“No, really, listen to me. You’re almost a mile away and I can barely make out your body, but your face seems like it’s right in front of me.”
“Do I have lipstick on?”
“Yes. It’s red, kind of.”
“What about mascara?”
“No, no mascara.”
“You know, I think you’re onto something.”
“But what?”
“I have no idea. It’s your dream.”
I was absolutely beside myself. I was desperate to have her explain something, anything. I suddenly screamed, “Is New Jersey really the psychic world?”
“Yes,” she shot back. “It’s in Hackensack.”
The dream wasn’t difficult to figure out. The way we were separated on the bridge again emphasized I was soon going to be on my own. With no direction home, as the song says. I wasn’t looking forward to it. The crazed tone of the dream didn’t help. It was one hell of a send off.
The dream also seemed to be repeating what Alice had often told me: that I didn’t have the chance of a snowball in hell of logically understanding the psychic world. I was completely deflated by the dream. Nothing made sense. Alice and I might as well have been Pinga and Angelo slapping each other’s faces.
It seems that Alice’s earlier suggestion I should stop thinking had come back in comic form, just in case I missed it the first time around. As I was thinking about this, Diane’s “I Am Laughing” translation of ISLAUGGH came roaring in right behind it. I had never been able to shake the possibility that all the psychic events I experienced might be completely meaningless, a lot of clever nonsense from the poet’s unconscious. But that was the last thing I wanted to hear, especially with Alice’s growing instability and my own growing uneasiness about our parting.
The only thing that kept me steady is what had kept others steady: no matter what my suspicious rational mind whispered from time to time, my experiences hadn’t felt like nonsense. Alice’s earlier suggestion had been good advice: “It’s time to stop thinking, don’t you think? ” It was time to put my doubts away.
Alice called me a few days later. She wanted to meet at Starbucks. When she came through the door, she almost seemed her old self again. As she got closer, however, I could see her normally clear eyes were badly bloodshot. I knew she was in trouble. I had wanted to talk about the dream, but it was clearly not the time.
“Alice, what’s the matter?”
“I’m not doing well, Justin.”
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“I can see. You haven’t seemed yourself lately.”
“What self are you referring to, may I ask?”
“I have no idea Alice, but let’s start with the one with the beer and hot dogs.”
“She’s not talking today. Try another one.”
I was completely out of my depth. “How about the one in my dream a few nights ago, is she around?”
“Her? Oh, she’s around. She’s always around.”
Right then, I remembered the scene in the dream where Alice kept telling me she was right next to me, but she was clearly far away on the New Jersey end of the bridge. That little scene had a very strange feeling to it. I could see her at the end of the bridge but I could also see her face right next to me. I could almost taste her, as Alice was fond of saying. So Alice’s hint that her dreaming self might have somehow entered my dream—as fantastical as it sounds—didn’t surprise me. Nothing surprised me about Alice anymore.
I wanted to talk to her about it, but decided not to. Who knows? Alice may have done it and still been completely unaware of it. From what I could gather, memory was very slippery under those circumstances. In the end, I let it go. It was time to stop thinking.
I began to talk about Graves. She looked at me in the most quizzical way, as though maybe I was jerking her around, and said, “I never told you, but I met Graves once. It was during my travels in Europe. He hadn’t published The White Goddess yet, but someone in London who knew Terry arranged a visit. He told us he thought Graves was onto something with regard to the Mother Goddess.”
“You knew Robert Graves?”
“Sure. What’s so surprising about that?”
“You never told me.”
“You never asked.”
“Are you putting me on? I can believe you met Jung— maybe—but Graves? I’m sorry Alice—that’s one too many.”
“All I can say,” she replied, “is they weren’t as well known then, at least not the way they are today. Most of the people I spoke to during those years have remained pretty much anonymous, but I wouldn’t say they were less helpful than Jung or Graves. Most dedicated people spend their whole lives in the trenches.
Kiki’s a good example of that: she probably helped me understand who I really was more than anybody and who remembers her?
“Anyway, going to Majorca was fun. Terry and I went by boat from London. Majorca back then was like Sarasota in the fifties: sketchy, almost not there. Graves had a wicked sense of humor. He couldn’t get enough of my cracker accent. Once he had me read The List of Ships from Pope’s Iliad. He couldn’t stop howling.
“He was a pretty good mimic too. He couldn’t do Rich Little, like you, but 258 ALICE HICKEY
his imitation of his Majorcan maid was unbelievable. Almost spooky. I hate to say this, but he also managed to put together a pretty good imitation of me reciting The List of Ships. He couldn’t stop howling at that either.
“He took my eyes right in stride. Maybe that’s because he had pretty wild eyes himself. They could stop traffic. And women. They were all over the place.
