Freed from the    ​                           Underground   

Email  william2fday@yahoo.com

Bill_Day

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Changing Planes and Shifting Gears

In the concerts, the music fills my ears. I feel, ....... I feel more than I would have without the music. But these are hollow feelings, temporary. The moment the music stops, so do the feelings. Emptiness is my depth. The music paves this emptiness, covering it for a brief moment. A moment in how long a life time?

A drunk person stumbles against me. He regains his balance, using the wall. My knees raise themselves. I place my crossed arms on them and rest the side of my head. An attractive woman walks into the cabin. She stands blocking my view of the doorway. Should I or shouldn't approach her? Another involvement? On what should I base my decision? Feelings? Rational thought? What?

The struggle to get up seems too great. For what? To touch and hold? And also most probably nothing will happen at all. Rejection or rejecting. No, my sex drives aren't enough to push me to it, but oh, to hold her and be held by her. Warmth, Comfort.

An impossible dream? The doorway is now empty. My eyes close. A life without purpose, and death without significance.

Mankind is a herd of animals grouping together out of need, and out of fear. Our bodily functions operate, and we strive for this biological process to continue without reason. Why?

  

"Oh to live for thirty seconds more," we cry. But for what reason? Just to add to the overpopulation problem? What can one person do in thirty seconds or in thirty years? Our heart will beat; we will eat; the waste products will slip away from our bodies and we will die. What else would we do if we have thirty more years to live? What would we do? Write books, sing songs, make children? We will still die; our books will be read by people who may be changed by them and who may not be changed by them, but who will die. Our songs will drift into the air, but go no place. Our children and our children's children will die. Why?  

Why bring children into this world? So they can die. Why go on living just to be a part of a whimpering race of animals so afraid of dead that they are afraid to recognize death's existence?  

Humans are indeed pathetic animals.

It's stupid. Everything is stupid. It is stupid to just float along, not knowing whether I want to live or not. It's not only stupid, it's boring. I should drive myself until I drop. But to what? For what?

I pull myself up, using the wall. Not looking at anyone, I walk outside, obviously going nowhere. 

It is pitch dark in among these trees. I stumble on unseen rocks and boulders. The trees are separated by the road, but there is no moon to help light my way. A car slowly crawls toward me from around the bend. It's lights are out. Weird! It is also trying to find its way in the dark. Another car follows closely. A van behind the second car. Good God, squad cars.

Cops! "Cops. Cops!" Running back up the road to the cabins.

At the door. "Cops. Two cars on the way up. A bust. Take off."

People in the cabins begin to move, I dash off through the trees. Car lights go on. Sirens. Flashing red lights.

People are out onto the mountain. Car doors are open. The police head towards the cabins.

  

Screams, confusion behind me, running down the back side of the mountain. A branch hits me in the face. Sliding on my rear end down a tailings of a mine. In and out of the pine trees. The noise gradually disappears behind me. A warm, thick liquid on my face. A bloody nose. Fuck. Moving slowly down the mountain. The tenseness is gone. Finding a stream at the bottom. No water flows, but pools remain. I clean my face. A long walk back to Boulder.

Back in the "Tap" at ten the next evening. Newspapers in every booth. People reading about what almost happened to them. Reading about arrested friends.

  

"A beer."

A canister for bail. 

"Change for a dollar, please." I take the change and put some quarters in the jukebox, hoping to drown out the world to which I don't belong. The record ends. A girl laughs in the booth I am leaning on. I look at her. A blond chick. She holds the hand of a guy with a college sweat shirt.

  

The headline on a newspaper face-up on the table reads: "SHERIFF RAIDS DRUG PARTY CATCHES STUDENTS WITH PANTS DOWN." 

I smile. What was my fear of last night? Self-preservation?

  

It would have ended my boredom. Imprisonment rather than boredom?

"More arrests expected." Why? They must catch them in the act. Maybe the people in jail are informing on the instigators of the party or the drug pushers. People sit together who never sat together before. The mood of the place bothers me. I finish my beer and leave.

Paranoia spreads over Boulder. Some leave for a while. The guy staying in the basement moves. I take my stuff and move down. A man comes down to check the meters but can't find them because they are outside. We talk for a while, but he doesn't ask where the meters are. The next day a cop car sits in front of the house for half a day. Another person in the house takes off.

I question whether I should. Not knowing whether I could get arrested for trespassing, vagrancy, or what, I sleep in the mountains and force everything that has happened out of my head.

Things cool down in two weeks. I move back into the house. The basement is still unoccupied. The bed and the rocking chair are still there. For weeks I speak to no one. Nothing to say.

How many people are silent, knowing there is nothing to say. 

In this room in the basement, I have found my place to escape. I have made a new world in which I can live, a room where no memories or thoughts can awaken me into the dreary grayness of the outside world. All I do, and all I want to do, is sit in the rocking chair and rock--back and forth, back and forth--seeing nothing, hearing and wanting nothing. I don't want to think of what has been, what can be , what is real, or what isn't

.

I live only in the present, not hoping or planning for a future nor caring about the past. My whole world is in darkness. A beautiful darkness. The only light in the room is a burning blue pilot light under the gas heater in front of me. The never ceasing flame transfixes me. It never falters; it never grows, but stays continuous through my many watching hours.

The blue flame exists as I do. It burns without light into a nothingness.

* * * *

I am free. I am going home in three days. I am leaving this loony bin. I am free! The doctor has released me. I can go home.

* * * *

Tomorrow I am leaving but a question has now arisen: Should I go home or to Boulder? If I went back to Boulder would I find a place? Maybe by now I have paid my initiation fee to belong. But then again how much has this institution changed me? Am I normal or have I become normal for this place but become abnormal for the outside? Would I fit into any place except here, here inside this institution, within this book? Only a fear of change? A real fear?

I have no way to tell, no measuring stick to put myself up against and determine. I should probably go home first as a half-way house before going into the outside world, the real world. I know my writings do not represent any world but my own. If this is a created world how does it differ from the real world?

  

Did I ever live in the real world? Could I live in it? Would I want to? 

From past experiences I have learned to take it slow and easy; I am definitely going home first.

* * * *

I wasn't going to write again. I thought that I was through; once out, everything would be fine and forgotten. Writing was a job that I had to do in the Institution. Three months have passed since the last entry, and I still feel this way

.

But why am I writing, you ask. The first month home wasn't bad. I sat around eating and watching TV. My father was the first to start hassling me.

"Do something constructive."

"I am. I'm thinking."

"Bull shit. Get out and go to work. Nothing you got that working won't cure."

"What good would it do for me to work if I don't have anything to work for? No reason. Money doesn't mean anything. What would I do? Why would I do it?"

"Don't feed me this. You are just a lazy bastard. A trait you must have picked up from your mother's side. You will see the use for money when you have to pay your own bills."

The door opens, and Mother enters.

  

"You live your way and let me live mine," I shout.

"But not here you won't," he shouts.

"Let the boy finish writing what he's got to write. That's doctor's orders," mother interjects.

I am writing. Sitting in the middle of a suburb in middle America, in a middle class house, in the middle of a block, middle, middle, middle,.............caught between nothingnesses. I hate it. I hate it all.

  

I still don't remember the "incident" which sent me to the hospital. Why did you release me?

Probably needed the bed. Right? Or was it that you didn't think the hospital was helping any more.

The music on the radio does my thinking for me. Let it; let it solve my problems. Music has really changed since I have been away. Or has it been me? Palled from the society for a year, then placed back again. Everything has changed. The music flows between the lines of my writing, telling me this is not what is important. Forget it. Begin to live again.

* * * *

I am up in the foothills above Boulder, living with a couple of people in a cabin. It is spring, early summer. The lilac bush to the right of the cabin's front door is only light green. The buds of the leaves are beginning to appear. Spring comes late up here. The ground is green, though. Green grass, moss, and weeds. I hope you are enjoying the spring where you are, doc. I am sitting outside in the lot in front of the cabin, typing. The sun is warm. A slight gust of wind blows the typing paper. A smell of pine settles thickly around my head when the gust stops. I can feel my face and shoulders getting burnt. The pines to the right and left of me trap the transparent blue-green haze which the wind sent to me.

Facing the dirt road to Boulder. Across the road, over the first ridge -the plains of Colorado. 

Standing on the ridge, one can see Boulder below. The Denver-.Boulder Freeway curves gently out of the Boulder Valley and heads toward a cloud of smaze in the distance.

  

Standing on the ridge at night, the night light of Denver seems to float because of that haze and smog. Boulder, however, is a combination of lights: yellow house lights wave in the rising heat, red neon lights of downtown flash, white lights of the street lamps indicate the housing developments, and the stream of white moving car lights curve down the Freeway into Boulder.

If I turn around from my writing now, snow covered peaks glare white in the distance. Day by day I observe the snow line advancing to the peaks. At night with a full moon the snow looks like frost from here. Already the lower mountains have only patches thawing in the warm sun to denote the fields of snow of winter.

It must not have been a heavy snow year, or maybe the spring has been exceptionally warm.

  

I was home during most of the spring, and yet I don't remember it. Too much TV. My brain's became mush, absorbing all those TV rays. I sat, being entertained, letting everything happen to me, rather than using my brain or any part of my body to find out what was happening, or to make something happen. 

But now I am not at home; I am out in front of this cabin, ........ the warm sun, the fresh smells, but why have I begun writing, again?  

The chick and the guy whom I live with are off on a picnic. I could have gone. But I am here, alone, typing.

Writing takes even more will power than I remember or anticipated. More distractions, less drive to get it done, less motivation, less time The mountains await me. Boulder and the Tap tempt me. My friends are rediscovering me. Living takes the moments, uses my time, and fills me with the message, "Live, just enjoy life. It has been so long since you have."

So why write, right?

Writing is no longer an attempt to drown out the world in which I live. Where I am is beautiful. My desire to recall the "incident" which sent me to the hospital seems inconsequential, just a period of blank time in my life. My happiness does not depend on the complete recovery of my memory. Recalling the "incident" could accomplish little more than helping me to avoid getting amnesia again, if it is something I can avoid, and set my mind at ease.  

No, that doesn't drive me strongly enough for me to give up what I am giving up. Then why? A need to express? Probably.... yes.... but more. A need to untangle my thoughts, to spill out my guts so I can examine them.. Yes, writing has become my scalpel to disclose what is hidden.

But more, writing, so far, has shown me that the chaos, the unformed questions, the contradictions within me need not exist. I can put them on paper, clarify, examine, organize, and re-examine them until I find my choices, the paths I can travel. By not leaving the past and the contradictions locked up inside, I can come to understand which problems can and which problems cannot be solved. Writing organizes my thoughts, and by organizing them, makes a path for new thoughts to emerge. Writing clarifies my alternatives. It shows me where I have been, and what is in my makeup. It shows me my attitudes, and in that sense, who I am.

