XVIII - THE MOON
Standing in line in customs at Madrid’s Barajas Airport I felt entirely disconnected from those around me who were anxious to get home, close a deal or enjoy a vacation. The Guardia Civil stamped my passport and I walked down the long corridor to the subway and made my way to a cheap hostel near Atocha Station in front of the Reina Sofia Museum. I sat on the old mattress and remembered years before staying at the same hostel full of illusions just after having landed a new job in Madrid.
I meandered through my old neighborhood of Lavapies and its mix of old time Madrileños, progressive youngsters and immigrants. I stopped at a hipster bar to have a few beers but it only made me feel more like a stranger. I called an old girlfriend and we talked about her new life and my old friends from Madrid but it was a mistake and we parted uncomfortably after a meeting that should never have been. Whatever Madrid had once meant to me was long gone and I anxiously looked forward to seeing my friend Lola.
The train to Murcia made its way through the vineyards of La Mancha and its flat monotonous terrain which was only occasionally seasoned by the steeples of village churches. I remembered traveling on that train for the first time with Lola to spend a long weekend in Murcia, but I had little patience for sentimentality. I took out my computer and began writing another article on money, comparing what banks loan, debt paper, to what is paid back, which is work. I used a fisherman as an example and the words and concepts flowed effortlessly. I walked out on the platform to smoke a cigarette when the train stopped in Albacete for ten minutes and felt a great rush lift me up in a dangerous inflation from the monetary insight. I saw the motorman looking back at the station chief waving the flag for the train to depart and quickly hopped back into the wagon to finish the article.
Lola was waiting at the station covered in brands which made me think of Marina with her sturdy boots trudging through the snow. After a big hug and kiss we got into her BMW and drove to her apartment which looked over a pleasant square in the center of Murcia where I was to spend a few nights, not completely sure what Lola’s plan was. Inside the plush car I again remembered having to dig out of the snow Marina’s ten year-old Subaru. Lola was, thankfully, genuinely excited to see me and we left my bag at the apartment and walked to a nearby tasca to have dinner and catch up in the warm evening.
Her dark hair was pulled back in a pony tail, her clear skin defying her age as she jingled with jewelry and clicked her heels over the cobblestones. We were on a double date the first time we met but the chemistry between us was so strong that we left our respective companions to fend for themselves and wound up talking till dawn. Our minds ran together in a way that was out of the ordinary and we never seemed to tire of one another’s thoughts. Almost as soon as we sat down I began to tell her about my epiphany on money.
“Look, imagine if you had a machine that spit out euros by the millions and a court and a credit system to enforce payment. They can literally enslave us in debt by creating funny money and making us pay it back with work. What they make with a few clicks of mouse we spend our entire lives working to pay back. The key to the entire matrix is money. Nothing in the world is more desired yet almost no one understands who creates or how- it’s an incredible mirage that few have been able to wake up to.” She felt my enthusiasm and we talked for hours about the financial crisis and the markets which had just touched bottom while we reignited our deep connection without any mention of our sentimental lives.
She brought out a pillow and sheets for me to sleep on the couch and we looked at each other intensely but we let the moment pass. After she left I stayed awake remembering our time together and wondering what had gone wrong, finally reaching the conclusion that maybe we should have just remained friends.
The next day she told me she would drive me to her farm house and that she would come out on the weekend to see me. I didn’t know if she had a boyfriend but I was very happy to escape the temptation and be able to spend some time alone in the country. It was about an hour and a half drive and as soon as we got out of the city we started another conversation regarding astrology. I told her the progress I had made and she said she would bring out her chart on the weekend.
I’d only been at the large country house, or cortijo in Spanish, twice, but it had made a strong impression on me. It was about twenty kilometers northwest of Lorca and five kilometers from the nearest village. The palatial home was built in the seventeenth century and had once been occupied by a prominent nineteenth century Spanish politician. It sat up on the initial rise of a mountain with a tower, family crest and a small church about hundred meters off to the side. The main entrance had a split staircase, on one side the dining room which connected to a very large country kitchen and on the other side were the bedrooms and her grandfather’s study with an impressive library. As soon as the old wooden door opened I again felt the magic of the house which had once enchanted me and I quickly made my way to the old study which looked out on 2,000 hectares of wheat, olives and almond trees.
.Lola left me with promises that she would be back soon and her demeanor and tone were perfect, leaving me with the sensation that I was welcome but without any uncomfortable undertones. Seeing her again left me with the sense of having reencountered someone to whom destiny had compelled me to meet.
