by David H. Haight, copywrite 2009
On a windy, cloud scudding day, a lone, middle-aged man can be seen plodding his way down a long beach, kicking up sand in front of him, his white locks blowing wildly in the wind, forming an undulating halo ‘round his pate. Head bowed low, he slumps forward in his wind jacket murmuring apologies to the sand fleas he carelessly disturbs, so distracted and feeling out of place is he in trying to trap all wandering thoughts streaming through consciousness.
Always apologizing to humanity at large, liberally scattering many a “thank you” about day after day has worn him down. Why did he do this, he wondered? Though it was against his nature to pointedly disagree with anyone, even if he thought he was right as to the facts or subtle surround. He always felt vulnerable if he took a firm position that he would then have to defend. Being alone bulwarked a desire to remain uncommitted on most matters, since there was usually a series of significant alternatives hovering overhead or around the corner, each of which contained elements of objective truth. At least, so dictated his mind…wherever that was located in truth. Perhaps this sidestepping was his way to avoid taking responsibility for anything or anyone, even himself. Obviously he detested confrontation with all its irrational emotionality. What a waste of energy and time, he thought.
Now, however, his resistance to firm commitment in the moment teetered, crumbling all about him, even as the Tao te Ching echoed solemnly from certain outer walls of consciousness that “The secret waits for the insight of eyes unclouded by longing. Those who are bound by desire see only the outward container.”
“Longing, secret …” what kind of longing, what secret he grumbled, resisting recognition of answers long incorporated into his psychotherapeutic practice with needy clients.
Mumbling to himself he shuffled along offering a judgmental soliloquy to the wind on his angry behavior earlier in the day. He thinks of that still true, worn cliché, “When a fool looks in the mirror, a king never looks back.” “Never looks back? Never sees the self behind the mask? How can that be?” he exclaims, kicking up another great scoop of sand. Exhaling a long sigh, Eric bemoaned his place in the scheme of things, feeling increasingly trapped, watching gray walls close in upon his little life and his professional persona.
At the edge of awareness, he dimly faced so much that is incomplete behind his looking glass, so absorbed is he in trapping all wandering thoughts streaming through consciousness—all that dark, undigested, energy-laden stuff he has pushed aside for so many years, lacking courage to turn and face personal monsters trailing behind, monsters he has encountered reflected back at him from clients’ faces. He seemed in his ruthless self analysis to be perpetually running over roiling waters beneath a dream bridge, chased by amorphous shadows whose gleaming eyes bore like hot pokers into the back of his head. From within he observes them gaining on him and yet, until perhaps just now, he had lacked the courage to turn and face down those shadows, walk through them, push the fear clouds behind him. After all, that is what he often told his clients, “Just face the monster and walk through it, or let it move through you. You will be surprised at what lies on the other side.” He growled out a few curses wondering why in Hell he couldn’t apply these wise ministrations to himself.
“Gods, is this yet another middle-aged crisis,” he spluttered, pausing to query a rolling tide whispering to an end around his ankles. “I’ve already survived several, thank you very much. At least I am here, whatever that might mean. Being ‘here’ includes the fact that I have been a practicing psychotherapist for over 25 years and should know how to face life’s problems and at least have a game plan for coping. Ha! That’s a royal bit of persiflage,” he exclaimed aloud, rank self-pity oozing forth to befoul the air.
“Do any of us ever get it, or are we doomed to dissolve unhappily into the great emptiness? Then again, are we fated to return again and again to this chaotic life, perhaps to transform more psychic sludge on our beatific way to some undefined paradisiacal end? That would reflect the swirling effect of a cosmic hula-hoop ever ascending. Ain’t that right, Martha?” He giggled sadly, performing a silly hip-rocking dance along the shore. A few watchers from the cliff above chuckled at what they saw to be a disheveled, hirsute bum stalking the wind in a mad frenzy.
Aimlessly hurling surf-smoothed land pebbles in a high arc out to sea, he wandered mindlessly in a zigzag pattern towards the end of the cove, infinitely relieved to be totally alone once more. Shameful self-judgment had him painfully by the nape of the neck. Facing his inner reflection bouncing back from the under-curl of those marching waves thundering in over the bar was quite enough company for today…especially after having lost control so early in the morning. But what is it exactly that he should be controlling?
