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Chapter Ten
This is the culmination of the first phase of the Opus that began when I drew the Prima Materia out of the welter of raw experience. Through my use of the appropriate Alchemical Procedures, the Prima Materia has been purified from its crude, undifferentiated state and its selected Elements coaxed to its full uniqueness.
The Element becoming fully itself was also preparation for it joining to what it is not, to crave merging with its Other, its compliment. In this conjoining, opposites are drawn together. This merging of two that had been separate and distinct in mystical, synergetic marriage is to bring about their mutual fullness of being through that union. This interweaving of realities can create a wondrous new vision of self and other.
As in all Procedures in this Opus, through higher guidance and transcending love, I, as Wizard, use my wisdom and deft trickery to bring this stage into completion.
My term for this merging is:
CONJUNCTUM or JOINING
Jason stealthily passed down the stairway and through the lobby, empty but for the dozing room clerk. Good, maybe that would delay her being helped too soon, Jason noted and smiled. He leapt out through the din and traffic of the street and into the back seat of a waiting cycleshaw. The driver could have passed for the Wizard's Royal coachman. Or even Bapu, the Royal Coffee-Maker. Maybe they're all are the same man. Both confused and chuckling to himself, Jason couldn't tell the difference. Isn't that one of the signs of a mythic happening, he joked with himself, when everybody looks the same. Whoever this was, he was taking Jason where he wanted to go. By the usual circuitous route, of course. Now Jason was getting that feeling he'd been waiting for, that rush of excitement that focused and hurled him. This was what he'd always looked for, the urgency of being on a mission to grip his attention. And this mission could be the fulfillment of all the others. He was in blastoff and saw his past shrinking remote behind him like the receding face of a planet. An unknown, perhaps unimaginable future was opening before him. The evening's cooling breeze was scented with the street vendors' spicy frying snacks, heavy hair pomades and perfumes from the ladies and gallants starting their evening's amusements, and the ever-present stench of kerosene stoves and assorted dungs. The old men sitting in open-air, white-tile-lined tea- shops playing Mah Jong; dusty, sarong wearing laborers taking their simple meals at long tables under the canvas awnings of sidewalk restaurants; somehow everything was exciting evidence that not only was he was somewhere else, but that something really special, unique was happening for him. Often, as things were drawing to a climax in a ministry, he'd find himself in a frenzy of excitement. All worked up like a berserk warrior, ready for the battle or for the flame. As happily treacherous as a ticking bomb. When he realized he was full of the same bloodlust as on a kill, he laughed. No, he wasn't on his way to a death, he reassured himself, but to a rebirth. But it gave him pause. Maybe he really didn't know what he was after. Everything that he'd said to Melissa before with such certainty now felt questionable. Maybe he really was going there to deliver the Sacrament, to find at the last moment that all the Wizard's foils and elaborations weren't enough to throw Jason off after all. Suddenly, the fang would have its feed. He'd played it that way before, as his stab-wounds reminded him, going out where the ice got very, very thin until it cracked under his weight and he plummeted in to remember he had always been a killer-fish. There was still a harsh, metallic aftertaste from Plang's scolding. "You have this dream about yourself." Old bastard! It was like some form of possession had hold of him. His heart and mind were tearing him apart, driven opposite ways y turbines of rage and desperate longing. The past smashed, the future unknowable. Not sure if he was going to be the Wizard's disciple or his assassin. Always passing through the clashing rocks. What he yearned for most... What he most feared... Lofty expectations and vengeful destructiveness. The paradox that persists. "You have this dream about yourself. Your constructs of reality". The old Wizard couldn't have used a more appropriate or devastating term to Jason. Because they were said empty of the usual warmth or guidance the Wizard's words might have had, Jason was left bereft. The Wizard had simply plucked out his certainty, down to the roots. Melissa managed to twist his guts around too, her great talent in his life. Her backdated summary to their whole history together, seeing him as nothing but demanding and hurtful had left him dazed. In her eyes a creature like him feeds on destruction and blood, a soul like those demon-masks. How does a man live with so little caring from others in his life, with no caring for himself? A self-haunting ghost, Jason saw himself