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Chapter
6
 Vision |
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Hot running water, is without doubt the greatest wonder in the entire history of human endeavour. And in the entire epic of the Divine endeavour, God’s finest accomplishment, is without doubt: Marijuana. Together, the two can produce some rather interesting effects: Dropping the end of the joint into the ashtray next to the incense stick, a curl of Lotus-smoke tendrils up to Marvin’s nose. He inhales half a lungful of air, in order to add some oxygen to the marijuana-smoke already in his lungs. Then he slips back into the bath, and submerges beneath the candlelight-flickers on the surface of the lapping bath-water. Bubbles of smoke rise out his nostrils and break the surface of the water. Misty vapours dancing on the waves like the bodies of seductive sirens swaying their ghostly forms, beating a rhythm in their pagan hearts. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Heartbeat is loud under-water. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. whole body resonating with ever-slowing r h y t h m. thump. thump. thump. thump. Easy deep peace, cradles like a new born child. thump. . .
thump. . . |
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thu..m. > I see < (>> he said <<) > I see < Marvin sits up in the bath with sudden shock, water streaming out his ears, his
mind alive with the deep resonating voice of unbelievable depth and That
Heavy undertone resonates
with thoughts! It echoes A vibration shakes his body with every resonating word and syllable. Leaping out the bath, he grabs a towel, then runs into the passageway to find someone, and stumbles on Mickey, who looks him up all over. But he does not notice, instead grabs her arm and says : “can you hear the sound of my voice?” “What about the sound of your voice?” “its resonating inside me” “It sounds normal to me.” “can you not hear the echo?” “No.” “It seems to be fading away. . . .
. . and now its. . . gone.
. .”
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The Capri was overloaded with at least half-a-dozen long-haired, and/or shaven-headed young people, all talking or yelling at each other at the same time. Jim Morrison and the Doors was thumping from a boom-box on the dashboard: (...keep your eyes on the road ...); not moving too fast, but not quite slow enough for the corner, the outside mudguard scraped sickeningly against the smooth-worn tires; (...and you hands upon the wheel...). The old lady who was saying farewell to the couple, looked up halfway through a “bye-bye”, and stopped in amazement. The second “bye” was never to leave her wrinkled lips. (...Goin' to the road-house, gonna havva reeeal...). The old lady's face dropped, as the Capri careened across the tarmac in an ever-increasing curve - and slammed head-on with a sickening smackrunch into the parked Mercedes. (...good time...) The Capri bounced back slightly and came to an undignified sudden stop; the black smoke from its exhaust mingling with the white smoke from the Mercedes' now steaming radiator. (...Let it rooollll baby roll...) Before the poor dear could release the “goodness gracious me” that itched to squeak out of her orange lip-stuck lips; a particular ferocious looking young man leapt out of a window of the now significantly smouldering Capri; whilst unsuccessfully attempting to conceal a five-litre cask of wine under his stained and holey ex-white T-shirt. He first stumbled, then ran, did an improvised dance, slipped, dropped the cask; picked it up again, giggled maniacally then rounded a corner and disappeared. Another
ungainly fellow with scraggly black uncut hair over his eyes grabbed
the boom-box and galloped after him. (...Let it rrooollll ! ! !
! All Night Long...), while a short girl/boy in the filthiest
jeans imaginable threw a bank packet full to bursting of a suspicious
looking green substance in it, to another young |
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Marvin sat down on a fire-hydrant to enjoy the next scene. All the youths had disappeared except the one who had been lying in the boot, and was now rubbing a very painful looking elbow. The middle-aged Mercedes-Benz-man approached him and half nervously, half-angrily, and more than half terrified out of his wits, began questioning him: “Do you see what has happened here?” protested the victim. The young man glanced over at him, his Nearly-Afro mop of black hair, hung like a dark halo around his head, and gave him a look of total disbelief at the inanity of the question. The man repeated himself, and this time managed a splutter at the end for emphasis. Abraham's face broke, which brought a quirky kind of smile to one half of his face, and a rather shaded gleam to his one eye. After
the police arrived, filled out their inevitable forms and left, Marvin
wandered over and introduced himself to what turned out to be an Abraham
of ripe and darkened variety. Conversation twisted a bit and then turned
to Abraham who suggested that they hijack a nearby train. All it actually
carried was milk, Marvin interjected, so they thought the rewards not
really worth risking life and limb for.
{44} One
afternoon Danny, Leon, Nick (with bandanna) and Marvin entered the gate
at a chipped and unpainted house from which a strange scent was emanating.
