The Gods Have Ears - Full Moon In Yelapa

 By: Christopher Moses- Page Two
 
Virulent strains of the ubiquitous cocktail chit chat  snake through the assembly and good natured shop talk abounds as we prepare to cast off the burdens of modern civilization and return to the patterns of the ages. The energy build can be agonizing. The Lord of Logs throws another limb on the pyre.
Around the circle are passed the clear jugs of sacramental fire (an entertaining water brewed in the local mountains which when mixed with moonlight makes a milk of amnesia designed to facilitate the breakdown of bourgeois constraints). Beyond acceptability, burns the fire.
By now, my focus is on my work. I enlist friends and strangers alike to grasp the wild wire of the lunar celestial beam and help to amplify for all, the Music of the Spheres. I encourage them to lay down their timeshares and pick up their bongos, sing their favorite song, or simply push themselves to some convenient extreme.
Take a tip from the birds. You don't need words. If you want to be a part, have heart. If you want to go up, come down. Let the spirits enter the body, let the wheat make bread. Let the chaff take a bath, you can sleep when you're dead.  
                                    *                    *                    *
The moon is much higher now as it accompanies me away from the crowd to the edge of the surf to share a word in private and watch me pee into the waves. The bliss is Oceanic. Infinity hovers. Critical mass beckons.  

I return to the fire to find a person more outgoing than myself who can hold a tune and keep the beat, a hook for my hat. This front person can remember words perhaps. I just want to play, to turn on the spigot. I don't want to think too much, just fool with that song. In fact I hope to lose my mind entirely. When the gatekeeper is gone, disbelief is suspended, time slips away. Dismal goofiness gives way to transcendental groove. I can look down at my hands moving on my musical instrument; dancing, gripping, sliding, flicking, strumming, pulling, and enjoy it as a spectator. As though someone else was doing it. It does itself.  
That's Grace;  a very engaging sensation.

I also feel like a buzz saw. Superbly lubricated, I'm spinning fast. I wish to cut through.
Seasons pass. Colors change. It's the other side of day. Luna llena.

*                    *                    *
Bound by wild desire, the emcee falls to his knees and testifies at the church of the piss-elegant crooner. As the ring of fire reaches higher, the vibration intensifies, and there are sometimes explosions. Revelers strip, and hurl themselves into the sea. Rockets blast off at odd angles. Sweaters are singed. Government officials have been seen masturbating. The Muses circulate and tickle. The Blues harp on. Those gods who were sleeping awaken, and love affairs begin.
Diminuendo to crescendo, the night is in bloom.  
Enveloped in moonshine's chamber, the minutes dissolve and the wind dies for a bit. Tricksters appear, to lead chants, and vanish. The bonds of memory slacken, and songs flow out from underground, like a spring of jewels. Rare discoveries are made, jokes seem funny, enchanters evoke the eternal, and canoes slink seductively in the dark lagoon.  

The night becomes quiet and peaceful, the crowd thins like an old man's hair, and forever falls upon the valley. The waves lap serenely in the background. This sand is the only land. The supersonic sounds of the frogs, are eerily planetary.  

There is just a small cadre now; gone cats chasing chaos' corner. Bad Gods, harmonizing with the embers, in tune with things that haven't happened yet.
On a good night we may trip the ecclesiastic bop with grand dip-see-doodle, Cro-Magnon style in our pagan humanity. Of course we're still dragging our disguises around, tied to our ankles like lapsed underwear, but we hope one day to forget the fifties, and forge bravely into new music.
Hear the wind whistle, hear the wind blow. Throw the last log on the fire.
*                    *                    *
All of a sudden I'm walking home. I'm tired. The dirt path seems smooth, like a worn banister, and looks velvet covered. As I make my way, my musical instrument tied and dangling behind me strikes on various boulders and bridge posts, setting off discordant gongs in the cool, quiet, early morning air, which in turn rouses small regiments of dogs who loudly hail my passage through their territory.
  I can hear the echo of my footsteps. Suddenly I swivel my head around and gaze serious, like an old hunting dog, back into the misty distance, toward the haggard beach, hesitating, as though trying to remember something. I am drawn on by exhaustion however, pulled to my pillow.
The sun is coming up, but the fire still smolders as I enter the bamboo door.
                                       *               *               *
I click my icons, close my windows, and save these thoughts to hard-disk. Quickly, I pull out my menu, and shut down. Nearly blind from screen burn, I stagger to the chimney, grab my Guild, and slouch onto the couch.
In this other world, streetlights drown the moon, but I'm up late by habit. It is always late before I get the time to play, in this other world, and I am soon to sleep.
"At last," I think to myself, and begin to fingerpick a melody oriental and serpentine. I close my eyes and think of distant sands. I drift away.
When I jerk awake a few seconds (or is it minutes?) later, I look to see that my hands are still moving, still playing an autopilot reverie of mystic origins. As if someone else were doing it.
Say goodnight Grace.
I stop playing, and bow my head, reluctantly relinquishing the day. I run my hands along the sensuous curves of the old F-50, trying to hold onto that melody, fading now like lost childhood, even as I slide down on the couch and into nothingness, still clutching the instrument.
At the fulcrum of consciousness, I hear a distant voice advise: "Forget it Beavis, it's Chinatown......"
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