screaming with rage and futility. Without his rage and his self-constructs as a shield, Jason feared it could only be a losing battle. "You're simply a self-deceiving bastard," she snarled at him as he gagged her. "No other details needed, darling." He looked at her eyes a long time, wondering. She and Plang Mengli had been tearing scabs off him all day, one by one, revealing those raw, ugly parts. Though he didn't like looking at them, they had forced his attention. Thanks to their efforts, he had to concede that he was a kind of monster, a two headed freak. He was both the questing knight and the dragon that kept him at bay from the longed-for treasure. Swished about by the Cosmic Whirlpool, he was fragmented, totally at odds with himself. Jason's Ode to Rage was really about his life's nectar, a toxic secretion distilled from the enmity between him and the world. It shored him up, gave him strength, answered for self-protective needs. No artifice about it, killing was a honest expression of part of his innermost nature. Uncertain as he felt, his past broken off and no idea what he would find next, part of Jason wanted only to destroy, to consume the world and fill that abyss inside him. Then maybe he'd feel nurtured and safe. And another part of him, with Plang Mengli's encouragement, wanted desperately to transform all that. And so he was on his way now to take that step off the edge of his world, to begin his path towards the Sun of Truth. The ultimate risk. Yet, he was ready to leave that life. As Jason's vision urged him, this step, though apparently into nothingness, was the only step for him to take. Perhaps the Wizard was going to be his teacher, his guru, the dispeller of his darkness. Was he really so merged in his own truth, his Essential self, that he could guide Jason across that bridge to his awakening, to reveal his spirit's own truth? A cloud of butterflies in swirls of pale blue, black and white overtook the cycleshaw. They fluttered around Jason's head for a moment, then wafted on their way. They felt like a blessing, a good omen. While the cycleshaw jostled by the Navel Temple , now empty of sacred carts and penitents, Jason felt he was being born along by the sweep of his destiny, the fulfillment of his visions and dreams. This was the connecting between his own will and the movement of the Spiral. What he'd been feeling earlier was back, a peaceful certainty that he could rest in of the rightness of the events unfolding. Another voice continued its suspicions. "Or was this another case of lofty ambitions dashed on others' foibles? Another betrayal of his hope, an other duping like from the Abbot and his Gospel of Judas." Jason laughed out loud at his predicament. He didn't have a clue. "Yes, Wizard," he thought, "you got fair warning that I live from my unpredictable lusts and impulses. If you accidentally brush me the wrong way, old sage, and the lighter appears and silently spits, then you get your Ceremony of Transition without much ado. Then I've done my appointed task, and the Abbot might even see to it that I get special dispensation for my foibles." The cycleshaw driver came to an arm of the asphalt roads crossing for a second time. 6:13 p.m., Jason saw on a building's side corner clock. No, this was going to take forever. Utterly fed up with the gyrations, he leaned foreword and grabbed the driver's shoulder. "Victoria Hall..." Jason hollered in his ear. "Quick! quick!" He was ready to jump out and walk. The driver waggled his head lazily back and forth to say he'd understood and gestured at the building where they'd just stopped. They'd come up to the Hall's side entrance. Out beyond the Square, the huge, flattening sun quickly oozed into sunset over the rolling horizon, molten, close and huge. Its last sparkling globule poured away just as Jason reached the Hall's side door. It opened into the empty Hall near the stage. Everything was set out as the night before. Neat arching rows of folding wooden chairs. The table and chair up on the stage. The huge overhead fans slowly spinning. He went through the door at the stage's side, past the dripping faucet and through the dank smells. Jason paused for a long breath, then knocked at the door with the pink star out it. "Come in, come in, my friend," Plang Mengli cheerfully called out. As Jason did, he found the old man sitting on top of the dressing table, his back to the mirror, beaming out a pleased smile of greeting. His black sequined cape was gathered about him. He looked very composed and self-possessed. Jason caught his own reflection behind Plang, and was taken aback at the anxious concern on his face. The savage thing inside him was there in quick defense, jumping and banging on the bars of its cage. It wanted to go on a spree, it's hair-trigger waiting to be stroked. Another, desperate part of Jason was repeating in prayer, "Oh, Lord of darkness and of light, Lord of darkness and of light..." And Jason remained suspended in this inner whirlpool, waiting to see.
