Pounding Stone in a Stream

symph

00:00 / 04:37

APT. 28

In Apt. 28, you find a large game called Empire set up on the living room floor. Four people can participate in the game, and each person plays a ruler who starts off with one trillion dollars in play money and numerous tiny plastic figures: four economic hitmen, three assassins, twenty investors, ten heads of corporations, eight current leaders and nine potential dictators, one token in the form of a central bank representing those who impose austerity on a country when necessary, and twenty tokens in the form of machine guns representing soldiers and thugs and death squads who keep the people in line. First, each player positions a current leader in a country that he or she wants to conquer. Then, taking turns, each player sends an economic hitman to offer a one hundred billion-dollar loan to the current leader of that country. The ruler can do what he wants with the loan--create or maintain infrastructure, build dams or roads or bridges or a palace for himself, but in return the ruler must agree to global free-market policies and allow investors and corporations to come in and take over the main resources and markets and industries and exploit the cheap labor. You draw a card, which reads, "The current democratic leader does not agree to the terms," so you hire an assassin to eliminate him. Then you install a dictator, who spends the money from the loan in any way he chooses. You draw another card, which reads, "The dictator cannot pay back the loan," so you place the bank token on the board and impose austerity on the people--who may or may not have benefited from the hundred billion dollar loan. You draw another card, which reads, "The masses object to paying for the loan (plus the interest)," so you activate soldiers and thugs and death squads to keep the people in line. In that way you take over as many countries as you can within a region, but it costs a great deal of money. You spend billions on weapons and the military to protect your empire from the other players and from the revolutionary movements in the region. You are running out of money and draw another card, which reads, "You must impose severe austerity on your own people by cutting as many social programs as possible and raising taxes on the working class and privatizing essential services." The masses complain, but the super-rich people in your country remain happy because most of the wealth from the empire goes to them, and they spend millions of dollars to elect the people who always vote to spend billions in tax dollars to aid their businesses in the empire. In this game (unlike in the real world) if you go a trillion dollars into debt, you lose. If all the other players go into debt a trillion dollars before you do, you win.

(You realize you must still be on the right path because in the corner you find a box with Chapter Nine of Alternate Reality Apartments.)

Pestles on Pounding Stone

ALTERNATE REALITY APARTMENTS: CHAPTER NINE

CENTRAL VALLEY MISFITS

The five senses register stimuli, translating the energy fields surrounding the body (itself an energy field composed of particles in space that form the cells of the body based on DNA, ultimately creating consciousness through the central nervous system--or is the body only a vehicle for consciousness?) into a consistent and believable "reality." The mind, I thought as several huge drops of rain splattered on the windshield, filters out information not essential for survival, such as a dead dog next to the curb or an angel hovering above the street, the brain focusing usually on what poses the greatest threat, such as red lights blinking on and off. The mind has the amazing ability to construct levels of meaning simultaneously, I noted; for instance, I was feeling a slight sense of loss as I was wasting time in my car waiting for the train to pass as other vehicles surrounded my car, the signal clanging. My car would be unable to move until something happened to raise the arm and the traffic inched forward, so my brain, I realized, was also registering that I was trapped. Three minutes and still no train. The social contract requires that I remain in my car so that everyone else will be able to move forward if and when the arm finally lifts. Even with this miraculous vehicle of consciousness, I have never been able to establish continuity in my life, I thought, as rain plastered the windshield and suddenly I heard a sound like gravel hitting the car. Still no train. White insects hopping in the grass. Hail.
I could see an arm lifting in the car ahead of me. I glanced at the watch on his wrist. Could it already have been six minutes? I wondered, as the striped arm, orange and white, swayed a little, pounded by hail and rain, the beat of the song on the radio suddenly stronger. Great, I thought to myself, I am sitting in a car feeling trapped, deconstructing the meaning of the social contract during a mechanical malfunction which is paralyzing more and more cars by the minute, unable to construct lasting meaning in my life, and here I am one energy field out of uncountable energy fields composed of particles whirling in infinite space, all connected on one plane of being, perhaps part of one infinite creation composed of infinite planes of being, each with innumerable energy fields. I'm pretty sure, though, I thought, that I'll never create lasting meaning.
Constructing meaning while certain that I will never construct lasting meaning. How good can it get? All the uncountable years of evolution, from the smallest one-celled organism to the diversity and sophistication of life forms in the present, has led to that profound insight. I began to suspect that I would never escape the mind's basic need to construct meaning at all times even if that meaning is simply depressing, like concluding that life is meaningless and absurd. Why was I sitting in a rainstorm mildly tormenting myself even though I was dying? I would never construct a satisfactory answer for that one.
The students in my alternative education class had never heard of a social contract (and probably never would). In fact, they seemed to despise anyone who attempted to provide structure for them. They had been expelled for bringing weapons to school, for lighting plastic toilet seats on fire with lighter fluid, for threatening to kill themselves with scissors or other sharp objects, for threatening to kill others, for saying the "f-word" an unacceptable number of times, for calling the principal a "faggot." All of that was just the tip of the iceberg. One of them came to school with bruises on her face; one of them, eleven years old, didn't want to sit alone with a male psychologist because he might rape her (the most obvious case of child abuse that the psychiatrist had experienced in twenty years); one of them threatened to shoot up another student's house; one of them talked nonstop about being a gangster, despite numerous warnings from teachers and administrators; another flipped other students off or mouthed the "f-word" constantly when he thought the teacher wasn't looking, creating an uproar whenever possible. This was their "Opportunity" (as in "last") to show they could behave in a classroom. The previous teacher had quit for health reasons; according to the aide the previous teacher claimed that his heart would start fluttering whenever he entered the room.
I had been called to take over that class for one day and had ended up in that classroom for eight weeks. I will never be anything but a professional substitute who takes over desperate situations all the time, I thought. I listed the assignments in my head, one where a teacher had been suspended for screaming and cursing at the children, two where the teachers were on medical leave, unable to stand the stress anymore, one where the teacher (a nice, dedicated young lady) had quit because of death threats. In the past year alone, I had ended up in four classrooms where the teachers, some of whom had been teaching many years, had been blown out of the water. I was the babysitter until the administrators could find someone else who could tolerate the aberrant behavior of the students on a more permanent basis. Honestly, I thought to myself, I don't think I could do it either, not day after day for a whole year, for a lifetime, not without blowing my brains out or having a heart attack, at least not in any of the public schools south of Shaw (an area encompassing two-thirds of the city).
I grimaced and then looked around. As far as I could tell none of the other energy fields in the cars surrounding me could tell what I was feeling, thank goodness. Each energy field, no matter what it is composed of, is trapped by the limitations of the moment. Some traps, of course, are a lot nicer than others. I was experiencing irregular heartbeats again as well as a slight shortness of breath. A doctor had never diagnosed me since I couldn't afford to go to the doctor, but I knew the palpitations meant I was dying, very slowly, from atrial fibrillation caused by celiac disease. My digestive system had been ravaged by gluten, and my heart kept going haywire. Of course, if I managed to stop eating gluten completely, there was a chance that I could live another twenty to fifty years. I looked at my watch again, realizing that I'd also spent too much of my life being afraid of dying--another perk of celiac disease--but now I was about eighty percent sure that all those particles, trillions of them probably, that formed what I called "me" and everyone else called Justin, or Dad, or sweetie, or Mr. C, were soon going to dissolve and become part of something else, the earth and the air and the water. I wasn't really afraid, just amazed that I was going to disappear and/or change into other forms of energy, mildly amazed that I was a collection of whirling particles forming an energy field aware of its own imminent death and transformation.
The signal was still clanging away like crazy. You're being pretty damned cerebral about your own extinction, I thought. Just wait until you're heart stops beating, and you can't deny any more that you're dying, and you truly have to face that you might disappear into oblivion, aware of nothing, unaware even of experiencing nothingness. How cerebral are you going to be then? I was testing myself to see if I could make myself feel afraid. Well, if I was dying, I would just cross that bridge when I got to it (the right cliche in a clutch...), just like I had dealt with everything else over which I had no control, which had the ultimate effect of leaving me exhausted, unafraid of nothingness, at least when I didn't really have to face It. Sometimes, deep down, even though I have had numerous experiences with ghosts and spirits and demons and angelic beings, I still occasionally fear that there is only nothingness after death.

