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X
I HAD A NOTE EXCUSING ME FROM EVOLUTION. The biology teacher announced that all students who’d been washed clean in the blood of the Lamb should go spend the remainder of the period in the library. There were only two of us: myself and a girl named Sarah, whom I had, for many years, loved with all my heart. We never spoke to each other. Her father was a rival preacher across town whom my father had mentored. He was the head pastor of the church my father had started in 1980 and then handed over when we went to England in ’85. We stayed in England for three years, then went to California for two, and then came back to Federal Way, where my dad wanted to start another church. But Sarah’s dad was threatened by this, and tried to block my dad’s path by badmouthing him and getting him kicked out of the denomination and ostracized from men who had always called him friend. So Sarah and I became Romeo and Juliet, forever parted by petty familial rivalries, starcrossed and so on, only she didn’t seem to know that I was Romeo. (But did she know that I used to sneak out of my house, ride my bike ten blocks to the Twin Lakes Country Club tennis courts, from where I could see, through the trees, her house atop the facing hill, a mere quarter mile away…did she know that I would sit there for hours, listening to sad songs on my walkman, gazing at her windows, hoping for a glimpse of her? Did she know? Well, maybe not hours.) We went to the library. She sat at a table and did her math homework, and I sat at another and stared at her and then the wall and then her and then the wall etcetera etcetera et—Oh, professor! What foolish eyes would look upon an ANGEL and see an APE?!
★
The dark day and the bright day, the two realms of space, turn by their own wisdom.
★
(6/30/06 8:26 pm helen)
H: Do you know what I called water?
M: What?
H: Ahk.
M: Ahk?
H: When I was a little baby.
M: You did?
H: Uh-huh.
★
like a king he drove back the darkness with light.
I do not know how to stretch the thread,
nor weave the cloth,
★
He asked my mom, “When are they going to cut my head off?” She told him, Monday, 6:20 pm. And they’re not going to cut your head off, honey, they’re only going to take the staples out, and tell us the results of the biopsy, and what sort of treatment to take.
Science was just not talked about in my house, The surgeon’s getting nervous. I think he wants to take a break. There has been talk that performing this experiment may prove to be too much pressure for one man to take. When he clears his throat I see
★
the world laid out upon a cross waiting to be relieved
★
I see hardly-hidden patterns everywhere—in dates, names, numbers, words, material states, license plates. I stay here writing from the time I rise in the morning until it’s time to go to sleep. I lie awake for hours thinking about this book. I fall asleep and dream about it, then wake and dive back in. I receive messages all the time. Not the kinds of messages reported by lunatic whackjobs on rainsoaked flyers and posted to the internet, not those angry hateful messages delivered by gangster communist men in gorilla suits slipping pieces of gangster vampire earphone paper underneath their innocent eyelids—I have not built personalities around the messages I’ve received. I simply open up my heart to receive them, and in they flood each day. All day. Who sends them, I have no idea. Some personality. But I don’t pollute the waters by making assumptions as to what sort, or type, or name. Or the specifics of their nature(s). Or even what the messages, themselves, might mean.
★
Although speaking of men in gorilla suits:
Just a moment ago I went down into the basement to find a tape a psychologist had made for me many years ago. He had spoken into a tape recorder while I’d sat across from him in a comfortable chair, my eyes closed, as he’d instructed me. He had then attempted to hypnotize me: 10, 9, 8 / GO DOWN THE PATHWAY… etc. Well, it didn’t work, but I have kept that tape in various boxes all these years—though I seem to have misplaced it in our latest move. I was looking for the tape, because I was working on page 1037 a moment ago, when I thought of the tape and wondered if there might be something of interest at the end of it after I pretended to come out of the trance I was never in—perhaps a bit of conversation between the time Dr. X counted me awake and pressed STOP. Well, I dug out the box in which I thought the tape might be, and though I didn’t find it, I soon found myself flipping through my high school yearbook. And lo and behold, out fell a single piece of college-ruled paper, folded in half. I hadn’t seen this particular piece of paper in years, but as soon as I picked it up off the floor and opened it, the memory came swimming back to me. It was a short description of a vision I had had around the same time as the underwater incident we’ve been discussing. I was lying on my bed when then too the scenery had changed. This time, I believe my eyes were closed. And I remember that when it was over I got up and went over to where I’d set my backpack after coming home from school. I opened the backpack, took out my binder, ripped out this sheet of paper, and picked up a black pen. And wrote down what I had seen.