The magnet that, to attract, repels. So this force that brings opposites to merge, must pull and push. I can no longer guide, but only allow self and non-self to guide themselves.
"You came alone..." the Wizard noted. "Yes, well, I didn't think Miss Alma would care to come. Though we thought to offer her some diversion for after the Talk. But, of course, she might have other obligations," he said with a questioning lilt. "Yes, she got tied up." Jason couldn't resist. "So, we are come to meet, you and me" Plang said in his low, half- whispering singsong voice, his spell-casting voice. He chanted, "Welcome, oh, weary traveler..." Jason felt no patience for rigmarole. "What's this?" He demanded. "It is the Welcoming," Plang answered evenly and continued.
"You thought you have wandered, but it is not so. Not once did you falter: No conflict was without goal, no doubt without its revelation. Led by the Light and driven by the Dark you come. To find the goal that is beyond leaving."
"Sounds like the Ceremony has already begun," Jason commented. "Isn't that why you're here,..?" "Yes. But I don't know if we're talking about my Enlightour or your Ceremony of Release." "We meet in this moment to celebrate a mystery, however we name or know it." He held his opened hands in front of him, one palm up and the other down. "If you look at it like this, it's like this. And if you look at it like that," he turned his palms, "its like that." "Looks like another Yi Yu," Jason commented with a tight grin. Plang's cool acceptance was distressing for Jason. It all held together some way for him that was free of fear, and Jason was praying to get a glimmer of just how he did it. Alone with Plang now for the first time, he found the energy of his presence even stronger. But Jason still felt some uncertainty about him, bewildered by being so at odds with himself. He looked at the Wizard and took some long, slow breaths, trying not to pop out of his skin. "You know, Plang, this thing..." he waved a forefinger back and forth between them to indicate the mysterious bond opening between them. He remembered the Abbot's prime directive about self-possession being the key to survival. He started again, more reasonably. "I would expect, as your Pushu, that being around you would be good for me, that it would have a calming, focusing effect on my inner life. Instead, its gone into a spin since I met you." Without getting worked up, Jason needed Plang to know how dangerous this all was, for both of them. "I'm confused and desperate. I don't understand what you want of me and what I need to do." "Good, good" the Wizard cooed rubbing his hands together with animated pleasure. "That is to stir up the surface scum a bit so we can get down to clean water. Even the donkey has enough sense to nuzzle the trash aside before it drinks." "Then I guess it's working for me," Jason replied glumly and felt no enthusiasm at all. "I've been more churned up this last day since I met you than I have been for years." "When we met last night, I thought you were well prepared," he stated matter-of-factly. "Confusion and despair can help keep the unimportant parts of yourself busy, out of the way of the important things going on. They can be a means to the Doorway for you, beyond the This and That." No, Jason felt Plang Mengli just wasn't getting the picture. "If I I'm supposed to, uh, offer you Release, there's not much sense of security in my taking this Enlightour." He stood and started to pace the tiny room. "Hmm, perhaps I grasp your meaning," the old man answered with a slow smile, with confirming tone and head-wag. "You are concerned. No, afraid is a better word. You are afraid of what might happen when you are defenseless,...are 'in my power', as it is said?" He fixed his eyes on Jason, brows raised in patient question, insisting the next word was his. Again, Jason felt that terror-tinged awe that his thoughts and feelings were open to the Wizard, that his words were part of a game of doubles they were playing. He couldn't quite decipher it all, and it left Jason nothing more to say. "When you grasp that your whole life experience is based on a few hand- me-down metaphors, you will naturally stop believing in them." The Wizard spoke with concerned authority. "They are instruments of convenience, useful for basic expression and communication. When you are free from believing that those metaphors are you, there is room to see the highest cosmic forces at work. Everything becomes providential, understood as part of the Divine Intent." Jason halted in his pacing. "Providential?.." he asked in scared disbelief. "I'm supposed to accept everything as part of my Call?" A cynical voice in him laughed at his upset, implying assuring that Plang would certainly abandon him to the anguish of that paradox. The old man smiled with special kindness. "There's no need for fear or anger between us. It is also providential for us to be counterparts, partners in birthing this mystery. Even before touching the Omen book, I knew you were my Pushu. I am old and glad that release comes. And I offer you whatever my hands hold. Grace flows in the form that blends both of our needs and natures." Jason asked, feeling its importance to this. "You said this morning that you could see it.., him.., my Other?" It was awkward for him talking about this hypothetical entity. 