Abraham's gangling figure swept over them at the door, his dark hair
always |
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obscuring one part of his face - “welcome” came the smile/gleam, “come inside and be seated, all who attend.” Nick's face widened with surprise as he saw Abraham's house for the first time. Most of the people that Nick knew, lived a lifestyle a little bit different from the norm: Some clothes were dirty, and scattered randomly around the place, others had been hanging for weeks on the line; which was always indoors lest the washing be thieved by the hoards of the destitute. In addition, two weeks worth of dishes would commonly lie in the sink, plus a week of miscellaneous mess would ordinarily be discarded all over the floor. Abraham's abode on the other hand was completely different. His house had not even vaguely been cleaned for nearly a year, which was as long as he had lived there. Half-eaten tins of food grew strange appendages of a multitude of colours, some of the shades of which had probably never even been seen by human beings before. Anyone attempting to throw such concoctions away is asked to leave them in place. It seems there was some kind of aesthetic form to keeping everything as disgusting as could be managed. The walls themselves were also painted different colours, and quite a few were covered in moulds, moss, food, algae and other odd growths. The wall and ceiling were widely splattered with a bright orange spaghetti-like stuff. As far as Kitchen's go, most that Nick had seen had been hostile to the nasal cavity, but this kitchen emanated a mixture of scurvy and black death that was devastatingly nasty. “Help yourself to food, make yourselves at home”, yelled Abraham, who then picked up an half-eaten tin of cat food, brushed off some ants, and had a mouthful from a spoon caked in a mustard-looking stuff, that had dried in the shape of a big drip. He offered it around. Even Marvin just looked awkward and thought to himself that a particular purple appendage looked more like eating him, than him eating it. Danny picked up a tin of green stuff and started smearing it on a mostly untouched spot of wall. He crafted it into the shape of an eye, by adding a few touches of real paint that lay around conveniently for such moments of inspiration. The
kitchen absorbed Abraham, who soon returned carrying a large black
pot with various shades of grey and brown decorating its rim. Nick
peered over the |
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edge and into the pot; he withdrew instinctively from the vile smell that attacked his nostrils, before holding his breath and looking once more. When questioned about the gunge that hung off the side and just how long it had been there, Abraham gleamed and replied “well it adds to the flavour, and who knows, maybe it adds to the effect”, he looked up, grinned with his perfect white teeth and let out a raucous laugh. Abraham scooped some liquid in a mug and gave it to Nick. Using various strangely-shaped, and variously contaminated vessels, he distributed the brew to each of them, taking twice as much for himself as anyone else. Danny looked at his wine glass. In it was a yellow translucent liquid, somewhat like tea, except that the bottom half of the cup was filled with tiny black seeds, a few hundred of them at least. The five of them sat hesitantly watching each other for a while at first, then slowly all inhaled the bitter wafts of the brew with varying looks of disgust and distaste on their faces; the gall-like puke smell assaulting their nostrils; millennia of instinct telling them NOT to drink it, yet the spirit of the moment, the thrill of discovery, the dread of the unknown, the leap of faith that only youth can take - overcame every one of them. Abraham swallowed in a couple of gulps; “drink quickly”, he sang, “it takes about an hour before the path appears.” Danny saw the gleam/smile; closed his eyes, held his breath, and with great difficulty, he swallowed. Danny found some more paint and continued decorating the already splattered and fungi-infested walls. His image of the eye had taken on quite a real appearance as it watched back at him. The others took paint and joined in - which helped to forget the expectation that they all felt. Danny turned back to the eye, touching it up with meticulous detail, here and there. It was
two days later before any pieces of the journey could be reconstructed,
as when using powerful Shamanic drugs, the idea of oneself being a single
self, is often not so apparent. Datura - the devil's weed as known
by Carlos Castenada, also suspended the immediate life memory, so that
the point of awareness is often mostly outside of the present life situation.
This can be rather disconcerting to souls who have not been around and
lived and died a few times, as older souls have a much more immediate
sense of singular selfness to start with, and not the |
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Abraham and Marvin spent the first part of their journey together, both saw a woman in Abraham's house and only realised afterwards that they had actually both seen the same woman. They decided that she was probably a discarnate spirit who for some reason had been drawn back there. Perhaps some regret, or unfulfilled desire, or karmic force had held her spirit to the house, preventing her from making her way to the next world. She did not seem confused and insane like the spirits who die without realising it; she definitely seemed purposeful, though to what purpose - neither could tell. ?Hallucinations? Not quite, but any psychic of little experience can tell the difference between self-induced hallucinations - and the manifestation of a living spirit. Once you've seen a living spirit, you know it. Fantasy is quite substantially different from Phantasy. Abraham and Marvin made the journey to the spirit world quite well and easy. However after taking the Datura in the early afternoon, what happened to Nick remained unknown until the next morning, when Buzz, a house-mate of Nick, came into their kitchen to find him with a frying pan and spatula standing over the stove. When Buzz asked Nick what he was doing, Nick replied that he was making breakfast. Buzz looked at Nick; and for the first time noticed that Nick was filthy; his clothes were badly torn, and there was blood all over his fore-arm, forehead and leg. All the buttons had been ripped off his shirt and he had long-since lost his shoes, his muddied feet leaving a trail behind him. Buzz
gaped for a good couple of minutes, with that 'What the fuck!?' look
on his face, before he realised that the stove had not even been switched
on, and that the frying pan was completely empty. Nick lifted the spatula,
flipped over the hallucination, and put the frying pan back on the stove.
