"We will assist the first waves of representatives to reveal their underlying beliefs to themselves, from which they will understand how specific aspects of behavior generate distinct events. We will teach them responsibility, and they will leave the world of average men and women to gain conscious control of their destiny. Their personal development will set the stage for those whom your masses will recognize as your prophets returned. Some of these emissaries will emerge from among the families of the forerunners. Others, cast off by mankind, will be adopted by the Original Family of Man."
What had begun as an undercurrent of hubris in her manner finally clawed at my throat, and a stark sense of foreboding stripped away the bullshit she had fed me since day one: I envisioned Jeanette standing amid the six-point lighting of a techno-cathedral, picking the pockets of sinners by way of electronic salvation. The Chyron crawl at the bottom of the screen read, Dial 1-900-Savior. *Three minute minimum, heinous crimes may take longer. Long distance charges apply… and all of the carnage I had seen generated by religions coalesced into an immobilizing rage. Breathing became a discipline. The systolic thump in my chest hurt.
Unconcerned with my paralytic apoplexy, Kha-lib said I was a direct emanation of an entity I could refer to as Phillip, under whose direction I could advance my own development.
"These lessons are difficult because mankind is difficult," he said, ludicrously challenging me into an alliance with my personal ghost.
Kha-lib bid me farewell with a crisp, "We will speak again," the absurdity of which cyclonically whirled through my mind until Jeanette's eyes fluttered her back into our own space/time continuum.
Beaming as if I had won a lottery, she said, "Well?"
"Well what?" I said, with the innocence of dealing with a collections agent.
We searched each other's eyes until it became a contest.
With no punch line in sight, I stood up and said, "I have a job today."
Jeanette did not challenge my conspicuous lie, possibly because the effort not to laugh twisted her face into a post-stroke grimace that sapped every ounce of energy she needed to control her bladder.
1-900-Fuckyou looped through my mind as I left her house for the last time…
Standing by my motorcycle, I forced myself through a meticulous safety check routine because I had a habit of sharing traffic lanes when I was vexed, and the bridge didn't have a ditch of forgiveness. Well it did, but I didn’t have a parachute and a dingy.
I was still incredulous over the extent of her hoax, as I leaned into the onramp—a feeling that dissipated with the rub of the curb and one of Newton's laws kept me heading toward my fate. Thusly refocused, I made my way to Davie Street like a probationary driver on weed, then I inched toward home through Saturday shopping traffic. Feeling supremely stupid for going back to see her actually served to calm me, while two-foot advances grinding away my clutch connected me to a sense of loss. I hadn’t moved two blocks before I was debating with myself again, because it wasn’t as if I made up my experiences with clarity or intrusive thoughts. My tentative thinking was that I could embrace Jeanette's performance as part of her research, which wasn’t farfetched within her meticulous preparations, accept that Kha-lib was real, or that there was a savant-like brilliance gone wrong with her wiring.
A fourth option came to mind, as I pulled over at the Dover Pub; she was researching how a well travelled, reasonably intelligent man, when subjected to endless conditioning by untouchable tits and ass, can be turned into an idiot.
I went inside to soak up courage enough to decide which it was.
Everything Australian was in vogue for some reason, except Men At Work in concert, so a number of Fosters fat cans later I over enunciated "fuck it" into the smoky air, and scraping my chair on the bare plank floor stood to dig out my cash. Two tables over, a stranger grunted in agreement while his muddled buddy turned to look for the bar’s resident drunk, Delores.
"Women troubles?" Miriam said, sidling up from wherever servers lurk to scare the shit out of contemplating customers.
"Investment problem," I said, offering her an uncounted wad of cash.
Taking the correct amount of money, she pried open my fingers and snatched my keys. "I saw you leave yesterday; wouldn’t want to lose a good tipper. Any tipper," she corrected herself, looking at the sparsely inhabited room of indigent regulars. "Who was she?" she asked, as I moved to step around her.
"Who are they," I corrected her, offering a ten-dollar tip.
"Have it," she said, and I walked outside as free as a man can be in the world I knew.
Chapter 27: The Question of Sanity
To leave the memory of Jeanette behind, I also left the grant application alone and instead concentrated on filling out the civilian ambiance in chapters of my book that preceded events in Lebanon. Background color aside, my thinking was that readers who were familiar with my characters’ environment and upbringing would better understand why they made some otherwise incomprehensible choices when the war came to their doorstep.
