Stay or go? Keep on working here and get a college degree while I’m watching over Brian who’s watching over me? Or shake out till I find what’s next? A pressure pushes me, but I’m not ready: Too many things unsettled.
For months Brian and Hailey shone like one love in my mind. Now that they’re together, I see things aren’t so easy. Twin spirits live inside of them, but they don’t know it yet. So they aren’t bringing out each other’s full light. At least I don’t see it. Confusion or maybe fear interferes. It’ll let up once Brian and Hailey finally settle down. But I’m not going to hurry away when there’s so much work. Especially my work, which only I-and-I recognize.
[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]
Every day I visit each hectic person in the Black Mountain group. So I know what’s happening with the whole heap. The family here worries ’bout my accidents. Even Royce, who ranks highest, because he’s past bitty sorrows. Royce knows I’m a mystic, even if I can’t see my own light.
Still, Royce recognizes and respects what’s happening to me, but cannot counsel me. No one can, he says. That’s the age-old test. Jacob agrees; I’m beyond twig teas or herbal concoctions, and must find my own way. Nobody can teach me to master good and evil. Unlike Brian, Royce and Jacob no longer trace me night and day ’bout Vivi.
Yesterday Royce asked if I wanted to try again helping him with the geodesic dome. “Got to get it up and stoked,” he said. “Feel how the weather’s changed?”
Today I persuaded Angelina that Royce, Earle, Zanz, Jacob, and me as bad as anyone, were suffering so that we could hardly work from the cold. We needed long underwear from Patagonia, thick sweaters, down vests, wool socks, hats, scarves, workers’ gloves, and big-bout coats. Angelina drove us to the store, which gave us a group discount, because the Arts Consortium brings them x-amount of customers. Even in desperate times, we’re holding the line. The money’s increasing.
Brian, Kaya, and Angelina say the changes in me amaze them. Amazes me, too. My long habit of meditation and ganja giving me glimmers of people’s inner direction are one thing. But this illumination everywhere? It’s fierce and astonishing.
A few weeks ago, I started waking up next to Lauren or Jazmine, Crescent or Destiny, overwhelmed by a terrifying dream about everlasting, universal powers. By comparison, my mother’s insistence that after life comes absolute death seems comforting. Asleep or not, I fall prey to premonitions that no real ending occurs. I’m certain that the fire that moves in us continues, radiating in waves of cosmic destruction and creation, infinite darkness and infinite light.
Unceasing activity terrifies me. But that’s saying little or nothing.
I-and-I don’t dare go into what I’ve seen in my dream visions because if I did, stones would hurtle from space. The ultimate truth never releases the tiniest particle.
A dream, Kaya says, although she’s read about the Lord being within all that exists, past, present, and future. Under their duvet, Kaya and Angelina cuddle with me. They stroke my hair and neck and kiss my face. I am their child; their angel.
But angels, too, represent terrifying, universal restlessness. Their supernatural faces rip the air to shreds.
“Not necessarily,” the women whisper in my ears. “Some angels, Trev, inspire people to seek their hidden, sacred natures. Some angels bring joy.”
And when fighting erupts within a community? Kaya and Angelina tell me that these angels can calm petty tempers. They cradle my head and shoulders and lull me into a late morning nap, where I see Jah blessing all things through all time. I haven’t asked and yet I know: nobody knows where Polly is or how she is. Which worries me and might worry them if I mentioned it.
(Click here to read the next episode)
