His dreams consistently predicted who was going to contact him the next day, even if he hadn’t heard from the person in years. He didn’t mention it to them though; he wasn’t quite ready to plaster a loony label on his sweaty forehead.
Trying an online tutorial on how to see auras, Kai couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the faint blue mist cloud surrounding the orange cardboard he had set up against the opposite wall. All he had to do was look beyond the cardboard for long enough.
Kai devoured the Bible. Never before had the words resonated with his soul so profoundly. It was uncanny how he could read the same Scripture on different days, and it could speak insight into his exact situation. It seemed to have levels upon levels, and mystery upon mystery. He couldn’t fathom its depth.
One evening, while attempting to hear from God by randomly playing songs on his iPod, searching for messages in the lyrics, the Bible opened all by itself! A flabbergasted Kai watched from across the room. He shut the music off and looked back at the Bible. It was still open. The sound of the AC continued to moan; Kai held his breath. He looked towards the window. Was it the wind? It was open, but the wind could never have been strong enough to do that! He shuffled over to the book, feeling the flimsy pages in his hands, and reading what was written on the page that had been flung open: “Do not put the LORD your God to the test as you did at Massah.” (Deuteronomy 6:16). Electric tingles!
Could the Bible speak to him like that? Maybe it could! It occurred to him that this was the strategy that had converted the Great Saint Augustine. He closed the hard-covered Book and opened it randomly, trying to get far away from the page he had just read. His thumbs drew apart the pages and his eyes fell straight on Luke 4:12: “Jesus answered, ‘It is said: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
Woooah! Kai slammed the book shut and pressed his back up against the far wall, breathing heavily. God? GOD is here! This transcendent Being is communicating with KAI! Can this be real?!
What is real anyway? The line between subjectivity and objectivity blurred even more thoroughly, like a drunken conversation between realms.
Suddenly one night, Carl Jung slung his arm around Kai’s shoulders in a calm vivid dream. Without moving his lips, he conveyed his Swiss-accented message.
‘I vas where you are - inhabiting two realms…in ze simultaneous fashion. I almost had ze breakdown because of zit. But zis realm you’re experiencing now, zit turn out to be real! My dreams were premonition of World War 2. It’s a journey – but it’s your journey, vith meaning for you!’
Kai hadn’t known much about Jung. He woke up from his dream intent on changing that. Eager eyes scanned the white screen, finding validation in his dream’s claim that Jung had predicted the World War! Except dream Jung said he had foreseen WWII, but real-life Jung had visions of WWI! Kai found this bewildering; his dreams appeared to grant him fallible shadows of real knowledge. He was gaining a kind of power here! But he was also losing power, and fragments of himself.
The first inclination of a shadow side of these abilities arrived in the mail. An envelope addressed to Kai. No one sent Kai mail. His warm breath stopped for a minute as he pulled out a business card from a pastor. White lettering on a black background sent him to a web address where he could download sermons. He listened to the first one on the list immediately. It was grimly entitled “Dead like a Dodo,” and was about the resurrection of the dead. It was eerily relevant to the things Kai had been reading about recently. It quoted names, places, Bible verses, something about Nineveh. Kai turned it off and looked at the website again. The whiteness of the screen hurt his eyes. It hurt his brain. It shot through to some dormant, asleep side. Kai blacked out…and woke up in a park.
CHAPTER 8.4: The Rabbit Hole – It’s Dark in Here
The first thing to return to Kai was his feeling. The coldness of a concrete bench pressed up rough against the back of his head. Pain shot through to his eyes when he tried to inch them open. It subsided, and he opened them again.
The shadow of a homeless guy slunk away from Kai. Why had he been over near him? His vision stayed faded as he swung his feet around towards the floor. They sank into thick mud. Goo oozed through five toes. He was missing a shoe. He pried them from their sinkhole and shook his head to snap himself out of his stupor.
‘Where am I? Some park, I guess.’ His vision was filled with grey shadows. His hands were grey, he remembered nothing. ‘How the…what?’ Panic set in. What had happened to him? Had he been abducted?
He was starving! His mouth was dry with the aftertaste of fish. Damn mud. His hair was caked in mud too. He had to get outa there.
Trees overhung him, whispering their sinister shadows in through his head. “Stormsssssss,” one seemed to say. He started jogging. He fell in rhythm with his legs. If only the presidents would stop spying on him, he could get somewhere. The queen would…wait, what was he thinking about?
“Help a brother out with some change,” said another vagabond. Kai ignored him, sprinting now. He heard the roar of cars in the distance and when his eyes fell upon the fluorescent red glow of Haight Street’s store lights, he felt relief as if he was returning home from a foreign land. He could get home now. He sunk his hands into his pockets to feel if he had any money for a bus. Bare.
