Bill let his grip on the support pole loosen, and it was apparently an outward gesture of an inward relaxing that broke open the floodgate of spiritual experiences Bill hadn’t been able to share with anyone up to this point. Kai had seen the interaction when his sons or wife came in. The weather was only so fascinating. It made Kai sad.
“I get visitors too,” Bill continued as Kai moved closer to the edge of his chair, “I had one just last night. A lady, I think I knew her once in my job as a joiner. She didn’t say anything. She just hovered there in the corner of the room. I think you’re making an impact here. The other day I got taken away by some pygmies from Africa.” Bill waited for Kai’s dismissal or affirmation.
“No way! Where did they take you?”
“They said they knew you anyway. But they took me on a boat. Across a river. A rather large river that one couldn’t see to the other side of unless one was at least half way across it. I wanted to go back when we reached that halfway point. And instantly I found myself back in my bed.” His body language said that he had more to say, so Kai waited with bated breath. “What do you think it’s like, you know, dying?”
Kai’s impulse was to further explore the pygmy story, and to find out how they knew him. But he didn’t want to dismiss Bill’s heartfelt question, despite having no idea how to answer. “Geez man, I really don’t know hey. I don’t think we can know. Like how are you gonna describe what life is like to a fetus? How can driving forces like ambition and hunger and love be described to a creature who has been in a water bubble that sheltered it from vision and thirst? I kinda feel like it will be a similar kind of transition. That would make sense, right? Maybe also that’s why Christians talk about a new birth, ‘cos we’re born into the realm of the eternal, even if we only have a vague knowledge of it.”
“Like birth you say...like birth. Jolly well then. But in all the births I’ve been privy to, I’ve never seen one where the baby doesn’t look in agony. I guess half of it is the shock, the change.”
“The fear of the unknown is one of humanity’s greatest adversaries. It stops us from being all we can be in life, and dreading the new dawn of death.” Kai stopped, remembering that Bill was a creature of habit like so many of the English of his generation. He had gone the way of the tried and tested, inheriting his father’s profession and taste in oats. That same teaspoon of butter, teaspoon of sugar and pinch of salt had been the taste of Bill’s entire life. And Kai wasn’t about to make him regret the monotony.
One morning Bill’s shell lay where his friend once was. Kai almost immediately regretted not spending more time with him, not praying with him. Kai regretted the callousness inherent in trying to teach Bill to calm himself so that he wouldn’t incessantly ring his buzzer to call Kai to hold his hand. He needed the warmth of human touch. Sure the calming techniques Kai had implemented worked, but they were cold. Cold and empty. He had taught Bill the power of affirmations, and now the croaky sound of “peace and tranquility” being repeated over and over still echoed off the empty-feeling walls. Kai had a dream that night that Bill was grateful for his friendship. Kai joined Bill in a subtle smile as he watched him silently and peacefully arriving on the shores of the New World, a Columbus who dared to climb the stairs.
At Bill’s funeral, Kai read a poem he wrote for his friend:
As seasons change, it might seem strange that leaves fall to the ground
Our numbered days may fade away, but the wheel of life is round
Like flowers drop their fertile seeds then dissolve into the earth,
we all will wake from these painful dreams into a glorious new birth
For all its worth, Bills better off, and closer than your breath
He’s just gone first to pave your path in the realm of light and rest.
CHAPTER 16: Everywhere You Go, There You Are
Funds acquired, fun was now required! Kai had already arranged the destinations on his £1200 around the world trip. They say if you only know one culture you know no culture at all. Kai was intent on dipping his hands in the multiple cookie jars of global human experience, sampling a sweet little morsel of each of human culture’s unique ways of understanding this thing called life. By doing that, he would have more options of thought patterns to choose from, and so be more conscious when it came time to make important life decisions.
The benefits of travel can be verified by the ironic fact that Kai’s African roots never grew down so deeply as when he withdrew them from the soil and scattered them in the ocean through his travels. Sometimes life needs to be temporarily lost in order to be wholly found. Kai was noticing Scriptural truth mirrored in practical reality more and more. Yip, the sky is mirrored in the ocean, and both require in-depth knowledge of the currents in order to ride them effectively. And Kai was planning on doing some efficient ocean riding on his travels, that’s for sure! After 4 months without surfing, he felt like a dried up prune, and couldn’t wait to exchange this dry persona for the water-soaked prune kind rather!
His first stop was South Africa, just as South Africa was his first stop on the planet when he made his debut to existence, and he always felt soul-restored after reconnecting with his roots. Africa’s healing atmosphere became more apparent which each successive visit home, and this one took the dirt cake!
For an unknown reason, Precious, his family’s maid, was particularly happy to see him.
