XX - JUDGEMENT
I dug up potatoes with a spade in early September of 2010, each one like a gift from the underworld. The sky was clear and the sun strong but I was enjoying the exercise and my new found stamina after six months of not smoking. Kostya’s SUV pulled into the yard full of tools and wood to help me replace the rotted out floor of the dacha. It was going to a be two day job and we’d decided to start that afternoon and see if we could finish by the next day.
Marina and I had moved all the furniture out to the deck allowing Kostya to start pulling out the floor boards one by one and by nightfall we’d exposed the dirt under the floor and had fitted in a few new beams. Marina was starting a fire with the old wood from the floor while I enjoyed my first beer in weeks with Kostya.
It was already dark except for the large fire full of rotted wood that sent frantic sparks into the night. I could hear Marina talking on the phone about me and then she asked if an old friend could come by for a Tarot reading and I agreed. His name was Dima and he was a buccaneer, what the Russians call salmon poachers. He had a well organized clandestine operation that caught illegal salmon only for their caviar which was frozen and sold abroad. When I saw his Dodge Ram pull up I watched Marina and could tell he was from her past. He radiated power and it brought back memories of New York and I realized, in spite of being poor and full of dirt, how truly happy I was to be out of that place. We had a small table outside where Marina offered him a beer while I went to the well to wash up with the icy water before going inside to get my cards.
It was a strange moment as I felt like I was doing a reading for my former self. The buccaneer had his iPhone on the table which he finally muted and we were able to do the reading. The moonless sky was brilliant with stars and only a small light illuminated the table, the cards and his heavy dilemma. “You know, the cards can give positive answers but also some very strong negative ones. Please don’t ask about something that’s already been decided. If you’ve made the decision, it’s better not to do a reading. It just fouls things up.”
He explained in Russian to Marina who translated. “No, I haven’t made the decision yet, but it’s been bothering me and I must decide. I heard you really had a special talent and being an old friend of Marina, I thought to give you a call.”
I was relieved. “Good, very good. You don’t have to tell me the question and I prefer you don’t. Just think about it very seriously, concentrate.” I shuffled the cards in my hands and then he shuffled them. His significator was the King of Swords and I told him to use his intuition as the function that should lead him. The first card, what covers, came out as the Five of Swords, defeat. That gave me a bad feeling that the issue might be revenge and I don’t think I ever did a reading where so many swords came up. Almost on cue, the final card came up the Ten of Swords. “What the cards are telling you here is not to do it. Whatever you asked, if you embark on this path it will have an extremely bad end. Rarely do the cards come up so clearly in one direction.” He looked at Marina and they seemed to understand something that I preferred not to know.
Once he had left she looked me square in the eyes, “I think you are connected to something very strong but it also scares me sometimes.”
“Don’t confuse me with the cards. When you ask honestly and from a place of sincere doubt they will generally give clear guidance. I don’t understand how they work but I think I understand how to read them and I really hope he listened because the energy around him was not good at all.”
“You never know with that type of man, sometimes they want to listen but they can’t; they’re driven by demons.”
The next day Kostya and I finished the work on the dacha and afterwards Marina and I returned to her apartment as I had some English lessons to give. That evening while she was working the night shift at the hospital I was reading my emails and saw my inbox had 150 new emails when I usually had three or four. There was even one from my old friend Ryan from New York who had moved to San Francisco to take a job in an agency. He sent me a link to read to a blog by a very famous neo-con journalist citing my final blog post as an example of the new fashionable anti-Semitism. It was good to hear from Ryan and I was quite pleased that my political swan song had ignited the ire of an infamous war mongering neo-con, a man at least partially responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people. But in the matrix, my statements against US support for Israel were more controversial then his war provoking tirades.
As I enjoyed the final allotment of the proverbial fifteen minutes a strange desire came over me to communicate with Irina. I hadn’t heard from her in almost three years but I realized that she was the impetuous for where I was- she started me on the road. I had no desire to write her or speak to her but I did want to know what had been going on in her mind when everything fell apart between us and a powerful scheming energy came over me. She and Perlini had been close but I doubted they stayed in touch because Perlini was only interested in people who could advance his career and Irina was not on of those. I found an email from Perlini in Gmail and I created a new email account, just adding a number to the end of his real email and I then forwarded Ryan’s email to the fake Perlini email I had just created, changing the text to a mocking tone about his old boss becoming a famous anti-Semite.