In a dream the night before, I was swimming, drifting near a concrete structure, and someone screamed, "No," as if I were drifting too close to something dangerous. Suddenly my body was pulled into the structure, like a fish into a pump, and chewed up. I could not fight it. My life was suddenly extinguished, despite all my hopes and dreams and desires, and all I could think was, "Oh, well," as everything went black, and I woke up. I, in fact, had a similar experience when I was six years old in a Doughboy pool. The neighborhood kids "dogpiled" on top of me, and I couldn't move. I don't know how long I was drowning before I realized that I was finally losing consciousness. All I could think was, "This is it. Oh, well." At that moment they kindly let me up.

The traffic was backed up all the way to the intersection. A few above-average people closest to the intersection backed out when the light was in their favor, but someone else soon took their place. Nine minutes and still no train. The music from my radio, hopelessly juvenile, stirred up more feelings of sadness tinged with longing. Ten, fifteen, maybe even twenty percent of my life since I had become a teenager, I'd spent listening to one meaningless song after another, all manufacturing some emotion. Those songs at one point had been my religion. How many songs really meant anything to me now? I could think of only one or two. The vast majority of it was cheap sound contrived to stir up my chemistry so that I would rush out and crack open my wallet.

Everything affects your chemistry, whether or not you're aware of it, I thought. For instance, the only reason you feel slightly lost could be due to the fact that you accidentally ate foods containing gluten, and you are simply having a reaction. I tried to imagine the process of chemicals interacting with each other to create an emotional response, the food digested in the stomach and entering the bloodstream as energy, ultimately reaching the brain and affecting the centers of emotion, but I couldn't picture in my mind how chemicals affected emotional states, a failure of imagination, no doubt. I would occasionally eat foods that caused a severe reaction and I became so depressed that I could barely function, and everyone thought I was just depressed, which I took as a euphemism for "weak." The old refrain: People could understand the negative psychological effects of drugs and alcohol but couldn't believe that I could have an adverse reaction to basic foods such as wheat, barley, rye, milk and eggs. I suddenly noticed that I had been staring out the window a long time, for how long I couldn't say.
Twelve minutes. Absurd, I thought. If it weren't still pouring rain, I would get out of my car and organize a retreat from the railroad tracks and establish a detour and have someone call the city about the malfunction. Though usually reticent, I often felt an overwhelming urge to organize people to fix a problem, another reason for my downfall. As an activist, I had pissed off powerful people for years, which was one reason I had remained a professional substitute even though I had obtained a master's degree, or at least that was my rationalization. What caused me to feel this need to organize the world around me, I wondered, even to the degree that the desire could end up harming me, even destroying me personally if I were effective as an activist? Not a very effective strategy on an evolutionary scale, at least not for me as an individual, though perhaps a good strategy for the species as a whole since my sacrifice might end up benefiting the community. I decided to let someone else organize the party this time, however. I wasn't heading anywhere.
I shifted my attention to the sky. In the distance, the clouds were breaking up, revealing blue sky beyond while rain fell in sunlight. I turned and noticed a rainbow in the distance. At that moment, I failed to understand the purpose of beauty. I was failing to understand a lot within the past few minutes, I realized, yet my failure at that moment made little difference. I was digging the smell and the sound of the rain, the sunlight jeweling the raindrops, the signal clanging over and over without any reason.
I suddenly remembered sitting in a boat on Huntington Lake, the water black--still two-thirds night and freezing. My father was with me; I couldn't, however, picture my father, only the black water and the huge pine trees surrounding the lake. I didn't like the idea of killing fish, of reeling them in with a hook in their mouth or their throat, and leaving them in the bottom of the boat to die slowly with their gills fluttering. I didn't want to be there surrounded by the chilling darkness in a cold metal boat, but I didn't complain because I wanted to be with a man whom I would ultimately never really know, who pulled the chord to start the motor. That's all I remembered, just a few moments until I turned and gazed into the black water--even though my father died a few months later.
What use was that memory? Who knows what I would remember in another twenty-five years, I thought. But you probably don't have another twenty-five years, remember? I still couldn't believe that I would die completely, as if all the moments in my life were recorded in some tangible form, as in a hologram, innumerable bits of sensory, emotional and intellectual and spiritual information recorded on some mystical holographic film in the ether, stored who knows where in the cosmos, including every possible bit of meaning, no matter how trivial or insignificant or horrible. My consciousness imprints experiences through some inscrutable chemical process, so why couldn't all experience be imprinted within the Universal Consciousness?
How long were we all going to have to wait here? We all have too much faith. In technology, in the government, in our fellow man, in our own beliefs, in whatever keeps the world working in some adequate but less than optimum fashion. We all just keep doing it, whatever It is, going to our jobs and back to our houses day after day, believing that our world will remain safe and sane, that our nuclear arsenals are not going to vaporize us, that the population explosion is not going to suck up every last resource, that the web of life is not going to be irrevocably ripped apart, that our pollution is not going to heat up the planet or poison us out of existence, that we're not going to die today or tomorrow or ever, that we will survive even our own deaths with every bit of the spirit, or whatever you want to call the consciousness, intact. We just have too much damned faith, I thought.
The radio played "Stuck in Lodi Again" while I sang along: "Stuck on Clinton Again." Too many things had happened to me on Clinton to be a coincidence, as if some greater force had decided that the avenue would be a major conduit of memory and meaning for me, the road taking on another layer of significance every time I traveled it. My first job as a substitute, I remembered, had been at a school on Clinton, a classroom of incorrigible children--after my stint as the director of a non-profit environmental organization in an office that also had been located on Clinton. The Gulf War had begun while I was canvassing on Clinton. When I was in high school, I had kicked off a relationship with someone in a car on Clinton. People were being murdered in El Salvador and Nicaragua by death squads as I traveled, completely oblivious to the fact, up and down Clinton. While I was growing up, riding my bicycle down Clinton, people were dying in Southeast Asia because of an unjustifiable police action, millions ultimately. Twenty years after the Vietnam War, a Hmong child was shot down in a parking lot next to an Italian restaurant on Clinton--ten years after I had worked there at the restaurant as a pizza deliverer. Of course, I hadn't thought at all about millions of people dying in conflicts caused or supported by our own government while I was pedaling my bicycle or driving my car or eating or making out or working in restaurants on Clinton. It was a street like any other, except that I, Justin C, had layered it with meaning. Layers of meaning creating continuity. I closed my eyes and relaxed deeply.
I found himself at the edge of the galaxy, gazing at the beautiful, cold disk floating in empty black space, totally removed from all human struggling and striving, and I understood that my physical condition was no more stable than a bubble, that all physical matter was like foam thrown up on the shore. My consciousness was an atom whirling around, a divine spark in an ocean of fire.
Once, I consulted a psychic who told me to close my eyes and relax my mind. Suddenly I was in outer space surrounded by innumerable galaxies. Then all of the galaxies collapsed into one point of light, which grew tinier and tinier within the blackness of space. "You are experiencing the blackness of space now, aren't you?" the psychic asked. How could he have possibly known that? "I guess we can transcend our own subjectivity," I remember thinking.

