Zyanya

Chamber 1: Continuity of Consciousness

The language of life is gibberish to me now;

fey, guttural ciphers scrolling bored and restive,

sibilant mallets of consciousness struck on a vast timpani.

The tableau lingers in an afterglow,

and with a choreographer’s gift,

prior to the vanishing,

an actor bows briefly, pure and untainted

and then walks off stage.

How can a thousand faces, properly lighted,

be cold and stumbling?

No applause?

The cruel silt 

that amends our presence persists.

A timestamp assures us 

that as parallel spirits of a shared pigment 

we live in a serial time.

We can pace-off the distance. 

We can overcome the linear,

and become strangers that blot a destiny 

from the common ink

of implacable need.

The isolate choice,

a universe digging at its own scabs,

unrepairable

and therefore repeatable;

holds us from the silences of God.

Spun of faith,

we are the loom that imagines

the mirror image.

Despite all of this, we rise.

Stillborn spirits

made of vapors that seek the altitude

that never ends.

The backward glance does not satisfy.

The forward stare blinds.

The closed eye

gathers the single photon

and over the rim,

multiplies.

Zyanya Chamber 1 portrays the universality of the WingMakers when the element of time is extracted from the view. 

Zyanya

Chamber 2: The Guardian

In a paralyzed moment 

the shift bellowed.

Time crashed 

to the black tarmac; 

a pile of thrones.

Tectonic plates lurched 

at me like celebrants 

of a victory march.

My heart spun 

in the blue, viscous liquid;

its centrifugal force 

forever separating 

the hopeful from the insufficient. 

And now, yes, just now, 

the minutes pool

like cut stones of 

an ancient pyramid. 

Time restored, 

my spirit can once again 

spit soft, vanilla words

upon the desecrate earth.

Who or what intervened?

A guardian forsworn 

to protect pilgrims 

from themselves?

An entrapped guard 

that decided — 

in the winking subversion of fate — 

to ever-so-slowly 

become me?

A deep-cast search 

reveals the single eye, 

the untethered diadem 

that swells in secrecy.

Its mystery cloak, 

like counterpoints unwoven,

drape like wings, 

and I shimmer, 

as it grazes my shoulder.

A winged guardian 

steps out

and I feel the 

countdown of self-destruction.

A compulsory step forward.

A mutual stare.

The stubborn arrival 

that cannot be withheld.

Calling a name 

expelled from a vacuum;

announcing itself 

like a sudden flare in the

blackest night.

The guardian 

within the guardian,

forever in contempt of court,

served a hasty warning 

to the bought verdicts and 

embodied deprival.

The evaporate world,

slung in the compost 

of a universe uncharted,

reveals the one name

that is nontemporal.

It is the name 

of an eternal psyche

lost in a thousand-linked 

chain of temporal bodies.

Each chain, a guardian.

Each guardian, a wisdom-giver.

Each wisdom-giver, a god.

Each god, a universe.

Each universe, 

a leavening of all

through the cut stones 

of time. 

The paralyzed moment,

beneath the lens 

of the diamond core,

an undying perfection 

unperturbed

like a spring-fed stream

enters a flaming forest.

Chamber 2 is the abstraction of how one’s guardian reaches into their world in quiet times of contemplation. 

Zyanya

Chamber 3: Upon a Giant

The earth cringed when I left.

I heard its voice in my parting breath,

a deep-scowled tone 

thundering atop all roofs:

“Didn’t he used to live upon a giant?”

Metaphoric roles 

like jointed doll models

prance as Fate’s seductress. 

Always ahead,

bartering pity,

deferring retribution 

for the insolvent touch 

of the black crude spirit in crusted books.

We forget the visit to god’s winery,

for the memory of invertible, twisted vines 

and the fugue of a heaving earth.

I have learned to settle within,

outside my body,

unafraid of death’s opaque cloak 

that falls

like a slowmotion leaf

in the utter stillness of a dawning forest.

The rhythm in my veins

entrained to the glorious Unknown

by the spirit mentors 

Love and Death.

Lashed together

like a pacemaker to a heart,

parallel spirits can fly

halved or not;

keening tribulations unheard

In the safest safe.

I cannot promise mine is yours.

I cannot see for you.

I cannot live as an adversary.

I cannot chase a finite vision.

I cannot promise you indelibility.

I cannot give you the funeral of innocence.

I cannot, with pointed fingers, accuse 

the goliath mistake of Destiny’s puppetry.

We might as well be vapors;

malleable, faint, ghostly.

With no points of attachment;

strings fall.

Giant hands wince without resistance.

But there is a way

into the centermost core.