Then I added a note.
Hi Irina, what’s up? Did you see this about our old boss? I think he’s off his rocker. Let’s chat sometime, would love to here from you.
It was after 3AM in Kamchatka when I sent the email to Irina which made it about ten in the morning in New York the day before. I left the invented Perlini email open showing the avatar showing I was online and went into the kitchen to make some tea. When I came back she had already responded.
Hey, what’s up? So funny this article. I’m here, bored if you want to chat.
When I saw how quickly she had taken the bait it scared me; it was as if the Oracle were ready to reveal all. I considered not doing it but the need to clear up the lingering doubts was too great. Sometimes I thought she was just a normal young woman who got mixed up with a man going through a crisis but other times I was sure she had more than just a touch of evil. I started writing in the chat box as Ricky Perlini.
Ricky: Hi, how are you?
Irina: Okay, doing an excel, what’s up with you?
Ricky: Same old. Where are you working now?
Irina: Conture Media, doing the same thing I did at Bernstein. How is your job going?
Ricky: Okay, doing normal media buying now. Could you believe that article about Arthur? Our old boss has become infamous.
Irina: Yeah, too funny.
Ricky: I never got along with him, he was a bit strange. I’m not surprised he wound up writing crazy conspiracy articles. Have you heard from him since he left?
Irina: Yeah, he was like stalking me for awhile, he was completely crazy.
Ricky: Stalking you, are you serious, you mean, like following you?
Irina: Yeah, on the subway and calling me at all hours, non stop. Finally I told him I was going to call the police so he quit bothering me. That’s what I get for being nice to him. He was lonely and always out drinking alone so I was friendly to him and then he becomes a maniac. Go figure.
Ricky: If you don’t mind me asking, what went on with you two? Did you have some kind of affair or was it all in his mind.
Irina: Ha, ha, it was all in his mind, totally delusional. I had lunch with him a few times and he decided I was going to be his next big love. I think he was doing lots of cocaine. I would see him come out of the bathroom very hyper. I did all the work too and he took the credit. After he left all of the accounts did better. They realized it was me not him that did the work.
Ricky: Wow, I can’t believe he was stalking you, what a lunatic. But I really thought on that trip to Miami you guys where up to something.
Irina: Nooooo! It was all in his mind.
Ricky: Well, I did s
ee you kissing him once, at lunch time. I was coming back and you guys where in that lunch area a few blocks from work.
Irina: That was just fooling. Just playing. Fooling is not sleeping.
Ricky: So you never slept with him?
Irina: What’s up with you? Curiosity killed the cat you know. Look, we fooled around a bit, nothing more. Then he dreamed up this fantasy that I was his great love and he went crazy.
Ricky: He wasn’t stable.
Irina: How are you and your girlfriend, when are you getting married?
Ricky: We broke up, I’m alone now. What about you?
Irina: It’s complicated. Long distance.
Ricky: You know, I really liked working with you. A lot.
Irina: Really?
Ricky: Really. I guess, well, I might as well tell you. I kind of had a crush on you, but since you were a bit older and I thought something was up with Arthur, well, I never said anything.
Irina: OMG!! I’m blushing. And you had a girlfriend! I thought you were so in
love.
Ricky: Ha, well, now you know. Maybe we can meet up this week, are you busy?
Irina: Sure, I really want to see you.
Ricky: Great. There’s a lot I want to tell you.
Irina: Ohhhh...this will be interesting. When do you want to meet?
Ricky: How about I call you this week?
Irina: Cool.
Ricky: Gotta get back to work, see ya.
Irina: See ya.
It was like removing a small stone that had been in my shoe for hours. I didn’t think less of her or even feel vindicated. I simply understood at a very deep level that what I had imagined her to be was vastly different from what she was. I could feel the heat from the bullet passing inches from my head when I remembered that if she had felt so inclined, I would have married her.
