A few months later I was going through some new poems that had been posted on our web page and noticed one by someone named Diane Randall. I couldn’t place the name at first and then I remembered her eyes. I opened the poem and momentarily lost my breath. It was a response to the Witnesses Log myth I had written on our web page some three years before. I had completely given up hope that anyone would ever respond. I must have been crazy, thinking others would find the myth, read it, maybe use it to create their own myths.
Yet that’s how I had come to see the myth in those first few days: as a sacrifice of some kind, an offering, something others could take apart to use, to feed on. I even wrote a separate section to accompany the poems, stating what I thought the myth was to be used for and then asking any responders to code their entries a certain way so I could easily locate them among the hundreds of everyday poems entered on our web page. Here it is, word for word, misspellings and all, just as I had hurriedly entered it:
DATE: Thu Dec 14 00:13:44 2000
AUTHOR: JUSTIN SPRING
SUBJECT: THE WITNESSES LOG PART ONE JUSTIN S
ADDRESS: LA
MESSAGE:
A NOTE FROM THE POET
46 ALICE HICKEY
on the listeners log
this entry consists of a group of short poems that came to me over a period of 3
or 4 days. i somehow feel they belong on the web, because their is something about their texture and continuity that wants to be on the web so that a new community of poets can be created.
i would welcome the entry of similar logs by interested poets. the logs can be wholly composed by the poet or, a group of poets, or I hope, by also using any part my log in any way you want to.
In the long run, I hope that those who find the form and results interesting will see the possibilities of letting other artists us them as material.
if you wish to be part of such a group,
just make sure you fill in the SUBJECT
ENTRY at sign in to read: XXLOG.YYNAME
WITH XX, YY BEING THE LOGS VARIOUS IDENTIFIERS.THIS SHOUD BE IMMEDIATELY
FOLLOWED BY YOUR FIRST NAME AND LAST INITIAL.
thus my own WITNESSESLOGPARTONEJUSTINS.
THIS WAY WE'LL ALL KNOW THE POEMS CAN BE USED BY AS MATERIAL IN CREATING
OTHER LOGS.
THANKS
JUSTIN SPRING
12/00
I realized that if the web version of the myth was to be a sacrifice, it was a very strange one, because it was a sacrifice that would instantly replenish itself, like the many-headed beasts of old. I liked the idea—it seemed quite mystical. There was nothing mystical, however, as to how the myth would actually replenish itself. On our web page, as on most web pages, any keyed entry becomes Read Only as soon as it’s entered. No going back, no erasing, no remorse. Yet while it couldn’t be changed, it was free to be copied and then after you had acquired your own copy, it could be rearranged, edited, cut up, added to, subtracted from, thrown away, used as inspiration. For some reason I still love that idea, that the myth is indestructible, that only its “shadow” can be acquired, never its essence, like Plato’s Ideal Forms.
In those first few weeks I imagined the web version of the myth as a small, bright galaxy whirling blindly through the reaches of space. I know that’s corny but that’s how I saw it: that it had a life of its own. I had faith that someone, somehow, would find it and then respond, send a message back. After a few more weeks, I began to lose faith, and then after several months of waiting, I realized someone accidentally finding the myth on the web, let alone among the thousands of entries on our web page, was about as likely as one of those SETI projects
ALICE HICKEY 47
finding an intelligent transmission from outer space. I became a bit embarrassed by my “sacrifice” message on the web, but there was no way I could erase it without recoding the web page. It was too much trouble. I let it stay. Who was ever going to find it anyway?
And yet, years later, here was Diane’s response. I have lifted it from our web page word for word.
DATE: Fri Nov 21 10:18:48 2003
AUTHOR: DIANE RANDALL
SUBJECT: WITNESSES LOG PART-ENTRY UNKOWN
ADDRESS: moongarden27@hotmail.com
MESSAGE:
This in response to WITNESS LOGS, Not sure what PART or ENTRY number this is but thanks for the inspiration!
THE WITNESSES LOG
It’s not about the visitors.
It was never about the visitors.
The listeners lay in wait
In the darkness
Like stars
That don’t exist without a witness.
We are the witnesses.
Nothing exists without us
Without our hearts
Our tears
Our burning desire
Burning to connect
That’s why we witness why we speak
To the dark burning stars
Even knowing the visitors do not exist
The stars do not exist
The listeners don’t even exist –
It’s us, only us, that puts form and word and wonder To any and all of it
And we, ha-ha! Have no existence either
Just tears and desire
Form and word and wonder
And that creates the burning light
That is
And is not
48 ALICE HICKEY
What really lifted my spirits was that Diane intuitively sensed who the entities were, something no one else had even come close to doing. Looking back at it now, and knowing what I do about her extraordinary psychic abilities, it makes sense she would have immediately recognized the world she lived in. But there was more. Not only did she give me a response, but a clarifying response, confirming many of my own feelings about the myth and what it has to say about us, the Witnesses: that without us there would be nothing—that we essentially create the world through the act of witnessing.
