteen story gray cubicles. I see the one I live in, I write in, I sleep, dream, bathe in. Is it alive this life? The cirrus clouds are abandoning me, and I need to hold on to the tower to keep from floating away. The tower is barely holding itself, it's so out-of-place. We're in danger of uprooting together.
Did you know you can see auras?
It's simple, just play games with the fuzzies, they're energy really, and eyes can be trained to see.
There are spirits there too? In the clouds, in the sky? I don't think so, they are in the heart. That is no place. No location. This floating is beautiful, as if space had never been created, nor time.
Is it true, our biography is already determined at birth. We know no time, Pre-cancer, cancer, post-cancer. There is no time, biography is already determined.
Absolute Sound
Absolute Love
Absolute Light
Thinned the veil, this has. A burden lifted, embrace, sunlace, encase, a foretaste, no haste. Frozen in experience, is movement possible, daring? Are there guides, is it overwhelming, or returning home? What is familiarity, what is love?
The cirrus clouds are gone. So is Giorgi. His cigarette will take six years to be dust where it has fallen.
The cable car is limp. Gravel.
The plane is still stalled.
A yellow minibus arrives. Out pile five tall women in sleek red outfits. They're ready to fly. But their plane is downed. They aren't interested in Turtle Lake, the Ethnographic Museum, the Tower, drawing, or floating. We ask them for a ride down and speak broken English. The road winds a difficult way. The same route the cablecar took, but so much more complicated. Do we choose which way we go? Our conditions necessitated this route. We do what we can with what we have, so they say.
The redsuits are gone, we're on a street again. The flower has wilted, the sun has set. The tower has uprooted and flown to the mountains, chasing the clouds.