Later that night in bed I kept thinking how lucky I was to have been able to ask the questions I did under disguise and when Marina came back at 7.00AM I still hadn’t fallen asleep. It was so good to hold her and talk a bit but it scared me to think I was with Marina only because I had met Irina.
A few days later Wild Bill sent me a long email saying he had finally retired, sold everything and was moving to Idaho where he had bought some land. He assured me I would always have a place to stay in the super bunker he was preparing for the coming Armageddon. Lola let me know that she had done a few television programs on astrology and was continuing to integrate it into her practice. As the fall of 2010 approached a cycle seemed to be coming to a close.
The fall equinox was September 23 that year, a Thursday, and Marina had a few days off so we decided to spend them at the dacha. The autumn colors were at their most sublime and Yilena and Kostya came over and we had a little barbecue to celebrate the equinox and enjoy the last comfortable days outdoors. We sat as usual outside with the fire going and chatting but Kostya seemed anxious to talk about something. He had watched a thirty hour long series of videos by a retired Soviet General name Petrov who described a complete world view including economics, history, religion, evolution and linguistics, all presented with a very nationalistic flavor. Kostya went on for an extremely long time without allowing any of us to interrupt and I saw in his excessive enthusiasm the same spell that had come over me in Spain.
At one point while he was talking about the bankers I tried to make a comment but he cut me off; he was the guru this time around and I realized it was my turn to listen. He insisted fervently that evolution was a lie, his main argument being that the only way humans could have imagined dragons was if they had at one time walked with dinosaurs. When I asked about Homo erectus, Homo habilis, Lucy and the like he scoffed. I looked at Marina who she gave me the potent grin that told me to leave him be while the usually level headed Yilena was nodding her head in agreement.
Finally I jokingly interjected, “Kostya, you sound like you found Jesus.” And with that he went on about how Jesus was a lie to kill the Russia archaic tradition and how the word religion was really of Russian origin. When I explained it was from Latin, ligare, connect, re-connect, he laughed as if I hadn’t the slightest idea what I was talking about. I shuddered to think how I too condescended in a similar fashion; my script might have been more sophisticated but I cringed to consider how much sermonizing I had done. How proud I had been only a few days before basking in my neo-con inspired infamy only to be confronted once again with the shadow of my own inflation.
After they left Marina and I had a good laugh at Kosya’s lecture and when I confessed that I had been a victim of the same disease she raised an eyebrow as if to say it was high time that I had figured that one out. Her phone rang and after answering her expression changed dramatically and she walked behind the dacha talking in serious tones. I was terribly afraid it might have been some awful news about her daughter but when she came back she told me that Dima, to whom I had given the Tarot reading, had been killed, apparently in an accident. She spent a fitful, sleepless night calling friends and taking walks outside.
The next day late in the morning a Koriak woman knocked on the door. Koriaks are one of the many native peoples of Kamchatka. I woke Marina and the Koriak woman came into the dacha with a big thermos and Marina handed her the bag of dried Fly Agaric mushrooms, or toadstools, that we had picked. The Koriak woman’s name was Alla and she was very calm and if I hadn’t known otherwise, I would have guessed she were Central American. Marina’s spirits rose seeing her friend and she quickly made tea and appeared somewhat better after the difficult night. The coincidence of her friend coming at such a moment was too self evident to need comment. Once she left Marina explained their relationship.
“I always collect toadstools for my friend Alla. She’s a medical doctor but she’s also a traditional doctor for her people and they use these mushrooms as a medicine and as part of their ceremonies. Every couple years I like to take them myself, but I never ask. She will come and just pick up the mushrooms from me with no tea for a few years and out of the blue she will bring the tea. It is entirely up to her as I don’t know the recipe and they keep it a secret. She knows so much; you see how she brought the large thermos for two? She’s a powerful, insightful woman who doesn’t say much, but she’s very intuitive. Do you want to take it?”
“Yes, of course.”