The collective psyche favors a savior,

it always has

it always will. 

The savior is the collective.

It always has been

and will always be.

In that central serenity of permanence 

the feral souls flock

amid the skies, chanting 

the primal hymns

of one being.

One collective being.

One. 

Collective. 

Being.

I have heard this chant. 

It remains aglow of purpose

to draw us inward

to that place unfractured,

unmasked,

waiting for our memory to unite.

It is all. 

The pluperfect of history —

all history —

is not right or wrong, 

steeped in moral certitude.

It is chatter in the conversation between 

all and One. 

The Attractor, the One,

is not the beginning and the end,

nor the beginning of the end.

It is the before and after.

It is not the collective all.

It is the unified one.

The difference between is infinite

like the shadow of a universe.

Chamber 3, like Chamber 2, depicts the guardian teacher interacting with their student through the field environment. In the column of the violet light descending into the guardian teacher, is a pictograph of the snake-like image, often depicted with circles at each curve. I refer to this image as the “tempter”, as in the serpent of the Garden of Eden. To the serpent has fallen the unenviable task of illuminating humanity to the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. It is an interesting thing how the snake became the personification of tempter, but it has been indelibly linked to temptation ever since the creation of the book of Genesis.

As with all creation stories and their introduction of the human species upon earth, there are many interpretations. The tempter symbol is my way of signifying that good and evil or polarity is ever-present. Of the nearly 100 paintings that are currently released, about half of them include this symbol somewhere in the composition. It is a bedrock theme that the knowledge of good and evil tempts people to judgment and blame (religiously speaking, to sin). 

The symbol is less prominent in the Ancient Arrow gallery, but makes its initial showing in Chambers 1, 2, 3, and 4. The symbol takes on variations over time, but it remains the good and evil serpent or tempter. The tempter is an initiator or activator of knowledge. It is not a devil or evil spirit. It is offering an experience of good and evil for transcendent purposes. In effect, and like all things divided into polarity, the good and evil serpent is providing access to knowledge concerning how good and evil operate in a seamless union.

It is the purveyor of transcendence. A wayshower to the Sovereign Integral state of consciousness. 

Zyanya

Chamber 4: The Snake Remains

Extreme measures were required,

not platitudes without the how.

Hunting quarry with insults

is as ancient as humanity

sloughing its generational skin,

but the snake remains.

You can try to be the sum of all suns,

like a sparkle conspiring to dazzle its

diamond host,

but the snake remains. 

We are pronged

on the wrong setting 

like stained glass wanderers 

tightly framed in gray, stone blocks.

The brazen herd watches 

in the humming light and musty air

of truth’s museum. 

Booming notes from a holy organ

whirl about their conflicted limbs,

but the snake remains.

A fire approaches

herded by winds that confess

that they are the only protectant 

from the rope’s end.

Held by choking hands,

a slippage into oblivion

right on the border of Elysium, 

so close to home,

but the snake remains. 

The mirror’s countenance is unchanged,

a vague hereafter is dealt in equitous calm.

You look at your reflection,

as if prying off the lid of a paint can

completes the work.

When all else fails

you can push forward, 

the onward breathing that draws life

from the thin air.

Feel that magic!

The thin air!

But the snake remains.

There is a showdown long coming.

The knowledge of good and evil

bears shriveled fruit.

Duality exhumed 

to resume its quarantined patch of space;

and the only cannibal of note —

the ouroboros —

will dine

on the flesh of time.

How do we continue to bloom

when the snake remains?

When holes punch through us

and scatter our sight?

How do we listen,

just listen,

listen,

when the hissing remains

and the slithering unsettles?

In some way, we are all revenants,

poking through the earthen crust 

like seeds whose code

impels the search for light.

A tree falls

and no one hears

its crashing reverberations.

The echo persists

deep below in that hollow, cavernous

space we call life.

We hardly notice,

but the snake remains.

Chamber 4 I refer to as the bird woman. These have a presence in mythology as the Sirin, and while my depiction separates the bird from the woman, it remains a picture of the Sirin.

Zyanya

Chamber 5: Not Impossible

The curious wing,

oblivious to its chains,

flexes muscle with hammering precision,

and the body rises.

The tugging of chains,

finally felt,

remove hope with clipped derision.

The winged creatures

settle for a range,

but have Icarus visions.

Over and over it repeats

until the range is compacted

under the weight of norms,

and the curious wing is made

less curious.

Maps have borders.

Their merciful renditions

take into account

the length of chain,

the invested energy,

the centered home.

The ganglions of separation

flared their afferent paths

and we followed 

like debris 

in the current 

of a swollen river.