The drafts of various family scenarios took a tedious nine days to complete, because writing about their social conformation inexorably led to thoughts of Jeanette and her premises. I dismissed these as best I could, until they struck an inner chord: I wondered if Jeanette’s eccentricities were a manifestation of an unusually agile mind, kind of like Robbie LeBlanc’s, but intelligible?
The thought of translating his world into ours triggered one of those aha moments, and I focused on interpreting Jeanette’s fanciful views into their source possibilities: she had been with a good man whose spirit had been crushed, seen his generosity as a ruse, and tried to heal him. Maybe she had been emotionally starved by her parents, as a means of discipline—there were two kids in her book, and she had a brother.
It made sense that her older characters, all kind parental stereotypes, were an ideal that compensated her. No matter, snickering with sad satisfaction, I marveled at how her survivor's instinct had segregated and insulated memories into layers, and that using trickery to unwrap abstractions was just mental masturbation for an ingenious flake in a world of cerebral eunuchs. And her need to dominate to feel safe was satisfied.
I concluded that I was an excellent disco ball, but not what she wanted reflected, so she had to fight for her version of the world even as she left it behind… everything she said I was doing.
With a celebratory beer over my genius, considering all that Jeanette had done to drive me so nuts that I would even contemplate believing her story, I realized that I needed to get away. Taking a motorcycle trip with Ed to Vancouver Island, and a weekend piss-up in a Victoria motel before taking the Sunday afternoon ferry back to the mainland, should rid me her influences. I would check ferry sailing times in the morning...
Zzzz - Sailing close-hauled toward granite cliffs.
Jimi plays chartreuse chords into a pear-scented breeze.
Gusts in C. Gales of grey rolling seas. Can't see.
Narwhal slides to the surface, l hang on.
The beast glides under; we dive deep.
Surfacing with a gasp, I drift on a kapok preserver.
Scarlet orchids rise from John's orchard.
Keith beats on a row of pumpkins.
Janice sings lime sandpaper.
The Narwhal hums rose pulses that push me toward shore.
The distance between artists creates a cacophony of echoes.
They reach me in sync...
A car horn outside my window called the entire street to attention, as I hazily understood there were five soloists working in concert to show me that I was where I should be; the fanfare of an inharmonious world returned me to my futon.
I pushed the ON button of my radio at five fifty-nine to check the weather. The news was the regular crap—pretty much a tape loop of the last decade, except for the last item. There was a police alert for residents of Horseshoe Bay, and surrounding environs, to be on the lookout for a prisoner who had escaped from a nearby island penal facility. The weather would be sunny with late afternoon cloudy periods…
I called Jeanette at seven o’clock.
"Sorry I haven’t called. Things have been going well…"
"That’s terrific—half an hour on your side," Jeanette cut me off, the hardened plastic bang emphasizing how much on my side she wanted to be.
I sauntered down to Nolan’s, turning onto Davie Street just as Jeanette walked across from her parked car; we met at the door sporting the ornamental grins of a first date. Entering the cafe arm in arm, Bréta cocked her head in a pleasantly surprised "Glad you aren’t dead," grin, and we ordered mocha lattés before taking our seats at the recently vacated window booth.
Shifting empty cups to the side, Jeanette cast the first line. "Unusual experiences can change the course of one's life," she said.
"Through the isolation they create, if nothing else," I replied, easily.
"That may be true in some circumstances, but not this time. I heard from other entities while you were away," she said, eagerly. "Now there's Saa-ra, Kha-li, Caroline, Jerome, and Philip."
"You've been busy," was all I could think to say.
Grasping my hands like an excited schoolgirl, she squeezed and said, "They told me f-a-s-c-i-n-a-t-i-n-g stuff about how the nature of physical reality impacts perception, and how the teaching scheme incorporates our perceptions to enhance our development." Letting go, she took a calming breath. "But you must have lots to tell me about your book."
"You first," I said, flexing my fingers.
"Sorry," Jeanette said without remorse, but with the foresight to place her palms on the table to minimize my sense of peril as she spoke.
"Physical reality is a realm within which each decision we make unerringly reflects our beliefs in that moment. Broaden that idea, and you can see how the point at which we chose to engage or abandon any event reflects our understanding of the relationship that always exists between our freedom of choice, and our responsibilities to that event." She tapped the table with her forefinger. "These choices determine when and where we will continue our development."
"Kha-lib said something about that."