Since then, my personality and ego have disappeared thousands of times. I have become "the eyes of God," experiencing absolute bliss, while gazing at a flower, my personality and ego completely vanishing. I have envisioned numerous spiritual symbols and archetypes during meditation, my personality and ego completely vanishing. During my spiritual rituals, I have transmuted negativity into harmony and neutralized insidious dark forces thousands of times, my personality and ego completely vanishing. I am nobody, and at some point, no doubt in the near future, my physical body and personality and ego will totally vanish from this world. Despite all of my mystical experiences, I am still afraid of that moment, I finally had to admit to myself. Even though I know I might soon disappear from this world, I am still sickened by the horrors and ugliness and tragedies in this world.
Suddenly people were tapping on my car window. The signal had stopped clanging, and the orange and white striped arms had lifted. The lane next to me was empty, but there were a few cars still in back of me. I waved at the people who had alerted me, turned on the car, and gazed at a rainbow as I drove in rain falling through sunshine. I'm going to turn the car around, I thought, and head out to the river. My wife won't be home until five or six, and my daughter will be on the phone watching TV anyway.
The swallows had returned, brown and white bank swallows looping above the creek, disappearing into deep holes in the steep embankment, the flock somehow never diminishing, violet-green swallows weaving between them, jewel-like when the sun struck their deep green and purple feathers. A blue heron stood motionless on a rock, waiting, waiting for a shadow to move in the water. A stunning lazuli bunting, smaller than most sparrows, foraged in the brush, its shrill, melodious call dominating the river.
I identified birds by losing myself in my surroundings, waiting for a sound or a movement. By the embankment, I lost myself in roots lacing the earth and sucking up the water, the branches like roots in the sky soaking up the sunlight, each individual creature distinct yet part of one ocean full of swirling currents of water and breath. Sometimes I felt more like an ocean of consciousness than one distinct creature while other times I felt like a distinct individual lost in a great ocean of being whose currents swirled on without end.
Don had sued the county for inadequate review of the rezone application for this property. The landowner had obtained a permit from the planning commission to build an upscale development even though the rezone would establish precedence for other development in the river bottom. The planning commission had not even required an environmental impact report to study the growth inducing and cumulative impacts of the project--just rammed it right through. Don had appealed the decision to the county board of supervisors, which then unanimously approved the rezone application.
I realized that I might never see Don again. I had searched half-heartedly for him for several months, on weekends and holidays, concluding that he had gone underground or offed himself in some secluded part of the forest or changed his name or moved to another country. I couldn't rule out murder, of course. Don was skinny, almost skeletal, with thin, shoulder-length hair that made him appear slightly feminine. One day as we were heading to a public hearing, Don insisted that a study had been conducted which proved that corporate managers who were forced to wear dresses during a high-level retreat actually showed more sympathy for their employees afterwards. That same day, when saying goodbye, Don had squeezed my leg for an uncomfortably long time. Finally, Don smiled for a moment and then got out of the car.
Though he was extremely articulate about complex issues at public hearings, Don tended to be reticent. One time, however, at a public hearing, he froze for over a minute, just stood at the podium without saying a word, to everyone's embarrassment, as though he had completely lost his nerve. At that point I began to think that something was terribly wrong. That same day, however, Don convinced me that we should commandeer an attack helicopter and blow up a hazardous waste incinerator if it should ever be built. Fortunately, thanks partly to our continued political pressure, the incinerator was never built even though the company had received the necessary permits. Due in part to our political activism, county supervisors also rejected a proposal for coal-fired power plants in our closed-air basin, and the state passed legislation forming a unified air pollution control district in the Central Valley.

Don once alluded to a nervous breakdown he had suffered in the army during the Vietnam War but never provided any details. He preferred to dwell on the issues, occasionally mentioning spiritual matters, mainly in conjunction with his LSD trips in the sixties. One time, for instance, his friends were in a circle and they began passing around thoughts as if they were all reading each other's minds, finishing each other's sentences, until they were all sure that they were so connected on some subtle level that they just stopped talking--because they didn't need to.
After Don disappeared, I noticed a homemade billboard on a stretch of Freeway 99 between Tulare and Bakersfield, which read, "Wake up and drop out--get your new identity here," followed by a phone number. I could imagine Don making fake ID's for a living, so I called the number and asked if anyone by the name of Don Manson worked there. "Everyone here has a new name, so I wouldn't know," was the reply, but I left my name and phone number just in case anyone with that name happened to pass through there.
Don's commitment to social justice and environmental protection had transcended any desire for material success or prestige or even a little financial security--superseding every personal desire, even the need to survive, it seemed.
Since he was largely ignored and defeated on a political level by good ol' boy politicians, Don had chosen finally to work his way through the legal system, demanding higher review of local land use decisions. He used the tools of the masters until he became effective, and then the masters used the same tools to crush him. Judge Adam Cane bankrupted Don, fining him $300,000 for pursuing a "frivolous lawsuit." The Judge claimed that Don had not established an adequate record on which to base the lawsuit since Don had only gone on record opposing the rezone application at the final meeting of the county board of supervisors. The Judge apparently had conveniently forgotten the law or had never read it. No matter. Don appealed the case and won, but only after he had been forced to declare bankruptcy. The developer then turned the tables and appealed the decision of the appellate court, eating up more of Don's time and money.
Somehow, though, the property by this creek had remained untouched even though the landowner had the permit to alter it beyond recognition. Maybe Don had ultimately had some effect after all but not on the governmental level. Yet, as far as I knew, the bulldozers were already lined up and every acre of land in the world had already been surveyed to determine how many board feet could be logged, how many acre feet of water could be diverted, how many houses and strip malls could be built. Perhaps even the air had been inventoried to determine how many molecules of pollution it could contain before we all choked to death--something Don had once said to me.
Like Don, I had fought too many battles, and now I stood alone, powerless and ignored, but at least I could lose myself in the stream, could almost feel it slide over the stones, could sense the roots gently sucking the water up into the trunks and stems. The water was perfectly calm in places, and one world penetrated another, the connection between worlds suddenly disturbed by ripples and then restored, both worlds a flowing of past, present, and future in a never-ending cycle where nothing was lost, only changed. For a moment it seemed to me that even the trail might always exist in the grasses somewhere in that flowing, in some ether that permeated everything--in a Universal Consciousness that remembered everything.
As the night flowed around me and through me, I felt the air cooling and heard the chirping of the lazuli bunting, the swallows looping overhead, the heron winging away to some more secluded part of the river.

All poems, stories, essays, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.

Tidy Tips, Bird's Eye Gilia, Miniature Lupine

hihihi

00:00 / 06:01

APT. 29

In Apartment 29 you live within a wide spectrum of energy. At one pole of the spectrum all is light and love and harmony. At the other pole all is darkness and hatred and chaos. You can choose what type of energy you wish to experience at any given moment. In one frequency, it doesn't matter what race, color, creed or gender you are. It doesn't matter if you are gay or bisexual or transexual or pansexual or heterosexual. In that frequency, everyone is treated as a magnificent spiritual being, and everyone lives with reverence for the natural world and for all other people. In the frequency at the opposite end of the pole, someone always commands power and demands that you conform to an insane code, which is harmful to many marginalized people, and what you do is almost always considered wrong in some way. Everyone in that frequency lives in fear; society always seems on the verge of collapse, and indeed the economy crashes every four to seven years. Politically, people remain divided and hate others for the group they are associated with. You can't trust anyone else because other people want to take what you have due to the constant instability. Most people get stuck in this frequency, and if you venture into the frequency of light and love and harmony, you remain vulnerable to attacks by people in the other frequency.

(You realize you are still on the right path because you find Chapter Ten of Alternate Reality Apartments in the corner....)

Tidy Tips and Lupine

ALTERNATE REALITY APARTMENTS:

CHAPTER TEN

I have always suspected that I would need to leave my society far behind in order to heal myself on the deepest level, which explains why for many years I have journeyed through the woods at every opportunity. For me, on just about every trail in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, at some point I lose my personality, and my soul surfaces; I sometimes even experience knowledge that transcends my five senses, intuitions about events in the future or about current events beyond the range of my perception. On each trail I also often experience anticipation and dread because with that shift also comes the fear of the annihilation of my ego and my identity. Authentic spirituality, however, cannot exist without that moment when the personality vanishes and the soul communicates with the conscious mind--the divine core, the soul, and the conscious mind in alignment. I seek that shift in ritual also, not only to align the divine spark with my soul and with my conscious mind, but to connect my soul with healing cosmic forces, invisible forces represented by Angels and Archangels and Gods and Goddesses. I use the symbolic representation of the Archangel or God as a bridge to their powerful forces of harmony, and I must leave my personality, with all of its social conditioning, outside the door of my spiritual room in order to connect with those extraordinary intelligences.
When I was in middle school, I was a jock, and I hung out with other jocks at recess and at lunch. We would usually roam the halls as a herd without ever saying a word to one another. We were members of the "in-crowd," providing protection for each other, clearly showing the other kids that individual members of the group were not to be messed with, ever. After about six months as a member of this herd, I felt an emptiness as we drifted through the halls. I turned my head and gazed at the boys beside me and realized that I had not said more than two words to any one of them. One day I couldn't stand the feeling of emptiness any longer. I started hanging out with someone who was more vulnerable socially but far more real and more fun.
So often as I was growing up, I just went around on auto-pilot, half-asleep. My family and society conditioned me to maintain the unexamined self as a survival mechanism. I adopted their beliefs and developed physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual habits as I learned to play by their rules. In the process, I became passive, allowing others to control and manipulate and even crush my imaginative powers, and it was this very habit of inner passivity that became a veil within consciousness. Even though these habits and beliefs interfered with my ability to live fully and creatively, since nothing challenged my belief systems too much, and since life didn't treat me too badly, I remained passive and didn't question anything. But as I grew up the tower that I was building was hit more than once by lightning. For me a thunderstorm formed from the inspiration and exultation I experienced within nature and the arts, and that, along with my chronic illness, compelled me more and more to step away from the herd.
The more I separated myself from the herd, the more I became aware of my ego, which I realized is concerned primarily with survival and gratification, not with sympathy and union. After many years away from the herd, I eventually recognized that my ego has dominated my soul--my higher self--driving it deep into my subconscious mind, so far down into the depths that for over three decades I was not even aware that I have a soul. As soon as I began to live more in the higher self, I recognized that my ego is willing to compromise the truth for security and status--my soul is not. I am keenly aware now that those who step out of the herd and insist on truth are treated as troublemakers and traitors. Fortunately or unfortunately, now that I am keenly aware of the higher self, I cannot turn back. Spirit has shaken me up without any apologies whatsoever. At times Mars is very much like Shiva, burning away everything except the essence of the soul. When Mars burns the transitory away, the spirit remains.
I realize now that over the years my excursions into nature, my spirituality, my art, and my music have all led me to one key event: burning away my conditioned self, accessing my divine core, purifying, and rising from the ashes. I have retained all of my memories and knowledge, but I have lost my ego and cleansed my psyche so that I am renewed. When I recall bad times, I remain detached as I experience the memories, like when I'm watching a video, and I don't feel anger or hatred or regret or any other negative feelings.
With fascism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, environmental degradation, species extinction, climate disruption, overpopulation, the volatility of capitalism, and on and on, humanity is approaching a reckoning. The more I purify my mind and lose my sense of ego and personality, the more I see how much social conditioning has thwarted and fragmented us, how deeply we have been damaged, mentally and emotionally and spiritually, by the herd instinct. Our problems collectively are becoming more and more acute--a reflection of deep inner conflicts and schisms within the psyche. Cleansing our psyches and becoming balanced is truly a revolutionary way to manifest harmony in the world. All other revolutions are merely chaos and noise and violence in comparison.