I know that if I left my thoughts confused in my mind, I would stand where I am, not progressing, not growing, becoming nothing but the confusion in my mind, the confusion I left behind a year and a half ago. A part of me is still that character trapped by his own thoughts, seeking meaning in chaos, wanting to answer unanswerable questions. That person who was disillusioned by his own insignificance is still inside me asking questions. Must humans question? Must there exist sensitive beings, torn by the contradictions in an insensitive universe? Does a person need to believe in life to live? What does one do with his life? and how can that decision be made? Can humans survive without a belief, with only a fear of death, to drive them forward? Wasn't my hedonism caused by my lack of belief? The lack of belief in a life without meaning. 

In Mexico I did not fight the tide as the snake and fish, but rode the wave onto a barren shore. Life carried me, for I cared not where I went. I had no reason to swim against the current, no purpose to direct myself toward. The truths of my youth dissolved in life's flow. The beliefs that were given to me were a mirage handed to me with a sign attached, "Take what you want and need; take these answers, these beliefs." But there was no way to maintain the beliefs. My knowledge from experience and education undermined and destroyed these beliefs. These given answers didn't work. Only instantaneous truths existed, truths that were confirmed by the immediate present. These became my belief. Truth and reality were one and the same. Both only lasted an instant in the flow.  

No, still there is no truth, but only the changing reality. This is what I should have directed myself toward.

  

But now I have to attempt to see what I didn't then. Yes, I could let life engulf me, but I know at sometime or other life will slow down, and the purposelessness will be upon me, eating at me. Will I have the energy to face the problems then? Sixty years old, not knowing why I am alive. No reason to continue.  

Yes, a reason why I write is that my fear of life and death and the fear that all the unanswered questions will again paralyze my being. I fear growing old without purpose. The fear of being old, just awaiting death. No, I must find my goal, my purpose. This must be a part of why I write.

Writing has become my way to come to grips with and understand life. It can help me understand which questions can be answered by clarifying them.  

Writing has become a way to know myself. It has become my tool. I must retrace my path, the one I so naively traveled and travel it this time with control, accounting for my actions, and from here decide what to do with my life.

The feelings from the past come deep and strong again. I will capture them and make them more real than the fleeting images in which they appear. Yes, I will force-freeze moments of the past to a standstill, to a solid form, to be chipped away, to be analyzed, understood, and then to be acted upon.

Writing has also become my way to explore my possibilities, as I have just done in the last four paragraphs. The character who has emerged from my writing had no basis on which to base decisions. I not only can explore my possibilities, but I can make decisions on my new objective knowledge and experience.  

Yes, I have seen some possible answers to why I am writing. I can fulfill these answers or find or create new answers and fulfill them.

This morning I went to the basement where I lived to see if I could find clues to awaken my past. The bed and rocking chair were still there, much as I remembered, but my books and sleeping bag were missing. This was to be expected. It was strange, standing in that gloomy room again. Feelings of despair arose. My stomach turned and I felt as if I had diarrhea. Because I wanted to spend as little time in the room as possible and because of the fear of my feelings, I stood, walked around, afraid to sit in that rocking chair again.

In the corner near the furnace, a wax face that I had been molding sat in a pile of old newspapers. I laughed at the thought nobody took it. As I picked it up, among the old newspapers and magazines were some writings with which I couldn't identify writing but yet I had written them. They were in my hand.

At the moment the writings didn't awaken feelings of the past, my past. But after having brought them back to the cabin, I found a completed poem and a letter which was never sent. A paper clip held the batch of papers together.  

 HUMANITY ?

 Bleed on, oh eternal wound.

 From an accidental lesion

 Blood flows

 And they ask the reason.,

 "Are you a woman?"

 Is the blood an accident

 Or was it meant to be?

 Does the blood cleanse

 Or does the wound fester

 And destroy the body?

Like I've said, it is my handwriting, but it's like a different person wrote it.

This letter must have been written in the basement and was carried around for weeks; I was afraid to send it, and yet didn't want to destroy it. It was folded twice and stuck between two other pieces of paper.  

Dear Aura,

I don't know why I am writing you, and maybe if I did, I wouldn't be. I hope it is for the right reasons. I tell myself that I am writing you so that you won't lose respect for me, or maybe lose your belief in humanity. I don't know. How could any human being do what I am going to do? This is what I want to explain.

It was the night before last when I first realized that the time was coming when I was going to kill myself. Jane came up from Denver and was sitting on the edge of my bed, reading something she wrote. But all I could see was an object, not a person anymore, just an object sitting there. Words spewed from her mouth, but they didn't have meaning to me. She sat there reading; she stopped and looked up at me for a reply. What could I say to her? Could I say, "I don't understand?" Could I say, "That is very profound?" Or could I say, "Tonight or tomorrow I am going to kill myself? All that you say may be true, but it doesn't make any difference. Not to me. Tomorrow, nothing will matter anymore."

After staring at me, she moved; I said nothing. Her body grew smaller and smaller. What could I say to her? She walked up the stairs. I didn't feel any different. She had left the basement, but I felt the same. I felt no loss, no absence.

Finding the twenty dollar bill today formed my method. All that I had to borrow a little more for the pistol and the bullets. Now, I sit here, writing you. Why? I ask. Am I just procrastinating? I know I am going to do it. It's only a matter of time. Realizing my intention has made it so easy. Almost too easy. I wrote last night, but it too was probably a procrastination. But maybe last night was also an attempt to explain to you why anyone would kill himself. And why to you?

I had already loaded the pistol, cocked it, set it in front of me, thought about it, then went and got a piece of paper to write on. It was only to you I wanted to explain this. The pistol is still there, cocked and ready, but tonight again, I am still writing. In a sense, the paper is about writing to procrastinate. I want you to read it. I want you to understand.

I have come to the realization of what living without faith in life is: a life without purpose and a death without significance. Mankind is a herd of animals, grouping together because of fear. Their bodily functions are working, and they are striving for this biological process without reason. "Oh, to live for thirty more seconds," they cry. But for what reason? What can one person do in thirty seconds or in thirty years? His heart will beat, he will eat, the waste products will slip away from his body, and he will die. What else will happen in the thirty years? What could he do? Write a book, sing a song, make children...he will still die, his books will be read by people who will die, his songs will drift into the air and go no place, his children and his children's children and their children will die. ...... Our sun will die, and at the rate we are going our planet will die first,...... what will it all mean? .. Why? Why bring children into this world? So they can die? Why go on living, just to die?

You will probably feel badly when you read this letter and find out that I have blown out my brains. But it is not for me that you should feel this way. It shouldn't be. I have made my choice. You may say it is wrong for anyone to kill himself and that you feel sorry for me for wanting this dreadful thing. Maybe you think I am crazy. "Poor boy, if he would have only seen a psychiatrist, none of this would have happened.''  

But both you and I know that I am not really crazy. How could we have walked in the streets that night, talking about our dreams and hope, understanding as we did? "I would love to marry you and have your children," you said. You almost giggled, but then realized what you said and smiled. "Yes, I would like to marry you," you repeated. I took your hand. We walked across the street into the park.  

But none of that is important now. You will wake up tomorrow, do all the things that you must, do all the things you find pleasurable, then go to sleep again. maybe at some time during the day you will stop and think how it was, or how it might have been, but basically you will live as you have always lived. There will be no difference. And that is my point.

I don't know how or why I came to my realization of what life is. Everyone dies; it's a matter of time. But it is how and why that's important. I am not killing myself because I am crazy; I am not killing myself because I want to escape the trial of living. (That is the only thing which kept me from being too bored.)

I do not feel sorry that I am going to kill myself, nor do I feel happy. I just know I am going to do it. Maybe I am writing all this down to convince myself that I must do it. Maybe I am trying to recall all the events that have led up to my decision so that I must go through with it. No, that's not the reason. I knew before I started this letter, and I know now. It will be today, because I am just tired enough; I can see reality just clear enough; I am just bored enough; and I have realized my situation. It would be meaningless to go on. It could be today or tomorrow as far as I am concerned. But it is going to be today. I know it is. Maybe I am writing this, not to be sent, but to make sure I am killing myself for the right reasons. Yes, maybe I am trying to build meaning into my life so I wouldn't have to kill myself. I really so desperately need to make a reason to live.

Am I doing the right thing? Am I? Is it insanity which makes me want to end my life? Could I see a psychiatrist and be "cured" of this obsession? I must stop and think. I must try to be objective.  

NO. I am doing the right thing. I am doing what I must. My life moves without me; I wait for nothing, absolutely nothing. I am just wasting time and taking up space. I know nothing will come into my life because nothing can come. I am just an irritant to myself and others. It is the too long period of time between the climax and the curtain of an already prolonged play. It is my responsibility to kill myself, to gain some type of control, to create a death, as I never created life. The time is here when all my previous actions are meaningless unless I act this way now. I must take my life because life at its best is a sorry whore just awaiting death.

* * * *

Desperation projects itself from this letter on the desk before me. That is what is locked in my mind. Will it surface again by its own will and become a motivating force directing my life? 

Fear drives this search

I remind myself I am not sitting in that basement, rocking in that chair, watching the blue flame. I am not in that calming darkness, or even the calming projected possible blackness. I am in a beautiful world, but I must go back, to the room, the gloominess, the blue light. The room still holds lost illusions, confused disillusions. I have to find a new place where I can face the lost illusions, a place where I can create new dreams and hopes. 

I must again organize myself. I must force myself to think about my old, dissipated world. That room can never give me the peace of mind it once did. It can only remind me of how it was--I can't exist as I did then. I must search and find a new place, a place where I can make new dreams and make those dreams a reality. A reality which can't be disillusioned.

What happened to that limited world in that basement? There was a man, a huge man, who came to see me. He towered over me in my chair. Who was he? Was I taking drugs?

No. What was it then? I can only remember being awakened by the rattling door knob and the light from the stairway piercing my dark world. A cold draft pushed its way into the room.

I was still not completely awakened until the overhead light shocked me into a reality; a nauseous feeling pounded in my stomach. The man entered and with him all my old memories entered. 

It was as if the cold air carried all the realisms which I tried so desperately to forget. All my old dreams and hopes entered and shone in my eyes. The man rocked in the rocking chair. His face was familiar; as were the memories he revived in me. He began to talk. I sat staring at him. It made a grotesque picture, him with the memories and the jagged lines of peeling paint protruding from his body. He had become part of the room, an unmovable part of the wall. I couldn't get rid of him, as I couldn't get rid of the cold chills and the infernal light. I tried covering myself with a blanket, but it was no use. He sat, questioning my existence. I could do nothing. I could not answer him. The light blinded my thoughts. I had to escape. I ran. I left the man and the unanswered questions. For days I wandered, lost in Boulder. Thoughts of suicide became more and more plausible.

Could death be a bullet forcing its way through the gray matter of the brain, exiting at the rear lobe with such force that the hair flies out to follow the projectile and is frozen for an eternity?

