Bardo in Midtown
I am in the bardo. Am I in the bardo? There are no faces on the people here on the street, this street moving west toward the river. But the dogs, they smile at me. Is it because they see me like those unknown beings on the ends of their leads do not?
Am I here at all because it is that I think they see me? Only them. And that funeral home. It’s the waiting funeral home just there, that, when I sat, I found I was opposite its doors without planning it. It must be because I’m so ready to glide inside, like I feel I’m gliding now. Glide inside like the dead things in an old black and white movie. Was it Carnival of Souls, that I remember? What an image. Here I am in it decades later. And so light. I can’t be walking? So I must be in the bardo. Between the lies of the living and the indifferent death of all those who’ve given up. Was I ever alive? What is that except nothing but disappointments and fears, and the distorting mirror that reflects a sliver of garbled happiness to mock you, to keep you chasing the carrot dangling at the end of the stick that beats you.
I believe in the bardo. I willed myself here. The dogs know what I’ve done. They smile at me. And their kindness makes me want to cry knowing I’m in this soundless middle. And then, knowing this, I remember it means that I am too alive, but, yes but over there. . . I think that at least I’m not a carriage horse. And one of those tall, shackled, once-free beings casts an angry eye as it passes me on the avenue. Yes, stop complaining. The bardo is better than that life of heavy slavery, any life. Of slavery? Or any life? At least the bardo I’ve made is quiet. So far I haven’t had to do the act finally to get here, have I? Take the action? Do the act?
The quiet bardo. It’s my new neighborhood. A compromise of retreat but I still act the bit player at the rear of the stage, unnoticed, with no lines. I always get this part, breezing through the audition to not be alive and too much a coward to be fully dead, so still walking, stiff like a corpse. No, not now. With practice, it’s like gliding. So it’s like this, half alive. In the bardo that only looks like living. Imitation. Reflection in the bent mirror. I don’t know where the door is anymore.