“Eish!” she exclaimed. “How you gone for loooong time. There’s something bout you now. Where you bin?”
“Hiy Precious, I’ve been all over. But you know what hey? I love being home so much! I never realized how unique our culture is here. Hey I’ve been into dreams lately, and I wondered if you have ever been to a sangoma?”
“Hibo wena!” she started. Then she wound up the cord of the vacuum and brushed off her pink tracksuit pants. She looked like she had just got out of bed. But you should see her when she’s dressed up, like every Sunday for church. She’s an ornamental masterpiece, immaculately groomed. She sat down on the top of the couch. It heaved under her weight. “Hibo,” she continued.
Then she went on to tell Kai intricate stories about her Xhosa culture and the role of sangomas. It turned out that her own grandmother was one, and that Precious herself had got a call when she was 14. She wanted to marry though, and had turned it down. It made her violently sick for a year. This was typical, she explained. “But oooh,” her eyes widened and her hand gestures could no longer be held back as she retold her grandmother’s stories about a trip to an underwater city for her initiation. Kai had dreamt about an underwater city nights before! Her grandmother disappeared for 10 days – no one knew where she was. This was quite the feat in a small, closed community. On her return she held her head high, her cheeks adorned with white streaks of paint, and haunting symbols painted all over her body. After that she could make it rain; she could call down thunder and lightning by mixing certain ingredients together.
Kai had got Precious on a roll now, and she stood up to make full room for her escalating hand gestures.
“Me myself,” she said, “I have the dreams. I have all the dreams. Haw. This one time I dreamt lottery numbers, all da lottery numbers, and da bonus. Ahhhh hai, but I forgot, I kick myself, I forget two. I still get five numbers though, win R2000.
“Wow!” Kai said. “That really is amazing Precious! Geez, you should keep working on that one!”
“I am!” she insisted.
She went on to tell Kai how her brother in law had a sick 4 year old son. He was going to die; Western doctors could do nothing. One Saturday night he had a vivid dream that instructed him to take his child to a certain minister’s wife who was going to walk past their house on the way to church at 9am the next day. He had never seen the lady in his life, but recognized her from his dream when she meandered down his road. She had had a dream too, and took her boy to her husband. The boy was cured. He is now 16 and on the way to priesthood. Precious had asked him what happened, and he had told her that he himself had had a dream. In his dream he was instructed to make tea for a group of tribal elders inside a half snake, half fish creature. On their approval of his obedience, they informed him that he will now be cured. And he was.
The stories became more disturbing. She told of a lady who was ill because she had refused the call to sangomahood just like Precious herself had. He was in the midst of a violent seizure, foaming at the mouth, when she told those around her that there were invisible people in the corner of the room trying to kill her. They had been watching her for weeks. She said she was sorry and that she didn’t do anything to them to deserve this. Then she died.
Lastly, there was a high school kid who stabbed 4 people to death with a sword, claiming that the devil made him do it.
All this was ringing a little close to home as Kai thought about his borderline schizophrenia and his blackouts.
“Wow Precious, you’ve got some amazing stories. Thanks for sharing them with me. I’ve gotta go help Sean with his wedding stuff now, but I’ll see you soon. Sala Kahle.”
Another reason Kai went home was to be best man at his buddy’s wedding. Thing is, he’d always noticed an unhealthy domineering tendency to his fiancé, and a desire to squash out the eccentricities that made Morgan. Kai noticed a feigned seriousness in Morgan’s mindset now that he had her. Once a dummer in a successful Christian band, he was now essentially an atheist. Once a fellow pirate-singing floor-swimmer, he now seemed content to board the HSS cruiseliner headed straight for dull land, no swimming stops along the way. But Kai was slowly growing in humility, and thought ‘Well maybe I’m the one with the issue – maybe I’m some kinda commitment phobe and am just disappointed that my friend is deciding to grow up.’
It came to a head two days before the wedding when 3 potent ingredients of his blonde fiance’s combined in a cocktail that made a caring friend want to throw up after just one drink – a solid pour of OCD tendencies, shaken with a dollop of Bridezilla complex, and thoroughly blended with her authoritarianism – the concoction inevitably exploded all over Morgan and Kai.
In the car ride home that day Kai gently approached the subject, “Hey man how sure are you that Rebekah is the one for you?”
“Ah 100% my bru, seriously,” shot back his instantaneous reply.
“I wonder sometimes how we know who we are going to be in 10, 20 years’ time. We change so much, how do you know that your values are aligned to the One to such an extent that they will draw you together as opposed to push you apart over the years?”
“You just know man, you just know.”