My body convulses, thinking about the possibility. Death, an absence, a void, or life, with meaningless suffering. Not being; without awareness or the painful void of living in a world that only exists for the sake of existence.

"Hey, man, you had better do something about yourself,.......and soon. See a shrink, do something, but get out of here."

"Where can I find one?" I ask.

"There's a free clinic in Boulder."

Finding myself walking down the hill into Boulder. Have I lost control? Can't I take care of myself? Are my thoughts blurring answers to my dilemma, making me see only the unwanted world? No drug trip was ever this bad.

"Here is an appointment for next week," says a too relaxed receptionist in a nurse's uniform.

"I don't know if I want to or can hold it together for that long. Something has to be done now."

"Let me see who's available."

Walking into an office I don't see, exploding my emotional thoughts to another human being whom I can feel the presence of but never see. Expending all my thoughts until I sit, blankly staring at a window, but not seeing the outside, only glare.

"Do you feel better?" he asks.

"Just empty. What do you think about me? Is my thought messed up? Does what I say make sense?"

"I can't tell yet. Do you still feel like ending it all?"

"I don't know. I can't think or feel at all. I'm blank."

He pushes a knob on the intercom. "Ms. Wimple, will you bring this young man a drink of water?" He reaches into his desk and pulls out a box with cellophane covered pills.

"Take one of these. Here's a couple more. Take one before going to bed. It will help you sleep. Get this prescription filled. Take one every four hours when needed. Can you come back tomorrow?"

"I guess. What time?"

"Eleven."

The nurse enters with paper cup in hand.

"Will you make an appointment for this young man tomorrow at eleven? Be sure to show up. Give Ms. Wimple your address and phone number so we can reach you. Did he fill out the six-twelve forms yet?"

"No, doctor."

\

"Make sure he does. Good-bye for now. See you tomorrow."

A ray of sunlight flickers on the Formica desk above the half-filled form, then disappears. The overhead light in the room becomes the dominant light. My eyes adjust to the color and intensity change. Age, nineteen. Height, six feet. Weight, 150. The form is filled automatically. Stimulus-response, without thought. How many forms does a twentieth century human fill in a lifetime? Has my mind blocked all relevant thought from surfacing? This morning, this form, these thoughts--an escape? But maybe the doctor could show me where my thinking is wrong.

Walking back up the hill. Feeling the muscles in my body relax as the tranquilizer takes hold. The tip of a cumulus cloud blocks the sun for an instant, then melts in the mid-afternoon heat. The pain in my temples releases, a pain which I didn't even notice before; the pain above my eyes lifts. My squinting eyes open. There must be more in this pill than tranquilizer. How could I have gotten myself into such a state? Rubbery legs lifting against the hill. My head floats.

  

Well, I almost did it. I really almost did it.

The next day, and one day a week for three months, walking into the office, sitting, relieving myself of my thoughts and feelings. Him sitting behind his desk, leaning back in his swivel chair, encouraging me to talk by making positive replies. He never recommends action, but only directs the flow, getting me to cover areas of my past. Me, talking about the meaningless life I am leading. Him, directing the conversation so that I will talk about my parents.

  

"My father," I say in a monotone voice, "gets up every morning and goes to work like everyone else's. I ask him why? He gets pissed off and yells something about supporting this god-damn family. Then changes the subject to me gaining legal employment.

"He thinks I may be pushing drugs.

"'Why get a job?' I ask.

"'Someday you are going to have to face your responsibilities.'

"'I am trying to do that now. I am trying to figure out why I am living.'

"'You are just going through a stage of life. I went through it when I was your age. Everyone goes through it.'

"'Why do people go on living? Do they find answers?'

"'Don't ask such stupid questions,' he almost yells.

"My mother chirps in with 'It's God's will, honey.'

And my father continues in a high pitch, loud voice, 'Maybe that's where we failed you, not giving you the proper religious education.'

"I have three years of perfect attendance buttons from church, and now I feel like a hypocrite every time I walk into the place.'"

"My father and I never could communicate. He never saw me as I was."

"Did you do many things together?"

"We used to go fishing, but I quit going because he was trying to make me something I wasn't. He would say I am like this and that, and I should become like this and that, but I knew I wasn't and didn't want to be. But then again, maybe if I did become like him or like what he wanted, I would have fit into the groove, and wouldn't be questioning all that I am. What do you think?"

"The hour is up. See you next week."

After the first month, deciding not to go back, but returning for two more months, saying to myself, "It does make me feel better, and it might get me out of the draft." 

The draft is one thing I should not worry about; life doesn't mean that much to me. My suicide could be a protest. That would give it meaning

.  

My thought pattern has not changed at all. I am just more relaxed about the thoughts. They don't seem as pressing. The meaninglessness is still inside.

"What time next week?" the receptionist asks.

Meeting after meeting, him encouraging me to talk, but after the hour, not feeling any closer to answers of the questions which ride my mind, which have paralyzed and are paralyzing me. 

Being only aware of more questions about myself. Getting involved with the vomited thoughts of the past. A little kid playing with his own shit.  

"Eleven with be fine."

More and more questions arise. Why did I do what I did? Why do I feel this way about my father? The new questions distract my mind for hours.

But that question keeps reappearing among the other thoughts. All thought stops on that question--unable to go further. Why solve the other questions if "Why live?" cannot be answered? 

Will I find the solution in my past? Through spilling my guts to a psychiatrist? No. Turning over old beliefs will not help. Rediscovering the disillusionments of the past make the present less wanted. ( My final rationale for not returning) This doctor cannot help.

Resolved that I am not going back for another session, I step out into the sunlight. Gery walks pass on the sidewalk across the street.

"Gery," I call. He stops at the crosswalk, turns, and smiles. I hurry my pace to meet him.

"What happened to you? Did you freak-out or something?"

"Yes, how did you know?"

"I found out where you lived and came to see you. You weren't really there. You were ranting and raving about something, but it didn't make sense. Then you said something and ran-out.

"I looked for you as long as I could without luck. I had to get back to Nebraska. I felt badly about leaving you like that, however ..... I just figured you were on a bad trip, but it must have been more, since you are coming out of the clinic."

  "It was more. The clinic isn't doing any good. Are you going up the hill?" Gery nods a reply, and we begin walking.

He is wearing slacks and a sweater. His hair has been cut by a professional barber. "What are you doing back in Boulder?" I ask.

"School's starting soon.......... I'm enrolling."

"Where's Aura?"

"I don't know. After two months she decided she really didn't love me, and we broke up in New York. I went back home and haven't heard from her since. My father got hold of me and put me to work. I have spent the last couple of months working on the farm. Every time payday would come around, my father would only give me enough money to live on, deducting the money he spent on tuition. It was going to take over a year to get enough money to leave. So I convinced him to give me another chance at school, and even convinced him that I had to fly out to find an apartment. That's when I found you.

"No hard feelings about Aura? Guess she wasn't right for either of us. What's been happening to you? What was it when I saw you last, if not a bad trip?"

"Don't want to go into it now. An hour of going through it is enough for one day." We walk silently.

Reaching the top of the hill, we pause at my street. Gery's breathing is slightly heavy. "Change of altitude," he says with a smile.

  "Do you live in the same place? I'll come you when I get everything together.

"I was going to the bank. When will you be home?"

"Almost all the time. Are you the one who lent me the sixteen dollars?"

"Yes, but it was twenty, though. That day in the basement, don't you remember? "I'll be over to cheer you up. I grew some grass at home in among the corn. It's not bad stuff. I'll bring you some."

He walks ahead.

"Bye." The only thing the doctor said which made sense was that I ought to eat better. That must have something to do with my mental state.

"Eat better, and you have more energy to face your problems."

Three months of walking around being a tranquil-zombie. I ought to give up the pills and let what happens happen. The void versus a living death? Being relaxed, with no fears, but no motivation either. My fear of death at least made my life vital for the moment. Nothing pushes me forward. Drugged boredom and my doctor visits only put off my search. Time moves without me. Three months have passed without notice.

* * * *

Two days without pills. My thoughts seem to become more chaotic, but then begin to dwell on the thought of suicide again. Pressure in my body builds. I don't sleep the second night either.

  

Four o'clock in the morning. Eyes are swollen from lack of sleep. Sweating in the cold, damp basement. The bed is messed from the night's tossing. The bottom sheet is crumpled under my body. I get up and pull the covers from the bed. The metal bed frame gives a jolt. The blanket is caught in the springs under the mattress at the foot of the bed.

Yanking harder releases the blanket with a tear. Covering myself with the blankets, back into bed, my arm hangs over the side. Staring at the sheets on the floor. The buttons on the mattress dig at me. A cynically sick laugh abruptly surfaces. Fuck me! I ignore it and again stare. The stain on the cement practically covered by the sheet makes a picture of a running dog. The furnace ignites with a small exploding sound. Fallen olive paint flakes from the wall make a pattern on the floor near the furnace.

My stare moves back to the sheet, not because I want to, but because it is the most comfortable position for my eyes. Eye lids close, but I still see the sheet. Fading into my body for the first time all night, I relax into sleep.

An ant begins to crawl across the sheet towards the boy. The boy with his hand pokes at the ant, tormenting it. Aware of the boy's presence, it begins to run frantically in and out of the creases. The boy looks down and laughs, then begins to manipulate the sheet to keep the ant on it. He turns the sheet in counterclockwise movement, opening it as he does, keeping the ant almost in the center. 

The sheet is now completely flat on the floor. The boy walks around the room, moving the sheet. Confused by the boy's maneuvering, the ant loses its sense of direction and runs in rapid confusion. When the turning of the sheet ceases, the ant's pattern becomes a continuous circle. He laughs The pace of the ant slows

. It stops, looks up at the boy and shouts, "Wake-up!"

What? 

The crimped sheet is still on the floor in front of me. What was that about?

Am I playing god with something? Is something playing god to me?

Why should the ant have tried to escape the sheet? To the ant, the sheet must a large desert or a white void. Is it the fear of death which makes it run? What kind of consciousness must it have to fear death? What kind of world? It does not know really where it is there, but yet it frantically tries to escape. Escape from what? Escape to what? The ant surely could not know.

"Yes," a voice pops on in my head, "escape from what? You do not know life, but only question it. You do not live, but only question something you observe. You only know the unsolvable mysteries life poses, not life. You know not where you are, why you are here, yet you seek to escape.

"Drive yourself into life to relieve the boredom. Live. Meet people. Communicate. Find out why other people live. Get into the act of living. Quit being a spectator. Know by becoming."

The boy looks back at the sheet. The ant has escaped in the boy's moment of deliberation.

What? Am I asleep again?

Eyes spin open. The room seems changed. The sheet has not moved, but am I asleep or awake? Something's different. Something has happened.  

Hope signaled in the night: a dream from the subconscious. The ant spoke to me. Where is that man who dies after a time, the one without? 