Sometimes I was afraid to look in the closets. He reminded me of a small, quick hawk, the way his eyes were always flitting around the room, like he was looking for something, or someone. Once, when we were talking about the Great Mother, I started to lift out of my body, I don’t know why, and I remember looking down at him and seeing his eyes, how hungry they were, like he was starving.
“I learned quite a bit in the three or four days we were there. His knowledge was encyclopedic; but even more importantly, he trusted the psychic world. Our conversations were able to go all over the place. He sent me a signed copy of The White Goddess after it came out. It was a tough read. He was far better in person.”
In the middle of all this, I again told Alice I had some real doubts about ISLAUGGH being a herald of the re-ascendance of the Female Spirit .
Surprisingly, she took it right in stride. “I've been having some second thoughts as well,” she said. “I still believe she’s a herald of the Female Spirit, but only of its weakened state, not its re-ascendance.
“I won’t kid you—coming to terms with what ISLAUGGH’s appearance really meant wasn’t easy. I had invested a lot of energy in her. I wasn’t completely mistaken though. The Female Spirit will re-ascend, and ISLAUGGH
is a herald of it, except not in the way I originally thought.
“I somehow read my own desires into ISLAUGGH. She was really a sign that the Female Spirit had reached its low point, or close to it. It was a sign that had to come before any kind of re-ascendance could occur. I should have known that, but I guess I turned a blind eye to it.
“No one really knows when the Age of Aquarius will begin to show us evidence of a change in the nature of our consciousness. I sense we’re getting close, but how close is another matter entirely. Time and the unconscious are very slippery partners. I’d like to be here when the Female Spirit's re-ascendance becomes truly apparent. I can’t tell you what it would mean to me; it would make my life complete. ”
What struck me was how complete Alice’s about-face was. No looking back. No regrets. When I mentioned she didn’t seem to have any ego at all invested in her ideas, she shot back, “Oh I’ve got plenty of ego; don’t kid yourself. I can be as stubborn as the next. But that’s only when it comes to the heart of what I believe—that the Female Spirit will re-ascend. That’s still intact.”
Her recent erratic behavior undoubtedly reflected her struggles with ISLAUGGH.
What’s more, her bloodshot eyes were a good indication she was struggling with some other issues. I knew she was anxious about her future; she had predicted
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more than once she was going to be blindsided, but couldn’t say by what. And while she may have given the impression that she had our imminent parting under control, I wasn’t so sure. Over the years, we had developed a deep friendship. It was going to be painful for both of us. My own growing uneasiness about her leaving me was taking its toll. I wasn’t sleeping well—or thinking well.
I decided the best thing to do was what we had always done: talk. “I guess my being a herald for the Female Spirit; that’s all out the window now, isn’t it?”
“Don't be so nervous. In a way, yes, it is all out the window, but not the way you think. You’re not quite ready to be a herald anyway. I was wrong on that as well.
But on the plus side, you know more now than you ever did about the nature of poetry, which is what you should be telling people about. But not quite in the way you have been.
“You now know that poetry—and in particular the act of speaking— is intimately linked to an early form of consciousness that didn’t exist in a vacuum.
It existed in an age dominated by the Female Spirit, by the Mother Goddess. You also know now that poetry has roots back into the collective unconscious that you had never even imagined. Your knowledge has grown tremendously about the forces at play within poetry.
“The Female Spirit may be at its low point, but it is still within us; and in some people, such as yourself, it’s very much alive, damaged as it is. I told you before that earth can move heaven , as impossible as that sounds. Our actions can help to bring about that re-ascendance. That’s how these great shifts happen anyway. They never happen all at once, out of the blue.
“Rather, someone appears who embodies the Female Spirit , someone who’s ahead of the crowd, so to speak, and then another appears somewhere else, and then another. One by one is how it happens. You’re one of those ones, whether you like it or not, and so am I.
“Who knew that you would lift off the top of my head like you did with ISLAUGGH and the myth? You can’t believe what that meant to me. I thought it was the sign I’d been waiting for all my life. It wasn’t. But it was a sign, that’s the important thing.”
Alice was putting up a brave front, but she was hurting, I could see it in her eyes.
I said to her, “Something’s still the matter, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I realized how much I’d been depriving myself of a real life over the years.
I wanted the world to become a true home for me, a place I belonged, a place where I wouldn’t be considered an outsider, a freak. I became so wrapped up in the Female Spirit I couldn’t see ISLAUGGH and the myth for what they really were. Somehow I saw them as corroborating my visions. I should have known better, but I guess I started making some of the details up without knowing it. But worse than that was the box I had built around myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m talking about Terry. We still see each other. He flies down from Washington every few weeks, and we still have a good time. I know he loves me. He told me 260 ALICE HICKEY
many years ago that he had been entrusted with me, that I was like a small, rare jewel who had appeared on his doorstep. That wasn’t just a lot of sweet talk.