I located her phone number and set a lunch date. That was when I got to see Diane’s second face. I had remembered the shy, dark-eyed woman at the gathering, and she was still there, but there was someone else in Diane’s face. I sensed an immediate friendliness, an impish humor—the kind you see in children.
It was all over her face. She told me she had just moved into town. I found out she was a writer and that she worked with dreams. I also found out we viewed the world of the soul in much the same way: as a world of both darkness and light. I immediately sensed we should work together on some artistic projects but I couldn’t quite figure out what. We set some tentative plans to collaborate on some theatrical improvisations involving speaking and let it go at that.
When we got together to do the improvisations, I realized from the way she was improvising that she had extraordinary powers of empathy: she seemed to know where I was going before I did. In the intimacy of those improvisations—where nothing whatever is planned—I detected another dimension hovering in the background of her innate friendliness: a deep spirituality. It radiated from her in a quiet, unassuming way.
Jane detected it, too. We had all gathered one evening to do some more improvisations and Diane immediately sensed the movement of the Stream to which Jane and I were responding. Jane liked Diane; saw her as a soul mate. I began to think that speaking might be a way for Diane to engage a congregation in a deeply spiritual way if she decided to start a ministry, something she hinted at from time to time. We talked about it a bit, that it was possible, but I really didn’t know if that seed would ever develop.
Something eventually sprouted, but it wasn’t the flower I’d expected. In the weeks that followed, as we did more improvisations, I began to ask more about her work with dreams, and soon realized she had extraordinary psychic powers. I didn’t realize just how extraordinary until she gave me a short autobiography she had written. It seems Diane had been walking in and out of the psychic world since she was a child, when she first became aware of the “see-through people,”
as she used to call them.
It was obvious to me that the psychic world was a territory as familiar to her as
ALICE HICKEY 49
the house next door. I felt she might be able to help me with the myth. I told Diane about my problems in trying to explain it and asked if she’d listen to the CD oral versions of the Witnesses Log myth to see if anything came to her in her dreams. She agreed. I told her I was almost at the point where the myth was finally beginning to make complete sense but I was still baffled by the Listeners.
As I said this, I realized she might have seen only portions of the myth on the web, so I gave her the complete written myth as well as the three oral versions, and waited to see what would happen.
50 ALICE HICKEY
Chapter 13: Witnessing
December 2003, Sarasota
Almost all of the poets I knew had a hard time accepting the art of speaking, not to mention the Witnesses Log myth. If speaking seemed incomprehensible to them, the myth seemed even more so. Only the fact that I had written some very good poems kept them from dismissing me out of hand. They would begrudgingly admit that maybe speaking was OK, maybe, but perhaps it would be best to walk away from that other thing—that myth.
I couldn’t walk away. I knew that something from the psychic world had brought me to this precise place in time, and that this was not the time to pull back; everything would eventually come together. It was as if I were putting together a large jigsaw puzzle that still had some blank spaces—except I had no idea where to find the pieces that would fill them, or even what they looked like.
I decided to limit my losses by only looking at small parts of the myth. I decided to bear down on the Witnesses— try to fully understand who or what they represented. Were they humans, or Gods, or human consciousness itself? What does it mean to witness? I kept asking myself. I reached for the dictionary as a start, the web version of Merriam Webster in this case: Main Entry: 1wit·ness
Function: noun
Etymology: from Old English witnes knowledge, testimony, witness,… from wit to know
1: attestation of a fact or event
2: one that gives evidence; specifically : one who testifies in a cause or before a judicial tribunal
3: one asked to be present at a transaction so as to be able to testify to its having taken place
4: one who has personal knowledge of something 5a: something serving as evidence or proof
b: public affirmation by word or example of usually religious faith or conviction None of these definitions, which are essentially contemporary, fit the action of the Witnesses in this myth, i.e., nobody in the myth is going to court (2), or is a member of a faith (5b), or is attempting to prove something (3, 5a). Some of the definitions, however, are close—like 1 and 4. This is probably due to the fact they are very close to the original Old English meaning of witness (knowledge) and wit (to know).
But just try applying these “close” definitions to the template of the myth and see
ALICE HICKEY 51
how far you get before your head starts to spin. That’s because they are too specialized. None of them really fit the myth’s use of the word witness.
I decided to talk to Jane about it. I called her up. I could hear Al Green in the background.
“Jane,” I said, “I need some help.”
“What?”