I was watching myself. The man in the gorilla suit swang the stick and my head
flew off in a storm of blood. It happened again and again and again like instant replay. And I thought how beautiful it was.
My body was open and my soul flew up to the sky in a wave. I was the light and I flew upwards. But it was hot and there was fire on every side. I heard a voice. “Heavens in the other direction.” I dropped back down and got to the other side. But everywhere was fire. On ground I saw a bridge, a drawbridge that were jaws. With every beat they opened up and light escaped from them.
As the machine closed and went away, I saw the world, but I was not on it. It went away until it was a speck. And the light in my eyes faded.
Reader, you can decide for yourself if the paragraph, brief as it is, is pertinent to our investigation, or not. If you decide not, then by all means disregard it, forget it, keep moving along. As for me, I have to say that the man being in a gorilla suit is, by itself, reason enough to assume that he probably belongs here. And if he belongs here, then we can assume that there is a reason, and if there is a reason, then we can assume, I think, that we’re supposed to find out what that reason is. We may do this, I would suggest, by engaging in the simple process of continuing on:
“A very good idea.” The Professor chuckled. “You’ve always been that way, Dan. I remember when you were about two years old, and your mother told you not to touch the stove because it was hot. You wanted to find out for yourself. You burned your finger, as
I recall.”
Danny laughed too. He said, “Yes, but you’ve told me yourself, lots of times, that a scientist is a man who’s always trying to find things out for himself.”
Professor Bullfinch nodded. He clasped his hands behind his back and began to walk up and down the room.
“Quite true,” he said. “Sometimes knowledge is worth a burned finger…
★
M: So you just asked me if I was sad when Margaret died, huh? I was. Were you?
H: Yeah. But I was trying to cry so nobody would see me cry.
M: You did?
H: Yeah.
M: How come?
H: Because…because I don’t like to cry.
M: You don’t like to cry?
H: Yeah.
M: Do you think about Margaret a lot?
H: Yeah. I think—I think that heaven is the same heaven in the dog story where Daisy did die. Heaven. I think that’s the same heaven.
M: And that’s where Margaret is?
H: Yeah! I think—I think she is just running around and jumpin in the water…and she’s havin lots and a lot of fun.
M: I betcha.
H: Well, when I—when I grow up to be a grandma, I’m gonna die and I’m gonna go to heaven with her—Margaret!
M: And you’re gonna see Margaret?
H: Uh-huh!
M: And what are you gonna do?
H: Play with her.
M: Oh yeah?…Do you miss her?
H: Yeah, and our whole family’s gonna die.
M: Oh yeah?
H: Yeah. And we’ll go to heaven with Margaret!
M: Oh!
H: And we’ll see Heavenly Father and Jesus! Because I never been with Jesus.
M: You’ve never been with Jesus?
H: Yeah…
After Margaret died, all of Helen’s toys started dying too. She would be playing quietly with them in a corner, and I’d look over and see her cover their stuffed bodies with sheets, whispering to them that they were dead.
★
Mike: Seems odd to die in a country like this.
Matt: You mean America?
Mike: Yeah.
Matt: Why?
Mike: Because there is so much……difference……
Matt: You think we should live forever in America?
Mike: Just about…
★
Whose son could speak here such words that he would be above and his father below?
★
We . Flow .
Message:
Yo Momma -- we love you and miss you. Remember your plane leaves Wednesday, and we have a bazaar to attend.