Terry isn’t like that. We got into problems not because of a lack of affection, or admiration. We got into problems because I wanted him to be completely open with me.
“I wanted him to let me in, even to the dark places I knew were there. But he wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. At the time, I was dying inside. I told him if he didn’t let me in, I was going to leave and never come back. That was almost a lifetime ago. I shouldn’t have punished Terry for being who he is. But that’s what I was doing. Last night, a small dark light appeared inside me. It was Terry. I knew it.
He was waiting to come in. He was so lost.”
Then she began to cry. “I let him in,” she whispered.
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Chapter 53: Heralds
December 2007, Sarasota, Starbucks
I met Alice at Starbucks one evening after Christmas shopping. She looked tired, distracted. I tried to pick her spirits up by chatting about some of the things we’d experienced as a result of our coming together years ago. At one point, I asked her if she’d had any more thoughts about why we had come together in the first place.
She seemed unwilling to answer, and then, suddenly, she snapped, “I’ve already told you that I never really know why the Spirit directs me to someone. For some reason, my interest in someone, or something, flares up. It’s a special interest, very keen, if you know what I mean, like when a poem begins to come to you. I just follow it. I know it’s the right thing to do.
“What happens after that is another story. That’s completely unpredictable. For some reason, my path became tied to yours, and has been for a very long time now. You might say there’s something I had to learn. As to why you had to go through all of this, I don’t have the slightest idea, really. If I had to guess, all I could tell you is one of the things the myth has been trying to tell you: all knowledge is communal, and some of that community is not of this world.
“In other words,” she continued, “you couldn’t have done it without me, and you couldn’t have done it without your voices, or ISLAUGGH, or the myth, or the Spirit, or Joan, or Jane, or Diane, or Betty, or Pinga for that matter.
Somehow, a gathering of both worlds allowed you to see how mysterious our lives really are. Part of that mystery is that true knowing is tied to our ability to live between the two worlds; because that is the only way we can truly understand who we are. We can choose to ignore that fact, as much of the world does today, but we do so at our own peril.
“Let me paint you a picture of what’s happening every moment of our lives. Think of the psychic world as an infinite tree high up in the heavens—a tree whose tendril roots are always insinuating themselves downward into the world of time.”
Here, she suddenly raised her hand high above her head and began wriggling her fingers at the table. She began cackling, “See what I mean? When the tendrils break through, they leave traces. Those traces can take any number of forms.
Some are physical—like furniture flying around the room,” and with that she dropped her hand down and flicked a Sweet & Low off the table.
I was about to ask her if she’d been drinking when she got the wildest look. She shoved her wriggling fingers in my face and cackled, “However, my dear Franklin, some roots only leave traces in the mind. We call some of those traces poems, don’t we? Come on now, darling, speak up; this is hardly the time to be shy.”
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I couldn’t take it any longer: “Alice what the hell is going on with the cackling and the wriggling fingers? Have you been drinking, or something?”
“That’s none of your damn business. What’s the matter, did I scare you?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“But it is my business. Every goddamn thing you do is my business. Listen Mister, I didn’t ask for this job, but as long as I have it, I’m going to make sure you understand what’s happening. You may think you have all the time in the world to get it, but you don’t. I could be gone faster than this,” and with that she snapped her fingers hard, like a rifle shot.
I became completely flustered and began apologizing like a schoolboy. I was about half way through my third or fourth “I’m sorry” when she put her hand up like a traffic cop.
“OK, so what if I had a few drinks,” she said, “it’s Christmas. I’m entitled.
Anyway, I just wanted to make sure you got the entire picture before we go our separate ways.”
“When is that going to be?”
“Soon, I can feel it. But there’s no use worrying about it because it’s going to happen anyway. I had thought parting was going to be easier, but it hasn’t turned out that way. The mind may bend to fate, but the heart doesn’t let go as easily, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t. It’s very stubborn.”
“Do you remember that poem of Frost’s you read me once, about the end of a love and a season?”
“Yes. It’s called Reluctance. It’s one of my favorites.”
“Do you remember the words?”
“I don’t think so, not entirely. I have my laptop here. We could Google it.”
I Googled it and found a copy. I began to read the poem when Alice interrupted me. “I’d like to read it. Could I?”
I turned the laptop towards her and she began reading the poem with the same rhythmic, Irish brogue she’d used for her own poems. The effect was mesmerizing:
Reluctance
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
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And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
We both sat there for a very long time, looking at each other.
“That was beautiful, Alice.”