As soon as Lola left I set up my computer in the old library which also had a comfortable armchair for reading and I felt like I was in paradise. The next morning I drank my coffee in the study while reading the Meditations on the Tarot by Tomberg and a book by Dane Rudhyar on astrology. Although Lola had offered me a phone, I had declined wanting to concentrate on reading and writing without any distractions. In the afternoons I took up meditating again, didn’t drink and walked up the hills each evening to watch the sunset.
I was completely isolated; the main village was about five kilometers away but the highway was not safe to walk on as the trucks and cars traveled at very high speeds and there was practically no shoulder on the road. There were two other very small villages nearby that I could reach walking on paths through the hills. I couldn’t contact Marina although I had sent her an email from Lola’s place telling her I was all right and thinking of her.
On the third day after an exhilarating morning spent studying, writing, and meditating, I decided to take a walk to a nearby hamlet through a path that ran across the farm between two large hills. I arrived at close to 6:00PM after a two hour walk and had a coffee in the only café in the village and read the newspaper. I started to make my way back but got lost so I just meandered along paths hoping to find a point of reference. On the way I saw a very thin dog that scared me at first but then he meekly began to follow me. He was a young, long faced, nervous and very hungry hunting dog who had either gotten lost or been abandoned. I was a happy for some company and together we walked through the soft dirt of a large olive orchard until I finally caught sight of the farmhouse tower in the distance.
It was close to eight in the evening and the first stars were appearing as I walked tiredly down the long dirt road, stopping for a moment to look up at the sky. The dog ran up to my leg and rubbed his shoulder on my knee as the twilight descended, dimming the fading blue sky when to the East I spied two stars close to each other and very bright. I had never been adept at identifying stars or constellations so I had no idea what stars they were but their extreme brightness transfixed me. The dog wandered a bit while I kept looking up when suddenly I saw a something moving between the two stars and I quickly realized that it was a satellite which I followed across the path between the two shining points. I was left shaken as it dawned on me that what I thought was a satellite was really a fixed star and what were moving were the two lights which I had assumed were stars.
I looked furiously for the outline of a plane but all I saw where the two bright stars moving in unison with no other identifying lights or forms. The two lights moved down toward me increasing in size and intensity then sw
erved off to my right in the direction of the main house and finally disappeared over the mountains and behind the house. I was sure it wasn’t a plane or helicopter as it had made no sound.
I reached home filled with the sublime and fed the famished dog who after eating voraciously passed out on one of the couches and I didn’t have the heart to wake him. The whole day had put me under a spell and that night I fell asleep reading a book by Dane Rudhyar on astrology and dreamt of the zodiac. I awoke with the same extraordinary feeling from the day before and my dreams with the zodiac led me to an idea for Lola to use astrology as a group therapy.
Around seven in the afternoon I heard Lola’s car rolling up the dirt road from the main highway and she jumped out of it with a characteristic bolt of energy and gave me a hug and two kisses. “Get your things and let’s go have dinner and spend the weekend in Cabo de Palos.” Cabo de Palos is a small coastal village at the very end of the Mar Menor, an inland sea protected by a long thin peninsula called La Manga (The Sleeve).
“Let me take a quick shower, I’ll only be a few minutes.” I felt infused by her energy and after showering I threw some clothes in a back pack and left all the food I could for the dog before sliding into her BMW. We headed off to the beach which was deserted except for the bars and cafes which were open for the Friday evening crowd from the nearby city of Cartagena. Her family had another wonderful old house in the seaside village with a big porch that looked out onto an inlet. We quickly made our way to one of the very good fish restaurants and were soon looking at a table filled with grilled octopus and shrimp, fried anchovies and plate of small clams called chirlas. We drank a chilled Rosado from Murcia and I talked on and on about my ideas regarding astrology. She listened trancelike and I could feel the dangerous charisma of my inflation seeping into her.
“Arthur, I have an idea. I’m giving a weekend seminar next week here in La Manga, it’s on personal development and twelve people are coming. Why don’t you give the seminar? I was thinking about this all week. You could give one day on politics, you know, what you talked about the other day, about how people need to wake up to the political reality we live in and the monetary system. The next day, Saturday, we can work on everyone’s astrological chart and then Sunday morning you can tie it all together. You’ll have all week to prepare.”
“Yes, I would love to. I was also thinking that we could act out people’s charts. For example, each person can be one of the ten planets and we can position them to be either working with or against the other planets depending on the aspects in each persons chart. What do you think?”
“I love it. Let me call everyone tomorrow and see how they react. We’re all very close and many are in therapy with me. If they’re positive, that gives you all week to prepare the astrological therapy and your talk on the forces behind the matrix.”
