Yo-yo Hugh Behm-Steinberg

I go to the eyeball store. I tell the owner I’m just looking, and she says, “No, you’re not, not really, you’re just being hesitant. You want a third eye.”

I say, “You’re right, I’ve been shopping for one for some time now, I believe I’m ready.”

The owner asks me if I have my papers, so I show her the note from my spiritual advisor. She says that’s nice, but when I show her my Orange Belt Certificate, which represents the growing power of the sun, how I’m beginning to feel my body and mind open and develop, she sits me down, she puts her hand on my head.

“Forward or back?” she asks.

Then time, I meet time, she’s using the universe as her personal yo-yo, she’s showing me her tricks. She makes it look so easy; she’s going around the world, she’s walking the dog, she’s rocking the baby.

Later the owner shows me my eye. I open and close it very deliberately at first, but soon I don’t have to think, I just choose and I see. As soon as I get my x-ray monocle, I am going to have a magnificent life.

Trapped in that sort of alchemy where joy turns into anger, I go see another alchemist. She buys me chocolate milk, makes me sing. I don’t feel like singing, she makes me sing, she harmonizes around me. I stop; she kicks my shin. “Don’t stop,” she says. I start over and after awhile I’m not alone, or don’t feel so alone.

It was like that one time, when I was high with friends, I was watching a bike rodeo, because that was where my head was pointed, and I got so angry because it was so fake: everyone was just fucking around, everyone who was there. The best they could do was fuck around and my friends said “It’s just a rodeo, and what’s so wrong with fucking around?” It took me decades to accept that; it’s still hard for me to turn that into joy. Stubborn experience.

My alchemist knows. Mostly I want to be serious, but my alchemist crosses me out and makes me eat a photograph of myself smiling. I look ridiculous so I start smiling. She says “Can you feel it, is it starting to work?”

“There’s this image in your mind. It’s photography’s mother. It’s how your mind creates the world; it’s developing all the time,” my alchemist says. “I know another way,” she says.

I’m sweating light. My blood is light so mostly I spin. And spinning my light floods the room.

Ginny MacDonald