GO BE ON
by Gabriel Orgrease

There is ON, being on, as in on balance, fully centered. To be ON is the tentative physical posture the mouse on the cover assumes between action and destruction—an image of the body captured, frozen in motion—almost to cheese. Though balance is rarely static, it is only in the art of illusion that we ever imagine a permanent state of balance. Once achieved, if not maintained, all sense of order quickly falls into disorder as we perpetually teeter-totter towards quieted oblivion. The small critter performs as a weather vane on our gazebo of awareness. Our physical and mental decay can be, to our personal horror, irony, fear, a beautiful fall away; a sense of romantic perspective moves us more quickly towards the crash zone—a burning swamp of cesium 136 that glows a soft green in the sunrise mist—to land controlled or out of control. Is it our desire to fall into the technological fix, or to leap mindlessly into the unsprung trap: the cheese, or the snapped neck—a slow and conservative movement on a gentle glide? We test and measure our way along to the small browned end of the metal tongue, narrow adjustments here and there. The fluff of soft mouse fur, a pill, a placebo, a desire for black sky balanced through the eye of a very tiny needle.

My brother went fishing and he caught a sea gull. Simultaneous to his cast, the bird had set off into flight and was quickly ensnared in the wind and weight settled line. A sea gull is an ugly bird made uglier ensnared, wing beating, twisted up, and pulled into the stern of the charter boat. Many gulls circled menacingly overhead as in a Hitchcock movie. My brother worked at it. Set free with much effort, the bird stood on the wood deck with a bold eye, incensed at the rude interruption of balance. It flew away, to adjust the balance of flight in the ruffle of wing.

As in any game there is always a great distance between our desire and reality, and the breadth of the gap is in our personal sense of balance. As some express, "Our sense of proper taste... and balance." The avoidance of excess, centering, the middle way. On the mark, having the chops to pull off and maintain balance.

In craft it can take a lifetime to perfect one subtle stroke of the framer's chisel, in prayer, a slight tapping of the lingam mallet, an empathy fully engaged in the process that does not cut through wood as much as glide with an elegant expenditure of effort. The parting of rosewood and the crafting of a fine sentence are an act of holiness, like with wisdom being knowledge that is not solely a cloak as much as the sacrifice of gentle blood acts in ritual. Each word being a step closer to what? As with Tibetan long trumpets the balance is in the low vibration that reverberates between this world and that other. And there, on this thin veil it is often what we do not do that makes the difference, our lives a settlement between ourselves and nothingness.

So easy it is for any of us, and those who have gone before that we remain witness, to be extinct in one swift motion. The difference from the balance that is life is so often in the lack of a harsh word, a hand shake, a smile missed, a fumbled caress, a lost hug, a hip wiggle or a dry kiss. With decay and death anxious to lurk our edges the achievement of any balance is temporary. A measure of vigilance balanced against a relaxed stance, mastery, the self-defined ability to hit the mark with a playful consistency. To be that which we imagine, a thousand worlds and in so many of them we are uncomfortable and fraught with desire.

ON is a condition of neither too much nor too little, but just enough and right, for now sufficient and no more, or less. It is an edge of order, a mirage between anarchy and totalitarianism. ON, which we should embrace, becomes increasingly more difficult to obtain. ON is a feeling in the gut, and yet a condition obtainable through our conscious effort. To know when you are on requires a supervising consciousness, a viewpoint of sitting outside of oneself and looking in, of discerning the shape of balance out of the confusion of all possibilities. To have the feel for just the right line at just the right instant, the one-liner, sound bite, our fifteen nano-seconds of fame in a spasm of dance. ON requires an ability to have a presentment of what may happen, what may have happened, what will never happen, the impossible; a feeling for just where in blazes ON is and an ability to feel ourselves alive just now, just then, just whenever and together.

© Gabriel Orgrease 2005

A descendent of Daniel Boone (who once cut the epic "I kilt a bar" in the bark of an oak), Gabriel Orgrease (orgrease@optonline.net) often leaves good writing in strange places for inquisitive readers to find. Carved on stones in riverbeds, scratched on the backs of matchbook covers, plastered on placards of trams, fingered in the dust of old windows, he maintains pride in a compulsive obscurity and the pursuit of an independent vision of the written arts. For Gabriel writing is not a way to prosperity or fame, but a way to the secrets of life. Look for his best work near you.

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