Kai left it at that and spent days preparing an epic best man’s speech. If love was blind, then to what extent is it the role of a true friend to help a buddy see? Even if that vision shatters the beautiful bubble they’re enveloped in. Kai decided to take the plank out of his own eye so he could see clearly before trying to help the Morgster take the speck out of his relationship. The wedding was awesome. They were divorced two years later. She left him. Turns out the speck in the pupil was a black hole.
Kai attended some epic churches while in South Africa, two in Cape Town and one in Durban. He met an interesting young guy named Ricky who had shared some similar experiences with Kai. Kai was surprised it came up.
Ricky was 20, had shaved hair. His mannerisms and dress style placed him distinctly in the avant garde Cape Town crew. He’d been into drugs since he was 14 and would “rage like there’s no tomorrow!” Until some interesting things happened to him on weed.
“Dude I was stoned, just lying there zoning out at the TV. Suddnely I get this vision man, like a realer than real vision. It’s the most beautiful angel I’ve ever seen. I’m talking like you immediately wanna worship this being type beauty. He was huge and I could just stare at his feet. He like radiated knowledge and power. But check this out bra, eventually I look up at his face, and its Lucifer himself! That’s weed right there bra.”
Ricky’s story made a big impact on Kai ‘cos he knew that Ricky could relate. His mom, Matt, JP, none of them had been opened up to the realm that weed had been a portal to for Kai. And things started to fit into place.
It was around this time that Kai started noticing a different side of weed. It was surprising that he had been blind to it before. It actually felt similar to the vibe that Ray gave off. It empowered with experience and knowledge, but stole character. It was apparent in two people Kai cared about: Matt and JP.
Matt was even more reliant upon the herb than Kai was. It did something different for him. Kai noticed that he was disjointed, lethargic, indecisive, and ignorant during his smoking phases, even when he had sobered up. Kai could tell with one look at him whether he had been smoking that day or not. When Matt had a surf comp coming up, he would stop smoking for a few days beforehand. The change in his persona was incredible. He was solid, quick-witted, and smiled more genuinely. Kai reasoned that it was because it affected Matt differently than it did him. After all, it was what made him aware of the spiritual realm in the first place, and the character growth was indisputable since then! His mom had often told him: “You always think you’re the exception, but you’re always the rule.” Kai thought he was the exception to that expression.
Kai shared this observation of Matt’s character change with JP on the roof of a Durban bungalow, with shooting stars blazing along with them as they puffed their Durban Poison. They’d always been able to talk deep. Now JP’s responses were smelling fishy. And there was no Omega 3 nutrition in them.
“Ag I think it affects everyone differently hey. You’ve gotta be true to yourself and not care what anyone else thinks. This is your life my bru. Your mom will come to terms with it.”
Kai noticed the progression in JP’s paradigm in the last couple of years. He had always approached relationships from an African holistic point of view, where identity was found in the principle of Ubuntu: “You are who you are through other people.” Kai was noticing a distinct Western Individualism creeping in and embodying itself in these freedom manifestos.
“I had some pretty gnarly experiences with evil while I was away man. What do you think of the devil?”
“Yoh I’m not even sure there is a devil. There’s God man, and God is love. And anything that’s not of God is not loving.”
“Ya I’ve heard that before. What have you been thinking about Jesus these days?” JP was always a passionate Christian who deeply understood Christian principles, and Kai always valued his input.
JP thought for a minute, the steady stars creating a backdrop for the outpouring of pounding as weed affected their hearts. “I think Jesus is da man you know. I think he was one of the purest ways that God spoke to humanity. God continues to speak bru. You should look up Sellasie.”
Kai did. He realized that night that him and JP were taking diverging spiritual and life paths. It wasn’t necessarily the religion thing. It was more a dispersal of essences. It was a pity. As they drifted apart, some lines from 2Pac’s song Life Goes On always reminded Kai of that night:
“Get on the roof let’s get smoked out and blaze with me
Two in the morning and we still high assed out
Screaming ‘thug til I die’ before we passed out’
But now that you’re gone I’m in the zone
Thinking I don’t wanna die all alone.”
Matt had a surf comp coming up in a week. Kai made a deal with him that neither of them would smoke til then. One of Kai’s main objectives in life had always been to be a good influence on his impressionable younger brother. The surf comp came and went, and Kai decided to continue his weed fast as an experiment to see what it would do to his consciousness and spirituality. What it would do soon became evident.
God was in the process of setting Kai up on a double date that resulted in a year-long relationship with Serendipity and Synchronicity. The two aren’t possessive at all, and even encouraged his two-timing!