He sprinkled some more hallucination over his sizzling meal and offered
it to Buzz with a drawl: 'Want some?' he said half-mumbling his stumbled
word from his stubbled face. 'Buzz's expression changed from 'What
the fuck!?' to an even more perplexed 'What the fuck!? FUCK?'. Then
Buzz noticed that the rags that were once his jeans were covered in
shit. Real genuine real human real shit! Buzz's mouth found some |
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'I was attacked' said Nick, in a half-muted voice as his attention became preoccupied with his frying pan and spatula again. He once more flipped over something with his spatula, stumbled forward, then, all of a sudden collapsed to the ground as if the bones in his body had all at once turned to jelly. He spent the next couple of days in hospital, recovered well after a couple of stomach pumps, and missed his mid-year exams, but generally remained in good cheer, except for the black moods that seemed to follow him periodically from that day onwards. Danny's journey was not as clear and untroubled as Marvin and Abraham; yet not nearly as hectic as Nick's. Danny was unsure as to when exactly he left Abraham's house, yet he was desperately thirsty. He bought a pint of milk, but the milk tasted sour; though it soon became apparent that it was not the milk that was the problem, but Danny's whole head that had become dehydrated. So he found a patch of grass to collapse on and looked up at the crazy colours of the sun, while a very peculiar nauseous tingling surrounded his body - then penetrated inward, subtly suffocating him. Someone found him there at sunset and took him home where he managed to stumble up the stairs to his second story house of cracked brittle brick, and collapsed on his mattress. Thirst of a thousand deserts... and trickles of water tickle your tongue with temptatious lust, just touch and turn to dust... and your head is ice... SHAKE AWAKE, and see the fire-grate out of focus, flameless cold iron. Frambles and jambles your mind, twisting scrambled sigh. Thirst...
Is that you Mickey? - Your form is there now - who are all these other
people? where are they from? they move in through the window and out
through the wall. They seem familiar - I recognise him... I think!
That one in the dull-grey clothes... One of the strangers... they barely
notice me... Mickey, I'm thirsty. . . |
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Danny froze as he noticed Mickey briefly, and his brow seemed to focus on something. But his mouth let out a mad scream that would shiver the shekels off a banshee; his eyes crazed well beyond mere wild insanity - a primordial beast with a primitive mind - and teeth ready to... Mickey turned and ran. Thirst... how closed and wan the faces of these people, like people waiting for a bus... Mickey? Please I'm so thirsty I think I'm going to die - help me - oh? You've turned into a crystal glass of sparkling stars. Water, sprinkle sparkle in your crystal eyes of water. Where are you? And what seemed to be Mickey and a glass of water vanished into nothing. Danny lay on the floor and watched the people walking out of the wall and through the closed door - occasionally sparing him a vague thoughtless glance. Then he noticed for the first time that seated on a broken and useless chair in the corner was an old man watching him. I'm so thirsty I need to piss. Danny stumbled to the bathroom and drank sweet juicy-gentle soft-floppy cool-happy angel-sweet heavenly-wet; so wet, water. He stumbled back to his mattress and collapsed. There
is a strange old man still sitting in the corner. Sleep.
Must not sleep - sleep is death, if I sleep then I die. |
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Come,
{46} Unusually clear sight. Church steeple neatly framed neatly in a dirty window. (Essence of decaying concrete, crumbling blocks). Then, just the barest inkling of desire and one is moving past the walls, through the door, its image barely brushes through: and now the passage appears. The journey slows down as the walls move slowly past and a door looms a distance in front, large and forbidding Yet soon it is easy to pass through it. Outside now in moody starless twilight, then down the paint-peeled flight of stairs. On the street, no cars, or flashing lights, no exhaust fumes, no people, everything sullenly still, the trees, stark and bare. Nearing Abraham's house he is suddenly in the room where they had first taken the Datura, but it is now empty and drab, the walls are unpainted; the mess is gone, the rooms barren. He looks
towards the window and his sight explodes lighter, as he sees a Victorian
building through a dirty window. The town hall, which suddenly topples
and falls over! Turning to look behind him, he sees the eye that he
painted earlier. It is alert, moving and alive. . . staring at him
and moving only |
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slightly. Then a stretching feeling from deep inside, beyond the inside of the inside. Sudden. Unable to get off the mattress, though you try and try. . . this is what it feels like to die. . . Danny
lay staring at
the darkness It feels like a flirting flame - flicking with the clinging wick. And blackness creeps
closer. . .