What time is it?

  

What time couldn't it be? But no time. I feel it. 

I sit on the side of the bed. Being. 

Again I wrap myself in blankets and lie down. Eyes open wide on the ceiling. "There is a world you don't know. Seek it. Think what no human has dared to think, not thoughts driven by fear, then share. Know yourself, and find your reasons and answers by being a living, acting being." 

Dreams re-appear. 

Awaking at noon in a wet dream, I get up and go upstairs to the bathroom. After relieving myself, I check the icebox, find something to eat, and go back down to bed What has happened? A dream? A revelation? Flashback? An unconscious self-preservation device triggered by the fear of death? Any or all of the four?. A type of objectivity for sure. 

Maybe I had intensified the suffering from disillusionment to relieve my boredom - Suffering rather than boredom. Yes, maybe I have driven myself to the brink because of the boredom? My suffering "because" of Aura? I would rather suffer than be bored by myself. Or I would rather suffer than think and confront myself.  

Awaking at night. Going to the Tap to meet people. To get involved, but again being by myself, acting drunk without drink, stoned without grass. Dancing by myself, then with as many different girls as will dance with me. Six of us in a booth across from the jukebox, singing. Finally involved with something besides myself and death. The Tap closes.

Back to the house, down into the basement. Gery sits on the bed, reading a magazine.

"Hi," I say as he looks up. He puts the magazine down and rests his back on the wall. I sit in the rocking chair.

"Things seem to be better. You don't look so down in the dumps," he says.

"Yes, things are a lot better."

"Sorry about not being able to get over earlier. Everything built up all of a sudden. Three days passed just getting the things I had to get done. Then sitting here, I began to think you weren't coming home tonight or were bringing a woman."

He sits back on the edge of the bed. "Want a joint? Home grown."

"Sure, why not."

"You never told me what happened. Do you want to go into it now?"

"OK." I rock in the chair, gathering my thoughts. The bed squeaks as he moves back against the wall again. "I almost talked myself into suicide. I was torn between a seemingly rational decision to kill myself and, I guess, my primitive desire to live. The conflict built to the point that I thought I lost control. My body shook violently when the thought 'I would do it' surfaced in my mind. By shutting myself in this basement, not seeing or talking to anyone, I tried to block all thoughts, but couldn't. That's when you  entered. But it's kind of resolved now."

"Why did you want to kill yourself?"

"Life had no meaning for me. A mosquito in human's world, a grain of sand on a shifting desert would be a couple of ways to describe my feelings about myself. No reason for being here. I am only now coming to realize I have to discover my own purpose for living and my own meaning for existence. The way life was described when I was young was that everyone was significant. By being a human, you were something, you were consequential."

"Yea, I know what you mean. People have glorified themselves by inventing reasons to be here, inventing a God. We supposedly are here to serve God and fellow humans or some other reason. We each have a role to play in the grand scheme of things. "Yea, they fed me all this in Sunday schools too. But a part of people's fear of death is caused by us thinking we are something special, like you said, significant. We believe we are one of a kind, our consciousness is unique and therefore it would be a real loss if we perished.

"I know that fear. Let's go for a walk. I don't even know why I came back. I'm not sleepy."

At the top of the stairs Gery says, "I didn't really tell you the latest about Aura. She called from New York City, this last month when I was home. She sounded beaten; finished. Her voice was barely audible."

She told me she was sick, so I said, "Come back."

"No, I can't return to any of that. That world is over for me. I didn't call for that; I called to say I'm sorry for everything I did to you," as he spoke, I flashed on another, earlier conversation, and even though he talks, but I hear her speaking to me.

"'You didn't need to say anything; I understand.' The excitement which filled me when I heard her voice was completely gone. Her sadness had filled me.

"Aura?"

"Yes?"

"Don't be unhappy. If things get too bad for you, come back. You will always have a place here'. You know that,....... don't you?"

"Yes, thank you." She was crying. "Did you hear me say thank you?"

"Yes." There was a long silence. She couldn't return. She knew she couldn't. I, sitting, holding the receiver, listening to her crying, knew it.

"There was so much I wanted to say when I called. So much. But I can't find the words. Just believe in me."

"Before I could say 'I do,' she hung up. Then when I got back here, a friend of hers told me she tried to kill herself. The police broke into her apartment, put her in a hospital with barred windows, and would only release her to her parents. It seems it is against the law to try to kill yourself in New York.

"A mutual girl friend of ours had called her parents when she was home recuperating. Aura didn't talk to her, though."

"Maybe I should write her and tell her what I've found."

"You said something about creating a reason for living. Do you know what it is going to be yet?"

"Part of what I have figured out is to make myself happy and to experience life."

"That doesn't sound like creating meaning to me."

"I really haven't thought about it. But it was discovering meaning in life through experiencing."

"A friend of mine, John,........... do you know him? Well, anyway, he took me over to this house today. The house seems to be supporting this kid who just meditates. Everyone has been going to talk to him. So I did. I couldn't tell if he was making any sense, but it sure sounded good. His name is Gene-something-or-other. John has been to see him three times already, and he said, 'The further out the question, the better the answer.' You ought to ask him what you should do with your life. When we talked with him, I couldn't fully understand anything at first, but after a while, I thought it began to make sense. He said something about continually seeking the limitless paths."

Gery stops walking. I stop in front of him and look back. "Maybe I didn't understand because I can't put what he said into words. It seemed to make sense before. Here, I'll give you the address, and you can see him for yourself.

"Have you heard of him?"

"No. I really have been out of touch."

Our walk has taken us into the foothills. The East is getting light. We sit. Gery rolls one, and we smoke. A three-quarter harvest moon rises. A late moon. Stars disappear from the night. Breath and smoke combine in the still air. Not even the trees move. All is silent.

* * * *

Thoughts come easily, remembering more than I can write. I have to select what I write now. Since my release from the hospital, so much happened to me that that person in the hospital and I don't seem to be the same.

A balance between writing and living has been created. Writing is still a chore when I think about having to do it, but when I get into it, I don't mind it at all. I can remember the past now, but it is distant; the person back then doesn't seem to be me. When I talk about my past, it is as if I talk about someone else's life. I recreate the feeling by writing; not feeling then expressing the feeling as I once did.

* * * *

Back down in Boulder. Gery has taken off hours ago. It is early morning. The street lights along University Avenue have been off for a couple of minutes before I decide to move from the curb where I am sitting. I rise slowly, thinking, "No place to go." My destination becomes the basement. 

The only person in sight is a man with red, pork-chop sideburns extending almost down to his cheekbone. He is leaning up against a street light when I start to move. Then he starts to cross the street, but changes his mind and starts toward me.

  

He says, passing me., in just an audible voice, "Grass? Acid?" You almost had to know what he said to hear it.

  

"Hey, wait a minute." He turns around and stops, but doesn't move toward me. "How much is a lid?"

"Forty."

"Let me see if I have it." A check through an empty wallet, knowing I don't have anything like twenty bucks. A forced "Fuck," then finding a twenty dollar bill crumpled in my front right pocket. Where did I get this?

"If that is all you have, how about some acid?" he says.

"How much?" But not wanting it at all. Knowing I didn't want to mess myself up again.

"Two for five."

"No. How would you like to split a lid?"

A pause, then "O.K."

"I can test it, right?"

"Sure."

We move across the street. "I'm really running a risk, selling this to you. You could be a narc."

I laugh. "I wouldn't worry about that."

"You don't have to. I am the one who's selling."

While walking down an alley behind a department store, he pulls out a baggy from under his belt and hands it to me.

"Let's try it," I say, without taking the bag. A wooden crate cracks as it absorbs his weight. Having sat, he rolls one. The sun has begun to warm the street from which we came, but the alley has trapped the pre-dawn coldness. He hands me the lighted joint. Having taken too big a drag, wanting to cough, I exhale slowly and breathe deeply through my nose. Force-holding my breath down, but it doesn't work. I exhale rapidly and cough. Interspersed with the cough, I say, "Where did you get the stuff?"

"You sound like a narc."

"I mean," and cough again, "it isn't Nebraska shit, is it? Where was it grown?"

"Where do you think?"

The high begins. "Wherever it is from, it isn't bad."

We pass the joint back and forth. No, this isn't bad stuff. My inward smile surfaces as an uncontrollable giggle. The sunlight at the end of the alleyway is broken by someone walking past. He tosses the roach to the ground.

"You want it or not?"

"Sure! But remember I only have twenty."

"I'll sell you a half a lid for the twenty if the next time you buy a full lid from me." 

He looks both ways up the alley. "Wait here." 

He begins to walk up the alley, but the opening of a back door of a small store causes him to stop, make a reversal; passing me, he says, "Come on." 

We walk down the alley away from the opened door. "Here." He pulls a small bag from under his belt.

  

"Here. Take it all. Tuck it in your belt."

I do and hand him the bill.  

Reaching the sunlight, he says, "Which way you headed?" 

I point in direction we came.

  

"I am going the other." He moves away rapidly.

"Thanks." The warm sun chills me, goose bumps break out on my neck, then warmth. That man must have been from San Francisco, what a beautiful person. Sell half of what I bought and get some money. Great!

Searching for the house Gery told me about. Walking along a tree covered street. Feeling a slight dizzy numbness from no sleep and the grass. Good stuff to have lasted as long as it has. 1380, 1384, it must be the corner house. Yes, 1390. Turning and walking up steps, following the sidewalk to a large, dark green Victorian house. My eyes catch the sunlight reflected from the lower of two rounded, stained glass bay windows. The green, shingled protrusion is crowned by a silver conical disc, also reflecting sunlight.

  

Because the glare hurts my eyes, I turn away. An "L"-shaped porch extends around the corner of the house on my right. Up onto the porch. The bell is missing, but the door is cracked. I raise my hand to knock, but it opens.

"Hello," she says.

My hello emphasizes the "H," as in this is amazing meeting you. "Does someone named Gene live here?"

"You mean Eugene? Sure, come in; he's out in back."

We walk down a long hallway, passing a dining room on the right containing a long, dark wooden table with a different assortment of chairs placed around it. Then on the left, a large living room, tan in atmosphere. Two couches sit back to back in the center. A light from the stained glass flashes "church" before my view is blocked. The smell of spaghetti grows strong as we near the end of the hall.

"Michael, here is someone else to see Eugene."

I follow her into the kitchen.

"Take him out ........ Well, hello, are you the one who wants to see Eugene?"

"Hello. I wasn't expecting to find you here. Hello, Audrey, Phan. Everyone is here but Velvet and what's-his-name.

"Oh, he is still around," Audrey says with a smile. "In fact, we expect him any minute." She stirs two big pots consecutively on the stove. "We are waiting on him for dinner. The last time you were here, I don't know how long ago," she turns and opens the icebox, "at one of our parties, you took off rather abruptly. Want to stay for dinner?"

