There is a beauty and a joy in the blankness that can be attained. A soothing form of balancing, knife-edged and fine in the interstitials of the buzzing hum that is today. Look:

one::one - rejection/erasure/repulsion/destruction - one::one

There. That one, there; the small girl with the brush-cut bristled hair - watch her feel the patterns of the wall with the neurons in her back - the small of which is nestled in the corner near the street. She watches traffic, foot and car, for the one she knows she'll meet inside the witching hour of the day. This day. This night. A lost and then-found treasure; who can say? Perhaps, then, you see the trail of breadcrumbs lost and ragged reaching from beneath her skirt and 'round the corner. Lagged off behind her, pick one up, the morsel of the whiteness in your palm - it's not bread, no, it's paper, plastic white and hologram. Identity, shredded, lost and dropped askew to scatter on the winds until it blows away. No longer true, it cannot hold her caged within, but flutters sideways past the grimy metal of the wasteman's bin into the puddle waiting near the curb. Look:

one::two - acceptance/flattening/leaching/purity - two::one

Farther down the street, a young boy sits. He's perched atop a dumpster, playing absently with a deck of pasteboards so dirty as to be nigh identical, none wishing to betray the winning hand (or, William, the Dead Man's Hand). Instead, the brownish slice of cards that flutter wildly in his grip. Somewhere, somewhen, he's read a book which talks about the freedom that can be found here once one has cast the self out. He has, some days ago. Longer down the trail than the girl we still can see (in the distance) watching the cars go by with still-wet tears of parting for the world. Climbing to his feet, our young man shades his eyes against the rays of the setting sun (which pierce the smog down here reluctantly, if at all). He swings down off the bin, cards magically vanished on his person, heading off down the street for a destination we don't know. His appointments we don't know nor understand, which is the point - he isn't here, nor there, as yet, his blankness just begun to show in the relaxation of his face, which doesn't strain for us. No more. Look:

one::three - recognition/flowering/manifestation/one hand clapping - one::three

Jump up and over, gentles, over cornice and rooftop all as one. Two blocks, nay, three, then fifteen more, across this unknown town to shore of water empty of a name. See, there? On the gravel, near the edge? The older woman there with the dog, who sits and watches out across the black surface of the river with her hand atop the hound's warm head. Tongue lolling, it sits beneath her palm, content to feel her pulse against its closed eyelids while it breathes. The ripples come ashore in train; marching to a distant heart beneath the town which hums and roars and SHOUTS A NAME OUT to the night. Us? We cannot hear it. She couldn't if she wished, but knows it anyhow - so too does her companion, paws, tail, coat and tongue. Ripples tickle at her soles, her paper shoes tapping lightly on her skin. Small bumps in the world, form through distortion, object through precessing packet of energy, they each nip (doglike) at her feet. Her face is light; no features there, just shadows, really, suggesting of the person that once she was. Was, of course; is is not the word this time. A glowing thing or place that is her self. No-one as defined by us and here. Of course there lives within a person unique and pure, unfettered by the chains of name and past; that person has chosen what to let escape and this is what we get: this glow, this light, the beauty that she is with dog beside her watching proof of Brownian motion trickle home. Look:

one::four - D I S T O R T I O N - one::four

a warmth on skin or play of light: that's all. We stop and hesitate, our paths brought short as we travel through the day. We don't know why. A ray of sun perhaps? Or, there, a warm short breeze, a ripple in the day's hot space that shows itself to us (a wavelet) passing by and gone before we could ever gain a hold. The echo of lost and gone-by footsteps tripping off the bricks in reflected soundscapes worthy of a lost and ruined Gothic manse - sound coming back to us in tricks and queer small packets of the world wrapped thin with tissue paper for our daily tasting of the here. They walk by, thus, those who have no they and want no more; they pass among the walkways of our lives in warmth and scent and color, their nonself serving to expose the wonders of their beings, of their selves with which they gift us in their passing ways. A gift which could not survive the cold and lines of the rigid ways and times with which we bind our days. Look. Look.

Listen.

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