Root Chakra

When I performed my purification ritual, I closed my eyes and pictured wheels of light, a rainbow of energy centers in my aura, each wheel a vortex which sometimes resembles in my imagination a cyclone but usually resembles a turning margarita glass. I imagined removing impurities and cleansing each wheel with water and a white cloth. The root chakra, in the groin area, after I purified it, was red and contained no defects or impurities that I could envision; I had imagined washing away all of the brown muck for several days, and the wheel had finally remained clean. The second chakra, in the stomach area, was primarily orange, but, in my mind's eye, was covered with a light blue film. The juxtaposition of complementary colors seemed odd, so I rubbed away the blue film with my white cloth.
When I had first visualized my chakras, to my dismay most of them were soiled or tainted in some way, so I spent hours in meditation eliminating the negative energies also from my body and mind, imagining the blackness draining from a hole in my back down into the earth. Occasionally I visualized the bodies of people who had harmed me slipping through a hole in my back and turning into dolls when they hit the ground.
When I felt satisfied that I had sufficiently cleansed the second chakra, the center of emotion, I began cleansing the third. Because it was always bright yellow, I left it alone for the most part, feeling just a tad uncomfortable because it was so very bright. I went to the heart chakra and cleansed it in my mind as thoroughly as possible, every day finding a streak of black and wiping it out. After what seemed like hours of draining the negative energy from my aura, the heart chakra finally appeared green to my mind's eye.
Impurities never appeared in my throat chakra, for some reason. It was the color of the baby blue eye flower, soft and intense and sweet all at the same time. The third eye chakra was a different story. I had read that it was indigo, but I could only imagine it as violet. Once, when I was cleansing it, I had pulled many black blindfolds from the center of the vortex of the chakra. I had just kept pulling them out, one after another. The last blindfolds were white. After I had pulled them all out, I expected to see something significant with my third eye, but nothing happened. Then for several days I imagined during meditation that I was dumping trash from my crown chakra, so much that I almost gave up believing there was anything but trash in my head. But one day when I envisioned my crown chakra , I saw a flower with four brilliant white petals.
Innumerable brilliant white petals suddenly blossomed on the stem of the four-petaled flower. The flower then resembled a stunning white rose, but the word "lotus" kept popping into my head, and a bright white light appeared from above as though a lamp had been switched on, but I couldn't see the source. A voice told me it was the light of God, which I at first doubted because I had always considered myself either an agnostic or an atheist. I allowed the light to bathe the lotus, and the light grew in intensity, and the lotus kept growing larger. Then suddenly, after cleansing all of the chakras, I imagined a lotus flower hovering just above each chakra--each bathed in white light.
After only a month of regular meditation, critical voices in my head completely vanished. The images of people whom I had hated also disappeared, usually after I imagined the people slipping out of the hole in my back and turning into dolls. I felt at first that "pooping" them out of my back was a bit mean, but they were all now, thanks to that act in my mind, people completely separate from me--no longer connected to me in any way. I once asked out loud during meditation how to keep the people in my past from bothering me. A voice answered immediately that I had to forgive them. I tried, often unsuccessfully, to forgive my enemies and think of them with love from then on, to bathe them in my mind with white light, realizing that each one had helped me to grow in some way, and they stopped bothering me almost completely. In fact, at times I began to visualize a place of perfect understanding where everyone would love each other no matter how terrible they had once been to each other in this realm, perhaps even loving each other more because they had--with or without intending to--helped each other to grow in some way.
I began to read more about the wheels of light. I found out that the third-eye chakra is actually violet and the crown chakra is white, uniting the colors of the chakras, as I had visualized. I also discovered that my second chakra was covered in blue because the throat chakra was dominating the sacral chakra, which is associated with emotion; in other words, the chakras of complementary colors regulate each other. Since most of us live in a society that encourages the suppression of emotion, and since I do not want to consider myself an "irrational" person, I had injected blue energy into my orange chakra as a way to dampen deep emotions, which caused me, of course, to feel "blue." Also, I discovered that my third chakra, related to the intellect, was indeed way too bright. The auras of the vast majority of people in the West are predominantly yellow, instead of containing a balance of rainbow colors.
Perhaps most amazing was my discovery that the crown chakra was often referred to as the "thousand-petaled lotus." Several days after visualizing the white flower with innumerable petals and hearing my inner voice strongly refer to the flower as a lotus, I found a description of the crown chakra and learned that a popular mantra meant, translated, "Hail to the jewel in the lotus." From that point on, I visualized a jewel with many facets in the flower. At first, I thought the jewel had a thousand facets to correspond to the thousand petals of the lotus, but then I realized that the facets kept changing as I visualized the jewel, that in fact the facets were countless--the jewel was not static but ever changing. Not only did I visualize the jewel as a diamond, without knowing that the diamond is traditionally associated with the crown chakra, but I quickly understood that it is part of my spiritual being that represents God, which some call "the divine spark." After awhile, I could gaze into the jewel or from the jewel.
I discovered that the first chakra contained an energy force associated with the "kundalini," the life-force that thrills through every level of being, if allowed. If the kundalini awakens, two snakes of energy, one masculine and one feminine, rise upward around the wheels of light and reach the third eye, and powerful energy also rises through the central channel associated with the spine. (When I encountered a caduceus, symbol of the healer, I realized that it symbolizes the kundalini energy.) The snake represents the male and female nature of being. As a creature in the habit of shedding its skin, it is also a symbol of rebirth and regeneration. If a person awakens the kundalini energy properly, he or she is fully awake spiritually. The kundalini, I discovered, is the life force that grounds us in the physical world and opens the higher spiritual planes.
(I had, in fact, periodically throughout my life experienced what I have thought of as a "ballooning" of consciousness. During those times I had felt absolute bliss, and my mind had seemed many times much "larger" than it normally was. One time, a simple moment, which had been boring and filled with anxiety when I had originally experienced it, came back to me clearly, in what almost seemed like a 3D hologram, accompanied by a feeling of intense joy, the holographic memory totally eclipsing everything in my surroundings. Another time, my mind ballooned at two A.M. while I was working at night. Suddenly I looked down at the top of my head, and I noticed that I was slightly balding. I was so startled at that moment that my consciousness immediately returned to "normal." (Memories of those moments of "ballooning" consciousness, of course, are usually soon lost in the daily grind.)
I genuinely felt reborn after cleansing my chakras and forgiving people and experiencing the thousand-petaled lotus and feeling the kundalini energy rising. I realized that my spiritual life tended to be extremely visual; my visions of spiritual symbols and my insights were almost certainly coming from the higher astral plane, a realm of imagination and spiritual insight, and I strongly desired to experience all dimensions of the self, but after a while I realized that healing myself was perhaps the best thing to focus on.
I'm not special. No one really is. Each human being is a miniscule spark of consciousness in an unbelievably vast cosmos where everything is inextricably connected. My mind is unique due to my personal experiences, but I am not superior to a spider or a snail or a dog or a fish or a tree or any other human being. I know the savagery that lurks just below the surface of so many relationships in modern civilization--within individuals, races, and nations--yet after my long process of purification I have no desire to harm anyone--even someone who is trying to kill me, which places me at a distinct disadvantage--I have no desire to be a martyr either.
I have, of course, thought long and hard about how to deal with John Blackmore, who, despite his charm and generosity, might at any moment attempt to ambush me if he could get away with it. The only reason he doesn't on a regular basis, of course, is that his reputation would be tarnished or ruined if anyone found out. Thank goodness John, and so many other people like him, spend so much time keeping up appearances.
My intellect insists that the only reasonable solution would be for me to eliminate the problem--in other words, kill him first. What does a moral person do if another person is trying to destroy him? Try to talk the killer out of it? Blackmore might understand intellectually that we are all connected, but he apparently does not comprehend the meaning of that connection--emotionally or spiritually. How do you get another person to make a true emotional or spiritual connection?
Another danger for me is that Blackmore is the top dog in his pack, so to speak. Over the years, he has become the de-facto leader within a particular group in Fresno. Those who at some point have taken an activist role know that the worst part of speaking truth to power is the activation of the pack mentality. People in power, whether in academia, business, or government, stir up other members of their clique to attack you. The list of people who have attempted to harm me, by ruining my chances for employment, for instance, or in some other nefarious way, is long and strangely diverse: businessmen, politicians, professors, administrators, activists, coworkers, friends, lovers, yada, yada, yada. Blackmore is simply the most extreme case. Until now I have been at a loss to explain why attacks on me have been so merciless. I am forced to conclude that people within a group, like members of a wolf pack, continuously vie for greater status, and when they see a chance to improve their position in some way, they attack the individual who threatens the pack. In academia especially this is the case because competition for jobs is so fierce. Even if the group has progressive ideals, members of a group containing, for instance, democratic socialists or feminists or anarchists or even poets, will often attack anyone who poses a threat to the group mind--quite ferociously. But it's not just because of the survival instinct, which includes the desire to dominate or crush anyone who threatens them. A member of a human pack has a greater chance to succeed, in other words, obtain greater status, by landing a job or a promotion or by obtaining greater prestige. Even members of the most progressive human packs, I've discovered, will go out of their way to protect an unethical "alpha" by tearing down a person who is challenging their leader. I can't tell you how many members of different packs have improved their status by undermining me--just because I simply told the truth. In the face of so many crises in the world, pack mentality has, at least for me, become one of the most terrifying manifestations of bestial behavior.
In other words, when I started meditating, I experienced a much wider spectrum of energy, from extreme light and love and harmony to extreme darkness and hatred and chaos. Anyone who dismisses my spiritual experiences during a conversation only reveals to me that he or she does not know this wider spectrum of energy and wants to shut down the conversation out of fear or ignorance. When I was an atheist, I hid in rationality. When I expanded my consciousness, I suddenly had to deal with radical evil, and I learned rituals that enabled me to neutralize dark forces to create balance. I tried to avoid Blackmore as much as possible and performed rituals to heal him and cleanse him and bless him with divine love and harmony. My wife and I eventually moved out of his house, and I made sure to set up a good alarm system with cameras in our new home. However, one day before we moved, he invited me to go on a hike to an abandoned Native American Village site in the foothills. I decided to take a big risk and see what he would do. I also wanted to make it crystal clear to him that I knew what he was up to....
