“Life is a repeated cycle of getting lost and then finding yourself again. There are many smaller cycles within that cycle where you get lost to a smaller degree and then remember yourself again. Sometimes you do it to yourself on purpose, consciously or unconsciously. Every time you get lost it is so that you can learn something or experience something from a different perspective.” ~ Jay Woodman
“Love your circus; love your monkeys.” ~ Trickster proverb
The sheep of 2015 has been sheared; its white fur replaced with black. The monkey of 2016 is rising up with a dragon’s heart, a heart of fire. How do you think the sheep’s fur turned black in the first place? It was promptly burnt by the roiling fire-laughter of the mighty monkey.
What is the fire monkey’s revelation? Purification by fire. He is a symbolic, if not archetypal, reminder to stay flexible, agile, and to expect the unexpected. Best not to look down at the flames of change. That’s too daunting. Best to leap from moment to moment using your intuition while maintaining a flexible disposition and a playful sense of humor.
It’s time to get down with some epic horseplay. Fire monkey energy is like carrying a hot coal through a harsh blizzard. You’re going to have to get creative to juggle it. Your imagination will be tested if you attempt to tap into it. But I suggest you do. For this energy is sacred in its cleansing. It’s a trial by fire and humor, and it’s worth it, because it reconciles as it reconditions, it topples thrones as it builds stepping stones. The fire monkey is a walking, talking, laughing crucible cooking Truth like it was an egg on a hot tarmac.
He is sojourn & pseudo, inverse & contrarian. His pockets are full of Coyote’s trickster tactics (yes, he wears pants: red corduroy, to be exact). He has gone through so many rabbit holes, his cognitive dissonance has cognitive dissonance. He’s gone through so many wormholes, his déjà vu has déjà vu. He’s cartwheeling on a crow’s wing, usurping summits and flattening mountaintops. He’s gutter & howl, cutter & caw.
His red tail is whiplash. Your spilled milk, he already licked up. He will cause you to trip over your past and fall face-first into the present, laughing the entire time. He stands foxtrot true to fever, blood, fire-berry, and blush.
He’s drunk on the blood of Christ you mistook for wine. He skips through all fast-track claptrap, because everything is red. Everything is on fire. Even the black sheep are blood-black, bleating indifferently through the static.
His jaw is hinged like a dragon’s, like his heart pumping fire and fury into laughter and high humor. He’s pillory & acid, dissolving the past into compost for the future. He reeks of blood & Zen. He doesn’t care about your delicate sensibilities. He will use them in his puppet mastery, his all-the-world-is-a-stage song and dance.
He’s there, in the Theater of the Absurd, dancing a jig. He wants you to join him, if you dare. But beware, such dancing is not for the faint of heart. There will be fury. There will be passion and pain. There will be hunger and fever. There will be doubt and fear. Old beginnings will end. New endings will begin. All will be recycled through this feverish dancing through the flames.
He rides on the fiery back of the Phoenix. He flies over Pandora’s Box, dropping love bombs like seeds. He’s a target for your arrow to miss. He’s bludgeon & blitzkrieg, a stone thrown in a glass house. He’s swinging through the blue guts of God. He’s already plucked out God’s left femur, polished it, poked holes in it, and played it like a flute.
Now he’s playing the ulna-radius of God’s arm like a violin, while using God’s skull as a drum. Through cacophonous thunderclaps, he’s tempting the world to the quick. The world is trying to catch up, but he’s too damn quick. The best we can do is skip through his wake, relishing the sacred residue of renewal and rebirth.
Fire monkey is Armageddon-happy as he cartwheels through the Trickster Apocalypse. The Middle Way is near and he’s owning up to it. He’s the laughter in the whirlwind, a beautiful annihilation. He’s the fire in the Tao, the third side of the yin-yang. He is psychosocial, societal-gangrene –a terrible juxtaposition. But the world is his. It’s in his lion-red hands. He’s eclipsing outdated memes. The blood moon in the sky is the punched eye of the old God. He is arrogance in decadence. He is staccato & dissonance, conceit & forfeit. He is Moot, shooting himself in the daredevil foot, in order to show you that “the way” that can be named is never The Way.
Image source:
2016
12 Monkeys
Triple yin-yang