“I owed you,” she said, and with that she leaned back in her chair and seemed to slowly gather herself up into her eyes. The effect was unsettling. “There’s something I have to tell you,” she said very calmly. “I want you to look at speaking for a moment, not as poetry, but as one of the ways we can surrender to the psychic world. If you slow surrendering way down, and look at it frame by frame, what is really happening is that we are sending up tendrils, and those upward-reaching tendrils—and the tendrils coming down from the psychic tree—
are entwining like serpents.
“This occurs whenever we surrender to the energy of the psychic world.
What is actually occurring is that the two worlds are coming together. We are becoming whole again, which is the true end game. This happens in any psychic event, but it’s particularly powerful when a poem comes to us. Are you listening Franklin?”
264 ALICE HICKEY
“Sorry, I got carried away by the tendrils. You know, I never understood poems that didn’t do that. I don’t know why, but it has always seemed self-evident to me that whatever else a truee poem offers us, be it a celebration of love, or a loss, or whatever, it always bestows a deep sense of belonging, of comfort, of being rooted in the dark, enormous song that is all around us.
“That feeling of deep spiritual comfort, of wholeness, is something we seldom experience today, because it is something the conscious self can never attain by its own means. Only the soul, the unconscious, can bestow it, but we wrote that part of us off a long time ago. We have become completely lost as a result. We have become dimmer. It seems to me that is what happens when the conscious self turns away from the psychic self, the soul.”
“Remember me telling you once,” Alice interjected, “about the South American shamans who use ayahuasca— that they see two entwined serpents at the center of creation? Well, I saw them too: I used ayahuasca in one of their ceremonies. It wasn’t easy convincing them, but I eventually got my way. It was night, and as soon as the ayahuasca, took effect I had a vision.
“I didn’t see just two entwined serpents, however, which is what the shamans said they were seeing; I saw an infinite number.
“I had a kind of strange tunnel vision that kept shifting back and forth—
I’d be deep in the earth looking up at the night sky, and then suddenly high in the sky, looking down at the earth.
“When I was deep in the earth, I remember looking up and seeing an infinite number of dark, writhing serpents reaching down and I realized they were the roots of the infinite tree I just described. Then suddenly I was high in the heavens looking down at a sea of serpents reaching upwards, trying to twine themselves around the serpent roots of the tree, and I realized the sea of serpents was the human race, and that I was watching the mating of the two worlds.
“Then I was suddenly far out in space—way past the moon—looking at a very small earth. There were some large, intense areas of light, while other areas were much dimmer. I realized those areas were meetings—or matings—of our psychic and conscious worlds—heaven and earth, if you will.
“I took the darker areas to be those where there was little or no communion between the two. I didn’t like looking at them—they left me empty—
and intensely sad. But the bright pockets of light were like magnets. The light was so intense I knew it was where we all belonged. That’s what you should be telling others: that we are more than we appear, that another way of knowing exists, and it is within us, at the border between the two worlds, where the tendrils meet.
“Just a story about your own journey should start people to thinking about the truth of that proposition, because that’s where the light is, the light that allows us to become more complete . Anyway, that’s where people should be hanging out, not Starbucks.”
“But I’m still not clear what I should do with all this.”
“Tell others about it.”
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“Alice, you’ve got the wrong guy, believe me.”
“Oh, you think so?”
“I’m the worst possible choice to be spreading the word about the Female Spirit .
Ask any woman who knows me. Jesus, Alice, just ask yourself.”
“The fact you can be a low-life with women has nothing to do with it. You’re a poet aren’t you?”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“You mean you just went through all this, as you call it, and you still don’t see the connection between poetry and the Female Spirit?”
“I see the connection, but I don’t see what it has to do with me getting on a soapbox about another way of knowing. My skin isn’t thick enough.”
“Who said anything about getting on a soapbox? Listen to me. A very primal spirit has been trying to speak through you, or to you, I’m not sure which. But you didn’t really get the message, at least not the way you were supposed to get it. All you’ve been able to hear is me and Joan and Jane and Diane and the myth and ISLAUGGH fluttering around you like a flock of crows trying to tell you there’s another way of knowing driven by the Female Spirit and it’s dying within us. And if there's anything you should be concerned about, it’s that, because poetry is one of the branches of that knowing, and it’s dying too, in case you haven't noticed.”
“I’ve noticed it Alice, I can assure you, and so has every other poet who isn’t living in dreamland.”
“Well, it’s about time you got off your duff then. Poetry is one of the few remnants of our older consciousness that’s especially resistant to the power of the Male Spirit. There are lots of poets walking around today. Millions. I’m not talking about poets like you, Mister Big Stuff. I’m talking about kids, old ladies like me. They’re everywhere and maybe they’ll never win a Pulitzer, but who cares? What’s important is th