I sat on my favorite chair while I changed the strings of my guitar. I had bought the chair from a store on Bowery that sells bar fixtures from belly-up establishments. It's hewn from thick, dark oak and is cut like a chair from the middle ages. The kind of chair to do disciplined things upon, I used it for practicing guitar. It was austere, but in a challenging way that said, "Sit your butt down and get some work done."
On the table beside me crouched a small jade plant that had grown considerably since I had placed it there. The number of green leaves had at least tripled, and it needed to be transplanted to a bigger pot. This I had intended to do for some time, but had always thought of the act of re-potting it in terms of the future, so I had never done it. Next to it, on the table, a blue bowl held steaming split-pea soup, and as I smelled it I was certain that there had never been a soup like it anytime, anywhere. But most of all, the fifth string of my guitar was badly worn, and so I removed it, dropping it to the floor. The brilliant silver of the new string pleasantly reflected the late afternoon sunshine that slanted in through the window, and as I picked it up from the table I thought of a silver lizard in the desert.
Contact with air turns blood its familiar bright red color, and altogether changes our experience of it, so that one might say that we are largely ignorant of the experience of the darker, blue and green colored bloods that course through our bodies. This is, however, only as it should be, for a sharply conscious experience of the darker color nature of blood is not an experiment to be carried out unprepared.
Exactly when, or how, the stray shard of A-string metal punctured my finger, I cannot say. When I first became aware of it, it was only because the perspiration on my thumb had caught the afternoon light's reflections and was dazzling the world with a display of cataracts, scintillating and flashing. This narrowed my perceptions into a tightly focused band centered on the cuticle of my thumb, and in particular, its interface with the actual nail. Within this interface, clear to behold, was a bright yellow opening, or what looked like an opening, but before I could examine it, a flood of blue-green color obscured it from view and caused the consciousness to fade from me, so that I was utterly blacked out.
When I awoke, or rather, the next thing I remember, I found to my dismay that I was not in my room, and my guitar strings and split-pea soup had vanished altogether. My new surroundings were not so much an alternate place as a black void, and my first feeling was one of panic as I sensed the disorienting absence of my body. Although I say a void, it was not the void of no-thing, but the void that looms as the blackness that we "see" when we close our eyes. Generally, we do not consider this blackness to be anything in particular, except perhaps the inside of our eyelids. What it actually is, however, is a porthole into other realms. A "void" containing more activity than our world, its extent and power threaten to overwhelm our individual flame, slim taper that it is, in much the same way as the sea or the great desert threatens our being by ignoring it as insignificant.
Suddenly, powers surged around me, in vast vortices that counter rotated and balanced each other, multi-hued and emitting what would be, in the sounds of our world, a roar greater than is made by all the earth's sea coasts combined. These, swirling and whirling around me, grew stronger and more awesome with each passing moment, so that soon I feared that this huge tidal ocean would eradicate my consciousness completely and somewhere, far away, an empty husk would be left in which I had once lived.
As a fever reaches a high pitch, then breaks and subsides, so the churning blackness crescendoed to a crisis, then relented. "I" and "It" drew away from each other mutually, until countless stretches and endless aeons separated us and I returned to my husk. As my awareness grew, I found myself returned to my room, and the percept of my blood-covered finger presented itself to my consciousness once again. The blue colored blood cast a cold, steely glow on my surroundings, and I realized that the atmosphere was wholly lacking both from my lungs and the room around me. I would have gasped and clutched at my throat, but directly the urge came over me when the walls and objects around me seemed to burst into impossible flames that raged in the vacuum. At this, I wanted nothing more than to scream, but my lungs were devoid of air, and no sound came out. Tumbling out of my chair, I thrashed around on the floor in the throes of agony as I felt my flesh charring and my hair ablaze. Blissfully, unconsciousness again took me at this point, and my sufferings, at least my fire sufferings, were at an end.
