#beyondness

It’s as though many lifetimes have already passed.

Yet, upon reading the things I once felt.

My heart. Remembers it all. 

Timelessness. 

The eternal voice.

Heart speak is the language of the soul.

Its depths as deep as the ocean.

Its truth as vast and silent as space.

There is pain. And. There is beauty.

It is all there. And yet ...

There is now another knowing.

From a nameless space.

From the heart of the heart of all hearts.

Welcome to the where-clouds-abound world of Airborne Mark. For some a man of many guises, for others a life cherishing artist who refuses to settle for the mundane. A graffiti artist by day, a rapper by night. As the beauty and complexity of life cannot…

It is incumbent upon my pleasure of communication to relate to you a short story I have heard (or told, who remembers?) many years ago and which I believe will impregnate our conversation with a fresh variety of sensations.

  It is a metaphorical story (how else?) about dragon slayers and maidens of necessity but it might also be a story about spaces and processes, which is for you to decide.

  There was this master dragon slayer you see, who was called upon every now and again to come and slay a dragon, whenever such a beast and wherever such a monster was startling the population of the realms of beyondness.

  And so it came to pass..

  After years of loneliness wandering in the solitude of the great mountains, a young maiden came upon him, she was, it goes without saying, of such innocence, that she actually, truly and beyond doubt, believed it. Of course the master dragon slayer had no such illusions, he well knew how deep and how fast the corruption of desire embeds itself in the young ones.

  Especially those that still believed in their own innocence.

  Nevertheless, being of such a huge strength and capability, being empty of particularities, yet still on his way to perdition he accepted the offer of the young one to teach her the secrets of dragon slaying and in the process become his lover and purveyor of all earthly pleasures.

  Before I go on with the story, let me tell you a few things about this particular dragon slayer. He was a being unlike any other, for though there are other dragon slayers; none is or was as rowdy, as wild or as feral by nature as he was.

  As you may know, dragon slayers tend to hide their wild natures, knowing quite well, that not everything in life is about dragon slaying, yet in his case the slaying of dragons was a procedure he mainly performed upon himself. For though it is true that all dragon slayers are in fact redeemed dragons, tamed by the vision of a world of beauty beyond comprehension, it is also true that some forget at times that they are already passed the stage of acceptance and thus do not need consent to the slur of young maidens. For when a slayer of dragons is accepted unconditionally, by the people of beyondness for the people of beyondness, he is free to do as he pleases, which of course he never does.

  Bound by an oath greater than themselves, dragon slayers abide by the rules of independence, mostly. In the case of our dragon slayer here, abiding by the rules of total independence is what allowed him to accept the young maiden’s embrace in the first place, even though, and this must be said, if it was only up to him he would never have agreed to such a deal. For there is another rule in the total independence of dragon slayers, that they must make another, for only dragon slayers can make other dragon slayers out of the dragons they slay.

  Quite the demand I know, but hey, there are so few of them that if they will not create other dragon slayers, who will? Can you imagine a world of beyond without dragon slayers? I cant (or will not).

  But wait, it gets more complicated still; the rules of total independence require that a dragon slayer present his apprentice to the people of beyondness for approval, a fact that does not always coincide with the pure satisfaction and deep joy of slaying dragons.

  Our dragon slayer was a bit different in this respect for he knew only one way to transpose the very fine art of dragon slaying, and that is to make it so that only a total intimacy of sensation between dragon slayer and apprentice in full merging of intensity and desire can make it work.

  It’s not always the case indeed, however such was the case in our little story here. There are many reasons for that particular happening, only some of which relates to the dragon slayer in question, for we should not forget that the maiden had her own agenda of innocence as well. (For though it was hidden from her own beholding, her agenda was anything but innocent).

  I believe that you now start to have a glimpse into the problematic situation of our very dear dragon slayer.

He accepted the maiden into his domain of existence knowing full well that such acceptance of merging in full intensity of craving and full intimacy of desire spells, how else? But trouble!!

  Our dragon slayer, truth be told, was a great master of slaying but as mentioned above, he was mostly performing this art upon himself and, here comes the troubling bit, for he was also sharing this very act of self slaying with the apprentice, also known as, the young maiden of necessity.

Let it be said here, that as such legends go all maidens are by necessity, called, well, maidens of necessity, the reason for that if you are interested in this sort of exotic knowledge I will reveal to you some other time, but suffice it to say that their necessity has nothing to do with being a maiden and everything to do with the necessary condition of unimpeded motion or free flowing.

  But now that you have enough knowledge about our dragon slayer let us hasten to reveal how our story unfolds.

