Rendezvous

Last Wednesday, close to midnight, I became possessed with the idea that mind really does reign supreme over matter. So consumed was I by the notion of super-human mental talents, even more of their existence in me, that I at once pushed myself off the couch and stared pointedly at the far left wall of my living room.

I imagined for a full three minutes that the wall only appeared solid because I have long believed it to be. I convinced myself that that time--that one time--the wall was becoming fully permeable in space-time, and would give way to my mass if I decided to run, with perfect intentionality straight at it--head first. And so I did.

I was amazed at what I found on the other side.

I saw a tiny drop of water expand so slowly that it may have taken eons--it is hard to say now, since time has no meaning on the other side. I stepped into the expanding pool and became an oblong love-molecule covalently bonded to everything else. I smelt the rosemary color of space and licked the cool, smooth ceiling of fraternal feeling which borders the squishy walls of compassion. I found my heart jumping with joy as it was caressed by the warm red hands of devotion and I was bathed completely in piety. Modesty lifted my spine with a dizzying rush and my stomach flipped when I squeezed hatred with my arms. Fortune pitter-pattered on my face like honey-rain and I spoiled my appetite by biting into a bitter blue-red anger fruit. And the yanking from behind that I was feeling all the while kept growing stronger and stronger till I fell back out of the puddle and I saw everyone else briefly, and then I saw nothing.

And then I saw someone I have always known, who cried with me and laughed with me, who will die with me. I saw him whom I could bury and avoid but never escape. The one person I know I could never give my life for, for that would be a contradiction. He was one of the immortals, and he taught me a very long “love-prayer” in a language whose characters are feelings and words are little drops of bliss, and it is my eternal regret that my waking mind can only remember and translate the last, most important feeling-word:

*Immortal ones that died a long time ago

Yet invisible but witnessed everywhere still

Please allow me to never ask for permission

And forgive me for not offending enough

And let me follow your example by leading

Help me live by dying to the world

And use myself up living for the world*

I repeated the “prayer” over and over till I found myself on the floor of my living room making soft whooping noises like a fire-truck. I must have awoken to the loud ringing noise that, with shame I admit, took me a few moments to recognize as the sound of my doorbell. I then got up too fast I'm sure, since my head immediately felt very round and hollow and full of lead bolts clanking around and bruising the soft walls of my mind. I thought that that must be what a migraine feels like. I walked over to the front door and opened it and felt the warm sunlight hit my face, and then for the briefest moment, felt the bliss of the closing of the word “love” as it departs into the ether. I then looked straight at the visitor and stared confused for a while, until I realized I was looking straight at myself. I extended a hand in trying to touch my face and then my mind ripped with a sound like cheap copy-paper.

And then I woke up on the floor of my living room, and felt a terrible pounding in my head.

And then I woke up in a bed.

And then I woke up in another bed.

And then I wake up in my bed.

And then I wake up.

And wake up.

And wake up.


(I'm now taking extra-strength over-the-counter pain-killers which help a lot with managing the last stages of my concussion, but I’m afraid there is no curing the being-yanked-from-behind feeling that tastes like green and sounds like "Fur Elise").