"They've all added something to what he first told us." With a finger occasionally tapping a lacquered pledge of love between Gail and Patrick, to underscore her favored words, Jeanette said, "There will be three core versions of Earth at the conclusion of our current cycle of evolution. One will be inhabited by those who assumed their responsibilities, as far as they understood them. In every way, this will be the best place to continue learning. Those whose behaviors demand that they experience the affects of their actions directly will inhabit another version. Teachers will be there to help. The other version," she settled back in her seat, "is this one. We're literally choosing our destination right now."
I grasped Jeanette's hands as Bréta arrived with two oversized cups, and a Danish pastry cut into quarter sections. Picking up the used cups, she said, "A new recipe. Tell me what you think," she said, explaining the welcome back freebee. "Where have you guys been?"
"Travelling the Universe," Jeanette replied expansively.
"In economy—she’s jet-lagged," I said to explain why I was restraining her. "You might as well bring us another one of those when you come back this way. Thanks."
Snickering without offence, Bréta said, "I haven't had a straight answer from either of you yet." She turned to greet a regular customer.
"Nice girl, interesting future." Jeanette sipped her drink while I tried the pastry.
Setting her cup aside, she said, "The Universe’s teaching style is about showing us how the decisions we make, and the challenges we create, set our course. In simple terms, we save ourselves from ourselves, and it's easier than you might think."
"Except?"
"There's no catch. Every mother who rubs away a child's pain, every shoelace tied by a busy father, every moment of need shared with a friend, every promise made or broken determines which passport we get." She pitched forward. "Don’t you see? We don't have to be brilliant, a physical prodigy, or possess even one iota of recognizable talent. All we have to be is kind," she said with a wave of her arm, and her hand struck a glancing blow to the rim of her cup.
"Some people are missing that gene," I said, pulling a serviette from the brushed aluminum holder.
"Some people need more help to see beyond themselves than others do." Jeanette took the paper from me and wiped up the minor spill.
"Does where you live matter? I mean, is a life in ancient Cairo better than one in Palo Alto? Are there places that guarantee certain points of view?"
"Every place and time provides their own challenges."
We subsequently discussed examples that ultimately made the point that we all manufacture our evolution with every decision, regardless of where we are: marveling at the simplicity of what felt like suddenly crucial knowledge, I was embarrassed over having chosen living in the moment as a philosophy that separated me from the bar prowlers. I knew that Jeanette really understood it; and me… maybe not so much.
Wryly, Jeanette said, "The same thing happens to me in the moment that I understand something beyond the intellectual grasp of my reason."
"Pardon me?"
"I’m talking about what just happened to you: a comprehensive understanding suspends the equivocations we rely on to face our days. You didn’t know how to act in the moment of comprehension that just passed behind your eyes, because you were entirely free to embrace the fact that you are responsible for the events you encounter. That idea took my breath away, as well." She leaned forward as if to pass on a secret. "If you think about it, you haven't known how to act since Kha-lib disrupted the continuity of your existence."
"I’ve been doing what I usually do."
"Because that’s all you know how to do, but your days aren’t the same—you are unsure of how to respond to me now, because you’re still not ready to give up your reason."
"My reason for what?"
"To give up reason as a mode of assessing circumstances."
"What else is there?"
"Logic renders reason archaic."
"Are coincidences logical?"
"Coincidence is how the average person recognizes the existence of Intent in the Universe, and the Universe is nothing if not logical. That’s what happened?"
"Yes."
Apparently not interested in what specifically had caused me to call her, we subsequently ate and drank within a comfortable exchange of information about our time apart. When we were finished, and had split the tab, I tucked in my shirt and tightened my laces before we headed for the park without speaking, but it wasn’t an awkward stroll. Jeanette window-shopped while I pondered the idea of disrupting the continuity of existence as something to put into the application as a plague. I hadn’t abandoned my plan, only put it on hold.
With four blocks behind us, Jeanette casually said, "I struggled to accept the validity of my first encounter with the Universe, as well. Not so much at the time, because an eight year-old accepts most things as they are. It wasn’t until years later that I wrestled with the question of my sanity."
We stopped walking to lock level gazes for that fickle stretch of time that implied that she knew she had addressed my thoughts, and that I had wrestled with the same question—her sanity. Turning to cross the width of the sidewalk to a bus stop bench, Jeanette sat down; I sat beside her, waiting to hear why she thought she wasn’t nuts.
Looking past me, she told me of her first contact with Kha-li, when she was standing beside her father on a Chicago street. When she finished, I asked her when Kha-li had appeared for the second time.