Ordinary citizens were now subtly looking at his muddy feet, one shoe on, one shoe off. ‘This must be what it feels like to be a homeless person,’ he thought. The graffiti murals enclosed him in a world of empathy. Their bright colors and meaningful messages resonated with Kai to the extent that he felt that he was there with the artists who had painted them, sharing in their struggles, wanting to communicated their message.
He shook his head. He had been zoning out in front of a mural of a monkey. Groups of late-night partiers were hollering up the street. What day was it? When had he left? The last thing he could remember was it was Wednesday. Right? Ya, he had got home from shift and answered that phone call from Abraham’s beard, and then picked up that business card. The business card - that was the last thing he remembered.
He started walking in the direction of home, thumb stuck out. No one wanted to give the muddy guy a ride though. His thoughts raced as he tried to retrace his steps.
Nothing.
Cold shot up his bare foot now. And he felt pain too. Had he been bare foot the whole night?
Finally he came to the BART terminal just as a tram was about to take off. He casually slunk on the back carriage amongst another crowd of rowdy party goers.
“Dude, best night ever!” said a goth-looking teen. Most of the rest of the carriage was empty. It must be late. The youth’s words passed straight through Kai, painfully amplified. He wished he would shut up. But he didn’t.
“Are you coming to church tomorrow?” he asked his sloppy compadre.
What a joke, the two of them in church! If God wanted to save…
‘Wait, church? As in Sunday! That means I’ve lost three days!’
His throat pulsated with his heart. He began shaking violently. It was noticeable. It was uncontainable.
“Hey man, are you ok?” the Goth asked.
“You’re fine, greecham,” was all Kai managed to grunt. The BART grinded to a halt and Kai made for the door, stumbling on the way out. He began running again. Trash cans lined the street and the sun was starting to come up. He needed to go to a doctor. He was sick. He was…
His front door was wide open. He huffed in relief that everything was still there. In South Africa he would have been robbed blind if he was gone three minutes! Thank you Lord for America!
The long shower washed away his shivers. He ravaged the fridge, leaving noodles all over the floor of the kitchen he shared with another guy. He’d clean it tomorrow. This was a desperate situation.
Despite the shivers subsiding, his body was still pulsing with energy when he pulled the curtains tight to try and shut out the morning light. Now that he was home he…felt great! He felt powerful, all-knowing! Was he a saint or a prophet?
He wanted to share this with people. But he was also frightened. What added to the questions, and the anxiety, was that he couldn’t find any trace of the pastor’s business card – no card, no envelope in the trash, no search history in his browser. He was sure now that weed was opening up delusional realities. He had to stop. He vowed to stop smoking weed right there and then. What had he done in the blacked-out period? Could he have committed any crimes, done drugs, had unprotected sex, hurt himself? This wasn’t right. He knew this wasn’t normal.
But also, he was gifted. He was chosen. If he told people and sought help, then society would label him mentally ill and subdue his calling with Valium and anti-psychotics. The medical field was governed by the powers and principalities of the world, of the air. They don’t want people subverting the norm. He began worrying about his search history on his laptop. They could trace his IP address. They were probably aware that he had become powerful recently. He was going to have to be more careful. Who else could know about all this? He could think of no one. He wished with a longing heart for a kinsman to share his plight. I guess there was Carl.
CHAPTER 8.5: The Rabbit Hole – And One of Its Inhabitants
Carl was Kai’s smoking buddy from the catering gig , and seemed more attuned to Kai’s wavelength than most. He was Bay born and raised, and the area’s open-mindedness permeated the life he lived. He seemed to live it like an artform, a song sung to himself (and occasionally others in his rough open mic night gigs). He was the offspring of two pioneering hippies who were prominent in the Haight Ashbury surgence of the 60’s, and had carried their free-spirited DNA into the modern (or post-modern) ambience of the SOMA district. He had tried most drugs, and you could tell. His faded clothes were haphazardly strewn along his scrawny figure. And he always wore a hat – berets, top hats, beanies, and the occasional baseball cap. He said his hats were yet another word that helped him in his freedom of expression. Born in March, his birthday always missed the Spring Equinox by a hair.
His eyes looked out with a wide-mooned dilation, absorbing his world with a half-second delay. His speech mirrored his lifestyle – slow, colorful, and strung out.
As a free thinker, he prided himself on being nonjudgmental. He never judged anyone…except people who asserted their right to judge. Kai never ventured so far as to point out the inherent contradiction there, despite their fast-growing rapport. Carl’s candid openness during the joint sessions with Kai had fast-tracked him on the friendship path, and Kai enjoyed bouncing ideas off of him, because they bounced back with a flower powered spin. One night after their shift Carl and Kai sat on a bench under the moonlight to bounce a joint, and joint ideas.
“Dude I’m not gonna smoke for a while. But you go ahead, I’ll chill with you.” Kai said.