'Me, but not mine to know.' "Yes. Yes, indeed. As clear, sometimes clearer, than I see this Yi Yu you." The old man chuckled. His image of his Other gave Jason a ghost sensation as if from a missing tooth or limb. Sensation when there shouldn't be any. He imagined some kind of mirror arrangement inside him that let Plang see this "missing" part of his whereas he couldn't. A peculiar kind of frustration. "And this "Other" of mine I'm supposed to meet on this Enlightour -who or what is it? "Your deepest love. Your total stranger. So, of course, it is called many different things: the soul, the double, the Dubbleganger, the Ka, the-one-who- goes-with. But these are limited gestures to try to name the unknown. It is 'Other' because it is unknowable to that self who wants to know. "We take our sacred wholeness and we split it," Plang described this process with some rancor. "We build a barrier across it that separates out the part that we think is acceptable and can be seen in this world from the part of ourselves that we believe is too mysterious, too dangerous or terribly wonderful to claim and expose. You can't grasp the truth of this split because the mind you use to try do so is based on that mutual exclusion." Though tormentingly confused as to what he was supposed to do with or about all this, Jason still had that underlying conviction that something right was happening, beyond his grasp, beyond all appearances. Out of a lifetime of seeking, he felt this possibility with the Wizard held the most promise. A precious something was shining through. Even so, as he sat down in the chair to face the Wizard, he felt exposed and vulnerable. "I do sometimes sense of that 'Otherness' you're talking about," Jason confirmed after a few moments reflection. "For me its like I'm split between two realms. From the neck up I'm in the air, open and clear for my thoughts and perceptions. From the neck down I'm in some opaque, viscous liquid. Like mercury or blood. Doing anything means moving around in both those realms, simultaneously. Two totally different ways of being that "never meet, not even by accident." Jason quoted and Plang smiled hugely. "And I know its not a brick wall separating the parts of me any more either, not like that protective wall round the captive Tree of Life." He shook his head at the memory of it. " There's only a thin membrane between us, a translucent, permeable bubble isolating me from this Other. And from everything else." Jason suddenly laughed with the revelation of this aspect of himself. Self-estranged. Self-haunting. That separating membrane was both his love and his hate, his longing and loathing for that 'Other' who comes with. Something else came to Jason's mind, something never mentioned to anyone else and only half formulated to himself. But he found it natural to share with the Wizard. "Something else about that doubleness too. I hear a mumbled chatter, a muttering in my mind. I call it 'my dialogue for one voice. I'm not always sure what they're saying. Sometimes the words do come through, and I hear fragments of the conversation and I'm pleased when I do. But, like after a dream, the words fade quickly. Even when I can't even hear it, there's still a sense of voices buzzing. I know that dialogue goes on still deeper inside as background to whatever else is happening." The Wizard listened in absolute stillness, clear of reaction and expectation. Jason felt comfortable, drawn to be open with him. Plang smiled understandingly and gave little nods of assent. "Yes, yes. All that are symptoms of your being at odds with yourself. So that, for your every wish to do, there is another, counter-wish not to do. Reaching out with one hand, the other one pulls back. "That shadow-self, that dreaming body, that disowned part you are blind to, is with you always, though always apart. Because your image of yourself is based on this self-denial, you can only partly know your real hopes, dreams and disappointments. No wonder that endless chatter between those disconnected selves inside you, eh? "Because I am at one with the Dreamer of First Times, I am not double in that way. That is how I can know more about you than you do about yourself. I have more information, we could say. You can only sense that mystifying half of yourself. I see both parts. If I explain myself, I say full words, you hear half and get upset. More cause for that inner chatter. Of course I have great sympathy for the hopeless confusion and self-doubt involved. But such consciousness can be a good preparation for real consciousness, a good fertilizer, we might see it. The distress you're feeling is part of the