HyperLife:
A Life in Hypertext
Story of My Life
21 January 2000
So there is nothing more to do than write the story of my life, beginning now. Yes, this is another preface. Yes this is a departure from the now into the future becoming more now every moment. Yet this will run out of detail to describe soon and I must depart for the moment of my actual, physical birth on earth some fifty years ago.
In the meantime, by way of everlasting introduction, let me descend into the meaning of pre-face, the face you have I have I am you as when we are born: our original face, our original pain. Still locked in breath, tetany hands, bands of steel around the belly, strange oozings in the crotch, where is my father but in the trees, in the snow falling out of the sky to earth, back to mother in the womb-shaped warm pool in the forest?
Woman with monkey face, man with stars in his eyes, these my friends and I listen to the all-that-is in this moment and every other as we are able, telling of the higher self and the inner child and the way forward back to the world.
With all that out of the way, I could start now or later as the drum plays, the sax squawks and croons, and the dark comes down to remind me of supper to warm, a lover to welcome soon. This is all part of the equation of enlightenment, you see: words too.
Music, breath, pain, word, boundaries of skin and personality and name and childhood history, what are our ambitions collectively but to transcend, to go through, to descend, to go through, to come out breathing on the other side. This is birth, and there is no returning but in this or the next moment, to come to the story.
So we continue, you and I, in a rhapsody of inspiration, in clear-eyed grace, knowing there is a question and an answer for it, in your eyes, your caring, your patient listening. We all have a turn at this wheel.
That said, I have the floor awhile, for you or others to come and go, open mikes everywhere, same trepidation in the gut. Knees shaky, out of breath, maybe it was the long walk through the snowy woods deer-wise, coming to the steam rising from the pool by the cobbed house in the clearing.
There is a culture on the rise in our small circle, a ritual without more formal requirements than breath and acceptance, willingness to go now to where we are. There is a coming to know and say and follow the energy as it flows between us, honoring the channel we offer and use to hear wisdom speaking. Sometimes it is the voice of the child, sometimes monkey and sometimes star man or spirit herself. There is a dawn and a dolphin fluid presence in our slick skin and we emerge wide eyed into the clear white afternoon.
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