The creek babbled by some pounding stones, threaded between some rocks, and crashed thirty feet to the valley floor, then gurgled about another hundred feet and vanished underground, emerging in a hole fifty yards away, still flowing at the same pace as before. Then the water disappeared into the earth again and didn't re-emerge for over a half a mile. I had once hiked along the creek, and where the bed was bone dry I couldn't believe that the water would stream forth above ground again, but it always did, and at those points where the water resurfaced, I would often find pounding stones, some still with pestles, abandoned over a century before.
On the ridge, I tried to make myself comfortable on a pounding stone. Broken in half by the roots of a buckeye tree, one mortar sprouting grass, another brimming with black water, the pounding stone commanded a view of the valley below where herds of deer and tule elk and antelope had once roamed. That day, the creek disappeared in smog about a half mile from Wildcat Mountain. Cows dotting the floodplain were the only beasts I had to worry about now, not grizzly bears or wildcats or wolves.
As a young boy, my brother and I had once chased each other around a "fantasy island" theme park, a hill near a large amusement park, where the proprietors had nailed logs and branches together to look like monsters and wild animals. As I ran I would enter a state of mind where I was no longer in the present, as though I had tapped into some memory deeper than my own. Now I realized, after exploring this creek near my home in Fresno several times, those trails at the theme park were very much like the trails still connecting the pounding stones throughout the Sierra Nevada foothills. Some of the trails webbing the ridge and beyond, I suspected, were ancient, perhaps many thousands of years old.
At the theme park, and occasionally on the ridge, I had felt an absence, not a conspicuous absence, but one that could only be experienced by immersing oneself in the sense of time expanding until it no longer could be measured or defined. On the ridge, I knew, deep in my soul, that many tribes had vanished, human and plant and animal alike. Oddly, though, on the ridge for seconds at a time I felt a kind of freshness, a surge of innocence, the same that I had experienced as a child running around the theme park.
I could barely see the tallest buildings in Fresno even on a clear day. An ancient culture was now almost invisible, but on that ridge a person sometime might have had trouble convincing me that Fresno ever existed. Odder still, I would sometimes hear laughter, especially when I was sitting on a pounding stone, and I would have to force himself to remember that the tribe had disappeared from that place long ago.
The day of my outing with Blackmore, I slid my buck knife--a birthday present from him--onto my belt and packed a lunch and an unopened bottle of water in my backpack. John picked me up in his white pickup around ten in the morning, and we took the long way into the foothills, with me pointing out where to find all of the Native American village sites near the road. We held an interesting political discussion all the way to the creek about the numerous attempts to build dams in nearby public parks, how they had been stopped in the past and what we might need to do to stop them in the future. I showed John the best place to park the car and where to climb over the barbed wire.
After a short hike, I showed John all of the pounding stones and house pits on the ridge. Then we sat down together and ate lunch, gazing at the smoggy valley. I soon grew uneasy, sensing John's hatred, which had grown suddenly almost palpable.
"We can't do this anymore," I stated.
John gave me a puzzled look and mumbled, "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."
"We can't keep trying to destroy each other and the world like this," my arm swept the ridge and the floodplain below.
John frowned for a while. "Very few people, unfortunately, can see the wisdom in what you're saying," he mumbled bitterly.
"It only takes a few. Have you heard the term 'morphic resonance'?"
"Can't say that I have," John smiled.
"The term suggests that we are all connected--that when a few people learn a difficult new concept or method of doing something, suddenly a lot of people can understand it more easily. It just takes a core group of people to internalize it deeply enough. Some refer to the concept as 100 Monkeys. In other words, studies have been done that show that when 100 monkeys learn a new skill, such as using a rudimentary tool of some kind, monkeys within the same species all over the world suddenly develop the same skill."
"The question is, I suppose, what do we need to internalize?"
"It's not a new concept."
"And that is?" John grinned.
"There is unity underlying all of creation, a Universal Consciousness. We are all connected, and all life is sacred and divine."
"Excuse me, but that seems more than a little naive. Genocide and ecocide are still ravaging the world. How can you consider that a 'divine, sacred order'?"
"We can choose to act with love and forgiveness instead of with violence and hatred and anger. We can open our hearts and recognize our connection to each other."
"That strikes me as a very old idea, indeed. A little cliched, perhaps? How well has it worked so far?" John smirked.
"I don't think enough of us have internalized it yet. It's not resonating enough, but I think we are reaching a tipping point where we must make it start resonating on a larger scale or we will destroy the planet and ourselves in the process."
"You are telling me this because?" John shook his head slightly.
"We, you and I, must internalize it. I've understood recently that we are alike in many ways, perhaps too alike. I have experienced a lot of anger and hatred and pride and lust and envy. It has boomeranged back to me, the karma I mean, just as it will come back to you, probably sooner than you think. We can choose to give all that up and turn things around. We can purify ourselves completely by eliminating negativity from our energy fields."
John gave me an angry, quizzical look, "Now I'm really not sure what you mean."
"There is something in the Qabalah called the 'Mysteries of Sacrifice.' As an activist, you probably have some sense of what that means. Let's say we do speak truth to power and take on the Ag industry to stop the construction of a dam. If you remain committed to that position, you are probably going to lose a job or two or whatever career you think you have. That sacrifice, though harmful to you, has a tremendous impact on the collective consciousness of humanity. The sacrifice opens a channel for the Christ-force--the force of harmony and balance--to manifest in our world. That sacrifice alone might be enough to save the day, to inspire people spiritually to do the right thing. The sacrifice itself becomes your true accomplishment even if people treat you like a pariah afterwards."
I paused, then continued, "Whatever you try to accomplish, you have to make a commitment, which involves sacrifice. If you are trying to kill somebody, for instance, you must be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice yourself. If you don't commit yourself completely, you're probably not going to succeed. Do you want to commit yourself to saving the environment or to killing another person? The thing is--committing yourself to evil cancels out any commitment to do good. You can't do both effectively."
Blackmore suddenly squinted at me.
I was feeling a bit nervous, but I continued, "You have a choice. I know that you've tried to murder me--more than once. You need to make a commitment now, one way or the other. I'm not going to the police unless I have to. We can resolve this one way or the other right here.
Blackmore didn't move.
"I know you love my wife....Well, don't you? It's pretty obvious to anyone who is paying attention, but there's something more, some other motivation. Am I right?"
"What are you talking about?" John exclaimed as he jumped up and turned toward the car.
"If I'm wrong, just let me know!" I blurted out.
John's right hand went to his belt. "You're right about one thing," John mumbled, unbuttoning the leather strap over the handle of his buck knife. "I should kill you right now, you f-ing dumbass." He lunged at me with the knife.
I leaped up onto the pounding stone, quickly sliding my buck knife from its sheath. I was unexpectedly amused to witness how inept he was at fighting. "You've got to do better than that! I'm not going to sacrifice myself for something that's both stupid and evil! By the way, my wife knows everything. If I don't return this afternoon, she's calling the cops. Are you going to kill her too?"
John glared at me, tight-lipped.
I shouted, "You're a practical man. Think about it. What are you going to do? You are going to destroy yourself if you don't stop now. It can end here. Just drop the knife. Commit yourself to something more positive."
John sheathed his knife and trotted back toward to his truck.
I remained on the pounding stone until John went down the slope toward the creek. Then I dashed toward a lookout point from which I could see the pickup truck and most of the trails in the area. In a few minutes I could see John opening the door of his pickup and moving the seat forward. Then he grabbed his rifle, locked his truck, and rushed back toward the ridge.
Down below on the ridge, John waited. He stared at the floodplain from the pounding stone. Finally, he dashed back to his truck and drove off, perhaps fearing that I had called the police.
I took out my cell phone and called my wife. "Meet me in half an hour." Then I followed a trail along the ridge down into the floodplain, trying to avoid open spaces as much as possible. I had just enough light left to find my way to the road. If John was driving around looking for me, it wasn't likely that he'd pass by just when my wife happened to be driving up. I made it to the road two minutes before my wife arrived. She drove by once before I could run out to the road. A minute later, she came back, and I jumped into the car.
"I told you I could prove it!" I blurted out.
"Did he admit it?" my wife asked.
"He tried to kill me, first with his knife, then with his rifle."
"Did he shoot at you?"
"He had to go back to his truck for the rifle. By that time, I was already hiding. He never saw me after that."
"Are you sure?"
"He hasn't shot me yet, has he? It's a good thing we arranged to leave town for a couple of weeks. Either he might turn himself in or he might take off."
"Or he'll be lying in wait to kill us when we get back!"
"He won't even think about trying to kill you, believe me. I'm almost one hundred percent certain that he won't be there when we get back, at least not in our house, if that's what you mean. But if he wants to talk, we can talk, all of us together, and you know what? I don't think he will. He's a coward. He won't fight fair and he won't be reasonable. He has to try an' kill me when he knows he won't get hurt, like when I'm sleeping or when he can put a little poison in my water bottle or when he has some kind of advantage, like a rifle. He won't want to talk to us anymore--I'm pretty sure. He's been found out."
"But he's so practical. He won't leave this unresolved. He's too good at solving problems."
"He hasn't been too good at solving this problem, has he?"
"Don't be so arrogant. This isn't over yet."
"You're right. The last thing I should be right now is arrogant."
"There might be only one thing worse than seeing him again, and that would be not seeing him again."
"Do you want to go to the police?"
"No. You're right. I don't want to get the police involved; I don't think we even have enough evidence."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah. I just don't know who to trust anymore. We just need to start moving as soon as we get home."
When we got back from our two-week trip, we moved everything in one night, and John was nowhere in sight. Since we only moved across town, we always wondered if we would ever see him again.
After my wife and I moved, Blackmore avoided us. I don't know if I had scared him or if he was afraid of getting arrested or if he was afraid of our sophisticated alarm system. He died a few years later from cancer. If you sit by the river long enough, you will see the bodies of your enemies float by.