“Some help, I need some help,” a little louder this time.
“What??”
“Jesus, Jane, turn down the music will you!” I yelled. “I need some help.” I could hear Al disappearing in the background.
“Sorry.”
“What does witnessing mean?” I asked.
“What?”
“Witnessing, what does it mean?”
There was silence and then she suddenly barked, “It means observe and report, that’s what witnessing means.”
“Observe and report what?” I asked.
“The present.”
‘That’s a big order,” I said.
“You bet it is.”
“What do you mean by the present?” I asked.
“Everything that’s on your mind,” she said.
“Everything?”
“Yep.”
“The past?”
“If it’s on your mind.”
“The future?”
“If it’s on your mind.”
“The present?”
“The present is what’s on your mind. Got it, stupid?”
“I think so. Is that all?”
“No.”
“What else is there?” I asked.
“Things that appear out of nowhere. Like the right path. Or God.”
I asked her how she could say witnessing was the observing and reporting of everything in the present. I told her it would be impossible for us to observe everything in the present, we would suffocate, like the man in Borges’ Parables.
“I didn’t say we observe everything in the present,” she replied. “I said we observe the present, and that the present is everything that is on our minds. ”
“What do we do, then, with what we’ve observed?”
“We remember it.”
“How do we do that?”
“We don’t. It’s done for us. It’s automatic, unthinking, like our breathing.”
52 ALICE HICKEY
“And then what?”
“We report it. We tell a story.”
“Why?”
“Because we can’t stop. That’s out of our control too. When it comes to witnessing, we’re like those tiny Moroccan desert rats that can’t stop fornicating.”
I didn’t know what to say. Fornicating rats aside, her explanation of witnessing seemed so simple as to be almost not worth considering. Then I began asking myself what the present really was, and what our automatic, unthinking, observing and reporting really entailed. At that point I began to see how incisive she had been.
I eventually came to see that if witnessing was the reflexive act of observing and reporting, it couldn’t possibly be random. We’d be worse than raving idiots. It became clear to me that there had to be an interest that drove our reflexive observing and reporting, an interest that was very deep.
And then one day, as I was tossing the interest associated with witnessing back and forth in my mind, I heard a voice inside me say, “serpent of interest” with the same knowing, clarifying tone I had heard many times in my life. Something in me wanted to see the interest that guided our witnessing as having something in common with a serpent.
It felt correct, but I had no idea why. I knew all the characteristics of snakes that were considered God-like by early man: the snake seemingly renewing itself by shedding its skin; the snake eating its own tail as a symbol of the interlinked mystery of creation and destruction; the snake’s association with the Other World
because of its cold-blooded nature. But none of these characteristics seemed to fit the template of witnessing.
I sensed, however, that something Jane had told me much earlier about the nature of the serpent might help me understand the serpent of interest metaphor that had just popped into my head.
At the time, I had asked her what she thought of the Witnesses Log myth; she had hesitated and then scribbled out on a pad: “like a snake / like a bone beneath flesh
/ bare bones / cold poem.”
Her cryptic scribbling had confused me and I remember asking her what she meant by stating the myth was “like a snake / like a bone beneath flesh.”
I’ll repeat the conversation that followed:
“I keep seeing a skeleton whose bones are perfectly articulated,” she replied.
“What kind of skeleton?” I asked.
ALICE HICKEY 53
“It’s human but not human.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“The bones seem alive, wet, glittery. I can’t explain it any other way,” she said.
“What did you mean when you said the myth is like a snake?”
“That’s the part of the bones that’s not human.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means the bones are special.”
“How?”
“Flesh swims on them, becomes alive.”
“What flesh?” I asked.
“The flesh of the other myths,” she said. “You know the ones: the myths where the hero walks through fire and survives, or talks to God and dies, those myths. The Wrath of Achilles, Black Sambo.”
As I tumbled that conversation around in my head, I finally got what she was saying. She had shot right to the heart of The Witnesses Log— that at its core it was a myth that mirrored the way myths are created—those powerfully-charged, unconsciously-driven stories that ordered our external and internal lives for millennia.
What she had seen was that The Witnesses Log is ultimately a mythic story about the nature of early human consciousness and the intelligent forces within it—
forces that allowed us to create stories that imitated and made sense of the mysterious forces around us and within us. And although those stories, those myths, no longer play such a powerful role in our modern consciousness, they continue—as Jung and Campbell have shown us—to hold sway over the deepest aspects of our unconscious lives.
Unfortunately, I still couldn’t quite bring Jane’s insight and my own serpent of interest into lockstep. I called her up and asked her if she sensed anything serpent-like about the instinctive interest that directs our witnessing.