"Sure, OK"

"You don't know Sirius. Where did she go? Anyway, she brought you in and Gregory," Michael says.

A "Hi" comes from a respectable looking man sitting on a chair near the bead curtain, the entrance to the dining room.

"Hi." Then turning to Michael again. "What's this about Eugene? A friend told me to come see him. It is Eugene, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is. He lives out back in the garage. A lot people have been hearing about him and are coming to see him. We have no real idea what he is doing. He told everyone something different. He told Velvet he was trying to rid himself of all his bad karma by recalling and reliving every bad experience in his life. He told me he was going to explore the Universe in his mind, and when he returned he would tell us what he found. He told Sirius he was going to listen in the void for communications.

  

Maybe he's doing all of them. Who knows?" Michael laughs. He sits in front of the kitchen table covered by geometric figures made out of match sticks, peeling Elmer's glue from his fingers.

"He told me he was going to let his imagination run with out hindrance, contemplating its contents," Phan says quietly. He jumps backwards onto the sink's drainboard.

"I think he's escaping with a great many excuses," Gregory inserts.

"Maybe," Michael replies, "but whatever he is trying to do, he's doing it mostly by meditating but sometimes he smokes grass, and........"

I've been with him once when he took peyote," Phan interjected.

Michael continued, "Sirius feeds him as previously arranged. He doesn't talk to anyone unless spoken to, not even Sirius. He has spaced himself. His only activities are carving on a wooden picnic bench that he found in the garage and working in his garden."

"How long has he been doing this?" I ask.

"About two months. Sirius is supposed to tell him when the third month is up," says Audrey "and he is supposed to quit."

"You mean that he has been high for two months?" I ask.

"He's been meditating, yes..........It's like a monk in a monastery"

"He'll never be the same, that's for sure," Gregory says.

Audrey turns to Gregory. "None of us will. He wouldn't be the same even if he wasn't doing this, and not all changes are bad, as you keep implying. Would you set the table for us?"

"Sure, I'm not doing anything." He crosses to the cupboard.

"Do you still want to see him?" Michael asks.

"Yes, more than ever."

"You might find him strange because he won't converse with you on the level you want to talk. He'll just talks at you. I think he expresses his being, where he is. He talks with you, completely involved with himself. But that's my guess.. Everyone's guess is different."

"That may explain why so many people are coming to see him," Phan adds. "What have you heard about him?"

"Go see him now and talk about that later, cause supper will be ready soon," Audrey says.

"You mean lunch? It's only about twelve o'clock," I say.

"It's Sunday. We eat our main meal now. Tonight everyone fends for himself," Audrey answers.

On the porch. The sky is partly cloudy. A shadow moves across the garden. I go to the side door of the garage, knock and wait. I knock again, pushing the door open. "Hello," I announce.

Eugene sits on a mattress, on the floor, covered by an India Indian bedspread. He sits cross-legged, with his eyes closed. A heavy blanket is wrapped around his shoulders.

"Hi," I say, approaching him.

"Higher," he answers without opening his eyes. I pause.

"Do you mean you want to be higher? Are you too high and can't come down? What are you trying to say?"

"We are higher than now."

"Impossible."

"Nothing is impossible. All possibilities exist in the infinite." Only his mouth moves. His body looks relaxed, but with no movement.

"Does the possibility that no possibilities exist exist?" I smile.

"Yes." He answers without pausing.

Still smiling, I ask, "Do you mind my presence?"

"No."

"Do you know who I am? Do you remember me?"

"Yes."

Silence prevails for minutes until I realize nothing will be said unless I say it. "Are you Eugene, and are you sitting before me?"

"I am here, but I am also there."

"Where is there?"

"It is here, but also not here. You have to be there enough times to know you are there. Escape from the past. Don't fall into the future. Be with yourself in the now. Make yourself know where you are so you can direct, experience, and understand."

"Yes, I think I understand." Is this related to my new understanding? Or was that an evasive answer? 

"Where are you," I stretch for comprehension, "when you are there?"

"Here but not here,............in the newness."

"Will it be new tomorrow?"

"It will be a different place tomorrow, but it can be there."

"Is there a state of being?"

"Yes."

"Can you describe it?"

"I sit in a barber's chair, looking into two mirrors reflecting upon themselves. Deeper and deeper I penetrate, moving faster down the corridor.  

The dragon is deep inside.  

It hears me coming.  

It is awakened.  

It takes me inside. 

My hand no longer moves.  

It is limp at my side.  

I have lost my disguises.  

I am where Death can no longer find me."

"No, it can't be. Stop trying to be where you're not, and be where you are."

"All humans can be where I am. Consciousness is the sixth sense. Let thought flow. We are all still connected to the umbilical cord; take nourishment ."

"Bull - drugged out of your mind."

"You cannot find yourself without losing you image in the looking glass."

Again, silence

He did not even attempt a rebuttal. His eyes are still closed. The relaxed, distant expression still paints his face. My last statement didn't faze his at all.

What did he say? Maybe he didn't comprehend what I said. It's just as well. Where Death can no longer find me. What effect do my words have? 

"What is death?" I command.

"Because of death, mankind exists on the brink of order and chaos. Death is but one door to the infinite, a door which necessarily opens.

He pauses and without changing the expression on his face inserts, "Don't push too hard on it." like parenthesis. Later I thought somehow he said it with a sense of humor.

But at the time I just perceived this whole dialogue in a monotone, and it was in this same voice he continued, "It is a transcendence of a corporeal being."

"Where are you after death?"

"In your last contemplation."

"For an eternity?" I smile.

"Change is inevitable."

"Will Death find you?"

"I am inside. I am the flow. I am the contemplation at the moment of conception. I am the essence of that which is and yet that which is there in the contemplation."

I laugh, not so much at Eugene, but at me for trying to understand and because he was starting to make sense. Obviously I want him to make sense and tell me something.

And because I could almost understand, his last comment startles me.

  

I sit in silence for a while until my stiffness makes me move. I stand.

"If I have understood anything you said, have beautiful thoughts." 

No reply. 

I walk over to a long, thick wooden bench with carving tools on it. Was there thought behind his words, or only spontaneous responses? The back of the bench is partially carved on one end. The design is intricate baroque interwindings. Professionally done, but unfinished. Peels red lacquer flake the remainder of the bench . Could he possibly have an overall concept, a picture in his mind of how it will look, or does he just respond to this stimulus also? 

The cold dampness from sitting on the cement has not disappeared from my body. The warmness of the outside attracts me, and I follow my impulse. I close the door on a body which hasn't moved once since I entered.

  Weird. I lift my face to the sun and rub my butt. A large cloud covers the rays. I enter the house without knocking. Michael and Audrey are the only ones in the kitchen.

"Go in and sit down," Audrey says.

"What did you think about him?" Michael asks.

"At first I thought it was a put-on; then, that he didn't want to be disturbed. But I don't know now. He's pretty far out, not logical at all."

"I noticed that also. But you can make sense out of what he says if you take him seriously."

"That may have been my problem. He seems to be all thought.''

A hello is sounded from the boy I never-learned-the-name-of as Audrey sits beside him. I smile a hello in return as I sit next to Michael, who's at the head of the table.  

"For awhile I actually thought he knew what I had happened to me in the last couple of months and was discussing it............" I pause, then ask, " How could you know if you have interpreted him the way he meant or not?" 

"We will not know until it's over, and he again talks with us," Sirius says at the other end of the table. "Have some bread, and pass it."

"If he ever can," Gregory sneers.

"You know," says Audrey's boy friend, "I think he is searching for a spiritual .... "That's obvious," Audrey snaps.

"Maybe to see if it exists," he continues, ignoring her, "But I can't see where it would make any difference if he finds it. You still have to live in this one."

"Wouldn't you change your life if you believed.....knew there was a spiritual world?" asks Audrey.

"It would probably depend on what it turned out to be, whether you could transcend into it, communicate with it, or what,.................. whether it had any effect on this one," states Michael.

"Until I found out that it was Eugene," I say," I was going to ask him how to resolve my questions about what to do with my life. However because I found out who he was, I just questioned who he thought he was. But you know, for a while I thought he was answering my unasked question."

"You aren't the only one to ask him questions about things like that. Everyone has heard different things about him, but it's growing more and more obvious that people are coming to see him as a prophet, a fortune teller, or some kind of mystic. It is becoming clear that certain people must be looking hard to find one," says Audrey's friend.

"I think the society is sick, and it's looking for a Christ figure to save it," Gregory interjected.

"That gave me the image of old man Society, sitting on the John, trying to fart out a Christ figure," Phan says, laughing at his own joke. Nobody else laughs.

"Does he know the effect he's producing?" I ask,

"We tried to explain it to him, but...."Audrey says.

"We don't know if he understood or not," Michael says. "You know, I been sitting here, thinking about what you said about you questioning who he thinks he is. Isn't he in part who he thinks he is? Also isn't he, and aren't we all, in part what we believe, not only what we believe we are, but what we believe? We are, of course, in part what the environment makes us and what our heritage made us, but also what we believe!'

"How could one possible resolve the choice of what to believe? That's ridiculous," Gregory says. Chewing, I nod in agreement.

"I can only answer that for myself," continues Michael. "There seem to be questions which can be answered, then proved or disproved. There are questions the answers of which (for the time being) can only be speculated upon. It is from these latter questions that we derive a type of choice, a freedom to choose among the unproveable possibilities, then live as though they are true, the only proof of their validity. Maybe Eugene is testing his beliefs by pushing them to an extreme, by testing them?'

"For myself I weigh the probabilities of the choices the best I can by using what has been proved, what I consider human's collective knowledge, or at least my knowledge of human knowledge. I also consider what would be the best for me to believe. Like would be better for me to believe in an omnipotent God or not? For me, definitely no. For if It exists and has control, then there is nothing I can do; but if It doesn't exist and I believe It does, then ......... well, I may be in trouble. I should be responsible for my being and my actions regardless of Its existence. What I think I am implying is a type of control, not only making the most probable choice, but the best choice for me to believe."

"Directing your flight through the chaos," Phan says.

"You have taken too many science courses and are stuck thinking that way," says Gregory with a cynical laugh.

"What do you think Eugene believes?" Audrey asks Sirius.

"That the infinite exists and that he is a part of it, maybe with a capital 'I'."

"If it does, we are all a part of it and can't help but be," Michael says.

"What do you believe?" Audrey's boyfriend asks her.

"I don't make my choice by your method," says Audrey, "I make it by feeling what I believe. If I had to put my beliefs into words, it would be .......... well, I have a picture to paint, and I paint it the most beautiful way I can, using both my rational and non-rational faculties." 

She turns to Michael. "The non-rational are my feelings, in case you were wondering. I don't even need to see the whole picture of which I only paint a small part. I can only do the best I can, using what I have. Right?"

"Feeling that you are working at your full capabilities, using all that you have to offer?" Michael says, posing the statement as a question.