It seemed to me that there was a passage of time while I was unconscious, (in the way that one knows, upon waking, that several hours have passed since going to sleep), but I do not know what, if anything, happened in this time. The next thing I knew, I was in the desert. The rocks and sand color struck a note of familiarity, and I knew that this was somewhere in the South West United States, and somewhere I had been before. Looking around me, I noticed several juniper trees and sagebrush scattered on the ground, and that I was in a canyon that had as its bottom a dried up stream bed. The scorching sun unlocked the aromas from the plants, particularly the sage brush, and the air was filled with an orgy of scents of the most pure and delicate kind. It was then that I realized that I was in Southwestern Colorado, at the site of some Anasazi ruins that I had camped at many summers earlier. I looked down the canyon, and saw, indeed, the very ruins I had explored, but they were now not ruins at all, but whole buildings. Instead of the broken walls I saw fresh towers that bore wooden ladders, and smoke from fires rose in the still air. Not only that, but around the structures moved a considerable number of amber skinned men and women, and the shrieks of children playing were floating through the thin desert air. I surmised that I was no longer in my time, but had been dislocated back to the time when these houses were inhabited, about 1200 A.D. Dying to get a closer look, I began to move in the direction of the buildings, but found that I was floating instead of walking. I once again had no solid body, but I felt a body made of light around me which seemed to "belong" to me and which I was able to move along the canyon floor.
Before I could approach very close to the buildings, I came upon an ancient Indian seated on a rock under a juniper tree. His long white hair fell freely over his shoulders and his face was an almost unbelievable collection of deep furrows and crevices, not unlike the landscape itself. For his age, which seemed to be well over a century, he looked very fit and strong, and his whole being displayed alertness and consciousness. As I drew near, he sat up even straighter, and although he did not seem to be able to "see" me, he knew that something had come near. He looked around, but not seeing anything, he calmly picked up a necklace made of colored stones and spoke. Although the language was completely unfamiliar to me, I understood perfectly well all that he said.
"I know not what spirit has come to this place, but if you are of Taiowa, the Great One, you are welcome. I have waited here many days for a vision, not eating or sleeping, only watching, watching and breathing. Soon it will be my time to journey to the other world, your world, and I must know what to tell my people before I go. The many hot days have dried my bones and the cold nights have given them many cracks, so that I know this old bag of skin cannot hold them together much longer. My people are worried because the water is less these last years and the crops are getting smaller and smaller. The Headpounders to the east are also suffering and have started raiding other bands of our people near here, and I am afraid that soon their raids will reach to our tiny village and bring us death and destruction. I ask you, great spirit, if you are of the sun, let me know if my people should continue their great journey, or remain here."
His face had a desperate, pained look, and hot tears were welling in his eyes. Naturally I did not know what to tell him, and I felt ashamed that I was there disturbing his meditations and deceiving him into thinking that one of his people's guardian spirits had come to advise him. As I was pondering whether to go back or continue on to see how his village looked, I heard a sound behind me and turned my attention towards it. A huge gray coyote was approaching the old man through the sagebrush and it stopped about ten feet in front of him, where they silently regarded each other. This was the physical scene which I saw. In addition to this, on the light-plane in which I also had sense perception, I saw the being that came with the coyote, as the coyote, using it as its physical herald, as it were. It was a splendid, glowing light being composed of silver and white light which flashed and streamed from a spherical cone in which other colors played; reds and yellows. This creature radiated love and well being, which was felt by the old man as well as myself, for his face clearly showed it. He regarded the coyote, but he felt the being behind it, and it made him very happy. Light tresses floated forth from the coyote-being, caressing and enveloping the old man's body in the warm glow. As I watched this, the man's light body slowly appeared at the top of his head and came forth, going to the coyote-being and merging with it, while his tired old physical body slumped over onto the ground and gave back to the world the breath it had first taken when it was born. All around the coyote being were other light beings now, of various colors, and they came to commune with their brother who had of late joined them in their world. I heard a sweet music all around and a deep drumbeat that seemed to capture perfectly the rhythm of the landscape, until I realized that the rhythm was the landscape, and the music was the luminous beings that hovered all around. The coyote went forward to the corpse and, gently picking up in its mouth the stone necklace that had fallen from the dead man's hand, started for the village. The beings went with it, and I followed also, to see what would happen.