No map or wing is necessary.

Those are for mystical lore

where the blackbird priest, 

with his feelered hands,

shames his flock.

The range grows smaller.

We are captives,

hidden tight in the twilight maze.

What force protects us

from what force?

The manacles chaff.

The wing beats tiresome.

The final story waits to be told.

Will we be there when it is?

And if home is not on our maps

or in the range of our wings,

then where is it?

The winnowed truth

blown by a trillion breaths

stands so tall as to be invisible.

In wavelengths too small to divide

like the print of an atom’s touch.

Our mouths do not move to these

rhythms and sounds.

The story is being told right now,

right here.

Immaculate.

Impeccable.

Imaginary.

Not, not impossible.

Zyanya Chamber 5 represents a narrative of the Quantum Presence and its flowering in one’s life when they use the single eye.

The single eye has been appropriated by various cults and secret societies over the past 400 years, however, it goes back much further as a symbol of out-of-the-body consciousness. Shamans used this symbol extensively to designate that an individual was out of their body, that they were experiencing life as a floating, disembodied eye. It was associated with a state of consciousness that an individual could achieve, but not sustain, at least while in the body. 

The eye of Horus and Ra were bound to mythologies that suggested that the single eye was a form of protection against one’s enemies. The single eye was later used to symbolize the all-seeing eye of God. It was known as the Eye of Providence; a not so subtle reminder that God was observing our human actions and judgment was not far behind. As a visual representation, it’s suggested to be an artistic invention of Freemasonry, and its most notable expression is on the one-dollar bill. 

The single eye, as it pertains to WingMakers, is a symbol of the sovereign integral state of consciousness. It is not phenomenalistic, as in the case of the shaman; protectionists, as in the case of Egyptian mythology; or omniscient, as in the case of the Eye of Providence. It is an interconnection. A lens into the Grand Portal that connects all consciousness in a meaningful and purposeful experience, despite the turmoil and relative chaos that operates in the individual domain. 

Zyanya

Chamber 6: New Prometheus

Body sees.

Emotion feels.

Mind groks.

Soul is lit

from a fire 

we cannot see 

or feel 

or comprehend.

Faith, a flat earth,

cast off from the matrix of unity.

It survived by pulling the sky-curtain back

and releasing the angels —

both good and bad.

Our binary world

rooted in righteous irrationality. 

The door of no return,

built by a disfigured mind that ushers 

final breathers to their life retrospect

against the whiteboard of binary code.

There is no debugging.

There is no real release.

Only the circuitous re-entry 

into the cave of silhouettes. 

The rehearsals staged.

Perhaps Plato suffered the disillusionment

that all true mystics — imperiled by detachment —

see, feel, and grok

when they stumble upon 

the source of the fire.

There was never education 

in the binary world.

It was a program.

The source of the fire

and the source of the program

are not entangled

in any manner, except one.

They are one. 

And it is precisely there 

where the disillusionment 

rises up on its very tiptoes, waving its arms 

and shouting: there is only the dance.

(Thank you, T.S. Elliot.)

The stillpoint smiles,

a doppelganger of the Mona Lisa.

E=MC2;

but the fire is not energy.

It is not dance.

How can such utterly opposite things be one?

We need a new formula 

that pierces the interdimensional conclaves

of weirdness (spooky, if you prefer)

and bears humanity a new Prometheus.

The prominant mandorla with the single eye with an infinity symbol crossing over it, speaks for itself. If you’ve been reading the notes so far, you are no doubt becoming more expert in decoding these chamber paintings. From now on, I will simply add hints here and there. 

Zyanya

Chamber 7: The Oasis Ahead

These eyes that water in the telling,

drift on the edge of a stream

that issues from heaven or hades, 

I’m not sure.

They both have gates.

To keep in

or keep out;

Does anyone really know?

It could be both.

The evidence is delinquent. 

Fiddling with levers that rise and fall

at the will of vacant eyes;

humans, once incandescent,

now obscure light

from behind the curtain.

Dreams woefully mangled

into wavelengths long and aimless;

boomerang to ego

like a cat at feeding time,

nustling ankles.

The treasure is not out there

in the restless eyeballs.

The life you thought was to be lived

is to be annealed into a lump of clay

and tossed onto the potter’s wheel

to be reshaped,

retooled,

into wisdom’s golden casing.

Only your hands

can draw boundaries in chalk

and walk across them,

sated by the checkpoints

behind you

and the Oasis ahead.

The theme here is interconnection.

Zyanya

Chamber 8: Testimony

I’m sitting in a pew;

a child of eight.