"Seven months ago," she said.
"What happened?’
"I was brushing my teeth, humming ‘Turn around look at me,’ when something clicked. I turned around and said, "It’s you, isn’t it?’ I felt that I was right, so I went to the couch to lie down and try to hear them, but nothing happened. So I said, ‘If you are here, raise my hand,’ and my right arm rose above me head."
"Uh huh."
"I asked out loud, ‘How can I hear you’, and my hand touched my ear then moved to rest on my chest. I said, ‘I can hear you with my heart?’ and my hand moved up again.
"As it would."
"I know how difficult this is for you to accept. I sat on my balcony staring at the ocean for three days trying to grasp the enormity of it all." She took a deep breath, stood up, and pulled on my arm. "Let's walk."
"So he spoke to you?"
"Like wearing earphones," she said, stepping away.
Jeanette’s idea of "walking" was ten feet to a clothing shop window, where she continued unfolding her personal plot.
"They told me about what was to come, about my life-force, and a bit about you being ready to meet me.” She waved the topic aside. “Soon thereafter they began my training by having me search my past for signs of their presence. I wasn’t sure what I should be looking for, so they started me off. When I caught on to the abstract style and context of their contacts, I discovered many instances that pointed to my destiny when I thought they weren’t around. This no different from your experiences bringing you to this point in your life; our lives are remarkably similar. That’s a good buy," she said about a fifty-dollar sweater.
"I'm glad you think ours is a match made in heaven, but claiming to have friends there will lead to a rubber room. People aren't accepting of that kind of thing."
"Channeling is more common than you realize," she said, strolling to the window of a men’s clothing store. "Or could realize… "This cannot be?" she grinned widely.
"So is rationalizing advantages out of a loss. I mean," I said hastily, "you can't be the same person after meeting Kha-li, and people don't let you change. They argue, or they leave you alone. The other side of that coin," I said, pausing to feign sensitivity, "is that you might be pushing people away to hide the inevitable losses meeting him has to have created."
"The people who think I'm nuts have fulfilled their purpose in my life, and parting company is the natural order of growth. What do you think of that belt?" She pointed toward a brown belt with a brushed brass buckle of a steer’s head with curved horns.
"I might wear it to a hootenanny: what you call the natural order is what a student might see as abandoning old friends for better ones."
"It's the truth unencumbered by how I feel—felt, because missing them isn't a loss anymore." She looked my way. "The Universe explained the underlying nature of my experiences, as they apply to a specific plan for this lifetime. Along with experiencing their world directly, I had to abandon my penchant to rationalize any event to suit my feelings, beliefs, or desires, like my old friends still do." She took a full breath. "The bottom line is that the unspoken agreements that bound us are gone. What about this one?" She pointed to a narrow black band with a nondescript, brass buckle. "The ache I still sometimes feel is from appreciation for what they did for me. Now, all I can do is go the way of my destiny, and leave my friends with a gift."
"Bewildered is a gift?" I quipped.
"That's the wrapping of knowledge. What about this one?" She pointed to a medium width reversible, brown/black belt, with a silver buckle on one side of the clasp, and gold on the other.
"That’s good," I said. Her son didn’t dress flashy, and he would have a choice to suit his pants.
Looking at other options, Jeanette said, "I catered to people's silent demands to maintain harmony by telling myself that compromise was fairness, and when it didn't seem fair to me I was being an altruist. Eventually, I saw victimization at the end of that road, and I broke my unspoken agreements to shoulder the burden of other's responsibilities, because it wasn’t doing either of us any good. Now, friends are discovering they have to face themselves, or find someone else to carry their baggage. In the first case, they'll unwrap the gift to discover the source of their hurt feelings, and they'll be better off right away. In the latter, they'll present their new friends with the opportunity to learn if, and when, to assume responsibility for their circumstances. Either way, they grow."
"How—," I hesitated to sound less offensive, "how would they learn this on their own if they didn't from Kha-li's ally?"
Jeanette examined my reflection for sarcasm. Finding none intended, she said, "Whiners use up friends because the fine art of sucking the life out of people is never an equitable exchange. Someone always feels they're giving more than they get, and they eventually move on to share their misery elsewhere. In time, they wear those people out, or they're thrown away so often that they have to consider they might be creating their own isolation."
"Aren’t you doing that—isolating yourself, I mean?"