“We’ll drink the tea then sleep for awhile. You might get a bit sick before you sleep, but don’t worry; it actually makes it a better trip. You’ll have some pretty strong dreams and when you wake up you’ll be on another plane. Don’t eat anything now or during the trip, wait till it begins to fade. Let me get two cups.” The smell was peculiar and the taste very strong. It went down harshly and then she poured again and we finished the thermos on the third try. I began to feel a bit wheezy and had to breathe deeply to calm my stomach. The sleepiness came on strong but as I went into the house I got queasy again and had to go back outside to throw up. When Marina heard me, she also got sick. We flopped into bed feeling quite dizzy but fell asleep almost immediately. I had a very scary dream about climbing up a dangerously high ladder which, to my great relief, I finally safely got off.
When I woke up I was plugged into a cosmic electricity and was vibrating on a different dimension. I just laid back and let my mind race waiting for Marina to rouse and I finally saw her eyes open and dart about the room.
“I’m feeling it very strong, how about you?” I asked.
“Very,” She said in Russian, “Let’s take a walk.” It was around five o’clock on September 24, 2010. We took Leo and started walking down the path that ran through the dachas with the two volcanoes looming down upon us, the smaller one spewing a bit of smoke. The color of the leaves was magnified and I heard a faint buzzing and imagined the earth racing through the elliptic and the dark overcoming the light through the last six transcendent signs of the Zodiac. I rubbed her back as she walked and she had never seemed so powerful; I h
ad the intense feeling that she was my guide and was initiating me into some profound mystery.
“You know Marina, I love you so much, more than any other thing I can imagine.” The feeling of love buzzed through my head and the tears swelled in my eyes.
She stopped and looked at me. “I wonder who brought you here.”
“I think Misha did. I think he arranged it, at least that is how it feels to me. You’ll meet him one day and then you’ll see it, you’ll feel it.” We came to a small stream and sat together on a tree trunk and watched the water skimmer by. “It feels so right here, so perfect. I can’t believe how absurdly lucky I am.” The dimming light glittered off the water reflecting the red and yellow of the trees.
“I had been waiting for you. I knew you would arrive, but I didn’t know when or how and when we started to communicate, I knew. I knew you were you and that you would come here.” I could literally feel her emotions like a gentle, rhythmic wave.
I began to separate from my physical body and move a few feet beyond myself and then somehow I was in front of me and continued on till I reached the water in the stream. At the same time Marina seemed to be in both places, on the log and with me in the water but it didn’t seem at all unusual though it should have. Her eyes were very open and as we looked at each other I confused her body with the translucent form that moved toward me. “I think we will be together forever,” I told her, “I too was looking for you, for a long time. Something seemed always to be missing and now it’s complete. I found it and I don’t need anything else. You lifted me up out of the ditch.” My words ended the spell and we both were transported back to the log.
She smiled and I again realized how she had been guiding me and could finally experience me at her level. We fell into silence and I thought about what my life had been like during that very dark period when I met her. All the actors: Wild Bill, Misha, Karina, Larissa, and even Harry Scott, Bernstein and Irina seemed to have been playing roles without any intention other than to simply read the lines they had been given. There were no villains, only actors doing their part within a grand scheme as I too was playing my role. It dawned on me that Irina, at some level, knew it was me in the chat and she was doing her part to help unravel what still mystified me.
It was a moment of pure bliss just as night began to fall and we started back toward the dacha and had tea outside in the chilly evening. Neither one of us was hungry so we just talked and laughed as the effects dimmed and we eased our way back into our normal states. The mushroom seemed to give me that final push I needed to force my consciousness forward. Once I was back I still had the intense feeling that Marina was my guide, the higher being. “You know babe, one thing that I’ve realized since I arrived the second time is that I’m no longer afraid. I used to be very afraid of dying or being left with nothing. But now it doesn’t scare me. The fear and dread are gone.”
“Arthur, that’s the sure sign that you have made it across. I could see the change in you when you came from Spain and now it’s finally taken root. I’m very happy for both us.” And she came over and kissed me in a way that let me know she had been waiting.
Another New Year’s came and went and I felt like I merged into the cycles of time, weather, and light. My material and personal ambitions were gone and Marina and I became incredibly connected to each other and through each other to something much bigger.
Your Love Incomplete Page 17