The coyote trotted up to a strong looking young man on the outskirts of the village who was fashioning an axe head out of flint. He eyed the coyote first with apprehension and then with interest as he saw the necklace hanging from the coyote's jaws. The animal dropped the necklace at the man's feet, and he responded by crouching down and petting the animal, at which the lights of the coyote-being and all the rest flared even brighter. The warrior picked up the necklace and gazed at it, not in the way one would examine an unknown object, but as one might view a familiar one, one which had some great significance. The man stood up and looked into the distance, and he knew it was time for his people to resume their wanderings.
Suddenly, I found that I was no longer in the desert, but back in my body, or what was left of it. I lay on the hot floor of my room and the stench of burnt flesh became all the more terrifying when I realized it was my own. I was not in pain, for the nerves had been burnt away, and I felt only a numbness of the most general sort of corporeal awareness. I suddenly intuited that I had burst into flames, and I even remembered having read about the phenomena known as "spontaneous human combustion". "Nobody ever expects to be the victim of SHC," I thought to myself, and if I had had lips, I would have smiled. Unfortunately, not having lips was the least of my problems. Nevertheless, my attention was not directed towards my situation, which might have seemed precarious, but towards the cuticle of my thumb, which I could see from the position in which I was lying, and which had apparently escaped incineration (as had my eyes, for that matter, for I could still see). Still visible in the cuticle was the yellow opening to which I have already alluded.
This luminous spot so absorbed my interest that I did not hear, at first, the voices that announced the arrival of several people. When I did finally hear them, they sounded awfully agitated, and the looks on the peoples' faces, when they entered my room, were, I assumed, the result of their first smelling, then seeing my predicament. You can imagine my surprise when it became apparent that my condition was of no concern at all to the group, in fact, they did not seem to be aware of it. Their agitation was the result of some rather unusual events. Apparently, news was getting around that a large ship of some unknown kind had been seen hovering over the desert in Southwestern Colorado. The air force had acted, but aside from flying near the ship and taking photographs and other measurements, there was nothing much they could do.
The ship was a perfectly featureless black sphere with a diameter of over one mile. In addition, there was an energy field around it which extended another quarter mile beyond the sphere's surface. This fact was quickly but expensively ascertained when two stealth fighters disintegrated as they impacted against the field at mach 2. The ship showed up on radar, but not the energy field. The names of the flight crews were, as the people were relating these happenings to me, being engraved on Half-Dome in Yosemite.
The ship was hovering over what was, technically, Hovenweep National Monument, a desolate grouping of Anasazi ruins of no known interest except to archaeologists and other strange people drawn to desert ruins. The ship's altitude was about one thousand feet, and so it cast a mighty shadow over the usually baking landscape.
Now, you must picture this scene. Here I am, charred to a veritable Cajun blackness, lying on the floor of my room examining a yellow portal visible in my thumb nail. A group of no less than a dozen people come barging in excitedly to tell me of the recent events, and proceed to do so without any apparent regard for my horrible old condition. They then proceed to stand there, waiting for me to say something. As I mentioned, I had no lips at this point, and so was unable to make any but the most pathetic sort of noises. My friends were not daunted, though, and proceeded to debate among themselves just what I was trying to say. One fat man with greasy long hair, and wearing a Bob Marley T-shirt opined that my reaction was to quote a line of Sylvia Plath: "Her blacks crackle and drag." A nun of Sister Theresa's order disagreed, maintaining that I had said that the black ship was an omen of Christ's second coming (Behind her, a gaunt man with an eye patch, hat, and cane, and carrying a thick blue book with gold lettering under his arm, looked up and opened his umbrella.)
In fact, what I had tried to say was, "Does anyone have some aloe vera gel?", but this was not one of the possible interpretations for my noises which were being considered at the time.
While this discussion was proceeding, a young girl, aged perhaps six, worked her way through the crowd and approached me. She wore an enigmatic smile which seemed out of place, considering she was in close proximity to what was, for all practical purposes, an incinerated corpse. Regarding me in a silent but intense way, I eventually did see some tears well up in her eyes, which gave me hope that someone finally had noticed me, had seen what had happened to me.