  Few years passed

  And in their passing, these years (as time has the tendency to do) had revealed a few interesting facts about this very rare relationship between dragon slayers and maidens of necessity.

  The most important aspect that was revealed during these years concerns capturing fire. Now, as you may well know, the art of capturing dragons fire is anything but simple, in fact, as legends will have it, capturing the dragon’s fire is even more challenging than actual dragon slaying. Maybe, some say, capturing dragon’s fire, should be the real test of a dragon slayer, and maybe, others say, the only serious measure of a true dragon slayer is how well he keeps the dragon fire he captured. This is an interesting discussion indeed but not for me to have an opinion about, since I only carry the storyteller torch. (Though if we were alone in the dark I would whisper to you that I am very much in favor of changing the norms of measurement of the people of beyondness, for at the end of the day it is the fire of the dragons that carries the meaning and essentiality of dragons, how much more so, of a dragon slayer, moved and motivated by dragons fire, the real substance of their being, ah! Well).

Be that as it may, the young maiden of necessity was vehemently opposed to the insistent demand of the dragon slayer that she give him the fruits of her fire capturing on an immediate basis. She claimed that our dragon slayer was not giving her enough time and enough space to come and bring him the fruits of her labor when they were ready and ripe for his consumption.

It was highly irregular of course, yet here we were, I mean here they were..

-

At any rate, as I might have already mentioned, fire capturing is a very complex process, consisting principally of three stages, the building of the container of fire, the capturing of the fire itself and the aggregation of the fire.

Amongst these three stages, the longer one in terms of duration is the building of the container. Again the reason for this is that the construction of such a container takes all the resources of the mind of the apprentice dragon slayer and in the process makes him or her actually able to capture the fire itself.

But in our story here, the maiden of necessity was impatient (due to her supposed innocence) to play the game of equality. For was she not after all in full intimacy of desire with our dragon slayer? The point however was that she was impatient about the wrong thing, she wanted the time to process the capturing of the fire, in her own way, but was not patient enough to build the fitting container which it must be remembered can be done only via the agency of the master dragon slayer.

When a master dragon slayer demands progress, he does so in the only fashion possible, in the now! And this our maiden of necessity could not contain.

  You see the paradox, for sure.

    The inconsistency of the situation was due to a few facts, the fact of intimacy of desire, which to a storyteller like I am, always appears premature (though admittedly it is not necessarily so) and reflects on the need of dragon slayers for companionship (and the second rule of total independence that demands of a dragon slayer to make other dragon slayers). The second fact was the unveiling of the self-slaying which our dragon slayer was performing upon himself. Now this is a tricky issue, for though it is a reality of intimacy that the self slaying must be made clear and transparent to the apprentice dragon slayer, it is also true that this unveiling must be made gradually and with high precision and clarity. Remember please that in the act of unveiling the dragon slayer himself exposes his raw nerve endings to an ‘other’ that is ‘not yet’.

  This leads sometimes to a great confusion, or to the very old, and by now legendary, illness, of all maidens of necessity, namely the sickness of overt familiarity.

Overt familiarity is not contra-indicated to dragon slayers in principle, just the opposite, it is encouraged and necessary, however the timing, fashion and manner of unveiling of the self slaying process is crucial, fundamental and critical, for it defines the future relationship of the dragon slayer with the maiden of necessity.

In fact I would go as far as saying that a dragon slayer’s self-slaying is the actual manifestation of fire capturing and aggregation in real time of the fire itself. And when successfully performed represents the highest form of the second rule of total independence, namely the creation of another dragon slayer, but when performed not in the correct time (or timing), generally speaking, disaster ensues.

  I realize that I bother you with a lot of details about dragon slayers lives and methods but I believe that these are important factors for you to consider in your journey to understand this story.

  More particularly my friend, I wish to tell you this story, because many a time, the desire for intimacy in intensity, appears to the Dragon Slayer as an act of independence and self-determination, when in fact it is anything but. Truth to tell, many a dragon slayer, has succumbed to the temptation of proclaimed autonomy, only to find at the end of the day that no fire has been captured and no aggregation of the eternal substance of dragons has been brought to the arena of the people of beyond.

  We must love our dragon slayers, and we appreciate their never-ending quest to, so to speak, bring the flesh of dragons to the hungry table of beyondness.

  But as storytelling goes you will see that the unfoldment of this story is not as simple as it might appear, for at a certain point of their disagreement on the subject of capturing the fire, the dragon slayer and the maiden of necessity, happened upon an unforeseen event.

  You see, they inadvertently triggered the curiosity of Nallab the mad dog; also know as Nallab the irreverent one.

  But for this part of the story you will have to wait until I extract it into written form from the annals of beyondness.