The Monolith and the Indulgence of Blood

Breathe that fuckin’ blood in, man.  Let it permeate you.  Bleeding is good, they figured that out in the old days, yeah?  So bleed.  I can feel the strength in my limbs.  It’s not ossified.  It’s not diminished.  It’s just unnecessary.  I’ve gotten too comfortable being the badass.  Let soft wins in PRIME fuck up my senses, let the glitz and the sanitized environs rob me of my instincts.  This used to be animal, automatic, a thing of the jungle, the parts of the forest that are ancient coursing through my veins, feeding me, nourishing me, granting me wisdom and speed and animal ferocity.  Now I’m soggy.  Limp.  The hits don’t give off that great staccato sound that they do in the movies.  Would that they could, that would be a lot cooler.  But we’ve learned to appreciate the tone.  Muffled wallops.  Like someone hitting a pillow with a ball peen.  Whomp, whomp, whomp.  This one, whoever he is, his family did a number on him.  I can see in his eyes that he’s not punching me, he’s punching a series of people in his life.  Siblings, educators, parents.  Did they abuse him in real ways, or were they so cold to him as to alienate him from what a loving childhood should be?  People can be so cruel without realizing the scope of their cruelty, without realizing how it corrupts and spoils things green and good in the world.  That’s what he had.  Spoilers.  Rot.  People who diminished him and made him feel like an outcast, people who seem to only exist to snuff the light of the divine within us.  That’s why this is important.  That’s why the work means something.  Something significant.  That’s the thing none of them ever understood.  They only ever saw sickness.  And yeah, when it’s out of control, sure.  But this is full control.  We’re in full control.  We’ve got this.  This is an embrace.  But Jake, all Jake ever is going to see is addiction.  He’s worked the program for so long that it’s caged his brain to what’s actually possible.  He can’t absorb something outside of these rigid constraints.  Cliff only sees the blood, he can’t for whatever reason see past it to see the benefit.  Which for someone who rumbles with fascists is…surprising.  Whomp, whomp, crunch.  Think that was my molar.  It was definitely my molar.  Luckily he’s tired himself out.  The blows sag.  The hits peter out, and his rage-filled breathing is softening into something else, something that makes his shoulders shake, the eyebrows altering their angle to remorse, to sadness.  The tears start.  He’s sitting astride me, hands at his sides, knuckles raw.  Sit up, man.  Hold this lost soul.  Let him know that his sin has been eaten.

—

The depression set in as soon as Cliff left.

“The second time Cliff left”, The Bodhisattva has taken to reminding himself.

Because Cliff did come back.

But Cliff didn’t like what he saw.

And Sage was cool with that, he really was.  “Maybe this is the end of our season,” that sort of thing.  The human mind can justify a crazy amount of whiplash, and credit to our resilience as a species, that works for a little bit.  Put those feelings on ice, man.  They’ll keep in a ziploc.  Whoops, you forgot about them.  Now they’ve grown.  Now the Ziploc burst and the freezer is nothing but your sadness, it swallowed up anything else in there.

So the freezer got full and the sickness took hold.

And yeah, he oscillated.  Wildly.  If you’ve not seen drug consumption by a man who uses so much so consistently, the sheer scale of what’s needed is gobsmacking.  An ounce of flower every three days.  Psilocybin, both concentrated in tea and raw caps in munch, sometimes 5 whole dry grams at a time.  LSD, Salvia, fucking phenethylamine even showed up.  The stupor was only interjected by settling petty disputes at the Rancho and the therapeutic fistfights that seemed to have become as common as meditation on the grounds.  Fights he rarely won.  Too fucked up.

Which is a first.

But it’s something he’s been embracing with a series of smiles that only seem to grow with each loss.  It was that the combat purified him but often he would get too caught up in the lust of the act, the passion turning what should be a sharing of pain into him inflicting it, literally beating the stress and demons out of people’s bones, like some sort of medieval chirurgeon, fists instead of leeches.  But now, be it from a sense of guilt or realizing that he can, in fact, take it…it’s flipped.