I continued to meditate, draining the negative energy from myself. One session, I suddenly remembered running around searching for my brother in the "fantasy island" theme park, and we both accidentally collided with each other.
"I got you first!" I shouted.
"No, I got you first!" my brother shouted back.

All poems, stories, essays, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.

Wilderness

highpr

00:00 / 05:06

HOLE NUMBER ONE

In Hole Number One, you are nothing more and nothing less than who you were that day when you explored the backyard. You were five years old. You remember letting the mantis pray for several seconds on your index finger and letting the ladybug journey around your hand--and then how you tried to catch blue dragonflies that were hovering over the bird bath. You remember the tortoise finding its way into the crawlspace under the house and the soft fur of the dog and the fragrance of the red roses floating in currents through the air, a time before you were ever abused or traumatized or vilified or demonized, a time before you began accumulating the negativity of suffering, of shame and guilt and regrets and betrayal and upheaval and poverty and loss. You can return to this time because in Apt. 31 you have performed a mental purification process, so you now sometimes experience a sense of blissful liberation, something you rarely even experienced as a child, because you have released all the negativity that had accumulated in your heart and mind, and you have become like a child again, without hatred or fear, a child with great curiosity and love for insects and reptiles and animals and flowers and all the other creatures of the earth.

(You think that you might still on the right path because you find a story near the back door....)

Bird's Eye Gilia, Lupine, and Poppies after the Rough Fire

HOLES: CHAPTER ONE

As we scrambled down to the hole, I slipped on wet moss and then almost lost my footing on unstable stones. I shadowed my Dad and Mom and my older brother until we reached a small stone promontory jutting out into the deep pool. Finally Dad set down the tackle box and baited our hooks with writhing worms. I soon lost track of time, lounging on the smooth stone and gazing at my line where it disappeared into dark water.
Suddenly a gray spider with long legs and a large, bulbous abdomen crawled out of a crack in the rock and lumbered towards me. I leapt to my feet and frantically reeled in my line, keeping an eye on the spider, which continued to approach as if totally unafraid or unaware of me. Then to my great surprise other gray spiders, four, five, six of them, crawled out from the crack in the rock and marched directly towards me.
At the same time, my brother, who had been fishing from a rock about ten feet away, dashed up river without any warning. Terrified, I jumped over the spiders, hoping they wouldn't somehow latch onto me. Then, surprised that I had escaped unscathed, I sprinted after my brother, soon discovering that most of the stones in the river bed were not fixed in the ground and not at all stable. My brother somehow scurried across them without losing his balance, so I did my best to keep up, not wanting to be out-done.
Eventually, far from the hole where my father was fishing, I encountered a large rock in my path, which proved a challenge to climb over, mainly because it was smooth in some places and sharp in others. I slipped several times, realizing as I got higher that if I fell and injured myself, there was a good chance that no one would find me. At that point, some latent power in me surfaced; before I knew it, I reached the top of the rock. I had a strange feeling that I had lost time, almost as if I had blacked out, when that power within me had taken over.
As soon as I climbed down to the river on the other side, I looked around and could not see my brother anywhere. I turned and examined the rock I had just climbed over and realized that I would be risking my life to go back the same way. At that point in the river, the hill back up to the road seemed even more treacherous than the way we had gotten down to the fishing hole.
A wave of panic swept over me. I crouched down next to the rock and tried to figure out what to do next. Then the strangest thing happened.
As I gazed at the river, listening to my breath and the rushing water, my fears suddenly melted away completely. A wave of peace washed over me. I recognized the same peace in the trees and the grass and the rocks, in the river and the sky. I wanted to sing, my soul in tune with the earth and its creatures, and I did sing a song called "Rocky Mountain High," for what seemed like a long time. I didn't know it then, but my soul had surfaced from deep in my subconscious mind, and I felt timeless. I knew in that forest I would feel free whether I was twelve or fifty-five because of the peace of the Earth and an intense exultation that connected me with everything in the river bottom. I finally remembered that I needed to find my way back to my family. I knew that my father and mother would be devastated if I did not return. Since the hillside next to the river was unknown to me, I examined the rock again and determined the safest way possible would be to climb back over it. On the way back, I hiked along the top of a small rise next to the river into an area that seemed to have been cleared by someone, and immediately I felt an eerie sensation, as if a presence was nearby, animal or human, I couldn't tell. I thought at first that my brother was hiding nearby behind an outcrop of rock. Fearing an ambush, I plopped down on a smooth stone and waited to see if he would leap out at me, and my mind shifted to a state alert to any subtle signs of movement. I heard a lizard scuttling through dry leaves and saw a rattlesnake slithering through the grass about twenty feet away. I watched a blue bird flitting from the ground to the low branches of an oak.
I was near a long, flat stone blanketed by moss, with tufts of grass sprouting out of it. Curious as to why grass was growing out of the rock in so many places, I pulled up one of the tufts and found a smooth cup underneath. I pulled up a few other tufts and found other cups of varying depths. Perplexed, I surveyed the area and noticed five large oval indentations darker than the rest of the earth.
"What is this?" I asked myself.
"Native Americans lived here," a disembodied male voice replied.
"Native Americans? You mean Indians?" I wondered out loud. No answer. "What are these cups in the stone?" I asked.
"You will find out," the voice answered.
"When will I find out?" No answer.
Suddenly the image of a woman rose into my mind's eye. She wore a green dress covered by flowers and stars and held a golden cup in one hand and what seemed like an emblem of rulership--a scepter perhaps--in the other. On her head she wore a crown suggesting the phases of the moon, her jet-black hair flowing all the way to the ground. A few animals, a bobcat, doves, and farther away, a stag, remained in her sphere, and each seemed less like companions than symbols of different aspects of her. I blinked, and the woman disappeared, but she unexpectedly surfaced again in my consciousness a few moments later as if stubbornly reasserting her ubiety.
Startled, and afraid that I had been gone too long, I dashed wildly back to the hole, only to find that my Dad and brother had vanished. Why had they abandoned me? I felt like I was falling into some black pool of suffering connecting me with the other people and creatures of the Earth. The black pool seemed bottomless, and I began to understand the pain and loss of others throughout history even though I knew that I had not experienced anything close to what many had suffered.
But I felt it keenly. "Why is there so much suffering in the world?" I whined, tears welling in my eyes. To my surprise, I received an answer, not verbal, but visual. Life forms that had once lived in the area quickly passed before my eyes, including dinosaurs and extinct animals and the first people, and I knew that they had all suffered to a greater or a lesser degree, but then I felt the deep peace of the Earth again, as if the Earth itself were communicating with me, showing me that all life is part of the peace at the deep core of existence, no matter what suffering has occurred throughout the ages.
Still stinging from a sense of abandonment, I climbed the steep incline back to the car, stopping now and then to orient myself and catch my breath. When I found the road, I discovered that the car was gone. I could see that the blue Dodge had vanished, leaving me stranded in the wilderness, with only a single-lane road, a thin gray thread of humanness, connecting me to my home in Fresno, CA.
"Why did they leave me?" I wondered. No answer. I stared down at the river, which I realized would just keep flowing no matter what happened to me or what I did with my life. Suddenly my face itched, and I suspected that I had brushed against some poison oak. When I scratched my cheek, I felt hair on my jaw. I looked at my hand and saw a ring on my finger. I suddenly remembered my wife and children, but the rest of my past had vanished. What did I do for a living? How much money did I make? Who were my friends? Did people like and respect me? None of that seemed to matter in the peace that pervaded the mountains.
Had I fallen and hit my head on a rock? Was I in shock? I had a headache, but I could not find any signs of blood anywhere. My father, I suddenly remembered, had died a couple of years after we had discovered the hole. My brother had moved to a different state. I began to remember my family and moments of vision and exultation, but so much of my life in the past had lacked the spark of divinity, the harmony and peace that earlier in the day seemed to hold everything on the planet and in the cosmos together. "I wish that sense of harmony and peace would unite us, instead of the sense of weariness and suffering that binds us together," I muttered.
Then I remembered so many people scrambling around, trying to get a leg up or to stay on top. Had I had just kept returning to the forest, where I could always let go of fear and let peace wash over me?
I started walking down the road, and a memory of a time when I had slipped on a rock flashed through my mind.
"Did I go so deep into that forest that I forgot years of my life? Did I fall and hit my head somewhere?"
No answer.

All poems, stories, essays, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.

Faery on a Flowery Path

10maj

00:00 / 04:04

HOLES: CHAPTER TWO

Rooms that Dream

As I was hiking on a path near the road, I suddenly felt like I had passed through a portal, a hole in the fabric of reality. Soon I encountered a faery on the flowery path. She appeared kind of shy but blurted out, "Mr. Mellifluous wants to see you. He sometimes sneaks into the realm that you came from, and he is waiting there for you. Continue on this path and you will find him." Then she fluttered away.

In the Courtyard

I followed the path and eventually found the run-down apartment building where I had once lived. As I entered the courtyard, the building seemed more medieval than I remembered, more like the the buildings in the Tarot Realm.

Mr. Mellifluous in the Courtyard

Suddenly Mr. Mellifluous appeared, and the courtyard seemed to change a little, like some subtle shift was occurring. "I know that you are thinking about returning to this realm," Mr. Mellifluous said. "I am here to reveal to you what negative forces you might encounter. However, I must go now because the landlord is coming. I don't want people like him to see me."

