Storm Peak West

Discovering the distinction between vitally important and utterly useless is a practice of threading a needle along a seam. The best stitches come from hands that are utterly relaxed, yet precisely focused, down to the threading of the fabric itself.

Sometimes, I imagine the needle of my this-moment experience is right on the money. When I stop sewing and review my handiwork, however, I'm often not even on the seam anymore. In fact, the stitching is usually running off into someone else's fabric.

Despite some heroic attempts at patchworking my incomplete view of reality into a wholesome quilt, my life remains much in likeness to a homeless man's homemade rucksack.

A recent example that illustrates this:

I spent a night out recently, drunk and manic, in a small mountain town in Colorado. It was a blood-moon eclipse, and I suppose my psychic underbelly decided I would act in the style of a werewolf (with a bicycle) until dawn. I burglarized a butcher shop, breaking the glass of the front door window to break in. I took a filet of smoked salmon, yanked the security alarm wiring from the wall panel (which did not stop the alarm), and ran. After consuming half of the spoils, I offered the rest to the bears and tried to sleep outside for an hour or so.

It was chilly and slightly humid out that night, and I decided to try my luck with a ritzy apartment complex in the town center. The front door opened, as did the elevator. To the top floor I went, down to the end of the hall. Unit 406 was unlocked and unoccupied. I made use of the bathtub and the shower, which was fully enclosed and doubled as a steam room.

Then I took a kitchen knife, stabbed a vaginal-shaped hole in a mattress, filled said hole with Jergen's, and tried to fuck the bed while attempting to practice semen retention in the style of a tantric sex practitioner. The springs in the mattress jammed up that idea. I had a terrific dream in the same bed however: I was rolling over on my back, bleeding out and drawing my last breath. I opened my eyes wide, let out a final "A' Ah...." Dzogchen syllable, and died back into my waking body.

This "born again" bardo experience prompted further fuckery from my wandering needle.

I arranged the outdoor patio as a feast for two, finding vases in the colors of the five lights, a cowskin rug, a sheep's fleece to cover the ottoman, which was the disciple's seat. A large clear vase of water sat on a table in front of the master's throne, which was winged on the right by a seat that held a bull's skull, and on the left by the skulls of two whitetail bucks. Knives were driven point-first into a wooden charcuterie platter. The whole scene was very voodoo and was just missing the appropriate parties in the form of man and woman to create a sacred environment.

It almost can go without saying that I ended up in jail, after a brief run-in with the owner of the apartment, which shocked me out of the werewolf and back into the young man grieving the loss of his marriage, his job, and his father's prostate.

The moral of the story (which is true unfortunately), is that sewing is not just for seamstresses, and should be given a higher position of respect in our society. Maybe if I had been taught to mend my torn pants as a child, everything would be tied off quite nicely at present.