He is a fleshy being for them to beat their rage and sadness into.

He takes those feelings and turns them into things these people need.  Love.  Acceptance.  Forgiveness.  A fresh start, a reset.  The Bodhisattva is providing indulgence in the Catholic sense.  Drink of my blood, eat of my flesh–rob me of my blood, rip at my flesh, in this you will be absolved.  Say three salutations to the spirits of nature and the old oak, then call me in the morning.  Call it the fugue state of the work, call it a manic episode, call it a side effect of him being on an absolute drug bender, but they all bleed into a single thing.  Colors, heights, weights, vibes, origins, sins.  All Sage can feel anymore is that these people are lost.  How they got lost varies, but they to a person have felt adrift.  Cast away in a world that doesn't understand them and doesn't really care to, that has no home for them and will not make one.  Society has decided these people deserve nothing and they expect them to just disappear.

But now they have a home.

Now, at the Rancho, they find work.  Honoring the land, honoring their spirits, mortifying their flesh.  Significant work.

Sometimes he feels lonely.

Not lonely enough to reach out to Cliff.

Not yet.

Not after how it ended.

—

Three weeks ago…

“Sage what the absolute fuck is wrong with you?!”

Cliff’s pissed, but who wouldn’t be?  The last time he saw Sage this fucked up he was in a random hotel somewhere in America beating the shit out of himself for some kind of spiritual clarity.  That event spurned everything that happened since it, really.  Sage going to meetings.  Meeting Jake.  Buying the land.  Every part of it.

And here stand the man he loves, missing two teeth, callouses ripped from his knuckles, eyebrow bleeding, beard matted in blood, a chunk of his hair torn out.

But looking back, Sage isn’t sure if the horror on his love’s face was due to the violence, because Cliff Pike is no stranger to nursing a few grisly wounds after a tussle in the streets.  Looking back, he thinks it was his demeanor.  His eyes, bright and glassy, as if he could see the entire scope of time and existence, as if the forge of universes was open to him.  His sway was one of pure cosmic connectivity.  He was gone in a way that Cliff had rarely been witness to, and it scared him, it made a fear come out due to its clash with his scruples.

“I attained something.”

“You think I give a half a fuck about you attaining some bullshit spiritual truth?!  Look at you, man.  You made me a solemn fuckin’ promise.  You swore to me this was over.  You committed to meetings, to all of it.  Is this because I left?”  He closes the distance, his tone softens as he tries to appeal to something in Sage.  But that last sentence sours the mood.  Pontiff recoils, his air of blissed out enlightenment shifting to anger.

“Because of you?  God, that’s so fucking…that’s ego, Cliff, that’s all that is.  ‘Because’ has nothing to do with it!  Sure, I hated to see you go and I felt lost, but this right here?!”  To emphasize, he runs his hand along his bloody mouth, gathering some crimson and smearing it on his face.  “This is beyond you!  Beyond you and me.  We’re repairing the sickness that the modern world has corrupted our souls with.  We’re healing through the primal act of bleeding!  Through the ancient arts, Cliff.  You can do it too.  You can be with me hand in hand.  And we can fix it all, don’t you get it?  I can’t heal the planet, but if I can heal everyone right here, right now, if we can make this place a refuge…do it with me.”

“Sage…”  The taller man cuts him off and walks forward, extending a bloody hand, smiling.  He doesn't realize how crazed he looks.

“Let go, babe.  Let go of all those worries the world out there has beaten into you.  Their system is designed to rob you of all your light.  Mine is designed to let it shine.  Be with me.  Be here.  We’ll make this beautiful.  Together.”

—

“I can’t stick around and watch this.  Don’t get a hold of me.” 