She was holding a glass of water, and after staring at me for several minutes, proceeded to pour the water onto my face. Believe it or not, I actually could hear the hissing sound that water makes when it is poured onto hot coals, and wisps of steam began to curl in the air within my cone of vision. At this sound, the people in the room stopped debating my comments and speculating as to the meaning of the events now transpiring in the desert, and turned to look at me again. After several seconds of silence, accompanied by a sudden blanching of nearly all the faces I saw, more than one of the women in the group screamed, and a violent surge towards the door demonstrated the unity of horror which had seized them. They were gone in a trice, and I returned my attention to the little girl now standing over me with an empty water glass. Only now, snakes began to grow from her hair, and her face became the more sharply etched visage of a middle aged woman, one of incredible beauty. She stood over me removing her clothes, and once she was perfectly naked, she lowered herself down to the floor and began to embrace the cinder that was my body, kissing my hideous, lipless mouth and thrusting her tongue almost down my throat. At this point I again lost consciousness and it is impossible for me to decide if I should say fortunately, or unfortunately.
Another passage of time, and now I was inside a giant sphere. Somehow I knew that it was the ship that I had just been told of. I was suspended in the center of this majestic sphere, which from the inside was all light. I could only barely discern the walls, which seemed to be very far away, for in the glare of the brightness, almost nothing could really be discerned. Presently I saw a figure approach, stepping on a golden walkway which seemed to form as he needed it. I say "he", but in truth the sex of the person was impossible to tell, or rather, the person seemed to embody the characteristics of both sexes. The long hair that flowed in light brown tresses from "its" ("their"?) head parted to reveal a face of perfect beauty, as if made from an average of all human male and female faces, containing all, yet being the hidden fulfillment of all. A garment of white covered the body, and the outlines could have been either male or female, partaking simultaneously of the angularity of one and the sinuousness of the other.
At a loss, I ventured to say "hello." Instantly, the figure in front of me changed into that of the young Indian I had recently seen in the desert, receiving the stone necklace from the coyote. In fact, I noticed the very same necklace now around his neck. Apparently, he saw that I recognized him, for he smiled, saying, "It seems you know me, and you look at my necklace as if it were familiar. My name is Ouami, and I am a facet of the being that stands before you. Your greeting elicited the part of me that you have come into contact with before to manifest itself. When I lived on this earth, I was the chief of a people who lived for a time directly under where our ship is now. There came a time, however, when we had to leave, but as we set out upon our journey, this ship descended and abducted all my people, not just my own group, and took us away to another planet within the galaxy. We were to become the seeds for a new type of being, one that would combine several incarnational personalities, melding them into a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts. Now we have returned to reveal ourselves, and to offer the same opportunity to your people."
I listened carefully to this somewhat bizarre scenario, and while I did the question of what the hell I was doing there came to mind. I looked down at my hands, which I expected to be charred stumps, but was pleasantly surprised to see them in their familiar fleshy aspect, and indeed I seemed to be my old, pre-flambe self again. My eyes lit up, and I looked up expectantly at Ouami.
His countenance darkened, however, and he cast his eyes down. "Your bodily condition has not, I regret, been changed. Here you exist in your light body, which follows the ideal form. The combustion to which you were subjected has not been undone, indeed it cannot be undone, and as soon as you return from this ship, you will find yourself in the same condition. I am sorry."
Naturally, this was not welcome news. "Can't anything be done?" I asked, almost pathetically.
"No, I am afraid not." he replied sadly. "This is not due to limitations in our powers, but necessities in our plans. Your unfortunate predicament is a very necessary part of our unfolding intentions, and I'm afraid to say you must grin and bear it."
"I can't grin, I have no lips." I offered, as an attempt at humor. No smile was forthcoming form Ouami. "Why is it necessary, what part do I have to play in your plans?"
"It is not necessary for you to know in advance. In fact, it might interfere with the consummation of your duties. We know that you will, if left to yourself, do exactly what we want you to do. All I can do is assure you of the importance of your contribution to this endeavor, and beg your cooperation. You were brought to this ship to reassure you before your trials resume. You were selected because of certain proclivities and talents you posses which render you qualified."
I was not overly pleased by this speech. I did not particularly want to be part of his, or their, plans, especially if it required me to be incinerated. I assumed however, that since there was something I was expected to do, my conflagration would not be fatal. There was so much I wanted to ask, but before I could formulate my questions, the scene began to fade, and I suspected that I would soon be back in my cinder body.