“Okay, but tell them they must all bring their exact times of birth.” We talked till four in the morning when we closed the last pub and on the way home things almost became physical again but some force seemed to intervene. When I woke she was already on the phone.
“Great news, Arthur, they all love the idea and I told them they must bring their charts. They’re so excited.” My mind was racing. “So, let’s go sailing!” she exclaimed. I had completely forgotten that half way through the night I had suggested we rent a Sunfish and spend the day sailing around the Mar Menor. The warm inland sea is completely protected and if the wind is right it’s the perfect place to enjoy a small boat. In a snap we had bought a few sandwiches, rented the boat, and were pulling out into the bay. She stayed in the boat with the knapsack and I pushed it out over the shallow water before jumping in and pulling in the mainsail as the steady easterly wind sped us along. We took the boat to a beach where we ate our sandwiches and continued planning for the weekend seminar.
On Sunday afternoon she dropped me off at the farm and told me she would pick me up on that Thursday evening. Sunday night alone in the big house my thinking continued at an accelerated pace as the dog, perched in a hundred year old chair, observed while I furiously set down the process of the group therapy and worked out the talking points of the monetary lecture.
I woke up the next morning still euphoric, which was always my litmus test for any project. It wasn’t until mid afternoon that I had my first real doubts when I began to realize that I had never spoken in public about politics or esoteric topics. My only experience had been pitching ad campaigns but I quickly reassured myself that the concept was the same. As an advertiser I had changed the way people thought through language and hence evoked, in a certain percentage of them, a change in behavior which resulted in them buying the product in question. Now I was going to use the same skills to elicit a different response but the method would be the same. I practiced and honed my discourse feeling like I was embarking on a new path but there were moments alone in that imposing house, espousing grandiose ideas on the history of man to a bewildered dog that made me to wonder if I weren’t losing my mind.
I hadn’t spoken or written to Marina in almost two weeks and I could feel her and Kamchatka slowly fading into a distant chill until a strong intuition sent me out on foot to a cybercafé in the main village about five kilometers away. I got there close to dusk and they said they stayed open till eleven at night so I wrote Marina a long email telling her about the house, the seminar and all the thinking I had done and how much I missed her.
I had a few beers in the village bar and watched a football match then went back to the cybercafe and called her when it was 9:30AM in Kamchatka. Something in her tender tone brought her back to me. She was worried and afraid that maybe something had happened to me or that I’d decided not to come back. I reassured her and we talked until they turned off the lights. Walking back on the dark highway wasn’t easy as there was no moon and tractor trailers zoomed by ferociously forcing me several times to move off the highway into ditches to escape them. Once back at the house I had the intense sensation that I had barely escaped disaster.
That Thursday night Lola told me she would introduce me as a journalist and esotericist and in a flash I had been reinvented. We worked on the natal chart therapy late into the night and again the next morning until she was sure we both had it completely down. The attendees would be sophisticated bunch as many had attended retreats in other parts of Spain and abroad. They were paying €600 for the weekend retreat which included their rooms, meals and the lectures and it was crucial that I deliver an excellent seminar for the sake of Lola’s reputation. As we got closer to the start I could feel the pressure building in a good way as I set up the computer, projector and large screen. Lola thought it was best that I be introduced formally at the beginning of the evening session so I returned to my room while she greeted everyone as they arrived and organized their accommodations.
The time dragged until I finally heard the knock on the door and we walked silently down to the big hotel conference room that looked out on to the beach of the Mar Menor. The twelve middle aged people, seven women and five men, sat on chairs, pillows, or just cross-legged on the floor. Lola gave a glowing introduction that only added more pressure as I tried to think of them as a big marketing team ready to listen to a pitch for a campaign. She had encouraged me to make it as personal as possible so I gave them my tale of a New York advertising executive who woke up and left everything behind to begin a new life as a writer and thinker. Needless to say certain details were left out but it was all part of my reinvention. I could feel the energy develop around my newly created persona and somewhat fantastic biography as the attendees listened enthralled to my narrative.
I began the presentation describing the two the pillars of power, the monetary system and the media, and then described the intricacies of money creation, tieing it all back to my personal story of having worked in a bank and with financial media. I ended the initial presentation with a slide of a person waking up asking himself the qu
estion, “What next?”
“So once we open our eyes and clearly understand what’s happening, when we wake up to it, what do we do next?” I put a slide up of people protesting. “Is political action the answer?” I shook my head. I could feel them in the palm of my hand knowing I had created the right amount of tension. “No, the answer is not changing the political system, that’s exactly what they want you to do. Embarking on a messianic political movement will only reinforce the political duality and allow them to manipulate people with false opposites and a mirage of nonexistent choices. It’s crucial for the functioning of the matrix that we believe their dualities and operate within them because the moment people simply look away, their whole charade collapses.”