A deacon winces behind a lecturn

as he recalls the bitter plight 

from which he was saved.

For some reason they call it testimony.

In the deacon’s moment of salvation,

when he was in the pit of despair 

and the hand of God reached down

to save him,

he was naked.

Not even a figleaf.

(Damn and dam those Adamic themes.)

The deacon had been 

the victim of alcohol and nameless drugs,

caught in their merciless undertow.

He ended up in the fetal position 

on the floor of his shower (not exactly Eden),

when something miraculous happened.

A voice spoke to him.

I wanted to ask, were the drugs still working?

But it was church,

and my father was next to me.

I didn’t want to invoke the stern lanterns

or the stooping whisper.

That voice, at least to the deacon,

was real.

it wasn’t his imagination, he protested,

or having been caught in the crossfire 

of alcohol and heroin. 

No…

he made that quite clear.

Instead, by a miracle’s mirage

the deacon had stood to his feet, half-choking,

half-baptized by water,

in a birthday suit 

that I couldn’t help curiously imagining.

The voice the deacon heard,

seemed to need a capital “V”,

because he had referred to it as the Voice.

It’s a funny thing to me is that god

should be capitalized, as if it’s a proper noun, 

and any action (verb) or thing (noun) 

that issues from god, should also be capitalized.

No comprender.

God is not a name for a person.

Even when I was eight

I knew that god was an indefinite pronoun. 

But back to the Voice.

The deacon’s cadence slowed down,

his tone wrenchingly somber,

and then, he whispered the words the Voice told him

(from outside of himself, 

he emphasized one more time):

“Lift yourself up. You have work to do.”

Hmm, I had been properly baited, 

reeled in,

fileted and baked,

and then this punchline?

That was the Voice?

Of god?

That’s all it said?

That was what saved you?

That’s your testimony?

That was divine intervention?

For a deacon?

What about me?

Maybe the voice would say: 

“Get out of bed. You have school!”

My mom said that.

Regularly. 

That’s my testimony.

In Zyanya Chamber 8, we see how the halo is unconnected to the individual, hovering above in a somewhat disjointed manner. The theme is about the creation moment when potential energies are materializing in a human form.

Zyanya

Chamber 9: The Theory of Everything

If we are to walk a tightrope

with the tipani of righteousness 

banging out

its querulous beat,

we must be calm, steady, poised, 

impervious.

At our back,

vultures crown the sky,

ink blots spiraling ever-closer

to stain the land.

One foot out

the rope cringes with the weight.

Far below, a rattlesnake darts

from behind gray rocks.

The theory of everything

is woven upon the tightrope

in code that only an ant

could see.

Doubtful it would illuminate

the ant or any of us.

Everything?

Really?

You mean a theory for every thing 

in every dimension

that ever existed or exists?

Do you mean the future, too?

Is there such a theory

that can connect all the dots?

Leave nothing out, 

even nothing?

I wonder where wonder would be found 

if such a theory materialized.

Suddenly, 

from out of the gloom of ignorance, 

we looked upon our silver screens

and saw the irrefutable truth

of connection

to everything.

Would any of us understand?

The tightrope is too high.

The net, too thin.

The code, too small.

Our minds, too thick.

When the tightrope cringes

our hearts fall to fear.

Looking backwards to the wooden platform

that small block of safety 

with a leaning ladder of Pisa.

And yet, there is the pull 

of the other side.

The jawboning parrots block the way

critics of all things original, 

The theory of everything

is the most original

of all originality

for the simple reason it threads 

everything

in a single fabric.

What could be more original than that?

Chamber 9 in the Zyanya series introduces the clear justaposition of wings and roots. This signifies the natural tension between the earthly and higher realms. Even the “angelic” figure is rooted, though it provides succor to the female figure who is also rooted but without wings. There is a sense of transference between the two figures, and there is a common soul complex, just as there is a common ground.

The crescent moon factors in clearly on this painting. While some might think that the crescent moon symbolizes a cosmological element, in the WingMakers Materials the crescent holds a different meaning.

It is one of the more consistent symbols in my work, throughout the four published galleries. The moon symbol actually represents the cardiac crescent, as it is called in medical terms. When the symbol of the moon is seen within the WingMakers chamber art, you are seeing the luminance of the heart, not a cosmological body. 

The heart forms within 22 days of conception. It initially forms as a “heart field” and then begins to morph into a crescent-shaped tube. This is true for mammals in general. Eventually the crescent becomes the right and left ventricles and the source of neuronal activity in the heart itself. 

In the context of Chamber 9, this is the symbol of the heart being awakened.