“How did it happen? What set me off? All that broken glass and pottery scattered about, including one of Mary’s finest pots. How could I DO that? Then the look in his nephew Samuel’s eyes…his focused attention. No, it wasn’t fear…just puzzlement, I guess.” His questions, piled endlessly upon each other, interspersed with sighs, seemed to push him further into an overwhelming sense of shame. Oh, yes, he had blown up before, usually on average once a year, but this rampage was a whopper. He wouldn’t, absolutely couldn’t physically harm another human being, least of all watchful Mary or ever so silent Sam. They kept him anchored, fore and aft—most of the time.
Today, the gods looked down upon Eric, speculating whether he was yet ready to face an underlying truth belching its fiery red magma from the hot floor undergirding his conscious behavior. He had allowed anger at life’s apparent unfairness to flare into being again, searing his wife and nephew early on this brilliant red dawned day. Wide-eyed, they looked at him in speechless surprise, feeling fear once more beginning to move the ground beneath their feet, not knowing what next might appear screaming out of him. Like witnesses to a sudden accident, they momentarily froze in place…Mary settling down at the kitchen table, spreading out those timeworn wrinkled hands, pressing down so hard her knuckles had gone an ugly gray white. While Samuel, all of eight years, simply wobbled in place, his eyes wide in speculative wonder, having witnessed a similar emotional explosion each year from the day he settled down in this old, rambling house following his parents’ fatal auto accident.
Oddly, the child knew just what to do. Edging forward to Eric, he placed his hands palm down on the angry man’s arm to look deep into Eric’s eyes before asking, as he always did… in one form or another, “It’s tearing…hurting you inside, isn’t it?” Usually Eric would lower his eyes and lapse into silence, his shoulders folding forward, signaling an end to the outburst. Sam had an uncanny ability to read another’s deepest feelings when encountering a crisis situation. Today, however, the sight of Samuel tentatively moving towards him to ask the same old question was more than he could bear, and he rose with an oath, slamming out of the house, terrified at what might lie behind his desperation.
Listening with some relief, still frozen in place, Mary and Samuel could hear grinding gears fading as Eric hurtled down the driveway speeding west towards his very private, secret place, near a protective watery womb—a sparkling white sand ocean beach now clogged with storm tossed flotsam.
Wending his way between huge sea-lashed tree trunks draped here and there by octopus-shaped gobs of green seaweed, he headed toward his favorite meditation boulder nestled in a small cove at the end of the beach. Hunkering down in a shallow, sandy hollow, he sat motionless…legs crossed in the usual position for hours on end, deep in thoughts insanely looping about the same oft repeated question: “Who am I and why am I here? Gods, that question should have received an acceptable answer long ago. Just who am I to give others serious answers to their most threatening inner problems?”
A sensitive passerby might fantasize that Eric looked like a mythic earth god searching the far horizon for lost souls tossing toward shore over the deep. Instead, he felt himself to be one lost soul amongst many, no longer sure of any particular form, any spiritual certitude or achievable earthly goal. Rather, everything…every idea moved in flux. He had nothing to cling to…to believe in. Lost in stygian blackness his soul cried out in its agony while the right answers, all those grounded truths, hammered at him demanding rational consideration. But that was the problem. “I am so weary of being merely rational, telling all those other souls what they need to consider rationally. What about my soul’s need for the sudden irrational act—my angry outburst this morning, for example. What does the irrational act mean?”
Now, he felt drained, sucked dry, ready to be tossed aside to terminate a meaningless existential excursion into this great worldly joke wrapped in irrational hope.
Today, time stood still for Eric, long hours passing unnoticed except to mechanically consume a candy bar he discovered in a side pocket. Eventually a cold breeze sprang up as the winter sun sank lower until it threatened to plunge into Pacific waters beneath a light blue, far horizon spackled here and there with wispy, pink-tinged clouds. Eric shivered, stretching his stiff legs over the boulder’s edge to make an ungainly plop back into the sand, his thoughts turning at last homewards and an uncertain reception. His windswept surroundings had briefly presented a brassy rose hue, even as he spotted the first starry planet blinking down upon him. Cool eyed Venus winked a generous greeting, promising a stable presence, whatever might evolve.