What does the argument that lead up to it matter, he wonders?  Sage knows there could have been a different way to approach the conversation, but every other way would have been inauthentic to his truth.

So here he walks.

There’s been some commotion on the western side of the clearing, an area where work continues to move forward.  After a prayer of thanks and promises to honor their souls, trees have begun to be felled on this side of the land.  The goal of this was simple: maybe a few shelters from the elements, for things like meals and work being done.  In the abstract for the future, the possibility of a few homes–he certainly doesn't enjoy being the only person with a permanent structure out here.

He’s not alone in his jaunt, and tends not to be these days unless he specifically asks for it.  Everyone respects that, but they will wait to be cued.  Wolf is always nearby, as he’s become something of a chronicler slash personal assistant–Sage hasn’t bothered with his phone much since Cliff left the second time, so Wolf tells him if he’s got anything on the docket and occasionally uploads a live of the Bodhisattva talking to a gathered crowd or of a project, like when everyone put up a fence around the main cropping field.  A few others hang on, some that clearly want Sage to invite them to bed, others who think there’s a greater lesson to learn, which there may be, but Pontiff isn’t one to explicitly give the guideline.  They need to fish for it in the dark waters of self on their own, first.

But he doesn't begrudge them, not a one.

Because here they’ve found home.

The crowd passes the boundary of the living areas, past the far out tent of  Harv, who prefers his solitude.  They give him a wave and he gives them a nod over his coffee and smoking fire.  Past the small mound where sometimes meditation is led from on nicer overcast days.

And then they see it.

They all stop, even Sage, their eyes widening at the sight.

“It” sits among a few trees that encircle it, across a field of stumps.  The felled trees and their branches sit off to one side, dragged there by Shae and her gasifier-powered C10.  But peering between those trees is a clearing,  And within that clearing, a massive, massive formation of rock.

Somewhere between a volcanic remnant and a cairn stack, an easy 12 feet of stones towers over the gathered lumberfolk and the contingent who have joined them.  The base is more narrow than the middle, but narrow can be relative–it’s an easy 5 feet in diameter that emerges to 10 in lines that are both jagged and smooth, brutalism of nature that has been protected from the elements for ages.  Centuries.  These may have been stacked by some goliath of the olden days, or drifted here on the waves of the world’s turn from BC to AD.  It dwarfs them.  Though shorter than many of the trees, it’s very presence makes them seem insignificant.

The gathered peoples have not stepped forward.

It feels like they’ve discovered something magical.

One figure breaks from the semicircle.

The Bodhisattva approaches slowly, as if this prehistoric tower of rock will spook like a deer.  His hand outstretched.  Trembling.

When he contacts the rough surface of the stone, it’s edges smoothed by the years from acute but still hard, his body shudders.  The surface feels cool and calming, and for a moment, he feels healed, truly and deeply, as if this rock is a conduit directly to the heart of the nature he now inhabits.  He throws his head back, throwing his dreads across his back, and gasps audibly before his mouth curls into a smile.  An irresistible smile.  The crowd looks at this, waiting for his directive, no matter how often he’s told them he is no sayer of laws.  Finally, he turns to them, his hetero-chromatic eyes opening, glassy and clear as if freshly soaked, small tears forming at the corners.  But his face is anything but sad.

“What a gift.  Shae, Luke–how long would it take to clear out all the stumps and trees from around this?”  Shae steps forward, wiping her brow with a bunched up work glove.

“Day, day and a half?”

“Perfect.  Please.”  She nods, and with a motion of her hands has gathered the work crew together to talk strategy.  Sage looks back up to the stone, and to say gears are turning would be a dishonor.  The leylines of time and fate and spiritual development have converged above his crown to inspire him to a new place.  One of his adherents steps from the crowd.

“Bodhisattva…what do we call this?”  This causes a pause.

But not a long one.

“The Monolith.” 

And then, with a jerk of his head to the question asker, a directive.