Zyanya

Chamber 10: One and Equal

The stories you’ve been told

have made you pray

to the sky-fixer.

With the weight of a ghost 

in space

the genie spins.

You lower your clasped hands

to your sides and sigh.

A downward glance,

a broken floor,

a stunted breath

stuttering in the wireless world.

The unequal falsehood,

stood up by derelict stooges,

is paper-thin,

but as strong as a belief

can be.

Forked tongues welded

these stories to your mind’s basement,

the casement for the blind.

What does equal mean, any way?

Equality is a concept

from the other side.

It has not bred 

on this side of the abacus.

It is the orphan in the corner,

the inductive murmur

neutered to 

stand like a sculpture in empty 

space.

We can see it,

touch it,

know it in our minds,

imagine its purpose,

but, like a marble eye

it stares back at us,

lifeless.

One and equal is the chant.

One and equal.

One and equal.

1&=.

Perhaps it is more a prayer

than a chant.

Maybe an affirmation?

Maybe a hope?

Certainly not a mantra.

The sky-fixer, spinning in weightlessness,

waits for more voices.

The franchised choir 

whose mercenary ways 

alienate, 

separate,

explicate,

ultimately precipitate the reins 

that embrace you

and hold you as seven and a half-billion

blueprints,

wandering the coagulate spirit. 

Garbed as particles of one thing

ignorant of itself.

You pledge your fate

to the invisible giant whose

bowels of confusion constitute your path. 

You rise up in protests,

victorious with new laws,

crawling

to the flying goalposts of equality.

The genie sleeps.

The three wishes expressed

lilt on the winds of time. 

They are:

ONE. Give us immortal life.

TWO. Give us freedom within that immortal life.

THREE. Give us purpose.

A fourth wish limped behind,

whispered in a croaking breath:

Give us equality.

The genie scowled, 

its arms green and muscular,

“There are only three wishes. 

You cannot have more. 

Do you wish to substitute?”

The particles, lost in their blueprints,

collectively shook one head

and crawled their separate ways.

In the WingMakers Materials there a a few references to living multiple lives simultaneously. It is a form of parallel worlds and multiple existences, all happening in the same frame of time (but not space). Zyanya Chamber 10 depicts this in an abstract form.

Zyanya

Chamber 11: Our Home

When all else fails

remind me of our home.

Even the word is warming.

In the back of a deep drawer

I can reach blindly,

fingers as eyes. 

When I imagine home

I have no fingers or eyes. 

Something approximate of light.

Something unbounded by 

heaven and hell. 

Something free

from the infectious armies 

that patrol the borders

between black and white.

Liberation is the ultimate home.

There is no border,

gate,

fence,

moat,

wall,

door,

or barrier.

No antibodies patrol

with creeping tendrils.

No antidotes to patch poisen’s 

wicked pluck.

Home is cast from a matrix;

a boundless source

unprogrammed.

A mystery billowing 

like a forceful form half-seen.

When all else fails

let me hear the primal hymns

that soar through the tall, 

half-naked pines.

Let me feel that ecstasy 

when light and air 

expose the soul’s heartbeat,

and its drumming 

cannot be unsummoned.

When all else fails

remind me of our home.

In my final depletion 

only speak those words: 

Our home.

Zyanya

Chamber 12: My Quietest Voice

If I could speak 

the quietest voice of my body,

I would doubtless disturb you.

I would tell you of noble gestures,

confounded by glamor and gain,

that codified discontent.

I would tell you that the search

is cast in the wrong direction,

because the maps were written 

beneath wings of steel.

I would tell you that the 

one thing missing,

that hibernates within each of us,

asleep in the surrender of hope and belief,

is the proof 

that we are one and equal.

I would tell you that this proof

is not so hard to find

if you are willing to live 

from the heart.

Only there

is the proof surfaced

like a whale’s breath.

I would tell you that the mind is a prism 

that separates colors, 

disunites forms,

and severs realities;

while the heart fuses,

mixes, and coheres.

I would, in my very quietest voice,

a voice that even an ant would 

strain to hear,

tell you that the proof 

is in the heart.

Zyanya

Chamber 13: No Shelters

I walk a path surrounded by

thorn bushes,

darting from the underground;

angling their way 

to the gleaning shelter.

Can you see this shelter?

Invisible horses herd us.

Stern voices command us.

Winnowing touches draw us closer.

Our purpose is lent

from a landlord cast of clay,

surfaced in gold,

burnished to a sheen that blinds.

Inside the shelter,

compliance of generation

upon generation,

hollowed out, 

thinned to the same

themes of sin and insufficiency. 

