The Sphinx 2

The sphinx has seen them come and go. The strong and the wrong, the wise and the wicked, the haughty and the lowly. She has seen elegant structures and torrents of chaos. Great swirling embers of power, and heart, and loss. She has stood both outside the gate and inside the gate, and found them to be the same place. The sphinx has endured the chattering sandstorms of the ages, and has remained unmoved. In her defense, it must be noted that she is made of 270 tons of stone. The sphinx is mostly sedentary.

The sphinx has lived through alphabets and minarets, prophets and parapets; she has emerged smoothened and wizened and so free of fear. She has eaten the choking dust of memory and been fed. She has seen breadths of time lap against impossibly distant shores and even still, she has not yet seen everything. Why is there always something new? What fresh momentum moves these crossing currents, turns these driving wheels, dances these many, many feet?

It's worth considering that the sphinx may not know. Her tears are long dried, baking daily in the punishing heat. For all her years, what has she accrued beyond survey? Her untold wrinkles are untelling. What has she seen but the sights? The world is set in motion, adrift but alight, and our human countless nows weigh nothing.

Our time is weightless but our actions have force. We can run circles around the sphinx, but we can also run forward. Run ecstatic, run through the gates, run in time as though time could never catch up. No, the sphinx does not know. She will never blink or lift a paw. We are the ones, the sands that blow, and breathe, and build.

Stay!!

Good dog.

The Secret

I've been practicing The Secret. By now you must know all about The Secret. Don't you watch Oprah? Neither do I. I could say what it's about, but that would be telling. Oh, OK. I never was much good at keeping a secret. It's about The Law of Attraction. Thoughts become things. You create your own reality. The cosmic boomerang. If you build it, they will come. There. Send the $23.95 to me. For $35, I'll say it on a DVD and your lips won't get tired reading.

So I've been practicing The Secret. It's the reason why justice always prevails. It's why good things always happen to optimists. Why unpleasant people never get what they want. Why innocent children are never hurt. You create your own destiny. For instance, today you were probably thinking "How can I get rich just by sitting around and thinking about being rich?" And now I'm here to answer that destiny. See how simple it is?

And I've been practicing The Secret. Me, I want a family, a big family. So I bought a bunch of toys. No family yet, but it will come. I'll need a wife first, so I've been setting two places at the table. I really want two wives but I've only got two matching plates. It will come. No food yet though, but I've been thinking hungry thoughts, and after a week I collapsed and a neighbor helped me into the hospital. And there I ate. See? But I didn't want to be sick, so I shunned all those unpleasant sick people there and paid close attention to the doctor and the nurses. And guess what? I got better. It really works!

I'm thinking with all these kids around how will I get some alone-time with my beloved? So I build a shed out back in the alley and put all the toys in there. Now for a romantic evening. I think "wine" and there it is, in my neighbor's Peapod bag. I think "music" and it comes out the radio. I think "fireplace" and gather some wood, leftover from the shed – see? No fireplace yet, but that's the beauty of The Secret. I believe in fireplace.

Crawling through the smoke, I keep thinking "Air." "Air." Did I somehow will that curtain on fire? As the coils pop through the flaming sofa, I think "I never did like that sofa." The Secret is helping me to get a new one. At least the kids are safe. Toward the end, I think "Stay cool," but it does not happen, at least not yet.