“It’s the way the serpent moves,” she said, “the way it directs our witnessing. It’s the way female energy moves, effortlessly, the way it can insinuate itself so quickly—and so seamlessly—into our lives—like intuition, or insight, or love, or a poem. That’s why we can’t take our eyes off a snake: something tells us its movement is not of this world.”
54 ALICE HICKEY
Chapter 14: Mercedes Noriega
December 2003, Panama City, Panama
I had decided Panama would keep my mind off the myth, but I had my misgivings as soon as Pinga and I stepped out of the arrivals door. It was two o’clock in the morning and the airport was completely empty, like they were holding it open just for us. Outside, a long line of shiny taxis was waiting to take us across the new, expensive, four-lane toll road. Despite my best efforts to be positive about the myth, I wasn’t doing well. There were days I thought I’d never be able to explain it. It had been a long time. I was a mess.
The cab driver told us nobody used the toll road except the cabs going back and forth to the airport. It supported a lot of people, he said. We got the code. A few minutes later we were outside the Covadonga hotel. We dug deep, paid the driver and wept. The neighborhood was right out of a B-movie: the dark, hot streets were filled with the usual girls, cab drivers, drifters, dealers, you name it. I felt like I was signing into Hades.
Despite Pinga’s high hopes, we got nowhere locating the wreck. Just finding the old enlisted men’s beach turned out to be a problem. The army was long gone and the entire area had been cordoned off for reasons no one could explain. Every cab driver we spoke to had a different idea where the beach was.
When we finally found out where it was located, we bribed a guard to get in. I took one look at the water and knew we were nuts. It was rainy season, which we should have known. The water was muddy; visibility was zero. Even if the wreck were near the surface, which it was supposed to be, it would be impossible to find.
We’d have to come back in the summer when the water was clearer. “Maybe if we wait for a real low tide,” Pinga kept saying, “maybe we could spot it.” But it was just talk. We were fucked and he knew it.
Fortunately, the Covadonga had a small, 24-hour restaurant on the first floor that could take the edge off just about anything. We spent a lot of time there. When Pinga was drinking, he’d tell me weird, funny stories about Kiki. The one I always liked hearing was her dressing up like a nun and chain-smoking Pall Malls in front of the TV for three days before suddenly coming back from God knows where, or as she put it to Pinga at the time, “From it’s none of your goddamn business thank you.” He couldn’t stop hopping up and down.
Unfortunately, after a few more beers, he’d begin chumming the waters for Mercedes. He had sized her up immediately as a Mafia Dona: “Listen, she could call one of her buddies in the government to get us a survey of the flats. It would be easy for her to get them, her husband was an officer; believe me, she knows
ALICE HICKEY 55
what arm to pull.” I told him all that data probably went back to the states with the Army, but I’d try.
What I didn’t tell him was I didn’t have quite the pull with Mercedes he thought I had. That was long gone. She’d been eying me lately because her ledger on me had been consistently adding up to zero: dreamer. I tried to let Pinga down easy. I told him I was a bit on the outs, that she had become so pissed at me for screwing up a dinner in Miami that she’d called me out right in front of the doorman: “I know what you are: you are like the dogs that bark but don’t bite.” Jesus. I told Pinga I was glad she’d said it in English, not Spanish, because I might have missed it and smiled back like an idiot. He had a pained expression. He knew I’d smiled.
I’d promised Mercedes I’d make it up to her, take her out for some nightlife on her next trip up to Miami; and so, two months later, I drove over to have dinner with her. I felt like I was going to the gallows. She was right about the type of dog I was: I didn’t have the slightest idea how to find some exciting nightlife, or even what it consisted of lately, but I knew she liked the older, more established parts of Miami, so I took her out to a Latin or Spanish restaurant on Collins Avenue in North Miami (I can’t remember its name; I had found it in the yellow pages at the last minute). When I arrived at the restaurant, I felt like a man who had just received a last minute pardon. The décor was right up Mercedes’ alley: gold leaf and mirrors everywhere.
The young waitress, who only spoke Spanish, or had decided to do so because of Mercedes, took the order from her with a great deal of attention. I wasn’t surprised. I had seen it before. Mercedes had that aura of old wealth about her that Latin working women instantly recognized. She wasn’t to be messed with. So it surprised me that all of a sudden there was a great deal of give and take between Mercedes and the waitress. Some laughing. Maybe some jokes about the dreamer.
I asked Mercedes what it was all about. She told me the waitress had wanted to know if I was her husband and she had replied “No, he is just my nephew,” that was all. She laughed. But I remembered the waitress’ face. Either she hadn’t believed Mercedes or maybe Mercedes wasn’t being quite truthful, because I remember the waitress suddenly becoming very brazen and forward, like now it was one woman to another a