All Roads

Up at four thirty to drop off a vehicle, return to the casbah, get our shit together.

I’m with Lucas and Rachel for this particular adventure. Supposed to be a couple chicks coming along which bodes well for old Sensey. We are to be together at 5:30 to make all the ferries, connections, directions and what-not. The chicks aren't there and we can’t wait for them. Rachel and Lucas look to me for judgement. Fuck it, I sigh. All roads lead to Rome. Same position I took about Tim’s week long waffling on whether he was gonna make it or not. He’s a guitar virtuoso and his axe will be sorely missed around the fire but what’re you gonna do? All roads lead to Rome and if he’s to be there he’ll be there. If he ain’t he won’t. We take off.

We’re hooking up for a weekend with some Hopis to whom I am acquainted for a mind-bending weekend at Rachel’s cottage. These folks travel around and offer vision-quests and sprititual transcendence for a hefty price, a nice dollar if you can get into it, to be sure. We are old friends so there is no charge and they too will seeking visions on this particular weekend.

Rachel laughs about something I said the night before at the party, said she wants to make it into a t-shirt. Somebody’d asked me something and I responded quite simply that I “admit and regret nothing,” before stumbling into an end-table and upending a full tray of drinks. Rather than getting pissed at me (and how could she) she went to the trouble of writing the expression down. Like I’d forget it. I liked the sound of it too.

Hanging on this big rock shelf that will be entirely erased with the tide before the end of the day. It is our haunt but only for so long and it is absolutely perfect. Little pockets of life within the rocks. Sublime. The perfect place for a vision quest. What I need. What I seek this day more than anything else.

Lucas bangs away at the guitar. He’s found it, the raw skeleton of ‘Folsom County Prison’ and I’d need no more than that. Did I not sing it all the way up that treacherous path through the mountains, racing in a pick-up truck to meet up with my old friends in the first place? Tim could nail the thing perfectly but Lucas is coming at it from a whole different angle and it's bloody perfect. Tim is not to be here, not now, and he ain't.

One of the girls (who’d made it up there after all, God love ‘em) tells me to sing it deeper. She doesn’t know. I’m singing young Johnny on this one. Meaning I’m gonna go deep but only where it really needs it. I bust it out and I’m nailin’ it and every time I go deep I look at that girl right in the eyes and sing it to her like she’s the only person who can hear me. Fuckin’ A. I think Johnny’d be proud ‘a me. Even if I do change a few words around here and there, like those folks in the train ain’t drinkin’ coffee but whiskey and smoking 'fat' cigars rather than 'big' ones. Think Johnny’d approve of that too, that he understood a little improv for effect.

The girls see a starfish, marooned and dried amongst the rocks and worry good naturedly about its survival. One tries to peel him off, to rescue it, and I stop her. It is a part of its Life. The tide will come in, in time soften up his shell, he will release himself from the rocks and return once again to the ocean. He’s just waiting for one of Life’s most reliable buses.

I conspire for a kiss. Tell you something, I don’t mind keepin’ it to myself. Personally. Do it all the time. Promise not to tell and never telling. Keeping it only between lovers. You? She is to meet me behind a big tree. Just a kiss, one kiss and one kiss alone. I swear upon it. We’ll see.

One of the girls seeks a rock shaped like a heart and I find it for her before she even finishes the sentence. It is thick and rough, like my own and it is as beautiful as it should be. It is a moment of magic, not between a Man and a Woman but between Man, Woman and Something Else. It is that Something Else that I seek to commune with on this day. If I am to make it with one or both girls then I’m certain that will happen, but transcendence of the Mortal realm, if only for a few fleeting seconds, is a tougher nut to crack and I seek nothing less. It has been too long.

Lucas is communing with the Hopis. He has a set of bongo drums and they have various instruments of percussion. The music stirs my heart, makes me feel larger than myself. I feel watched for a second and cannot shake it until I look across the inlet at a vast, black rock. It radiates a brand of energy that my mind is particularly hip to at the moment and I know that if my vision is to be met, this be a place of magic. I am to go there. Immediately. As I am now. I go.

I walk into the water, still clothed and begin my swim. It’s a long swim, burdened by clothing and sandals as I am, but the drums give me strength and make return impossible until I have met my vision, whatever it be. Tired at the half-way point, so tired I think of ditching my sandals for my own safety and survival then realize they could be used for my safety and survival instead. I would take them in my hands, transform them into paddles if I have to. But the beating of the drums keeps my strength, and I reserve this strategy for if and when I would truly need it.