★
★
TIME TO GO
★
Back | Home
★
The only thing to live for, the only way a person is to be judged successful in life, is that person’s relationship with God. This is strange for me to say because mine is a very distant and dim one at most, but it is clear that nothing else in this world matters. Why? (This is the second thing about God that I’ve written this week. I hope there isn’t some divine reconciliation being played out as a last chance before dying. If it is, then today is 12-21-96. Amen.) First though I should mention something and I’ll set it in parentheses. (I’ve become nearly illiterate in my attempt to numb myself into being. Without a numbness or abstraction from awareness, I would probably have no other option but to die, because after 3 1/2 years of this pain, This Pain, I’ve become brittle and weak. This means I am addicted to painkillers and gladly welcome any other substance to set my mind in a separate, disjointed direction (this being against the plan of God, but I’ve taken a detour from the previous conversation about God without explaining, though I will return to it…) Narcotics and painkillers come with the promise of a rebound effect, which after a period of time surfaces, the length and (I’m forgetting things constantly) severity of which differs from person to person. My rebound has finally found me, an effect by which the Original Pain is significantly less than a new Rebounded Pain that finds you in the morning, or any time of day, providing that it’s been some time since you were last numbed. This causes you to take more pills, more frequently to fight the rebound, which is where dependence finds you. And so you find you must be numbed all day, because the regular pain you’ve become accustomed to (accustomed but never used to) is now more severe. I begin to read Kafka or Beckett and cannot pick up the meanings of words strung together, sentences and paragraphs, and lines and pages, not only because of the temporary high I find myself in, but also because of the residuals of the constant chemical residue that seeps through me. At quarter to eight I’m at the Velvet Elvis / We sat in a bar and smoked grass that reminded me of splashing whiskey on the brain / It has been raining / We had a pointless conversation / I could not look at her / I think his name is Brubaker / I think my name is Ashe / Even what I write and have written loses meaning, without clarity, without awareness, which is the thing I’ve been trying so hard to lose track of. Well. Well.)
★
M: The Snail, by uh, Matt McIntosh, here we go….
This is the room where we sleep…
★
This is the bed in which we sleep…It’s also the bed where Erin—when?—four nights ago gave me a snail shell. She picked up the snail shell on her way to or from work around here and she—something about it—she thought I needed to have it—she needed to give it to me. So she gave it to me and before we went to bed she remembered it and ran downstairs—this was four or five days ago. Today I sat down on the bed—
★
this is the place, by the way, where I put the snail after I looked at it and thought it was really cool. Today I lay down on the bed,
★
I looked a little bit through Well,
★
I looked up at the light, and
★
★
I said a couple prayers about certain things, and I looked over in this direction, and there, is the snail
★
on top of Mary’s head.
★
Anne: You wanna sit here?
Claire: I’m gonna take this spot……………… You got cold toes, babe….Yeah, cold toes…Cold toes.
Anne: Am I in your way?
Claire: Yeah………………… Hmmm. Is there a spot for me?
Anne: [laughs] Do you wanna swap me?
Claire: No.
Anne: I was kind of laying weird, like I was laying on one side.
Claire: [groans] [laughs]
Anne: [laughs]
Claire: My butt’s too big!
Anne: It wasn’t very comfy!
Claire: It grew! My butt grew! Uh!
Anne: I put the bar down!
Claire: I can’t fit in there with the bar! No, that was worse.
M: Here, sit in this chair.
Claire: No, no, no, no! Do not move the man!
M: I want you to have it.
Claire: No, babes! No!
M: Please.
Anne: You can sit here on this side.
Claire: No, there’s no room for me. Do you not understand how big my butt is?
Anne: But does Matt have a pillow be
hind him? If you put this behind you here…
Claire: [groans]
Anne: Do you need a pillow behind you?
Claire: There, I’m good.
M: Is that nice? Are you getting comfy?
Claire: Yeah.
Anne: …Are you sure you’re all right.
Claire: Yeah.
X
IT MAY FEEL AS IF YOU’RE JUST GETTING STARTED, but the truth is
ALL IS ALREADY DONE.
29, frost on roofs, beautiful sun,
The Game is over, the board put away, and, somewhere out there, somebody knows who won.
★
(while here) We’re running around like maze-crazed rats; wasting away in a mirrored box with only our reflections to entertain us. And outside the box the audience is just now filling their seats. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, resist the urge to applaud until the operation is over, the subject has been sewn up tight, and all heads have been removed from the stage. Soon I saw a shape up ahead in the distance, and I went toward it, escorted bodiless, remember, by warm, kind female voices, all speaking in beautiful heavenly tongues. The shape was moving forward, in the same direction as I, though much more slowly, and as I approached, its shape began to take on a form, until I recognized that it was a body, a human body, swimming underwater like me, in long, smooth strokes. I moved toward it, closer and closer, until I saw that it was the body of a male Homo sapien. I swam toward him, until I was upon him, until I was with him, and then until, without any transition, I suddenly was him.
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