“The answer is simply to live an awakened, coherent life. I don’t even think evangelizing to people is a good idea. Evangelize with your actions and don’t be afraid to push things because many social norms are simply invented taboos to keep you enslaved. Stop consuming their media products, stop eating their genetically modified bread and following their circus of pop music, football and Hollywood. Stop using their banks; pay off your debts and put your savings into gold and silver. If you need to downsize, do it, but don’t be hooked into their debt system where you pay back with work the fiat money they lend you. Take over the education of your children; create schools that teach them what you want them to learn instead of having them indoctrinated with bureaucratic dogma and turned into sheep. Remember, we don’t need a majority; we just need the leaders and influencers. The rest will follow.”
“When enough of us are living an awakened life their whole power structure will crumble. Each time one of us wakes it does make a difference and each ripple becomes stronger than the one before it. They lay a trap telling you that to change yourself, you must change the world; it’s a lie to keep you from acting. You only have to change yourself, the rest will follow. The key is the spiritual awakening that comes after you have woken up to the matrix. Tomorrow’s session will give you one method of doing that, one way to see your way through. Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you all at tonight’s dinner.”
They gave a big applause and I could feel their energy running through me. Everyone went to the hotel bar to have drinks before dinner and I mingled and chatted but made an effort to remain somewhat aloof. As we were sitting down for dinner Lola came up to me with a big smile and told me it went over brilliantly and that they were giving me glowing appraisals.
The next day’s session began on a completely different note with an introduction to Hermeticism and a short overview of alchemy, Kabbalah, Gnosticism and neo-Platonism followed by the basics of astrology- the planets, signs, houses, and the key planetary aspects. We put Lola’s chart up on the screen and assigned each attendee one of the ten planets, the ascendant and the north node so everyone was acting out a force in Lola’s natal chart. We spent a lot of time discussing how each planet expressed itself in her chart with respect to the sign, house and if the other planets were helpful or subversive. I had no idea how it was going to go over but Lola, the consummate actress, was fantastic. She spoke to each planet, asking what she could do to harness his or her energy and she motioned for the opposing planet to jump in antagonistically. I felt like the author of play watching it come alive for the first time.
Lola really pushed it, bringing up difficult issues from her childhood and demanding the planets respond and explain to her why certain things happened. It became very intense, almost frightening. The performances built up as the participants became more comfortable with their roles and by ten-thirty that night everyone was emotionally spent as we had completed all twelve of the role plays. I sat out on the beach alone trying to get a hold of what we had done when Lola came out, the most visibly tired I had ever seen her, and told me it was the best workshop she had ever done. That night all of us stayed up very late, drinking, laughing and connecting in a way that I had never done before with a group.
The next morning we had a three hour session on the Tarot cards showing how they related to astrology and Kabbalah and I explained how to do a basic spread before wrapping up with a lunch. They all received a Tarot deck as a parting gift and by the time everyone left it was six o’clock and Lola and I decided to spend one more night at the hotel.
Though we were both exhausted, we had a long dinner and took a walk on the beach. After a pause she looked at me pointedly and asked, “Did something happen to you Arthur? I noticed it when you arrived but this weekend during the workshop I could see something almost glowing in you.”
“I don’t know, but I feel very different from the person I was just a few months ago. I told you how things fell apart in New York and than the time in Russia somehow adjusted and healed me and now what has been boiling up for years has suddenly just burst forth. Sometimes I don’t think it’s me speaking. Really, it just comes out in phrases that don’t even seem like my own. This weekend, speaking in Spanish, there were words I used that I don’t even know what they mean but they just seemed to make sense. Anyway, I felt really connected to the group and I’m sure we made some progress, all of us.”
“You were inspired,” we walked a bit and than she started to speak again, “I want to do this workshop a few more times. I have colleagues in Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, and Madrid. Sometimes they come here to do workshops and seminars and other times I go there to do them. On the business end, we usually split the profits. I think they will love this workshop, I mean, if you think you would like to do it a few more times. They cover all expenses and you can make some money this way. This weekend’s earnings we’ll split.” I didn’t want the money and I felt like it would somehow diminish the inspiration.
“Look, Lola, I say this more for me than for you. How about you take the money and just cover me for cigarettes, coffees, drinks and the like. I would rather not have to deal with the money part; it seems to suck the life out of me.” She looked at me a bit strangely. “It will be better for me. As long as I can just have a place to stay, something to eat, the basics. If I turn it into a business I have the feeling that I’ll lose it, and I don’t want to derail this. I think you understand.”
