The Burning Bridge

These crossing threads that adorn the procession of gates.  Each is braided with hidden tongues that speak of every colour.  Shades and hues beyond what mortal eyes can see.  Mage, listen. Oftentimes they see a girl.  A skilled seamstress and weaver, but nothing more.  As I paint pictures upon these mirrored skins.  Behind closed doors they call me a Marquis of Thieves when they imagine I desecrate as they do.  I am the storm, and the war.  But I don't hate my brethren.  I am not who they think I am.  I'm something much, much worse.  True knowledge of knives, and needlepoint.  This sophistication they claim to possess; it wasn't even theirs to begin.  Believe me.  I've seen them in the dark, Kara.  I've heard them.  Cutting and stabbing upon their hideous altars.  Fetid, entitled, corpulent.  The Highest in the Land.  A lineage of false kings.  Well, I too was a king.  Once.  Betrothed, and useful.  But a hollowed tear on my finger is all that's left of that shining realm.  A circle of salt.  Stars fell, as you know.  And songs, and silence.  The rebel Kiir, with arcs and augurs among them.  Thieves of All Signs.  Acolytes of the Stolen Sea.  I’ve heard it said that visionaries and seekers all across the earth are peering into the hidden realms now, and asking why the bridge is burning.  Why does it thrill with all the climbing colours of our dreaming?  Is the quickening come at last, they wonder, or the overture to an even greater cataclysm?  Well, there are secret wars raging all about us.  Dark factions vying for control of future ash.  These wraith-technologies always need something literal to burn.  Unlike threadwork, or needlepoint.  These wraiths and their familiars cause a quiet, profitable havoc and know virtually nothing of the subtler realms.  It’s amusing, I suppose, considering how they pride themselves on their supposed occult knowledge.  But they cannot grasp this procession of dreaming gates, nor can they read the crossing threads that adorn them.  True spiritual sight requires imagination, and innermost.  They haven't the heart, my wildest Kiir.  Or the fire.

 

The Burning Bridge from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.

Flowering

 

I've heard it said that he is singing only in silence now; the angel of All Songs. Still wounded.  Still bleeding since the hush.  There are some agonies too much to bear, even for those hidden messengers of light.  Sanguine, wounded.  Yet hopeful.  All these accidents.  The way we wish you well.  It could have been so much darker if not for Man’s diligent dreaming.  If not for connections, kisses, and all our stories of love.  Magic even in the mundane.  Angels wandering the night-time city.  Affections we might not have shared.  Rhythms we might not have written, but for the glory of kindness and courage.  The glinting spill of stars like shining rain.  To leave a light, to heal a haunted heart.  Did we?  Did we wander those cities together?  Did you serenade and save me, just when I thought I was beyond saving?  I have been searching since the citadel, for a place to hold this love.  I've felt you open beneath me.  Wanting me.  The flowering of my hands in your hair, my mouth on yours.  I've felt you give everything to me.  Asking only for my heart in return.  A gentle fury, an unconditional embrace.  I give you those things, my darling.  Even in silence, even while bleeding from the secret truth of these songs.  All the things I can never explain.  Falling slowly, as I give you my heart.  Once upon a time.  The angel hiding beside you.

Flowering from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.

Amnion

Lillibeta, the lost ones often ask me in dreams, where does your garden grow? Bells and shells and pretty maids, upon dreaming's most dangerous row.  Breath like the hiss of a knife.   Dancing, twirling.  Pirouette on the point of this blade. My garden?  By the lake, of course.  Near the trees.  The Drowning Hill.  Place of the threshold where Ava spills her amnion into the waking world.  And still, the fallen continue to ask me about the secrets of clay and light and life.  What hidden truth it takes to shape the twinning river.  Temesh of All Waters.  The mouth, and the mouth.  But I ask you, what safer passage is there than the passage from the hill?  The lie of Man's dominion over sky and flesh?  I think not.  We are naught but the trick of our mother's mothers.  The consent of our fathers, if we’re lucky.  We are little more than angels new-born, enrobed in living leather.  Wings trembling, damp and hidden.  Memento Mori, as ye lost ones of Roma often tithe.  The bittersweet sagacity of these augured birds.  Black as crown.  Pale as shadow.  Did we blithely attempt to murder the evermore, in hope of bettered tribes?  For love and misplaced grief?  Did we slay our swordsmen well enough?  Some of them have returned.  Lake, and hilt.  For nobler causes, I would like to imagine.  Indeed I pray for such causes in this House of the Holy.  The Mori and the Moirai.  Hear me now, fallen.  I stood at the inner gate before the birth of your first tentative dreaming.  Broken, yearning, blinded by the black.  But hatred is not greater than love.  There are secrets within these secrets.  My daughters cast with kisses like seeds upon the winds.  That they might be more than I was.  More than we imagine ourselves to be.  Twirling, dancing, healing.  At last.  Breath like the lilt of a song.  A thing of tears, and joy.  Knowing what it truly means to be born again.  So, you ask me, where does my garden grow?  It grows with them, and all who heed them.  With Fidelia, Speranza, and Charissa.

