Not sure exactly when it was that things starting becoming, kind of, well, different.
On some of those days the sky was clear at night, painted with stars. And that was when suddenly, really, I noticed them. Seriously. Like out of the blue, or black.
Of course I had always known they were there. I suppose I had even seen the milky way before and the big dipper. It was just that never before had their existence, that starlight shining from so far away, really seemed all that important. I had once even taken an astronomy class. I remember learning about the nuclear reactions, and the immense distances, but I wasn’t affected like I am today. At some point I stumbled into this astonishing disbelief that we have not paid more attention; that we could go through our lives knowing only the sun and moon and watching television.
I guess at the end of everything I hoped I could explain how the stars became so bright… so immense and important, that I even started to kind of fear them, in a way.
In all that celestial energy is a light that shines so bright. It scours in to you, into every crack. Around every dark corner, through them. The light was shining so brightly, that even my skin, my mind, my SOUL started feeling, in a way, thin. All of this, even, on a dark night when the rain came down.
The same thing was happening with some of the colors. Not just the reds either, which somehow were appearing, well brighter I guess. It wasn’t like the red was really any different than it had always been. In many ways it was just exactly itself. But oh the deep hues of its many shades! The audaciousness of orange! And even brown suddenly it was so warm and deep. The contrast of them all, was it enhanced? (1)
I tried telling a few people about the stars, and the colors, with some success. It was like everyone understood, basically, what I was talking about. Yes, stars are nice and pretty. The universe is profound and deep. Colors are all so beautiful. And yet I would always come away from our conversations with an empty feeling. Even now, as I try so hard to describe those moments… like casting out a net again and again it always comes back empty. It is only when you stop that the rush returns.
The worst part was when it felt like you were bragging. Certainly that was never my intention. And yet I could hear it in my own words. It certainly was never about a secret club that not everyone had access to. Everyone was on the inside. If I get to the part about some of the metaphors,beautiful and frightening, maybe that thin-ness, the anxiety of the consciousness clinging to existence, would be more clear.
I struggled with the ineffable task of defining certain things. I was afraid people might think I was just making things up or embellishing on what was already the obvious.
Like the characters in The Journey to the East. Was this just 'The Children's Game"? Every time I would write about it or tell the story, it was never there.
And now there were times, more and more of them I guess, when I was, actually, scared. And if you asked me what it was I was scared of I guess I would end up saying it was the light! The funny thing is that sounds like a fear of dying, which it really was not. In fact there were times when even death seemed like it might be a welcome escape! Those nights when I would be lying awake in bed, feeling the sweat drenching the sheets beneath me, my mind, so conscious and aware. It was the other end of the duality.
Walking scarred. I’m not scared.
It’s this Angel.
She says
You are right.
The light is in your eyes.
I mean I guess it was always my own fault. Ever since the first time they jumped at me, those reds, blues, and greens, I had sworn never to forget them. Like watching a magnificent sunset, when suddenly the sky turns to deep shades of pink, purple, and blue, before the moon rises in the east, and the dark blue transitions to deep black. You can take a million pictures of the setting sun but, when you look at them, it’s never really the same. And it all leaves you to observe even the most subtle breeze more carefully.
Some part of the Cartesian world said “you might be going crazy”.
And so I swore again and again that duality was bad, and there was only this continuum, these shades of grey. Each color was never actually itself, each only a slight variation from the other. The sharps and flats blending together into the angelic resonance of what we called a note, a sound, or even a written word.
At some point when I was freaking out I put on the most relaxing music I could think of. And in the first instant of the song it was as if I was transported into a magical kingdom, where ivory whites gleamed with glowing auras on everything. And each word was heavy with intention directly to you. The Angel was singing again.
“Strange how I falter
To find I’m standing in deep water
Strange how my heart beats
To find I’m standing on your shore”
Wow. And it wasn’t because sometimes it did seem like falter, to be standing in deep water. It wasn’t just the way the Angel came to me.
I noticed that just as it was the angel speaking to me, how she had come to me, it reflected outward as well.
She was speaking to directly to you, the words were yours.
(1)
Aldous Huxley described the phenomenah as “...an intensification of what I may call intrinsic significance. That which is seen, either with the eyes closed or open, is felt to have a profound meaning. A symbol stands for something else, and this standing for something else is its meaning. But the meaningful things in [this] experience are not symbols. They do not stand for something else, do not mean anything except themselves. The significance of each thing is identical with its being. Its point is that it is. In a paradoxical, but [sometimes] entirely self-evident way, the relative becomes absolute, the transient particularly universal and eternal” (MOKSHA).