Allowing his imagination to wander, he discovered a gigantic rip in the heavens through which God’s unblinking eye peered down into his heart challenging him to admit his “sinning”, his callow lack of self-control, challenging him to take responsibility for the hurt he had caused this day. He let out a bitter laugh as he reflected upon this cosmic, mythical, magic golden eye, seeing what there was in his heart collapse into angry flames plunging down to encounter at bottom so many unique, unrealized possibilities encapsulated in all his writing projects. He felt his little human self struggle upwards, or was it downwards, on such a narrow path towards an ultimate summit or to depths not seen, but felt in anguish.
“Shall I imitate Garcia Lorca’s little Punchinello in Dirge for a Puppet… who so bravely leaps at Fate?” thought Eric, his laughter echoing from cove walls now turning deep green black in the fading light and he began to cast out upon a rising breeze a silly ditty he vaguely recalled from his war service: “Oh, ‘fer a bob-tailed nag or a blue-tailed hag! Hooda! Hooda!” Sighing into silence he remembered a poem he had composed during happier, more innocent days:
“Swinging to-and-fro around spiral arms,
Dancing about some distant nebula,
Plunging away from our undiscovered center,
Pursuing outer limits tethered in imagination,
Discovering obscure beginnings’ reflected light,
It is then our hearts clasp the universe,
Even as we return, folding back upon ourselves.
To live the life awarded us in all good grace.”
Eric shifted uncomfortably beneath his mental corpse, that dismal past family history, bending forward under tedious ungainly weight to continue his lament:
“Oh, not to think—not to have to carry the burden of consciousness, how sweet that would be. To find myself reduced to the natural animal living happily in paradise, respecting its ways and not concerned as to why, or how, or where I should take the next step in life. Why not leap across this tedious slog to find a better way, a safer more abundant valley. If I could, my favorite place on earth might remain this sandy strip along ocean’s edge…a mellow space between the fluid promise of becoming “a something”…and a fixed, unchanging landscape saturated with our human ‘thou shalts’. But I’m already a successful therapist, d—n it!”
So thought Eric, hopelessly wallowing about in extended self-pity, dimly sensing he was an absolute, incurable ass, and indeed would become totally bored inhabiting any projected paradise out “there”. Such utter nonsense all this verbiage is, screamed a distant part of his mind, his disengaged human intellect.
Then it happened. A dazzling shaft of light slammed his brain, dulling his eyes, momentarily stopping his heart…a severe stroke they later said. He fell into the surf like a twittering rag doll, instantly realizing, without any judgment, that he might now abruptly meet his maker, plunge down into his eyes and so find his way home at last.
Our blessed sun slipped below the horizon to make its way beneath the earth to another dawn as an evening breeze sprang up to kiss the sand, riffle Eric’s clothing and toss sea spume landwards. Ever so slowly, consciousness returned to his dark blob of a self caught in a rising tide. Carefully lifting his head he focused bloodshot eyes on a shadowy, hooded form clasping a staff rising over a far dune at the end of the beach. “How droll and pointedly obvious,” he snickered. The melodramatic nature of the past moments sent laughter streaming through his brain, presenting a gift of visions popping up in the narrow blank space preceding his life’s beginning and end. Oh, such visions they were: He sensed a pregnant rainbow arching to kiss heaven’s vast realm even as he looked seaward to spot laughing mermaids reaching up through roiling surf to tickle skimming seabird bellies.
Somewhere above he sensed a mass of tumbling cloud faces rubbing noses, melding into a thousand frothy forms descending to bubble around his surf-tossed, shivering body.
Very slowly fuzzy sight regained sharper definition as once more he felt his heart pumping blood, singing at a faster rate, promising him energy to rise and struggle forward in a slow crawl on hands and knees to rediscover a familiar hearth and home. It was then an incoming tidal tsunami from packed memory banks thrust him back to his earthly beginnings, running a panorama of select experiences through consciousness with each laborious move he took towards that lounging, mechanical beast, the SUV, just over the dune. Each forward motion accompanied a vivid memory whose feeling tone caused tears to flow as Eric made his slow passage inwards from the sea to reclaim some semblance of an earthly self.
When almost back to the car a third attack hit him leaving him unconscious, face down, just as he reached for the car door. Tourists found him some hours later and so off to the hospital ICU to be on life support where Mary and Samuel appeared the next day, their anxious faces asking all the forbidden questions he dared not face.