“Sure, Arthur, you need to do what feels right.”
The following week I spent at the country house writing a new article on my political ideas. I had never had a clear political philosophy but suddenly I came to the realization that anarchism was the way for me and that government was simply a tool for the banks and the corporations to control society. Even the welfare state was simply a way to subjugate the masses; all of it financed by banks with money they made out of thin air which the tax payers had to return with work. If the state were shrunk, its power to maintain the matrix would diminish exponentially. I wrote a very personal piece about how I’d come to be an anarchist and that following weekend I sent it along with the other article on money to Wild Bill who published them. They were by far the most popular pieces I’d written.
Lola organized weekend retreats around Spain through May and it became a road show that seemed to evolve. I talked about Kondrief cycles, alchemy, Gnosticism, and we always did the acting out of the astrology charts. As we moved from city to city it was getting more difficult to keep my distance from her. We were spending the whole day together and as we became closer I could feel the distance growing with Marina. With the arrival of May, Lola scheduled a weekend at the end of the month that would make it impossible for me to get back to Madrid in time to catch my return flight to Kamchatka but I was uncomfortable telling Lola about Marina. I had a new life opening up for me- a mission to carry out and the perfect partner to share it with.
I talked to Marina on Skype and told her I’d changed my ticket and that I would be arriving on June 7th and would miss her birthday. I could feel the distance and she seemed sad and detached. After our talk I was sure that I wouldn’t go back to Kamchatka and the money I’d left there she could keep; I
had to follow my destiny. We finished the workshop in Seville and drove to Madrid to see some of Lola’s friends and discuss what we could organize for the autumn. In Madrid I got in touch with an old friend of mine who was the managing director of an influential financial radio network and I was interviewed on one of their most popular shows for a national audience. It was an hour long interview about the implications of the financial crisis and I was dead on for the whole hour. I walked out of the studio feeling like my ship had finally arrived. Knowing I would lose Marina weighed on me but I was convinced it was the price I would have to pay.
Madrid once again enraptured me with its charms and we were out to chic clubs and invited to posh homes for dinners. Everyone was sure we were a couple and we let them think we were as it only seemed a matter of time. Our demeanor together was becoming very much like a marriage except for the sex which couldn’t happen until things with Marina got squared away. It was Friday, June 5th and I had been avoiding making the call to Marina. She sent me a few emails asking me how I was but I didn’t answer them which made making the call all the more difficult. My flight was that Saturday morning at 11AM and we were at a very well known journalist’s house in the Barrio of Salamanca, an upscale neighborhood of Madrid. The talk was of politics and I gave a long discourse about how America had to give up the empire and restore the Republic.
The discussion was lively and I felt again the rush of my ego but suddenly, as the talk turned to more mundane topics, I was struck with the fact that I didn’t belong there. It was New York all over again just with a different veneer and even the ideas I was bantering about were beginning to remind me of tired ad copy. The people at the dinner were completely in the grips of the matrix and they couldn’t leave it; their lifestyles and social positions were much too entwined with the system. I slowly withdrew into myself and Lola clearly noticed. She knew I had a ticket for the next day but we hadn’t discussed it as we both assumed I wasn’t going.
We got back to her friend’s apartment and after the three of us talked a bit they glided off to bed and I camped out on the couch but couldn’t sleep. It was a very hot night in Madrid so I opened the window then went to the fridge for a beer and looked out on the dark patio feeling like I was nowhere. I heard the door open as Lola came out and sat on the couch speaking in a hushed voice, “I think you want to leave.” she said.
“I’m afraid I have to.” I became very upset. Maybe it was the life I was giving up, maybe it was Lola. “I really want to stay and continue but it’s just not in me. I know what you’re thinking and I have been thinking the same thing. But it can’t be. I’m sorry.”
“I understand Arthur. I’m so glad you came; this has been one of the most inspiring times of my life. There’s someone you’re going to, isn’t there?”
“Yes, I should have told you about it but it just didn’t seem right. We both knew there was someone else there, someone I couldn’t betray. I have to be true to something Lola, for once in my life, I have to be true to it. It’s a crazy path but I have to take it.”
I gave her a hug and felt her back and arms and it was very difficult to stop, but I did. She dropped me off at Barajas and we made a quick, cheerful goodbye and I walked toward the Aeroflot check-in not really sure why I was getting on the plane. But I got on it.
Your Love Incomplete Page 15