“You what brah? What on this forsaken planet could make you say such a thing?” Carl asked.
“Ah nothing really man, I’ve just got this drug test coming up for a health plan I wanna get on, and I’ve gotta keep it cool for a bit. But I’m stoked to be here man, in fact I’ve been wanting to let you in on my alter ego.” Kai said.
Carl smiled with a closed mouth. He had already sparked the joint. He was open to hearing Kai’s story, although he frequently got side-tracked. So Kai had opted to let him into his enchanted land, to test the social waters and see how people would respond to these ventures he was taking.
“Carl I’m telling you dude,” Kai continued, “this stuff I’m getting into is insane! So many amazing things to ponder; I can’t get enough of it! It’s like sucked me into this kaleidoscope and I feel like…Alice or something. Alice in PonderLand.”
“Haha, Alice!” Carl chuckled with closed eyes. He paused with a smirk on his face. “Alice is in chains maaan, she can’t get out of her mind.” He let the words draw themselves out, animatedly gripping his head in exclamation.
Kai grinned knowingly; he could relate.
“Ya and neither can I bru. That reminds me of something I wanted to tell you about. Have you ever heard of lucid dreaming?”
Kai had stuck to his decree to stop smoking weed, but without it needed some other intriguing pursuit to take him out of dull reality. He had poured himself into learning how to have lucid dreams,and was having about one a week.
“Lucid dreaming…I have!” Carl proclaimed, finger pointing toward the sky in triumph. “Never done it though,” he confessed. “Had this whacked trip with a homey of mine who was hella into it. But the guy tripped so hard that night that I never got to tap his brain about what’s involved. Speak forth!” Carl made a sweeping, open-handed gesture, beckoning Kai to elaborate.
“Well I’m still getting the hang of it man, but so far it’s one of the trippiest things I’ve ever experienced! You teach yourself to realize that you’re dreaming while you’re dreaming. And once you know you’re in a dream, the dream itself becomes as real as this,” Kai insisted, sliding his hands over the bench they were sitting on. The moonlight that illuminated the harbor wall, and the towering Bay Bridge that adorned their view at that moment seemed pretty real. It was almost hard for Kai to believe his own words, and he wouldn’t have if he hadn’t been there. He couldn’t wait to tell Carl about his ventures in these other planes, but he wanted to teach Carl how to open up the realm for himself first; as if Columbus paused on his return voyage from America to give directions to a fellow expeditioner. There is a real mutual brethrenhood between consciousness expeditioners.
“Dude I’ve gotta tell you about some of the things I’ve seen there, but first do you wanna know how you get there?” Kai was on the verge of launching uncontrollably into a verbal diahorrea session, but had enough composure to check Carl’s interest level first.
“Speak forth,” Carl said again. Kai beamed involuntarily, noticeably relieved to get permission to proceed.
“K so check it out: in the dream realm there is no such thing as time or space, right, which is one of the things that makes me think that dying might have some similarities with it. But that’s a different tangent. So one of the ways you can figure out you’re dreaming is by scrutinizing watches, ‘cos the construct they supposedly measure isn’t real over there.” He paused to analyze Carl’s expression. He seemed to be tracking so Kai continued. “So for the past 2 months in my waking reality I’ve programmed myself to look at my watch twice every time I check the time. I look away after the first time, and then check back to make sure that nothing weird is happening. You might have seen me.”
Carl pulled his mouth and gave a small shake of the head, then raised his eyebrows as if to say continue, or more likely “speak forth.”
“It’s hard to notice trippy stuff in a dream ‘cos even weirdness seems normal there. Like Alice dude, she didn’t even notice that a talking rabbit in a waistcoat was strange until she saw that he had a watch. Come to think of it man, a watch, time!
“Anyway, as soon as you realize you’re dreaming dude, you’ll freak out. It’s hard not to get too excited, and I revved myself up too high the first couple of times. But that wakes you up.”
Kai wasn’t sure what side of Carl manifests in the Astral Plane – his chill druggie side, or his mad excitable side.
“There’s stuff you can do to stay in the dream though. Like I learned that spinning around in a circle locks you in it for a little while so that you’re free to explore. Dude,” Kai raised his eyebrows and put his hands out as if he was nonverbally reiterating that he was dead serious, “once you come out of the spin you literally land in this tangible realm. You can fly; you can taste food exactly the way you would in waking reality…you can have sex with anyone you want!” Kai knew that last line would be a selling point for Carl.
And he was right, as Carl flung his head back in jubilant reaction to his imagination and yelled, “Yes sir! Sign me up!”
“For sure man, you’d love it! You can also rock telekenesis. And listen to this: I’ve met, I mean full on met, frieken Mermaids and Gnomes!”
“Mermaids and gnomes, moohahawa,” Carl cracked up again, repeating Kai’s words in a drawn out tone. “That is far out holmes! I’ve always had a crush on Ariel, I’ll kill two birds with one stone yo!”