The Landlord in the Courtyard

Suddenly the landlord was standing where Mr. Mellifluous had stood. "You are way behind in your rent. If you don't pay, I will have to evict you. It's not my fault that you got sick during the pandemic and lost your job. You might have become lost in a forest and ended up in another realm for all I know. I run a business here, and you must pay up within the next three days or move out."

The Liars near the Courtyard

Suddenly a man with a lion's head appeared in the street beyond the apartment building. He blew a trumpet and spewed one lie after another. I searched for Mr. Mellifluous but couldn't find him. Then I heard Mr. Mellifluous state, "These tricksters live to deceive. They trumpet their lies to the world. They love to falsify and fib and malign. They are phonies who cheat and perjure and con until no one can figure out the truth. Their goal is to twist and distort the facts until they leave you completely in the dark, deluded and misled."

A Gollum in the Courtyard

Soon I returned to the courtyard and discovered a Gollum waiting for me. I could not see Mr. Mellifluous, but I heard his voice again. "This creature was once a man. Notice that he seems to be turning into a beast with hind legs. The man has become so obsessed with money and possessing things that he is now turning into a monster who harms anyone who gets in his way. He might seem strange or even ludicrous, but he would not hesitate to harm you or kill you and eat you."

A Witch in the Courtyard

I turned around to look for Mr. Mellifluous. When I turned back around, the gollum was gone, and a witch was standing in the courtyard instead. Suddenly, Mr. M spoke again, "Witches might try to harm you with black magic if they find out you are a knight. They want to fill good people with so much negativity that they ruin their life through illness and misfortune. No one can stop them because they the send their dark forces from a distance to undermine others. If they succeed in destroying another person's life, they feel a great sense of power."

The Obscene One in the Courtyard

Suddenly I was startled when a creature with five legs and a lion's head appeared. Again I heard the voice of Mr. Mellifluous: "These hideous freaks are nasty and gross, disgusting and lewd, salacious and crude. They love to shock the mind with their lascivious filth and foul the soul with their sickening smut. They live to soil the purest love and blacken the highest ideals. Their only goal is to make you lower than the beasts."

A Raven of Dispersion in the Courtyard

I backed away and looked around for a hiding place. Suddenly a creature that looked like a huge fly appeared, and I heard Mr. Mellifluous again: "These creatures, who are called 'Ravens of Dispersion,' do not always look like ravens. They are very good at scattering, damaging, decreasing, depleting, and desolating. They love destruction and decay, misuse and wastefulness. They want to disperse and devastate and dissipate until you lose absolutely everything. Their greatest pleasure is to leave you in ruins."

A Troll in the Courtyard

Suddenly a huge troll jumped from the balcony to the courtyard, causing some cracks in the floor and plaster to fall from the nearby walls. Mr. Mellifluous stated, "These quarrelsome savages love to squabble and wrangle, bicker and brawl. They thrive on discord and misunderstanding. They believe without a doubt that their religion and their status in society are superior to everyone else's, and their privileges should always prevail above everyone else's. Conflict is their daily bread. They live for feuds and dissensions, commotions and altercations. They will not stop until they have caused strife in all the tranquil places of the Earth."

A Hinderer in the Courtyard

I hid behind the stairs. When I peaked out, I saw a dragon waiting for him in the courtyard, and Mr. Mellifluous claimed, "These fiends often try to seem like a friend, but all they do is hamper, delay, and frustrate. They love to obstruct, interfere, and thwart. They live to inhibit and fetter and stymie, and they will block and burden and cripple you so that you can no longer continue on your path. If they can't harm you in a significant way, they might even try to kill you."

The Burners in the Courtyard

I hid under the stairs again. A demonic creature on a fiery horse suddenly appeared, and Mr. Mellifluous explained, "These fiery devils sear and scorch your very soul. They glow as they blister and broil you. Their flames ignite hatred and anger that smolders and smokes. They want to light you on fire so that you burn everything around you down to the ground. More than anything, they love ashes."

The Breakers into Pieces near the Courtyard

I backed out of the courtyard, and when I saw a warrior on a huge alligator near the street, I Heard Mr. Mellifluous say, "These creatures are known as 'The Breakers into Pieces.' The goal of these brutes is to pound everything to dust. They love to dismantle and dissolve, disrupt and disperse. They live to tear down the most magnificent cathedrals and destroy the greatest works of art. They roar with laughter as they rip apart your most creative ideas and strongest ideals. If you let them, they will stomp on your most cherished beliefs and ruin what you love."

Death in the Courtyard

I quickly returned to the courtyard to find a place to hide. Then a skeletal figure appeared. "Yes, this is Death, who has been busy in this realm for a few years, mainly because the people in power wouldn't make any serious effort to contain a pandemic," Mr. Mellifluous said. "The wealthy did not want to pay more taxes so the people of this realm could have a decent system of health care. People die here all the time simply because they are exploited and aren't paid well enough by greedy employers and don't have access to health care--many poor workers don't have enough money to go to a doctor."

A Fairy in the Tarot Realm

Suddenly I felt an overwhelming desire to return to the Tarot Realm. I left the courtyard and dashed to the path that had led me here. Suddenly I could hear Mr. Mellifluous in the distance: "Unbalanced creatures and dark forces exist everywhere in your homeland, and they are spreading to other realms throughout the world! The super rich want to rule with an iron fist, and fascism is spreading. The wealthy control the political and economic systems and are destroying the community of all life. Despite the fact that they know what they are doing, they continue to cause disastrous climate disruption on a global scale. A few who are super rich and powerful are even threatening to use nuclear weapons, which could destroy the entire planet. They will continue to find every way they can to exploit and exhaust people and resources until nothing is left. In the Tarot Realm, we strive to create harmony in every way we can. We neutralize evil and negativity so that unbalanced forces cannot flourish in our realm. If you return to your homeland, you must practice what you have learned in the Tarot Realm so that you can neutralize and harmonize unbalanced forces. You must remain a knight even though most people will be unable to recognize or acknowledge the significance of your task." Finally, as I continued on the path, I could no longer hear Mr. Mellifluous. I eventually found my way back to the Tarot Realm and discovered a faery rejoicing in a field of flowers.

Mystical Tarot Realms

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Pounding Stone in a Stream

APT. 28

(You realize you must still be on the right path because in the corner you find a box with Chapter Nine of Alternate Reality Apartments.)

ALTERNATE REALITY APARTMENTS: CHAPTER NINE

CENTRAL VALLEY MISFITS

All poems, stories, essays, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.

Tidy Tips, Bird's Eye Gilia, Miniature Lupine

APT. 29

(You realize you are still on the right path because you find Chapter Ten of Alternate Reality Apartments in the corner....)

ALTERNATE REALITY APARTMENTS:

CHAPTER TEN

All poems, stories, essays, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.

Wilderness

HOLE NUMBER ONE

(You think that you might still on the right path because you find a story near the back door....)

Bird's Eye Gilia, Lupine, and Poppies after the Rough Fire

HOLES: CHAPTER ONE

All poems, stories, essays, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.

Faery on a Flowery Path

HOLES: CHAPTER TWO

Rooms that Dream

I followed the path and eventually found the run-down apartment building where I had once lived. As I entered the courtyard, the building seemed more medieval than I remembered, more like the the buildings in the Tarot Realm.

Mr. Mellifluous in the Courtyard

A Witch in the Courtyard

A Troll in the Courtyard

A Hinderer in the Courtyard

All poems, stories, essays, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.

Pounding Stone in a Stream

APT. 28

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ALTERNATE REALITY APARTMENTS: CHAPTER NINE

CENTRAL VALLEY MISFITS

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All poems, stories, essays, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.

Tidy Tips, Bird's Eye Gilia, Miniature Lupine

APT. 29

(You realize you are still on the right path because you find Chapter Ten of Alternate Reality Apartments in the corner....)

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ALTERNATE REALITY APARTMENTS:

CHAPTER TEN

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All poems, stories, essays, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.

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Wilderness

HOLE NUMBER ONE

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(You think that you might still on the right path because you find a story near the back door....)

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