"Yes. Something like that."

"That seems like a type of freedom also, in that you choose an area to paint and decide what you paint and how you paint it," Michael says.

"I don't believe. I don't believe in anything," I say with a laugh.

"Then you are an atheist," says Audrey's friend.

"No, he isn't. If I have understood you correctly, you don't disbelieve either, right?" interjects Michael.

"Right. I reserve the right of resolving what I believe and don't believe in anything," I laugh heartily, but then add, "Maybe a more truthful statement would be, I believe in nothing."

"Are you sure it's freedom?" Audrey asks.

"On what have you based your life? How have you resolved decisions?" Michael asks.

"I haven't. I have just been floating around for years, letting things happen to me, going where I could go, doing what I could do, being who I wanted to be." My laughter turns serious before the words are finished.

I look at Sirius to see her response. 

Silence weighs until Sirius timidly says, "I believe in humanity and its potentiality."

Gregory laughs.

"In a way I think Michael is right. I believe mankind can become anything it wants to. That humans can become what they want," she states more strongly.

"Something it is not?" Gregory both asks and says in a nasty tone at the same time. "Something he is only in his head, like Eugene."

"No. Something all can become. I believe mankind creates its own reality. When all humans believe everything is a certain way, and it is--for them. When we all believe something...say, in a set morality, it does exist."

"Until the outside comes crashing down on this dream world," Gregory says.

"I think it is all a dream from which we are continually being awakened. The final awakening is death. So it comes down to who can preserve his beautiful dreams and awaken himself from his bad ones."

"Sounds good to me. It......" My comment is muffled by the bang of the front door and curses.

"That cock sucker, mother fucker!" ejaculates from a voice stomping down the hall. "Who the hell did he think he was, anyway?"

"Here.....comes Sam," a female voice says.

"What happened now?" yells Audrey's boy friend. 

Sam hadn't made his appearance and fumbles around in the hall.

"Those fuckers!"

"Which ones?" Gregory yells.

He appears at the doorway. "The ones that hate and fear anybody who doesn't look like them; the ones who title you and hate you because of the title they laid on you; the ones.........."

"Had a bad day?" asks Phan.

Smiles illuminate; everyone looks at each other, then at Sam. He also has a sheepish grin. "Yea, you might say that."

"Only if you look at it that way " Sirius says.

"I must have interrupted one of your discussions."

"Yep." A few people laugh.

"What happened?" Phan inquires

Sam comes over and sits next to me. While talking, he fills his plate and eats slowly. "Well, the first incident was this lady who came up to me and said, 'Excuse me, young man. Her conversation seemed slightly confused, but it was something about getting a job. I tried to tell her I was trying to find one, but she didn't listen. She figured she had me figured out. Maybe she was crazy. Whatever it was, my existence was offending her, because when I couldn't get through to her by talking, she started calling me names. I just stared at her as intently as I could until she quit talking. Then I said as firmly as I could, 'It's better you don't know.'

"She tried to draw back from me, but for some reason I was holding her umbrella. I hadn't even realized that I was holding it until she tried to pull away. Then again, it was probably our only connection, so I held it. Anyway, she mildly panicked, released the umbrella, turned, and hurried away. I started after her, wanting to give her the umbrella, but my approach made her move faster. I had to run to catch up and had to say, 'I didn't mean to frighten you' before she would take it back.

"Then about twenty minutes ago, a monster in men's clothing approached me right outside the Tap. I think he really wanted to talk, but he couldn't control himself. He called me I a fucking non-conformist and threatened to smash my face in for me.

  

"I said, 'Thanks, but no thanks, I have bone cancer," and took off around the corner. When I stopped and looked back through the windows of the Tap, he was laughing. I flipped him the bird. It stopped his laughter, made him mad. He called me a chicken-shit and started after me. It was my turn to run. I didn't stop to even look back for at least two blocks."

"It's fear, it says Gregory. "The society is a growing serpent that tries to destroy everything that is not in its likeness. It is the conformed masses so closely knit by the mass media that they think alike, fearing anything that doesn't think as they do. This animal thinks that if it doesn't destroy the non-conformists, the non-conformists will generate a society and destroy the serpent."

"It's true that those who can't be natural in the system are destroyed by it," Sam says.

"Or change it," Michael adds.

"Or escape it," Phan inputs.

"Or conform to it," Gregory says.

"Or exists in harmony with it in a coexistent state," says Sirius getting up from her chair. She starts stripping the table.

Before you sat down, I thought this place-setting next to me was for Velvet?" I mentioned. What a stupid question. She's gone.

"No, she left about a month ago," answers Phan quietly.

"Nope it's mine," Sam say.

"Velvet got pretty deeply involved with some people outside the house. Mainly one guy who started messing her around," Sirius says standing in the door way. She enters the kitchen.

"The last thing she said to me before she left," Phan continues with a smile. "I've got to get out. Everyone is trying to fuck me up, fuck me over, or just plain fuck me,"

Mixed laughter fills the room, then everyone focuses on finishing the meal, or sitting back and relaxing.

"One night I heard her at the Tap turn some guy down by saying, 'I have one asshole in my pants, I don't need another one.'" Sam added gleefully.

Merde carved on the table, I saw her do it, but that event can't out do Sam so I don't mention it.

"Who will be the ants in the society?" Gregory interrupts, returning to conversation. "Somebody has to do the work. Not everyone can be apart and different."

"The potential of the human race would increase if there were more free thinkers. More people thinking different ways could solve the problems we are faced with," adds Sirius at the bead curtain. She grabs the stack of plates and re-enters but yells, "Besides, as Eugene would say, 'We all have our labors, whether they are of love or of hate.'"

"You know," adds Michael, "Some of the monsters which men create of themselves are created by creating a mask. They create an image of themselves, an image of............. let's say, as in this case, strength or power. They present themselves as who they think they should, to be strong or powerful."

Not understanding the connection, bored with the conversation, I pick up my plate and head for the kitchen before he said any more. The strings of beads were still bouncing off each other as I walk through. "Hi," I say.

"Hi." She walks past me and back into the dining area. I place the dish on the drainboard and follow.

"I also struggle from being categorized." Michael still talking. 

"Maybe it is the people who don't know who you are, the ones who can't put you in a category are the ones who fear you the most," says Audrey's friend.

"Or the ones who have categorized you incorrectly, thinking you're something you're ....... says Audrey.

"People tend to project themselves when they don't understand another's actions," Michael says as I follow Sirius back into the kitchen. I put Phan's plate down, smiling, remembering Phan's smile at me when I picked it up. He understood.

"You don't have to do that," Sirius says.

"I know, and I know you know I know. Why are you doing it?"

"It's in partial payment. All I have to do is strip the table. You still don't need to help. It's Audrey's turn to clean them. Go back in and enjoy yourself."

"Look, there is a lot of money to be made from grass," says Gregory. 

"Where would we get it? Nebraska?" asks Audrey's friend.

That Nebraska stuff must have spread like a wild plain's fire. I smile.

"No. We really don't need that much."

"I don't get you." 

"We need some really good stuff, but we don't sell it. And the great part is that we can work out of this house. This is the way we handle it," he leans forward, resting his elbows on the table, "is to make contacts and build up trust. We have a central person who is just visiting us. He is a new friend, but not a close friend. This is what we tell people if they ask. Just visiting. He is the dealer. Everyone in the house meets people, turns them on, saying they can get more.

Maybe even sell some lids, but nothing that could get us into trouble with the law.

"We build him up as a big dealer. This goes on for a couple months. We build up faith, make friends, until everyone is sucked in. When the time for the big deal comes around, we collects hundreds from a lot of people. To build up confidence and throw off suspicion, people in the house ante-up also. Our dealer takes the money and is never seen again. In real life he splits the money with us to keep the rent payments going for a couple of months. If we go to San Francisco and get a house, our dealer would have some place to go, and we could work the same thing there with a dealer who could live here after the rip-off. 

"It sounds like big business. What about the people who get burnt, won't they go to the cops?" asks Sam.

"What will their complaint be? Nobody is going to the cops and say they got burnt in a deal. We say we are in the same boat; we also all got burnt. We could pull off only one semester, only hitting people who can afford it, hitting people who most likely won't hit back. We could choose them by the car they drive. That's the way to stay out of trouble. Don't hurt anyone who can't afford a loss."

"That is absolutely mind polluting, " Audrey replies.

"They ought legalize it, gain some control over it, have some government oversee

 over what is really being sold, and prevent something like this from happening," says Michael.

"Then you are against the deal, right?" Sam asks.

Sirius removes Sam's place. I touch her arm and whisper, "It'll go faster if we both work."

"Sure I am against it," Michael says.

In the kitchen Sirius says, "Let's stack what's in here first." I pause and watch for a while, then follow her steps. "Now, we can finish stripping." The beads are never given a rest as our in-and-out pattern becomes almost opposite each other's.

"You say that it will accomplish a type of freedom. I question that. Breaking the law does not guarantee freedom; it's a loss of freedom. For instance, we will be trapped in the fear of getting caught, of getting hurt by enraged customers, in the guilt afterwards, if someone does get hurt."

"Start a new stack on the other side of the sink. Grab a sponge."

I enter the dinning room with sponge in hand.

  

"In other words-- you are saying that freedom without control chaos?"

"I wouldn't put it in those words. In fact only you would put what I have said in such abstract terms." He laughs, "Sounds like you have been talking to Eugene too much.

"But in that if it functions in the society, its validity is proven. Functioning is the prerequisite for individual freedom."

"Like functioning means not limiting others' freedoms,'" Audrey interjects.

"Freedom to commit an illegal act?"

"And one must function in order to help preserve mankind-- the prime reason for this freedom. By burning people you are not accomplishing this goal, but undermining by creating distrust," Michael says.

"In an idealistically functioning system!" Gregory yells. "Since when do such things exist? You sound like a pragmatic idealist. No such an animal exists."

"A debatable question, but not relevant," says Phan, acting as a chairperson. "Just present your discussion. No personality probing, please."

"This can't be a council anyway. Sirius and Eugene aren't here, so I think we should end the discussion," Audrey's boy friend says.

"We weren't considering this an official council, anyway. Is there any more discussion?" says Phan.

Ever since the discussion began, I have been thinking about the grass I bought but was hesitant in bringing it out for fear there would be none left after everyone had some. I touch the baggy. Hell, no loss. They would do it for me.

"I just remembered that I have some grass." I pull the plastic bag out of my pants and throw it onto the table. "Anyone want some?"

Gregory picks up the baggy and opens it. "That's funny," he says and smiles, dropping the bag back on the table. "I'll go get some, if you really want it," directing his statement directly at me.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

Phan picks up the bag before I can reach it. "I've never smoked real grass before. It might get you high. We could try it."

I reach for the lid. "That son of a bitch! I thought it was too good to be. He must have switched baggies on me."

"If he told you he was going to sell you grass, he didn't lie," Sam says with a chuckle.