{47}
buzzing, blasting ringing hold on
lose the present |
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hold out
until the end of the storm.
{48} blackness... 'WAKE-UP' Shake the iced sweat from your mind. No its too much, just sink back, and the darkness will come slowly... NO! No.. no... 'WAKE-UP' - his body lurched again, and for a third time, felt the narrow hand of death grasp close at his body, and then retreat back to from whence it came. Slowly normal sight returns, and Danny becomes aware of his own name for the first time in eternity. Morning. (old man in the corner). Limbs are stiff and pained, vision very blurred, but alive. Just close your eyes and wish, and just like that, the old man has gone. The chair he was sitting on, still broken. Unable to seat anyone as it always has been. Danny slept until sunset. Leon
would not utter a single word of his journey. Or just could not.
{49} |
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A couple arrived a bit later, and wondered if anyone had anything to smoke perhaps? Someone mentioned that Stan might have some, but of course all twelve of them pitching up would be a little bit on the rude side of obnoxious. So they tried an old trick, leaving at different times, in two's and three's; and all arrived at Stan's house innocently in their separate groups. Just to visit. A slightly
sceptical looking Stan greeted them without diminishing smile, scratching
his longish sideburns, as the number of visitors steadily increased
to a dozen. They then proceeded to smoke his whole stash, though Stan
did not seem to mind too much at the time. Though he may have suspected
some sort of conspiracy.
{50} They scrounge the dirt bins, beg for bread and sweets and video-game-tokens, sniffing glue and re-smoking cigarette butts. They sleep in the gutters, storm-water drains, and half-dead houses. Few wear shoes, and their feet have grown hard against the tarmac that flows through the growing scrubland. But it seems that when the centuries pass, and the last remnants of colonialism fall to dust, that the street-children will still be there. In little gangs, playing, fighting. Surviving. As the concrete turns to grey lifeless dust. And is consumed by the wind. And devoured by the red rich living dust of Africa. When
the nights are warm, and the Southern Celestial Hemisphere glows brilliantly
across the sky. Who needs clothes or houses? When the veld is lush
and the cows are fat and docile, and the beggars can make a living without
lifting an eyelid, then who needs civilisation? |
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{51} The speed with which the fire grew, was only overtaken by the speed with which Abraham stripped, and began running and leaping around the fire, naked and dangling; whooping and cackling with laughter just a little too quick to be completely joyful. Carolina and Marvin laughed for a bit, and then decided to join in the dance, spinning around, until their clothes flew off in all directions. Carolina was still in pain, the bandages still tight around her torso, strangely half-naked and hobbling, yet still gleaming as the fire lit her eyes. Alice at first felt very self-conscious, and slowly eased out of some of her clothes - but no-one paid her much attention, because by now Abraham and Marvin were in a frenzy, screaming at the top of their voices. Carolina stopped dancing because her half-healed wound had opened again. Then, she noticed Alice's shy figure, half-undressed, just watching. Carolina hobbled over and eased the garments from Alice's fearfully clenched fists. 'You
don't have to take everything off, just something more than usual -
the shedding of the clothes is symbolic of the serpent shedding its
skin, it celebrates the new replacing the old, the beginning of a new
cycle. Then the four of them yelled in collusion, and screamed as if
they had just been released from some terrible chain that had hung around
their necks. Alice faltered, and felt self-conscious again, because
she was the only one that still had some clothes on. |
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{52}
shed your shameful clothes
life and laughter.
{53} A chill wind turned harder, its cool chorus sweeping through them, then it abated. The naked crackling and bubbling energy of the fire roared back to life, and soaked them in the heat of leaping cajoling flames, crimson and orange, then scarlet again. Rain joined in the melody, pelting down in large warm drops that stung and burnt as they exploded on the skin, intense with momentum. Fire sizzling, hissing, spitting and spluttering; and giggles at the slippery slips of wet skin, , , slip into slits of lips, , , lithe and thin-limbed. New year came and went, that year was 1992 AD. But
what is time? It changes us, and lets things die and be born. It flows
like water, sometimes churning, sometimes meandering; it makes us aware
of the fickle nature of the Universe, how our lives become transient
flickers, changeable and brittle. But time allows us to transform,
to view things anew, to see every stone on the street, as if it is being
seen for the first time. |
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Next Chapter
7
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