Kai’s arrival in Singapore ushered in the truly foreign nature of his latest venture. Huge tropical plants intermingled with futuristic cityscape as the silent train slunk hundreds of feet above the ground. 1st and 3rd world collided in a humid fume of flurry on the busy streets. Kai couldn’t believe how pedestrians would obey the rules by stopping crossing the street the instant the walking signal started flashing. He knew about the seriousness of violating rules in these countries, and came too close for comfort in Bali.
Kai knew he wasn’t going to smoke in Bali ‘cos the penalty for taking drugs into the country was death. Only a hardcore addict, or a hardcore idiot would do that! Turns out he was inadvertently one of the above. Little did he know, but he had left a thumbnail sized stash of Durban Poison in a side pocket of his backpack. Security at the airport seemed to search every second bag thoroughly. Kai passed through uninspected, ignorant of his near death experience. When he found it later the next day he was presented with a unique opportunity to smoke. Was it God letting him have the opportunity to smoke? He wrestled with it, and limpingly decided to ditch it in honor of God sparing his life. He felt it would be disrespectful to smoke in the face of his rescue. As he buried the little parcel of newspaper, he threw earth on some solid foundations being built.
Bali was out of this world and despite crashing his motorbike in the sea of swarming scooter riders, the place went down in the book as one of his favorites. The surf was incomparable! Balinese cliff fronts towered over turquoise-hued reefs. They called out to something primal within Kai. That same primal surge that Kai felt when he was surfing, and he was now able to saturate himself in it. Although he had the best waves of his life, a cloud of depression hung over him. It was too hot to surf after 9am, and he spent the scorching hours until evening loosened the heats grip lying water-soaked under a fan in a thatched hut, pondering his unfulfilled feeling.
He met some super interesting people who would share the journey with him temporarily. Two of his Facebook friends happened to be in Bali too and hit him up when they saw his status. It amazed Kai how small the world had become. Other travel partners who he traversed paths with for a spell came and went, never leaving him the same. One presence remained: God. He had invited Kai to flow with Him, and extended His perpetual protection and guidance along with the invitation. The blanket of protection He threw over Kai was sometimes as tangible as it was vision-distorting.
For example, Kai’s research had placed India as the spiritual epicenter of the planet, and imbibing the spiritual vibrations became a huge hunger. But for reasons Kai couldn’t discern, the opportunity kept expelling him like a case of Delhi Belly. In Singapore he came close to satisfying his craving. He got his Indian visa there and was ready to book his flight. But when he tried to book it, the website wouldn’t let him click confirm, despite trying multiple browsers. After numerous attempts, he took this as a sign to think more carefully about it and cancelled the trip. It turned out that the hotel he had listed on his visa application was targeted while he was supposed to be there. Terrorists tragically killed 200 UK and American passport holders. Kai was traveling with an American passport. Death narrowly averted…again.
Each brush with G.Reaper put Kai’s life more and more into focus. He didn’t know why some people died and some didn’t, but he was getting to know the God Who did know. And what Kai knew was that he would rather die living than live in zombie slumber. His headphones could transport him to a world of ignition at the click of a button and the nod of a head.
“There is no map, there are no signs,
we’re on our way, we’re crossing lines” - MxPx
The depression followed Kai like a zombie. It was multiplied by the fact Kai knew that he was supposedly living the dream. He barely left lucid in his waking life. He had stopped having lucid dreams in an attempt to close the portal. He attributed it to a come-down from weed that was lasting months. Maybe he missed solid connection with people too.
Whatever it was, the immense jungles of palm trees in Malaysia were dwarfed by this depression, like Kuala Lumpur is dwarfed by the Petronas Towers. The elephant Kai rode in Thailand seemed to share in his melancholy, both of them pathetically pursuing the fruit that perpetually dangled 2 feet in front of their faces – a banana for the elephant; bright yellow exuberance for Kai.
New Years in Sydney lit up his night with the explosion of endorphins that came from being popular amongst the youth hostel residents as they flooded the harbor with Opera-toned drunken screams. Melbourne reminded Kai of San Francisco and he missed California. He missed connection. He missed weed like a kid being forced to watch his favorite Disney movie in black and white. In theory he knew that the majestic New Zealand Glaciers that unremittingly encroached upon tropical forests were worthy of awe, but again his emotional response fell short. It was stifled like his sleep was, as his finances forced him to live out of his car for the duration of his 7 day gallivant around the South Island. New Zealand joined Bali on the list of favorites.
Kai conceded to the impulse to drink Cava while in Fiji, and guzzled the stuff to the surprise of the locals. He was trying to drink in satisfaction for his addictive personality, and the supposedly spiritual ritual that accompanied the stuff was a mere byproduct. It didn’t occur to Kai that this may have echoed his relationship to weed. He laughed at the tyrant of a tropical c