How can a shelter, 

based on sin and insufficiency, 

be a shelter?

An oasis for slaves?

A detour into the illusory?

The pull of a demonic shade?

A mirage of tarnished hope?

A dream of salvation

where souls are properly attired

in bowing minds.

I walk a path

that moves serpentine, dotted

with eyes that see

around bends and over mountains.

That see the karmic freight

borne of a listless, if not witless, mass.

Whose map encircles

an entire galaxy of learning

where there are no shelters.

The powers of duality, to hold our attention and distract us from our most important task: to awaken and stay awake, is illustrated in this chamber painting. The transmission of the higher frequencies is ongoing (the light entering the head of the central figure), but one must be diligent to express the actions of behavioral intelligence or they could be subject to duality, diminshing their awareness of that higher frequency connection. 

Zyanya

Chamber 14: Purpose Served

Do not be seduced

by the plow of nihilism.

Its seeds sprout,

and nihilists believe 

in the sun, water and soil.

They are the equal and opposite effect

of something ineffable,

where real, unreal, and surreal

align in a magnetic clasp

of surrender.

The Enlightenment obscured

the ineffable,

like an eclipse 

blunts the moon or sun.

The core of light

is unchanged;

the program of blockage

ebbs and flows

through generational time. 

Science will prove perennial mysticism.

The eclipse is always temporary.

But in the shadows

the senses come alive.

Purpose served.

There are a few painting where words enter the canvas, and in this case, it is three simple words: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. This painting is highly abstracted and dimensional in order to bring through the mysterious frequency of the unknowable.

Zyanya

Chamber 15: Who Else?

In all of this change,

can we live blind?

What other species summons fire?

Who else walks the earth

with feet on ground,

arms raised up 

in argument with the invisible truth?

Who else?

Can we live blind

like cave dwellers who cling to walls,

waiting for survival to crack

their translucent skin?

Who else?

If we blame the gods or spirits or ghosts

then we miss the connections.

We become the nucleus of disconnection. 

Blame pours like crude oil

thickening, curdling, poisoning, 

filling the cavities so receptive

to its leaden voice. 

Our collective minds 

frame the savior

in golden tones of sin and shame.

Fear strikes out

and we call the invisible 

on our psychic phone

to absolve us.

The blame is plain, 

it falls like rain.

It enters like water

fills a glass

half empty.

Who else?

Occassionally, a painting’s purpose is to evoke a sense of awe, not in the sense of beauty, but rather a sense of otherworldliness. Trying to depict the multiverse in a 42 x 30 inch canvas is a challenge that very few artists would entertain let alone attempt. Here is my attempt.

Zyanya

Chamber 16: Monument

For if just once in its brief lifespan

the mud-limbed creature staunch entrusts

the entirety of its being to a single guiding star,

without thought to consequence or charge,

shorn of reservation and uncertainty,

of indurate heart, of resolute mind,

of immaculate soul…

it is ever sung and honored

within the senior ranks of bravery,

notwithstanding the overt success of its mission.

The act of commitment bricks the monument;

a willed reorientation of self

to the nurture of the seed’s kernel,

to the perfume of the flower of life

from which all life springs.

And should it be asked of me,

a sprout of divine derivation,

if the retrospective yields the lesson,

I would proud salute in quiet reverie

the God-spark’s passionate audacity

that emboldens and animates the mundane.

Zyanya Chamber 16 introduces a new element of the WingMakers visual vocabulary: spirit guides. The two golden figures on either side of the head of the central figure, are spirit guides, working with that particular entity to reach out and touch infinity. The figure shows the horns of materialism, the roots of physicality, and the wings of ascension. The astral and religious worlds beckon on the left side of the painting. Often I depict the heart as a desert underneath a night sky, and usually there is a body of water often reflecting the crescent moon. All of these are symbolic clues to decode the picture. 

Zyanya

Chamber 17: The Gates of Crumpled Paper

Inward goes the call.

The writing proceeds, but the words

fall

beneath my gaze

before they reach me.

A hand that is mine

holds a pen that is yours

over a paper that is ours.

Its white geometry

stares up at me like a gate,

refusing me,

using me to sour fate.

I know the madness inside you

lurks, breeding with itself—

each generation madder.

Until all of us,

straining to see what is within,

the last of kin

a silent monster

in my shadows.

Truly, it is not your fault

that you are a petal of gold

on the flower of disease.

I have crumpled another

page on the floor,

hoping to please you.

Another gate refused to open

so I closed its existence.

Your pen is too fine

for my words anyway.

And my hand is

tired of denial.

I can tolerate the savage smile.