Kai grinned widely, “Oh yeeeah!” He wasn’t sure how seriously Carl was taking him. For the meantime he was content that at least he was humoring him instead of shutting him down. Kai was having a grand old time anyway, and this was amping him up. Plus he sensed by something in Carl’s body language, or maybe it was something in his eyes, that he took Kai more seriously than he was letting on.
Kai remembered the mermaid encounter vividly, and probably always will. He was walking along a rocky outcrop into the ocean. About half a mile out, he was bordering on lucidity and spun himself coherent to see a pair of hazel eyes gleaming up at him, tucked behind cresting peaks of choppy water. Her light orange curly hair had flecks of blonde cascading through it. It looked unkempt and shared little in common with Ariel’s.
Kai had dived hastily into the water in her vicinity, literally leaping at the chance of a closer encounter. She was clearly fascinated with him too. He found himself breathing underwater, as was typical in his dreams, staring lucidly out into the murky grey-blue. The water gurgled it’s song around him.
She appeared like lightning two arms’ lengths away from his face. He gasped in oxygenated water. Staring intently into his eyes for a captivating moment, Kai felt bewitched. Her gapped teeth made her look like a hick, her hair waved in hypnotizing slow motion. Then she scurried away like a fish that had been reached out for.
Kai had pondered long and hard about this experience, especially the surprisingness of her bad teeth. If she was a subconscious manifestation of his ideas of mermaids, then why the teeth? Was all this purely make believe? Where did the idea of mermaids originate anyway?
The gnome experience was enchanting too. It bore the same uncanny naturalness that made it hard to believe it was a product of his imagination. Kai was engaged in small talk in a Hobbit-like setting that felt as if it was a couple of hundred years in the past. Wrapped up in the dream, he glanced around at the stone outcroppings of burrow-like houses nestled amongst the deep green rolling hills. It felt like a lunch break on a construction gig, and little clusters of worker men were chatting harmlessly in the midday sun. Nothing seemed strange at first; his vision fell across the gnome softly and unobtrusively.
He had seemed about as normal as a Mexican is in a group of white folk, no more out of the ordinary. His height gave him away, although he was bigger than Kai had imagined a gnome would be. He came up to his human co-workers’ shoulders and was no less of an animation than they were. Dull skin and bone just like Kai was.
As Kai headed over to further investigate, lucidity dawning, he noticed the gnome’s tattered, soil-smeared brown trousers falling loosely on worn clog shoes. He appeared to be in his early 60’s, adorning the characteristic grey beard, and with wrinkled skin that spoke of adventures every bit as real as the ones we experience in this realm. A chalky green, rough textured coat hung down just short of a leather belt that squeezed him like cookie dough.
As Kai approached, excited and increasingly bewildered, the group of guys stopped talking and looked in Kai’s direction. Kai’s vision was fixed on the gnome, whose button brown eyes slit in growing suspicion as Kai approached. Face wrinkling, the message was, “Can I help you…(you freak)?” Kai woke up with a gaping jaw.
He wished he could express all this to Carl, but how can you convey such realistic experiences in terms that don’t sound childish or ludicrous?
“Lucid dreaming huh?” Carl paused and nodded. “I buy it. I’m gonna try that man ‘cos it sounds a lot like a free acid trip! Mermaids…that makes me think.” His facial expression took on a more serious aura as he let his stoned smile subside. “Brah mermaids have been in our collective consciousness since like Ancient Assyria. Even frieken Christopher Columbus saw ‘em ladies cruising the Caribbean shores! You know bro, I almost feel like people in the past were more permeable to the veil that separates us from those mythical, magical kinda trips.” Now Carl was talking! He know his stuff. And even more affirming, he had been taking Kai seriously! “Yeaaah man,” he continued, drawing the words out slowly, somber now, “what if the common denominator between like dreams, and drugs bro…and meditation, and all that kinda stuff, is this actual place? Like a land where we rub shoulders with the world of the subconscious. Maybe I’m just mad, but I know others who are madder.”
Kai’s mind began simultaneously clicking various trains of thought together: Jungian collective unconscious and archetypes; Vísir’s 1998 survey that found that 54% of Icelanders believed in elves; Plato’s theory of forms and mythology; mutual dreaming. He had to let Carl know about mutual dreaming, ‘cos that discovery was a paradigm-shifter for him.
“Ya well that actually makes sense bru ‘cos you know what else? You can have these mutual dreams where people arrange to meet up and can share an experience in Dreamland. Then they can independently verify details about the dream when they wake up! How crazy is that? I mean a lot of their imagery varies, I guess it’s like you say, huge parts of that realm are manifestations of the subconscious, but from their account man it’s pretty obvious that they have real shared experiences. Which means that the dream wor