preparation, the appetite for this self-joining. In this circumstance, your desperation is a measure of your preparedness. It strengthens your resolve to hold to the Way in the midst of your chaos and discomfort." His gaze settled deeper into Jason's being. "I assure you, the passage you are about to take, that you go to with such fear and trembling, I pass back and forth through as easily as breathing." He grinned and gestured with floating hands. "To know my Other. Yes, I've got to have that, Plang. That would make all the difference for me, wouldn't it?" Jason was convinced. But the Wizard was already attending to it. His gaze shifted, not at Jason's eyes but through them to some place far, far beyond them. His mind went through Jason's consciousness, reaching, compelling Jason's awareness to follow deeper into his own psyche. The Wizard took Jason to some remote place in himself usually inaccessible to others, the place Jason watched himself from. The fibers of his nervous system were flushed with the extra force of Plang's consciousness. With two of them there, Jason was elated. The gateways of Jason's mind uncapped, opened wide. His inner eyes uncaged, opened to a thousand-fold more span. An instant, a glance, then Plang looked away, came back out and left Jason with a lot of inner space he didn't know what to do with. He'd read Jason and left the book open and the pages flapping in the wind. "It is only the edge that really attracts you," Plang commented with a grin on what he'd seen in his glimpse. "Right there where the opposites play, at the brink where the death dance is. No wonder at the strength of your Call. You're made for it." Yes, he'd seen Jason, to the core. The Wizard turned quite serious. "You understand, don't you, this contact with your Other is total risk, way out beyond the brink. Not a like a tour with reservations and an itinerary. It is into your unknown with no guarantees," he cautioned, though it felt like coaxing to Jason. "Complicated and difficult. For both you and your Other. Don't forget," he reminded Jason with some bite in his voice, "what you want and what you don't want are not major factors in determining what happens. For our aims, success or failure are the outworkings of our innermost hearts." Jason felt a jolt at the similarity with the Abbot's counsel. Plang crooned to him in his singsong chant, face absorbed in a distant, devotional expression: "The Heart of the Spiral is two interlacing Snakes. One is of dark smoke ascending from Earth, the other a spiral flame twisting down from the Sky. The opposites thus entwine to create Time and Thought to fill all Space, sparks from their interplay. Thus illumination is found through foolishness, realization through innocence, stillness through the interplay of opposites, trust through self-abandonment. Knowing this, the deep Heart weaves out the Work. The Way unwinds, secret and unspoken.
"I do understand," Jason muttered in response. In spite of the doubt and the paradox, he knew he was Called. The Cosmic Whirlpool and the Spiral were complimentary perceptions of that same Reality. Here was a merging of his personal vision and their mythology. He was confirmed in the core of his knowing. Remembering the last words he'd flung at Melissa about being Plang's bodyguard, he'd seen to it then that there was no turning back. By now the Abbot could be coming in on the ecclesiastical jet. "And I've already burned all my bridges," Jason told Plang and grinned like an accomplice. Plang Mengli, the Wizard, grinned back and nodded, knowingly, satisfied. "Just tell me what there is to do," Jason asked." Professor Phineus said something about a love-offering. If travelers' checks are all right..." he felt safer bringing up the commercial aspect of it. "The nature of the love-offering is dependent on the Spiral's unfurling. Always, it is of a very personal nature. For those so inclined to conceive in such terms, indeed a monetary token can be acceptable," he confided with witty self- deprecation. "The undisciplined may be put to task with some dull, exacting chore. The proud are given ridiculous and humbling orders. You follow my thought?" He continued at Jason's nod. "With Phineus, well. Let us say, I gave him a puzzle he couldn't digest. Then I held his hand while his mind followed its natural bent and consumed itself. He enjoys the quiet now, doesn't he," Plang chuckled. "As for you, Jason,.. we already know the gift you bear me. When it is time, in the fulfillment of the Rites, you can make your love-offering as a part in this mystery we partake in." The Wizard patted his Omen-bag next to him on the table. "What was once despised becomes the altar and the offering. The affliction becomes the sacrament." Jason knew he was quoting some very ancient Wizard text. Jason looked into the mirror behind the Wizard, at the strange familiar reflection. Yes, time to go learn the Imagos wisdom, Jason told himself. "Flame driven and bliss drawn..." he quoted from the Gospel of Judas to