I fall into a chair. Anger blankets my mind to everything. The whole morning scene flashes before me as a slow motion nightmare. But it all makes sense now. My last twenty dollars.

  

I look around. Nobody is in the room now but Audrey and Michael. Sirius is still in the kitchen. My anger has changed to embarrassment. I should have checked it in the alley. What a fool I am!

"Nothing you can do about it now, so forget it," Audrey says.

If only I see that fucker again! 

"That's true," says Michael, "no sense punishing yourself for something you can't do anything about."

Well, it was only twenty.  

"Hey, Audrey, it's your turn," Sirius yells from the kitchen. I follow Audrey through the beads. Sirius sees me and smiles hello.

"Hello," I say verbally. My emotion disappears.

"Michael, will you take the garbage out?"

"Sirius, show him the house."

"Haven't you seen it yet?"

"No."

"Come on, I'll show you the upstairs first."

She asks me if I was thinking of moving in. I make an affirmative reply, so our objective becomes to see Velvet's abandoned room. We pass two closed doors. A third is ajar. 

"This one is mine," her voice is almost timid.

I stop to look in, then slowly walk in. A neatly kept room with a mattress on the floor, covered by a quilt bedspread. I comment about the quilt. She tells me she made it. An India Indian block print spread hangs from the ceiling, making a cupola effect above the bed. Broken sunlight shines through a window with curtains drawn and rests on a hand-painted dresser with an intricate abstract design. Handmade jewelry and coins are scattered among the toiletries. A shadow created by a large maple tree outside moves, and a piece of jewelry sparkles. The opposite wall is covered with posters, collages, pencil drawings, photos, and a work of macramé. 

She slips her arm through mine and escorts me from the room.

Velvet's room is bare, with a single mattress on the floor. The hardwood floors have recently been stained and polished. Each wall is painted a solid color. Black and violet walls oppose each other.

  

After a question from me about rent, Sirius explains that Gregory takes care of it, so I should ask him.

  

"We all pay different amounts, depending on the work we do in the house."

"It is really the best deal in town!"

When I ask why, she in a round about way says that he can't justify making money for himself from his friends, and yet he likes to make it and is good at it.

"He supports what he believes?" I ask.

"Something like that. He has a million deals going on all the time. It sounded like he wanted to start another one from what I could hear after dinner. But if it is a good enough plan, I will hear about it. 

"It is not like everyone sits around and lets him support us. Everyone does what he can. But now Phan is trying to raise money to finish his movie. Michael is saving money to buy land somewhere in the mountains and build the domes you saw in the kitchen.

  

"He has some great ideas. Every home will be different. It's going to be wonderful. We will each have our own home and a large community house to meet in."

"If this house is such a good deal, why move?"

"One--to get more room, and two--it's Gregory's place, and we want our own. Gregory pays the rent with an option to buy.

The landlord is really a fine person. Doesn't seem to be out to make as much as he can, but just to protect himself. Anyway, Michael is afraid that when Gregory does buy, he will consider this his place. There may be trouble. He may not represent our will, and we will be trapped if we don't have a way out."

"So in a way, he is using you to buy his house."

She doesn't comment.

We leave Velvet's room. A door closes down the hall near the stairs. Quiet talk, then a guitar begins. Fine playing without hesitations. The mood, not quite classical, nor quite gypsy, a unique expression of being. The volume increases as Audrey comes into the hall and goes into the bathroom.

  

Turpentine fills my nostrils as we enter a large room with windows on two sides. A partially woven material in a wooden, hand made loom sits in one corner. I walk to it and ask whose it is. 

She answers, hers. "Maybe if I can work it out, it will be a skirt."

Woodblock prints hang from a clothes line. A painting on an easel is covered by a turpentine stained cloth. The toilet flushes. I look under the oil cloth.  

The guitar music stops. Music with a new melody and rhythm, accompanied by two voices, begins. I drop the cloth and listen.

  

Sirius tries to move silently across the room, but the plastic tarp covering the floor crinkles with each step. She stops, picks up a piece of matteboard from the floor, places it on a long table, then enters a bathroom connected to the studio. The door closes without sound.

  

The wall behind the table is covered with pictures. An exacta knife and cut matteboard are spread on the table. One wood block is matted and a second is ready. Two chairs are pushed against the table.

The music stops and then starts again, repeating a run. I walk to the door to listen. My left hand hits an upside down brayer on the table. The metal handle squeaks against a large plate of clear glass. I spin soft rubber, silently listening.

  

The music and voices crescendo. The toilet flushes. The music stops before the run of water begins. I walk back across the room to the window facing out onto the front lawn, lean against a large cupboard, and stare at the wind blowing the trees. Music begins again, an entirely different piece. 

Sirius stands in the doorway and asks if I want to see the photo studio in the basement.

"I don't know what I would be seeing."

"Michael also has some sculptures down there he has finished."

"If you want me to see them."

"I know what I want to show you. Come on."

She takes my hand. We walk down the hall, then down the steps. At the bottom she enters a long, walk-in closet. I follow. She walks to the end of the closet, moves some trunks and suitcases, and disappears.

"Hey, it's dark in here," I plead.

A light switches on where she disappeared. I follow it and stick my head between the trunks. She sits on a handmade rug.

"What do you think? My place to be alone. Without this place, I couldn't take it here. Nobody but you know about it."

Someone walks up the stairs above us. "That could be distracting, if not disturbing."

"If you let it."

I sit beside her. Why did she bring me here. "I'm honored." I lie on the rug.

She places her head on my stomach for her pillow. 

My feet are on the wall separating us from the livingroom, my hands behind my head protecting it from the floor.

  

Her head moves up and down with my breathing. Stroking her hair, I look down and she smiles at me. The back of my hand lightly touches her cheek.

"It has been so long since I have felt the warmth of any person at all." I say in a whisper. "Is it a need for gratification that I desire, or is it you and only you? I hope it is you." 

"I want to know you from what I have felt and seen, but my want is without need," she answers. She tries to raise her head; my hand prevents it. Holding her head, I pull my body out from under her and bring my head to hers, laying her head gently on the rug.

  

` We kiss each other's lips, first lightly, then press harder, passionately, deeply. We try to get closer to each other so nothing separates us.

We roll, holding each other's head between our hands, not releasing our lips. Pressing tightly. On top, I begin to unbutton her.

"Hey, wait." She pushes her way up. "Didn't you hear me, or understand? Let's go into the livingroom."

I turn out the light and begin touching her breasts. She finds the switch and says, "You go first. I know my way in the dark. How long have you been by yourself?"

We both laugh.

"O.K." 

We crawl out between the suitcases. 

I hear her say to herself, "Promiscuousness could become a problem if I let it."

The rattling of the window pane in front of us attracts our attention as we enter the livingroom. Two couches back-to-back divide the room in half. An oak floor stretches out in front of one couch. The bareness is only broken by a light wooden table with a stereo outfit on top. Rock music plays softly, but the speakers aren't visible.

  

Sirius puts her arm around my waist.

"Is your real name Sirius?"

  "No, Wendy."

My hand runs over the couches as we pass. "I would rather your name be Wendy."

"Call me what you want." She stares at my face as if trying to figure out something. Her stare makes me look away.

This whole side of the room is distinctly different from the other. Fractured colored light is pervasive. On closer inspection, the "stained glass" bay window is colored plastic pieces fused by something which looks like metal. Larger pieces of plastic have been curved to fit the curvature of the window. This side of the room is darker. A fireplace stands before us with logs and paper ready to burn. An aquarium gurgles in the corner. 

Wendy takes the pillows from the couch and tosses them onto the Persian rug covering the floor. She sits, crosses her legs. I pull the pillow up and sit facing her. Before me is a faded pink and tan tapestry of what looks like a seventeenth century picnic. Standing in front of the tapestry is a dark green velvet antique chair.

  A verbal flow of thought pours from my mouth. Trying to say everything, trying to show as much of myself as possible. Explaining as much of the last three months as possible, as much as I understand and some that I don't. Enjoying talking, letting my words flow, feeling good about letting it out. Not being afraid of what I am saying nor how I am saying it. My words fall, touching someone who wants to be here, listening; not affecting someone who really doesn't care what I say but the reason I say it, not someone who is half listening, nodding or grunting approval for me expressing, but she is actually someone interested in what I am saying, my content. 

Getting out everything that I can:

"I want to drive myself until I drop. I want to be working, creating, dancing intensely living one moment and die the next. No time in between. No time to question, or doubt Yet to go through changes and continually be a new person. If that old lady came up to me and asked, 'Young man, what do you want from life?' I would answer, 'I want to drink so much at that party that I pass out after making passionate love to a beautiful woman.'

"If this is true, 'Then act,' I tell myself.

"'Do something now.'

"But indecision makes me immobile. 

"'Do what?' I ask."

Her laugh cuts my seriousness. I smile. She places her hand on mine.

  

"If you did it that way, without questioning, you would probably end up going in all directions, with no single direction. Just experiencing--that would be all right. I can see it as a possibility, but then again, it could be hurtful to you or someone else."

She laughs. "Michael has had a huge effect on me. I felt like him when I said that."

"Do you have a direction? A single direction?" I ask. 

"I want to help change the world, make it a better place. I dig living and want to help keep it happening. I want to help keep something here although I may not be here to enjoy it.

"I was going to ask Eugene to help resolve my question of whether to be altruistic or hedonistic, whether to help, or just get personally involved. If he was who I thought he'd be, I was going to ask, what is worth doing? What is one's life worth? What is the worth of one life?"

"If each and every human personally evolves, mankind has evolved."

"What's that chance?............"  

I caught myself before letting that train of thought go further.

"No. That sounds too much like my old negative self. How are you personally making it a better place to live?"

"I would like to help in more ways than I am. I am so limited, but anyway, let's see ...... trying to present as little conflict as possible, helping other people accomplish what they want, turning as many people on to living and thinking and feeling, helping people help themselves............" 

"Conflict is not innately bad," Gregory says, startling me. I didn't even notice his entrance and now he's standing almost directly above me. "It helps to promote change.

"I went and got the grass, but everyone disappeared. You two want to split a joint? I already had one."

"Sure," I say.

"Change doesn't necessarily depend on conflict. It can occur naturally," Wendy says.

"Natural occurrences are conflict happening at a natural speed and in a natural sequence. Unnatural occurrences are a slowing or speeding up of that speed or changing the sequence," Gregory says.

Without giving Wendy a chance to reply, he continues while rolling a joint, "Did you ever think that all the abstract talk that goes on around here is so abstract that it has no relevance to anything at all?" He laughs.

  

"Not really," he answers his own question, "Just my exit lines."

He places the joint between us. "Have fun." Turns and leaves.

"Shall we smoke this?" I ask.

"0K."

"Do you think it will change what we have? I don't want to .... if it might."