It was Samuel who held him bound in a piercing, sad gaze. This nephew of his, a small wisp of a boy, soon to have managed nine years of life, left him after every encounter deeply puzzled and just a little terrified. There was something, some quality in the boy that defied age and experience, almost a profound inner knowing totally out front, yet overpowering in its simplicity. It was as if he were in essence speaking from another reality, another realm quite outside any momentary issue or place. At school the other boys were constantly challenging him or would try to beat him up. In return the boy stood still and would look calmly at them asking such a little question, “What are you doing?” his dark eyes focused calmly upon the aggressor. Usually the bully stopped, backing off in confused withdrawal while Sam serenely maintained his space and peaceful attitude.
Now, Eric couldn’t take his eyes off the boy who slowly approached him, taking his numb hand and looking intently at Eric he said softly, “They will take care of you in the other place ….don’t be afraid.” For a moment Eric was tempted to laugh only he couldn’t. He felt within their locked gaze that the boy was absolutely right. They would, indeed, take good care of him, but . . .
It was then he dropped off into a timeless dream world, a mix of scattered memory fragments jumbled together amongst possible scenarios of what life might be some day.
Samuel shortly turned to Mary abruptly saying, “He will be fine now. Really, don’t worry. Please, let’s go home, I’m tired.” The boy’s face seemed so much older, mature in a strange way, yet deeply weary, as if he had almost passed beyond his strength. Mary nodded assent, once again experiencing what could only be called an extrasensory affirmation flowing from the core of this little being named Samuel.
Many, many days passed seemingly without beginning or end as Eric passed in and out of consciousness, some days being better than others. He seemed so pale, a wasted paper-thin man now, a shadow who could only talk with his eyes since the last little stroke had robbed him of speech and almost all movement. They wheeled him into the little room at the end of the corridor, a special quiet room assigned to the dying.
Nurse Rogers, her great round face displaying an Irish pug nose and blue eyes of large proportion peered forth from under swales of deep red hair to look down at her new charge with an impersonal, professional intensity that brought only a wisp of a smile to the corners of this parchment man’s lips—this subdued Eric. Though he wanted to, he could say nothing to break the silence. She said nothing either. Yet how they did talk with their eyes, holding a mutual gaze for several minutes until staff members appearing at the doorway displayed their increasing nervousness. They simply saw him as already moribund and merely awaited his final documented release.
When his time came she had sat some six long hours with him, occasionally dozing off only to awaken and find him staring steadily at her. At around 4 a.m. he turned his head just a little intensifying his gaze and slowly moved one hand from under the covers about his chin signaling her to come over. She seemed to wade to him through all his echoing goodbyes as she took his hand to feel shortly a slight squeeze. Watching intently she saw him settle back against his pillows, his eyes momentarily glazing before he once more turned to her with as large a smile as he could manage before those wide eyes seemed to peer in deep wonder at the great mystery lying just behind her.
He felt a slow flutter of the heart—just a slight tightness in the chest and then the most amazing happening. The ceiling of his little room seemed to float off to his right revealing the deepest, brightest cosmos to be imagined set against black velvet as ever so slowly the walls seemed to fold outward and under all about him. There was no sensation of lifting upwards or any “out of”, merely a steady expansion of being.
Nurse Rogers appeared to fade into a vague outline and then disappear as he realized he could see all about him without turning his head—a miracle. He had 360 degree vision and of such clarity at his center, facing all those many choices on all sides out in this great immensity. He sensed no pressure to choose, no pressure to be anything but what he already was . . . in this now and forever time.
As the lotus walls unfolded reflecting a fast forward photographic sequence, his sense of smell returned to its once acute sensitivity—the air so sweet as if he were taking in fresh gulps of oxygen-saturated air upon the top of some great peak or at the foot of a tremendous waterfall. Then he fell into a quality of spiritual shock as his inner hearing tuned in to an a cappella chorus of such magnitude as to set his true Self vibrating. Myriad flashing lights accompanied the all-encompassing music, a veritable celestial fireworks display—expanding his mind, wrapping his soul in misty wonder to send him out beyond any measurable distance and into the infinite, into another sphere of being hardly to be imagined or even briefly understood.
–o0o–