Plang, and smiled with the face in the mirror. "Whatever the risks or considerations," he told the Wizard, "its decided. I'd like to take your Enlightour." He automatically searched and found no tension knots in his chest or belly. Plang's eyelids dropped and his chin eased down. Since Jason had come in, other than his hand gestures, this was the first time he'd moved. Jason was startled at how quickly the energy deepened. "You've decided...Hmm, yes, I also see now is the time." Jason's watch said 6:53. Last night the Wisdom Talk began at 7:27. "Will half an hour give us enough time?" he asked the Wizard. "Oh yes, plenty of time." With a pleased, mischievous twinkle on his face, the Wizard beckoned Jason out of the chair and up onto the dressing-table beside him. "Without your shoes and jacket, I think you will find it more comfortable." After taking his shoes off, Jason hesitated a moment before removing his jacket, thinking to transfer the lighter to his pants-pocket. He sensed his own bad faith, so he left the lighter there and hung his jacket over the chair. Jason watched Plang's face with earnest intent and felt he knew. He had seen. They shared the victory. Jason climbed up on the shaky table. He tried to copy Plang's posture but ended up in a painful parody of it. At best, he could endure ankles crossed, knees awkwardly drawn up before him, stabilized by his encircling arms. The Wizard scuttled down off the table and went to gather various things in the room. He went out into the passageway and filled a small brass jug with water. The sound of the faucet's dripping turned to gush, then back to drip again. Putting the jug on the table, Plang retrieved three incense sticks from his omen- bag, the stub of a candle, a little silver tray and a marble sized pellet wrapped with gold-colored foil. He returned to his perch face to face with Jason, the mirror to their side, reflecting them both. The Wizard arranged the things between them on the table. "Do you have fire..?" the Wizard asked in a ritual singsong. Iron butterflies flapped in Jason's gut. He smiled at the irony and got down again to get the lighter out of his jacket. "Give the flame here," the old man requested, pointing to the candle stub. A mind apart, the trained killer instinct snapped in Jason, "Now is the moment to deliver the Sacraments, to resolve the fearful, to vent the rage always rumbling. He looked at the fine age wrinkles and tattoos on the old man's folded hands. The lighter itself began to spin round Jason's fingers, to his amusement. He caught it in mid spate, aimed at the candle, and struck the flame. No, no squirt of killing toxin, no violent balm. He went meekly, his head bowed like a lamb. He lit the candle and placed the lighter down between them. For some breaths they watched the little flame in silence. Solemn and intense, the Wizard lit three incense-sticks from it, slowly waving them in front of Jason, head to lap. Their saffron fumes hung in the air between them. The Wizard whispered the invocation.
"This is the air of that place you seek." "This is the light that guides." He circled the candle's blue flame between them. "This is the water of immortality. "May you survive all the ordeals of the way, and find bountiful supply wherever you go."
He touched the cool brass water bowl to Jason's forehead then poured a few drops in his cupped hand motioned Jason to drink.
"Of the Valley's earth, your flesh is formed, so natural will the homecoming be.
The Wizard sighed and carefully unwrapped the golden foil and revealed a fingernail-sized brownish-green globule. It looked like a pellet of resin. "This sweetmeat I offer you," the Wizard exclaimed, holding it before Jason, one hand cupped in the other.
"This is made of the Valley's vines and flowers It will liberate your awareness from the cage of the body, from the tight web of time and circumstance.
You will be led down a waterless river. Garuda, the Heavenly Bird, will carry you to the mountain peak where the Jewel of Paradox is enthroned. Though it is guarded by a thousand headed dragon, if you forget everything but this Treasure, the Way will be made clear for you. You will be shown the invisible path to the Valley, that is filled with the splendor of First Times and the radiant care of the Imagos.
The Wizard closed his eyes, breathed deeply and chanted:
"All things converge to and come from the Valley. The place of origin and reconciliation. The wondrous just beyond the darkest place. Through the eye's blind spot all the radiance is seen. Open fully to the fullness of the Spiral. There is the place of stillness, of fearlessness. Though it twist you upside down, back to front, on the way, all will be resolved. There your shadow is the mirror of the Other within. Remember, all you see is also you. It is the place to awaken from the you that you imagined you were, the half-truth of a lie. There you can cross through the door in your mind where everything flips, becomes its opposite and you become your Other."