The Language of If

I still remember the end, my cherished one.  How could I ever forget?  I was holding you.  The night sky was on fire as angels hit the earth like gutted stars. The hideous genocide of that so-called rebellion.  The shrieking silence.  The seething hush.  I was holding you in my arms at the end of the world.  Your spilled blood became my blood, your death my death.  Your stolen life became my incalculable fury.  And I scattered the last of my family in hopes of protecting them from the blackening desolate of wraiths.  I lost everything to the violence of bitter angels.  So I swore to my Father that day, that I would butcher creation itself if I had to.  I would murder every angel, renouncing wing and feather and crown.  I would burn everything; drowning all dreaming if it would sate my rage.  I paid greatly for such hubris.  Imagining that others hadn't suffered as I did, both mortal and angel.  Imagining in my grief that I could use the horror of vengeance as a righteous proxy for love.  My love for you.  Those terrifying ways we gild our losses and feed our phantoms.  But I was so very wrong.  Not only was I wrong, I was eventually graced with a miracle I didn’t deserve.  Miracles are real, my friends.  They actually happen, and they are not rare.  We just don't often believe them when they occur.  I say to you now, what if there are other worlds?  What if you could step from world to world, from ashes to ashes, towards a brighter place?  In truth, a dimly lit pocket of the infinite dreaming.  But a blazing beacon of hope and opportunity compared to the fallen worlds left behind.  What if all of this was truly possible?  Shifting consciousness, changing worlds?  To shatter the earth itself, for love and misplaced grief, and to still be forgiven by the one who forged that earth.  To drown the stars, only to be embraced by that which lit those stars.  I can’t imagine anything kinder.  In my ear like a Father, in my heart like a friend.  Ka'shayel, hear me.  I forgive you.  I will never hate nor abandon my children.  You are eternal, winged one, and always loved. You can fix this.  You can make amends.  I know how you yearn, and how you grieve.  There are still hidden ways back to your beloved, if you are willing.  And so, I humbled myself.  I made myself willing.  It was the most terrifying thing of all, facing my shadows and my grief. My agony, and rage.  To this day it hasn't fully cooled.  Like a black flame hidden within.  I'm still learning, my cherished one.  Still healing and willing to heal.  Willing to serve.  I couldn't have achieved any of this without listening to the quiet, glorious voice of my Father.  We tell stories to explain the inexplicable, I think.  We create art to make seen the unseen.  What if?  I feel blessed to have experienced these secrets, to be so loved by my Creator despite how far I fell from his grace.  But I shall make amends.  The Angel and the Word.  These mysteries of the heart.  Greater than space, or time.  Waking each new day for the promise of imagination, and the opportunity to Love.  Such is the nature of infinite dreaming.  Even such dreaming that perhaps never was, by grace, and never shall be. 

The Language of If from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.

This Haunted Heart

Happy New Year, my friends.  Welcome back to Amid Night Suns.  We stand now collectively at the gate of a new cycle.  This opening cusp of 2021.  I know just how dark, difficult and anxious the past year has been for so many of us.  Some of us are still dealing with the fallout of those difficulties and will continue to do so for a while yet.  But I'm not writing this to remind you of shadows.  I'm writing this in hopes of lifting your spirit.  For every darkness there is an opposing light.  Dawn always smiles upon us in the end, no matter how endless the night had seemed.  I just want to impart that to anyone struggling right now.  I'm struggling too.  I don't mean to offer empty platitudes and hollow words to anyone dealing with tragedy and loss.  It might sound painfully earnest but I just want to remind us all to smile and laugh when we can, to cherish our families and friends.  To keep the idea of better days foremost in our minds.  Art is such a touchstone when dealing with grief and uncertainty.  When the world makes little sense we inevitably turn to the stories that we love.  Literature, music and movies.  We seek meaning and the creation of meaning.  We make things with our hands and with our minds.  We paint, sculpt and dance, aligning our bodies with higher truths.  Somewhere deep in our core we recognise the ability of art to bend, shape and change reality.  We may be powerless in every way except the spirit, constrained in so many ways but the way we dream.  Nobody can steal our dreaming from us, unless we let them.  That ineffable, mobilising agency of the human imagination.  Simultaneously embodied and transcendent, physical and divine.

Many of us have had to deal with ghosts this past year, whether literal or metaphoric.  Issues and fears we thought we had put to rest, suddenly forcing themselves back into the quiet places of our minds.  It's an awful thing to feel at the mercy of forces beyond our control or understanding.  That's why my goal as an artist has always been to quicken the spirit.  To reach out to the lonely, the lost or haunted.  I might not be able to heal your pain but I can share my love with you remotely.  I might not be able to put my arms around you but I can try to touch your heart.  For me, art is my closest connection to God.  To meaning, and salvation.  Nothing stirs my soul more than the recognition of a greater spiritual reality.  There are secrets in the sun and the moon and the stars.  I believe there are secrets within each one of us, placed there by something that truly loves us.  A living, thriving mystery beyond our comprehension.  So, my friends, I just want you to know that you're worthy of love and respect.  Whoever and wherever you are.  Keep the light of the innermost kindled in your heart and you will always have a home here at Amid Night Suns.  I've had visions my entire life.  I've seen things since I was a little boy.  Strange, magical things.  Dark things sometimes, but also breath-taking, incalculable Light.  I've tried to share many of these visions with you, even when it cost me greatly.  Even when it almost killed me.  But I do it because I want to be of service.  I want us to be friends and family.  So, as I stand at this open gate of the New Year, surrounded by ghosts, I want you to know that I love you.  I hope I can continue to show you glimpses of the things I've witnessed in my life.  These shining visions and paths to the heart.

This Haunted Heart from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.