"It could make things better. I could make it worse. The way it changes me, sometimes, is that it either helps me to get into things or stand away and observe."

"If it makes you objective, will that be good? I don't want to take a chance of becoming distant to you." I pause, then continue, "Maybe smoking causes conflict. Something must happen to make you high."

  

"Not all change is bad. I don't believe Gregory. Maybe we can direct this, make something nice happen. If it does make us distant, maybe it will be an indication of something. I really have only just begun exploring drugs myself."

"O.K., I guess I don't care." Wanting to again feel my apathy but feeling a kind of regression which must have a been seen clearly on my face because she says:

"It will be all right." She stands and walks over to the fireplace. Taking a match from the flagstone mantel, she strikes it on the underneath of the red stone. The burnt match is tossed into the fireplace, and she hands me the joint. Before she sits back down, she changes the music.

  

One I have never heard before. Voice and instrument sing discordantly.

She sits back down across from me. Crossing her legs, she takes the joint. Crossing my legs, I move closer to her until her knees touch mine.  

We pass the joint. 

I finish it and throw it at the fireplace, but miss. 

Her body spasmodically bends and twists with the music. My hands move to the inside of her thighs. Pressing outward, the motion of my hands works toward creating a "V". She puts her arms through mine; spreading them, and only rubs the tops of my thighs. I take the hint and only press the tops of her thighs. She begins to stroke with a rhythm that she wants me to feel; it is the flute in the music.

An erection pushes on my pants to the point of hurting. I sit up, then pull away.

"I could very easily become promiscuous," she says, this time speaking directly to me, "by just letting things happen, letting go, but I don't want that. I want it to mean more than that. I want to make love with you, but not now; when it will be making love.

Staring into her eyes, I see different lengths of tobacco-colored rays radiating from the blackness.

"My eyes are the weakest part of my being. Because they are, they are the easiest place to put your eyes. A lot of people stare me in the eyes, making-me feel a lot of different ways. With you I don't feel challenged, threatened, but comfortable, nice, just myself, who I want to be. I feel good."

Our eyes don't drift from each other's stare. She continues to talk softly, but I don't listen, but feel her feelings.

"I don't want to seek security in you. I want to share," I abruptly say without seeing her, still caught in the depth of her eyes. 

I slowly draw my eyes from hers. Golden tobacco rays on a steel blue background surrounded by pink-stoned, almond- shaped eyes. I smile.

"Ripped," I mumble.

Her face: serene, smiling. An angel's face. Her blond hair rests on her shoulder

"Turned on," she smilingly says.

I smile a yes in return.

"One reason I followed you into the kitchen..........you know........have you ever wanted to meet someone to make them more real than what you saw?"

"Am I more real? Or a larger fantasy? Was it an image you saw that you wanted to make real? What do you see now as compared with what you saw then?"

"Hold it. Do you feel like Michael now?" I laugh. "I was immediately attracted by you. I had no idea who you were, no image, only what I saw."

  "Those questions are a force of habit, probably from living here too long." She smiles lifting her eyes. "Maybe it's the effect of the pot. Or conditioning because I have always only smoked around Michael and family. But the questions serve a purpose. I get to know you through what you think about me, how you view things. I can see what someone else thinks about me and maybe learn something about myself. But this stuff definitely turns me on.

"Time to fix Eugene's dinner. Do you want to go to a party tonight? There is one up at the Ranch."

"Sure." My legs are stiff from sitting cross-legged.  

The house seems deserted except for shuffling noises upstairs.

  

I sit at the kitchen table while Wendy begins fixing the meal.

"Tell me some more about these stick figures Michael has made. Maybe we could move there."

She laughs while she moves around the kitchen, knowing what she is doing.

"Now he is trying to figure out how to cover the largest area with the least amount of material. What you are holding is the community house. It has something to do with Buckminister Fuller's domes, at least that is where it started.

Now, he mentions Plato's structures. Each match stick figure is built differently, but there are basic structural units. The simplest is a triangle, then a square, pentagram, hexagram, and one structure built with a septagram. The simplest structure from the triangle is a pyramid.

"How is he going to enclose the figures?

"Plastics, wood, anything we can find and afford that is functional. One in southern Colorado uses metal hoods from junked cars."

I walk over to Wendy, place my arm around her waist, and kiss her on the back of the neck. She pauses, kisses me on the cheek, then continues the preparation. 

"Are you always that exact in measuring?"

"Eugene figured out a balanced diet and wanted me to be exact in the preparation. Look at the menu. It's in the back of the cookbook."

A seven day menu, two meals a day. Brown rice with every meal. Lots of fish and vegetables. She turns; my arm falls from her side. She opens the icebox, pulls boxes and bags with names of food I have never heard of, names I can't even pronounce.

"How long is this going to take? Want me to help?"

"No. I'll be finished in a half an hour or so. Can you reach that package for me? If you want to do something else, go right ahead. Are you hungry?"

"No. I'll go outside. When you are finished, come out front."

The gray dusk brightens as I walk down the steps. The final rays of the sun have caught and changed a huge cumulonimbus cloud into a bright, burning fire. The moving, burning mass seemingly rushes eastward, but with no apparent progress.

Change without movement, a contained chaos. A wisp of cloud breaks away from the gray-white side, rises, turns red and evaporates. 

A single stratus cloud moves slowly above the larger, closer cloud. The scarlet stratus seems to be an open wound in the blue, disappears slowly behind the flowing, billowing red mass.

  

Branches of a big-leafed maple dance, touching an elm, then both bend hard eastward. Many leaves break from both and are carried. 

The uncut grass on which I lie pricks my cheek.

Steps approach, and I turn my head to see lead-green, spiked heels on stocking-covered legs and a green skirt before a blade of grass pokes me in the eyeball. I rub my eyeball, listening to the steps cross the street. 

The cumulonimbus glows bright orange. It has moved. Its gray-white, unexposed side is partially hidden by the two trees. More stratus clouds, now red, journey slowly across the sky. Two crimson dots work toward each other. Red vapor trails follow, like a cake decoration being pushed .from an icing tube.

Another large gust of wind; I close my eyes and feel the wind press.

  

I smile. How long has it been since I have felt this way? 

A leaf blows against my hand. Lifting my head, I clutch the vibrating leaf, lift it, and let it go into the wind again. The mat of grass where my hand was has partially-regained its shape. A small black ant climbs in among the network of bent blades, disappearing in the growth, then again appears closer to my body.  

Hopefully, no dream from which to be awakened. It disappears, reappearing a shorter distance closer. My head falls back on the living cushion.

  

My imagination watches the ant reach my shirt, climb the wall, making a more rapid progress across the smooth area. Then it disappears under an unbuttoned fold. My skin itches. But I just smile.

Dusk's gray begins to sit heavy. The large cloud, almost completely covered by the trees, has lost its color. The tenuous strip moving eastward is gray. Only the strip nearer the mountains moving westward maintains color. A rustle causes me to turn my head. I look backwards. Wendy emerges from around the corner of the house.

She yells coming toward me, "You want to go for a walk?" Then closer and softer, "The party doesn't start until late," she says in a soft voice.

Handing me a sweater and in a voice like a mother, she says, "Put this on." The wind stirs the trees again. She sits down, helps me with the sweater, then places her arm around my waist. I place an arm around her shoulder. The wind stirs the trees again.

She abruptly pulls away. "Everything is so different; I mean than what I had expected."

I stand, offer her a hand, and say, "Try that again."

Still holding hands, we begin our walk.

"Everything is evolving so rapidly that all my previous conceptions of how things would be never materialize."

"Huh?"

"This relationship isn't what I thought I wanted, but here I am, wanting more. I am not what I foresaw myself to be. But then again, I don't, nor could I, fulfill my concept of what I thought a college girl was. Maybe my mistake, if it was mistake, was to expect. You know,........... to have an expectation, a preconception of a college girl and how I thought I would fit into it.

\

"Too many movies?"

"Maybe, but in fact, it seems to me that expecting does nothing but lead to a form of disillusionment. We can not but help fall from our vision."

"No, what if it happens?" I question then pronounce, "and could it be wrong to reach beyond what we can grasp?" I pause then continue by answering my own question. If the fall destroys us, it couldn't be good. But maybe expectation is just natural, a motivational force which drives mankind forward."

  "Planning also drives us forward, but without the fall: by planning, then trying to make the plan happen. But expecting the plan to succeed could lead to disillusionment. If it happens, well that's nice, whether we expected it to happen or not." 

"Isn't it amazing that I understand you and that we have known each other for such a short time?" I say.

"Maybe forever," she laughingly whispers into my ear.

"Maybe we have known each other forever in each reincarnation and always as lovers, and it's our psyches that tell us it is right," I return playing along, then with some seriousness say, " This may explain why it is so natural and comfortable."

"How could that happen? I always thought that psychic phenomena were intuitive knowledge that came from an individual's collective knowledge. You know, like we must collect a hell of a lot of knowledge which we are not even aware we have collected, and when we have an intuitive thought, it is from that knowledge."

"I think the psychic is that which is passed from generation to generation in the form of the subconscious. It is the intuitive knowledge with which we are born, our heritage as a species, or knowledge brought along as an individually evolved being. "Eugene believes that the psyche is a connection to an outside force. The brain is like an antenna, a receiver of waves from this force that one plugs into........."

"Is there anything between you and Eugene?"

"You mean romantically?"

A yes whispers but is not heard.

"I don't know. I love him, I know. He probably loves me in a certain way. But I am not in love with him. And there are so many types of love, so many ways one can love another person. But I don't know if my love for him is romantic. It might have been a couple of months ago, but it never blossomed. It never had a chance to grow. Now he is so distant."

We press close. Holding tight. Energy seems to be exchanged. Darkness hides our location, but we are somewhere in the foothills. The clouds have passed and a clear starlight sky surrounds us. The foreboding mountains in front of us have stopped our ascent.

"Let's sit for a while before we go back."

Our vision encompasses only a small number of Boulder's lights waving below us in the dark. A cold breeze blows up from the valley.

We sit close. She rests her head on my shoulder. I place my arm around her. Fatigue seems to have engulfed us both.

My past was but a dream 

from which you've awakened me,

Now I am here, 

Because of you, 

in the vital present, feeling, 

.... wanting .....to feel more.  

That person who I was 

has risen and taken leave.

What time couldn't be?  

Where is that man 

without 

hope 

signals in the night.

"What?"

: "Just some thoughts I had, which now seem more meaningful than even then, but yet came from a different me."

"He is probably still within you. A distant you in yourself. You should bring him to the surface again and again, expose him for what he is, see him clearly, understand and cope with him. Even, maybe, make him work for you."

Her last sentence is said with a chuckle.

  

She must have felt my lack of response and sensed my torment for she says, "Paranoia can be a driving force, even a positive force."

"Maybe we should smoke more pot," I sarcastically say.

"Funny, ......... no, but really, those cavemen who were paranoid survived, and those.......