The lock of hair cut in rage.

The latch left open at night.

The blackouts that seize you in their cage.

For that one small gift that you have given

is not so small.

A muse of a lonely highway;

of searchlights that prowl the night

in a feast of anti-mimicry.

You have brought me here

to see the crumpled gates

that my bare hands have laid

before your madness.

In this aloof chaos we call earth

we have both listened for the apology.

Stabbing at our brains’ indecision

every ounce of us drenched in the

sanctity of sweat.

The pitiless tint of crumpled paper

surrounds me

like birthmarks of the

cream carpet face below.

Lifeless and languid

they imitate cruelty in their disavowal.

But like you,

their denial is part of a calculation—

the kind that is not kind.

“Tough love,” you said,

“is the only witness to true love.”

You sacrificed your letting go so I could

walk

above

and below.

Gathering the words that had fallen prey

to a matchstick’s fleeting light.

The small gift that you have given

is not so small.

It has no dimension.

It has no presence at all,

yet it gives permission like the sun

to see.

The moon to dream.

The mountain to hope.

The ocean to feel.

The desert to desire.

The forest to commune.

The earth to live.

The human to love

and to leave too soon.

I know you know us.

You have pressed yourself to me

in the falsetto of love’s voice.

Not enough I thought,

but it was enough to create us.

When you go on, past me,

remember, any thought you might have

of me, is not me.

It can only be us,

because there was never a time when I walked

or ran or crawled or laid on this land

alone of you.

Never.

Nie.

Never.

My deprived angel, if you go mad

when my flesh

is crumpled on the floor

like a birthmark on Death’s face;

I will crush the gates for you

with my bare hands.

I will talk with the king.

I will tell him you are forgiven.

I will show him your small gift

that is not so small.

“There is only mercy

in a world of madness.”

I remember your words’ stealthy aim.

It was my heart,

the one thing that cannot be reduced

by a cage.

Like an evening shadow

I will wait the moment of your return.

The king and I will walk the land together,

listening for your arrival.

When you come,

I will run from my rations.

I will lie atop you heart to heart;

silent measures,

transparent wings.

The holy art!

And the time of crumpled papers,

of launching words like fireballs

over moats,

over stone walls

into the deaf kingdoms

that hold sanity dear…

souls will finally sit with us

around fires and cheer.

We are not crazy when we hold our breath

as one lung.

When we close our eyes

to the punishment of purity.

When stars speak

to a leaf and

we intercept the repartee,

and smile

as one.

Zyanya Chamber 17 is about: “The felt presence of an invisble world”.

The painting is trying to evoke this sense of wonder in the viewer. There is always much more going on in our local universe. Much more. Our five senses do not allow all of these frequencies to be processed and analyzed by our mind. This painting allows you to get a sense of this expansive, multidimensional world that is around you all of the time. 

Zyanya

Chamber 18: So, So Slowly

You cannot mute fire with Holy Water.

You cannot lure the wind to obey.

Yout cannot find the weakest in the stronger.

You cannot answer the questions that stay.

Cannot is the limit of can,

that you cannot unbelieve.

If you live a full life’s span,

gravity falls without reprieve.

Life is a humble, sprawling beast,

a tinder night seeking embers.

A castoff world unmoored released;

licking losses it falsely remembers.

Behaviors beneath the skin bloom,

their mount of the inner vessel complete.

Vanity spreads the bristles of its broom,

sweeping virtues to the street.

If we give, truly give of ourselves,

the water within becomes holy.

We learn what the universe tells,

even though it seems to speak 

so, so slowly.

Chamber 18 is illustrating the “birth” of a new consciousness. 

Zyanya

Chamber 19: Seat of Freewill

The heart steers the mind

to unity and connection.

The mind steers the heart 

to the red veils of separation.

Whose hands grasp the wheel?

It is called the seat of freewill

for a reason.

I will let you decode this one on your own. (Hint: the poem will help.)

Zyanya

Chamber 20: Real Gold

Following fires that bore into the land

like storms driven by lightning,

I see horizons cast deep,

flung by powerful, emboldened arms.

There, in that crease that folds mystery,

I can see a future 

where ten billion differing beliefs 

disintegrate into one. 

Where the inside-out clarifies 

why slavery can finally die. 

We have been wrapped in slavery

since time was born on earth.

We accept the husk,

as if it was us.

The fools gold of spirituality.

The dazzle of light.

The glamor of angelic hosts.

The vanity of hierarchies undisclosed.

Its recipients; love-obsessed people

with u-shaped mouths.

The sovereign is integral.

It is not cut-off from the motherload.