"My experiences with the Universe removed me from the world of common thought in a single act, but it’s their lessons that’ll cement the specifics, and make that change a permanent gift of separation from the madness." Reflectively she said, "Every day that I work on changing my ways is another day I can honestly say I like who I'm becoming. It's slow, but I'm low maintenance now. Come on." She went inside the shop, picked up the belt, and had me put it on. The salesman commented that Jeanette had good taste, looked for me to passively agree, and she bought it.
As soon as we were outside the door, I said, "I’m saying you might not think there's much to change about yourself because you're pretty much alone now. You have no points of reference."
"And I’m saying I don't feed off other people, so I don't need the touchstone of their approval. As you assume responsibility for your life there will certainly be ostracism."
"What if you need help and your friends are all gone?"
"Following my heart has always led me to what I really need, not what I think I want." Before I could ask, she explained, "I used to think accidents or being without money was unfortunate, but now I can see how those circumstances motivated me into making choices that benefited me in the long run." Restraining a smile, she said, "Like you, I've always been fine in spite of myself. I told you how I got my house?"
"Falling down stairs."
"I cracked my tailbone. Even a little movement hurt, so I limited where I went and shopped at places I wouldn't have normally gone. A man at a checkout line asked me what I had done, which led me to telling him I lost my townhouse deal. He was the rental agent for the county."
"You told me. I think the Universe plays too rough."
"We choose our accidents as certainly as we choose our pleasures."
"Why would I want an accident?"
"To put an end to a particular phase of living, or the momentum of poor choices. You see, it doesn't matter if we are aware of our purpose, because learning how to live properly is everyone's purpose. Mind you, on occasion the Universe directs an apprentice to enhance an experience if both parties agree."
Nearing the park entrance, Jeanette chose to bypass it and instead headed toward the sandy beach, strewn with large sun-baked logs.
"If they didn't push you down the stairs," I said, "what's the big deal about meeting the agent? It's a coincidence, granted, but there's no mystery about a stranger talking to you."
"At other levels of awareness, I chose the event to prevent me from deviating from what needed to be done. Our friends probably softened the blow."
"Deviating from what?"
"A mortgage might have stopped me from connecting with you and Josh."
"You don't know?"
"You didn’t know that turning back was right when you did it in Lebanon."
"Our physical friends connected us, which was a lucky thing because there were a lot of people over a lot of time and miles that could have changed either of our plans."
"I’m sure they did many times. The fluidity of a universal intercession can seem so reasonable that we don't think to track contributing events, or as in your case they were acceptably inexplicable." She chuckled.
"A student would think it’s more logical that you are contriving personal intercessions with the heavens, because you don't consider yourself a common person. You know—greatest ally?"
"My experiences don't make me a better person than you or anyone else. I am better off than most, because I embrace the minimal chances that life offers us to improve every day. It's that simple and that profound, and being an ally is their claim. I’m not comfortable with it, at least not until I know what it means."
"Minimal? I thought every moment is a new decision?"
"How many of them do you embrace?"
"One more than I did an hour ago."
"Now we’ll see if you can pay attention to individual events, and act as if there's a point to everything."
"Why wouldn’t I?"
"Because a lifetime of dismissing everything that didn’t serve your personal myths has crushed your view." Jeanette sat on a huge log, and patted the space beside her. I sat as she said, "But if and as you embrace each moment as a new event, you’re rewarded with far richer insights than the parameters of weights and measures other people impose on their experience, and that feeds the momentum to continue your efforts. Case in point, this morning you recognized a coincidence that clearly had a huge impact on you." She shook her head. "There was no way in hell you were coming back without something big happening. Now you’re bargaining your heart out by questioning me as if you are a student, when you’re really looking for a loophole to changing how you think."
"In what way?"
"From acting as if we’re researching a screenplay, to acting as if the Universe is talking to you. The former has you arguing over what might take too much screen time, so you’re not paying attention to the moment."
"Which means you’re not getting the information you want… got it."
"Neither are you," she said with another shake of her head, "so how about this: as a teacher, channeling becomes easier the more they do it, so students could miss who they’re really talking to. Whenever you hear me say we, instead of I, you should assume you’re talking to Kha-lib. That should help keep you focused in the moment. This is the push I mentioned, by the way."
"How so?"
"These lessons inherently subvert a student’s belief in themselves. This means they have to act as if they believe in what they are doing, more than their own judgment. It’s difficult to replace one with another, so teachers constantly remind them not to react, and to remember