“Find me someone who can cut my hair.”

—

Instagram Live from user @Wolf_Om_Ether, posted 21 minutes ago. In the frame sits Sage Pontiff, lotus position, beard to his nipples, wearing his standard array of hemp necklaces and Mala beads.  His dreadlocks, a project he’s been committed to since he was 12, cover his face, running to his shoulders.  There is no great ceremonial kickoff, though it’s apparent that such an event has drawn a crowd.  One person is standing behind him, an array of things laid out on a small folding table next to them: scissors, clippers, a brush.

“At what point does a piece of personal style become an affectation, a brand?  I’ve been thinking on this.  What makes a person should be acts and spirit and intent, not…affectation.”

Without a word, the person behind him steadies their scissors and gathers a lock.  Snip.  Frees it from his head.  Drops it into his palms, which lay motionless outstretched in his lap.  From this first cut, his shoulders slacken a little.  But his voice remains calm and steady.

“But I’ve also had transformation on the brain.  And this hair, this is an older version of me.  I’ve been clinging to the cocoon of who I was, and it’s prevented me from fully forming into my next stage.  Reinvention is the definition of how one defines themself.”

Snip, Snip, Snip.  They’re starting from the back and moving forward.  The camera doesn’t falter.  The clipping continues as he speaks.

“You know all about that, don’t you?  You’ve sought the same thing I’m seeking, Bryan.  ‘Definition’.  I felt formless too until it all made sense to me, until the universe showed me the truth of my pursuit and laid in my path a monolith of guidance.  Then it all crystallized.  The cocoon I had held myself in was preventing the vibrations of the universe from reaching me.  No more.  No more between myself and the energies of the divine furies.”

Soon, the locks in his hands have become a pile.  He doesn’t move.  Doesn't flinch as they begin to reach mid skull, starting with his crown and moving down to his ears, each cut of the scissors authoritative.  Each snip a step further to a new emergence.

“Don’t think I haven't seen you seek meaning.”

Snip.

“We all are.  But you’ve never known who you are.  And I think you’re afraid that you’re nothing but a facade.”

Snip.

“I know you aren't.  You hear me?  I know.”

Snip.

“I finally fucking know.”

Snip.  Down to nothing but bangs, the remnants of his locs leaving nothing but matted stumps of blonde hair across the terrain of his skull.

“All that is in you, and I’m not just speaking to you, but also to all of you–listen to me closely.  All that is in you, all your doubt and fear, all your rage and swallowed pain, all the parts of your life that still stick out of your spiritual being like blades…bury them in me.  My flesh is the graveyard for everything that causes you pain and rot.  Because I have been gifted by the universe with the ability to absorb your darkness and turn it to starlight.  You understand now that what I’m telling you is truth.  In a universal sense.”

The manic edge to his voice notwithstanding, the last dread falls to his hands.  His eyes, wet with tears, meet those of an adherent, and with a gaze he brings them close, pressing the bundle of his hair into their hands.

“Get rid of this.  It is no longer a necessary decoration.”

He then looks back to the person who has divested the dreads from their roots.

“Finish it.”

With a click, the clippers come to life.  With a number of swipes, he is brought down to the barest cropping of fuzz.  The knots and roots of his hairstyle cascade down his frame like flowers, like cherry blossom petals.

Until he finally lets his hands feel what has been wrought.

They shake.

Over a decade is a long time for a young divine.

But he finally smiles.  He’s still missing those teeth.

“See?  Transformation.  And all it takes is being open to the power of the work.  Important work.  Significant work.  Everything that anchors you to the mire can be severed and made to dust, to nothingness.”

The smile drops.  The calm of the Buddha overtakes his countenance.

“All you have to do is take of my flesh.  It is being willingly offered to you.  Punch, kick, slam, and bash it all into me…and you’ll walk away not a new man, but the man you always were–the man you were afraid to be.”

Video over.  Play Again?