The pocket of gold spreads everywhere. 

There is no mine to find.

We are it. 

There is no have/have not.

There is only illusion.

The program.

The lie.

The truth?

Well, that is worth finding.

But it is underneath and beyond and invisible.

It is cloaked and silent.

It dreams us awake, 

and nightmares us asleep. 

It runs when we walk

and walks when we crawl.

It seems to tease

like a harmless want.

The truth is,

it’s clear like perfect glass.

An oasis or mirage?

Somewhere in that midpoint,

intoning threats of sin.

We stand at the perfect glass,

watching the tarnished gift of mortality.

We delete love

in every judgment and blame.

Yet love remains

the only game.

This is one of a handful of paintings in the WingMakers art collection, where the subjects are completely abstracted, but this time, it is not in geometrical formations, but rather organic, biomorphic forms. This takes the concept of a gylph to a new level, like zooming in on a single glyph and really viewing the granularity, as if it was put under a microscope. This glyph represents the Sovereign Integral, contained (soveriegn) and connected (integral).

Zyanya

Chamber 21: Completion

Completion. 

Such an odd word,

as if anything alive is complete.

Everything is in motion,

shapeshifting its way to new expressions.

All to assemble

at the mysterious attractor.

We are untethering

and reattaching simultaneously.

Our experience is to change,

modify,

reconstitute,

always to move on 

to the expression of our next.

Unless you draw the circle of time

around a life,

marking changes,

completion does not exist.

We are the cast that changes

the stage,

the script,

the story’s arc,

down to the final, immutable page.

Until we are complete,

there is no completion.

Zyanya Chamber 21 is a painting that illustrates the collision of temporal time with “eternal” time-based frameworks. That which is eternal is the core of all things, and it cannot exist in temporal entities. Only the concept.

Zyanya

Chamber 22: Purpose Penned

If I am free

then walls do not exist.

There are no iron bars 

that cross windows.

No tape to seal lips.

There are no wars

that settle scores

or torch the night 

in high-pitched wails.

If I am free

then not a single child

is hungry for love.

There are no whispers

of hate

or glorification

of handwritten fates.

If I am free

then there is no path. 

Beliefs hurl their decrees,

dissolved in the aftermath 

of an untold foretelling.

If I am free

then so are you,

even if we are transferred 

to the bottom shelf

of the universe.

We remain the selfless self,

un-imprisoned in the unreal.

We are stewards and shepherds 

of this recognition.

Purpose penned.

This painting speaks to the disorientation of everyday life. Many of us, as we travel the long path, encounter the cross frequencies of consumption, greed, glamor, and a dozen other varieties of phsyical, 3-D realities. These can drain our energy and cause disillusionment, which can easily cascade into depression. The figure that is upside down, is in this state. Caught in a swirling current of distractions. However, the main figure in the darkness remains, and that is the Soverign Integral. 

Zyanya

Chamber 23: What If

What if you could see 

the universe as your home?

What if you could talk with God…

I mean really talk with the universal spirit?

What if the highest frequency in the universe

circled you moment to moment.

What if every morning you woke 

11 million miles away?

What if you lived forever?

Yes,

yes,

yes,

yes,

and yes.

What if your learnings were lost 

and you started anew?

Would you re-find them?

The very same ones?

Why would you?

The brilliant presence

has suffered in the intellect.

Isn’t it time 

to do the penultimate crime

and open eyes that lighten?

Sometimes an artist wants to create a mood through color and form. This particular painting is to show the mood of contemplation, and how the act of this contemplation draws the attention of our higherr self (featured in the center of the painting). 

Zyanya

Chamber 24: Broken

The frightened populace

edges closer;

a herd of ominous calamity,

yawning at the wing-full sky.

Switching tails rally against the flies.

Predators creep in the borderlands.

Some with bodies,

some with only a watermark.

A tightening spiral

brings tension.

Tension brings wear.

Wear brings breakage. 

Breakage brings repair.

Healing is innate,

if allowed.

If a space is made,

if a time is given,

if an open mind receives;

healing can step in.

The graveled crowds

gnaw on the bleached bones

of sanctimony,

hoping to find a nutrient path 

to accrete wisdom.

Wisdom is not found in the herd.

Wisdom is not found in the book.

Wisdom is not found in the path.

Wisdom is not found in the other.

The mind’s scrapbook interior

hoarded dreams and desires

like the pantry of a billionaire. 

But where is wisdom on the shelf?

Wisdom is healing.

It is what recognizes and repairs 

the broken.

Wisdom is healing. This is the simple theme of Zyanya Chamber 24 painting.