"Sounds like a dying." Jason wasn't able to suppress a shudder. "There is death," the Wizard confirmed calmly. "I trust this death is a way to my wholeness and not my oblivion." Jason was asking for reassurance. By way of answering the old man said, "Know that your guide in First Times is the Dreamer. Here dreams dissolve at daylight like mist. There they transform the life. I put you in his care because he is the one who best knows the way of your Call. Look to him! "I have kept this sacrament near my person for some years. It has become a nugget of empowerment and experience for just this purpose -to pass on to my Pushu. I retrace the Dreamer's footsteps as I pass this gift to you as he had passed one on to me. "Are you prepared to receive it?" the old man asked Jason with weighty intention. Hallucinogenics are the shaman's stock in trade. Jason had ingested his share of the sacred medicines as a curious seeker. Some produced incredible experiences, but he came out of those trips much as he'd gone into them. And afterwards his life went on much the same. If this was the only means the Wizard offered for all that he'd promised, Jason felt let down. He looked at the glob in the old man's wrinkled hands and suddenly recalled a personal myth for what he was after. He long had this haunting image about looking for a Switch. He was sure it was hidden inside him, in some sub- sub-basement of his psyche, but somewhere he felt he could never find by himself. But once the Switch was found and closed, he was certain, all the partitions in him would melt. The fragments of his being would join and he'd become whole. The knowing parts could help the doing parts. The ones that loved could soothe the hurt ones. Since he was a kid, he'd had that image along with the longing. That wholeness was part of the birthright he longed for, part of his quest, to find and close that Switch. The would be part of finding the Golden Fleece. That would be a sign of its fulfillment. And this glob was Plang's answer to his most personal myth. This was supposed to launch Jason off on his own quest for the the Jewel of Paradox? Though he might be a great Wizard, could another psychedelic trip lead Jason to that Switch? Or was he still doing things at odds with himself? Acting as if he accepted what the Wizard was telling him, but undermining it with ongoing doubt and questioning, making everything muddied. Jason inwardly shook himself from his chattering. Only the simple word mattered. "Yes. Yes. I'm prepared to receive your gift. But there's a problem with Melissa. She's a bit upset and might cause problems. Will I be able to take care of myself? How long should this take?" "You won't be where she can get at you. And, in her world, it will just take minutes," the Wizard reassured him warmly, and continued his chant.
"Here then is the crossing over time, from Now Time to First Times."
He held the pellet, still resting in the golden foil, for Jason to accept. He studied Plang's face and found only caring, calm, and he took the chunk. It was candied with sugar and ginger, but after he chewed and swallowed it, his stomach puckered at the bitter vegetative aftertaste. The Wizard smiled. "Good. Now we can be quiet and wait." He closed his eyes and rested his hands palms up in his lap. Soon, he settled in a rhythmic breath, his face soft and free of expression. Jason crouched in his cramped, huddled posture, grimaced, and tried to relax. In the silence, the faucet's dripping in the passageway outside seemed loud. Jason noticed that a fly was trapped in the room, buzzing, thudding from wall to wall, buzzing and futilely seeking some way out. With little faith and uncertain prospects, Jason silently prayed:
"Lord of Darkness and of Light, I am here within Your sight. In Your shimmering Eye, I pray, You hold me safe and guide my way."
"And may all this work out so that Plang Mengli is my benefactor and not my victim," he stuck in as a postscript. He wondered if this shift in him about killing wasn't already his transformation's beginning. He sighed and quietly waited for deathing. Waited for rebirth. Ages later, it seemed, someone scratched at the door. "Sir Wizard, are you preparing? Soon is time for your Wisdom Talk." "Yes, yes. Thank you too much," the old man muttered back. Then, whispering in Jason's ear, he said, "See you for after." For a long time after, Jason seemingly wasn't anywhere at all. Then, all at once, he was some one else.
Click on the chapters from the list on top left. Copyright Nathaniel Schwartz 2010 |
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