Ziji: Buddhist concept of the shining light of divine radiance

The building was a layer cake of sheer chaos, divided by shattered windows, narrow stairwells and screaming. You won’t find anything sweet like frosting here.

She pulled me into the mailroom with desperate urgency which I can’t stand first thing in the morning. It was too early to have someone grasping at my arm like a clawing tourniquet but there was no where to hide so, begrudgingly, I surrendered. Boundaries are a joke when you’re a countless ghost.

Before I could speak, she choked her arms around my neck and planted an unwelcome kiss on my cheek. What the…! I forced myself into a polite recoil. I could see it now; the scaly flesh flaring up on her cheeks and around her mouth. Something is wrong, she said. I can see that.

Apparently it was going around. The effects remained to be fully realized, at least by me. There’s always a watchful eye who sees it all but never gets up from her chair. Is this your cosmic chess game? The other side is winning. Shout all you want. Meanwhile we’re impaling ourselves on stakes too high. Bleeding for a savior that never comes.

I practiced your boundaries, patience, perseverance, piety, gratitude, prayer and all you did each time, was walk me to the next highest cliff. Don’t point fingers or act surprised when I finally jump.

I once flayed myself like a fish with a pair of scissors. All I got was a staph infection. Nothing changed. I didn’t know any better and opportunities only presented themselves disguised as rigged systems and commodified traps. Guess which one isn’t a pit full of venomous of snakes?

Is this fun for you; watching us tiptoe over uncertainty with no safety net to fail forward into. Some of can’t afford to make mistakes. Lessons become traumatizing instead of adventurous.

He proceeded to pour lesson after lesson over my broken existence like a box of Cheerios. Keep shaking me if you must but I’ve checked every corner and there is no prize inside.

But I digress. Back to the other nightmare.

Why the f*€k did you kiss me if you knew? I shoved her away, leaving the room to find a a way out that didn’t exist.

Under the main clinic was a supermarket, crowded with hungry, shifting corpses. It was one of those cheap supermarkets that cater to those of us who string together menus from one paycheck to the next. Everything is ugly, tasteless and buried under sediments of shame, processed sugar and worthlessness. There are no peak moments to be found in these fluorescent aisles. Nothing worth saving or striving for; fleeting satisfaction.

My grandmother came out of no where and attempted sucking the life of me. I plucked her away with as much compassion as I could muster knowing she’d already been gone for years. Forgetting is a convenient disease for those who’ve come to the end of their skill-set rope; meanwhile a family hangs like a clock pendulum in the balance. Tick. Tock. Who can blame us for wondering what in God’s name it was all for?

The stairwells were polluted with the screaming flesh of resentful bodies too overcome by their own sickness to bother with conscious thought. Hands flailed. Arms jerked. Necks lashed out. Spastic limbs threatened every inch of freedom. I dodged the human gauntlet till I reached the fourth and fifth floors which housed untold numbers of unwanted children, feverishly pacing sparsely furnished rooms, starved for love, opportunity and connection. I didn’t have the heart to tell them no one’s coming.

They scrambled towards me in their day old pajamas, recounting everything they hadn’t gotten over the holidays, bringing with them every unmet need from their short, invisible lives. Combined as they were in a chattering crowd, their list felt like a thousand weighted blankets. How do you tell innocent victims their fate lies in prison condos, psych units and smattered doses of randomly doled out serendipity? It might work out for you if you’re willing to work tirelessly, smile and endure merciless punishment for crimes you didn’t commit. Chin up buttercups!

Meanwhile the vampire-zombies, as I now understood the spreading contagion to be, moaned and multiplied just outside the door. What could they do but eat the very children they’d produced? They never wanted them anyway. It was always about their insatiably wounded egos.

In the parking lot, five stories below, the vampire-zombies stuffed themselves with sex and food; cannibalizing each other in a capitalist buffet. There were no winners and everyone left hungrier than they’d arrived.

If there was any gratitude I might’ve found to offer, it was that I’d not become one one of them.

He scratches at my window sill and still you make me get up everyone mourning and beg. They tell me I’m stupid, useless, unproductive while sucking the marrow out of precious remains with ignorant tears and manic insults. And I rot under your thumb, frantically searching for some shred of hope in the middle of every successive, sleepless night. What if I only love you out of fear? Like some caged, mutilated animal who licks your hand every time you don’t hit it? I’m terrified. Is that where surrender comes from? Is this the kind of devotion you long for in all your exalted glory? What free will do we have when we’re born into slavery? Choice? I’ve chosen you again and again but where are you? There is no relief. Everything in this temporary plane of placating, they tell me it’s grace. Your band-aids and cheerleading have gotten old. I’m screaming for freedom and you don’t answer. I’m TIRED. They’re voracious, relentless. Rest is an illusion. Well, if it’s all in my head, she’s gone.

This gracious light you speak of when I can’t sleep, yet again; is that what I’m supposed to be thankful for? That I’m here in this shit hole surrounded by living nightmares with no way out but you’ve spared me from whatever poison lives in their veins? Meanwhile I scrape my head off the pillow, night after night, to get up-when it’s the absolute last thing I want to do- only to be assaulted by a mess I didn’t make.

You’re a sadist holding a flashlight. And I’m blind. Whatever it is I’m supposed see tonight, is lost in the shadows.~

I had a nightmare; as per usual. While looking for an explanation I found this:

Let your light shine- Matthew

Ziji- glittering confidence, divine splendor