At this point something large and white swims right beneath me and I have time to wonder what nature of beast it be. I haven’t an ounce of fear, not for even an instant. If this white thing, whatever it be were to drag me out to sea and eat me then that is my destiny. It is to be. See? My blood, bones and soul would never become closer to Oneness with the Great Ocean than being torn to bits at the teeth of some great and savage beast. All roads lead to Rome. Oneness. I’m struck there, floating on my back and knowing in my very soul that this was my lesson, my message I was and am supposed to learn on this day, the force and Truth of it making it undeniable. Lesson learned and I’ve not yet reached the Great Rock, which bodes well and I’ll tell you why.

The Gods don’t spend a whole lot of their Time throwing all sorts of lessons at you. Us Mortals are fickle and distracted easily. It may be an inevitable byproduct of our Mortality or we may just be numbskulls. Regardless, I assure you, the cosmos teaches its lessons to you one at a time. And guess what, folks; you’re fucked until you get it. You keep dating the wrong people, making the same mistakes and follow the same damn cycle over and over again til that lesson is learned and Change is made. I digress. Point is that my lesson was already learned and I hadn’t met my Vision yet or even reached the place of magic. The rock meant something more. Other things were possible.

There is a rare opportunity that Mortals sometimes have, my Hopi friends tell me, which is a communion of sorts. With the Gods. With God. With the Cosmos. It takes the right mind at the right Time and circumstance but it’s doable, has and does happen. If any mortal can, I have faith in myself that I too can. If not me, who? If not here, where? If not today, when?

I reach the shore and climb the face of it this obsidian behemoth. Where ocean meets sky I ride the rock like a steed into space and speak my piece:

“If there be a sentient Being more powerful than We of the Mortal realm and if that Being deigns at times to commune with Man, I ask for such communion. I swear before you that no Mortal Man alive or dead is more receptive to your message or signs than I who stands before you here and now. Speak, if you will."

I look to the Heavens and see an eye open above me in the clouds, looking at me. It turns its focus just to the left of me where I notice, right away, a face built into the rocks, a craggy, all knowing face with the same eye I’d seen in the clouds. It speaks, I listen. I speak, it listens. I see another face and it too speaks. To it I listen and when in turn I speak, it too listens. Then I see thousands of faces in that rock, all of it speaking and listening even as I speak and listen. This, communion.

I’ll not tell everything that was said that day at the rock, for a Man’s destiny when revealed is best left to himself but I will tell you what you need know. All those faces were all the gods. They were Allah, they were Christ, they were. The message they give me on this day is that all those faces, those gods are One. As is the rock underneath me, the large white shape that had swum beneath me on my way, and as am I. I am Allah. I am God. I am the rock. And so are you.

The rock tells me all it has to say and all eyes in all faces turn, look down into the crevice that splits the rock right up the middle. I am to descend to the very heart of the rock. There is something more there for me, the magic is not quite finished.

The Hopis tell me that when the Spirit world and Man successfully commune, the gods often give that Mortal a gift of sorts. I require nothing more than the gift of this Higher Insight into that which is the Universal Oneness of all things, but I am not a fool and would not risk offense. I climb down to the heart of the rock, my sandals threatening mutiny at every turn. I slip at one point and nearly tumble to my death but I have no fear. What more suitable place for my bleached bones to decay and become a part of the larger One than in this place of great magic? Could I ask for a better place, if not time? Regardless, it is not to be on this particular day. All roads lead to Rome, all Rivers to the Sea, eventually. I reach the heart and there it is. My gift from the cosmos.

Rather than swim back I decide on the long walk around the shore. I’m not ready to speak with my friends, I have digesting to do, reflection. This reflection goes on to the moment I write of it, will go on until I’m silenced forever. If ever. Onness makes you think on these matters. How can One truly be gone if One yet remains?

I snap from my thoughts as darkness falls about me. How long have I been ruminating on this? Long enough for me friends to have built a fire and for me to be stumbling in the darkness, apparently. For the second time that day I feel a presence, behind me this time and undoubtable when I hear a low growl that turns into something of a roar. I turn and look and all I can detect in the darkness are blazing eyes. Big blazing eyes. I am unafraid.

The gift from the Gods was this tree-branch honed by the forces of Nature into a perfect spear, and though it be thick and rough it is every bit as beautiful a gift as one could expect from the Gods. Blunt on one end, sharp on the other. A walking tool if needs be, a weapon also. I'd hefted it in my hands and thanked the Powers that be for my gift, and made to them the following oath:

“I’ll not hurl unless I mean to strike. I’ll not strike unless I mean to kill.”

When I turn to face the beast in the night I am comforted by the weight of the thing in my hand. I slowly circle the beast, discerning in the darkness that I am face to face with a large bear, ravenous and crazed, species indeterminate. He saunters in the direction of my friends and I’ll not allow his passage on this day nor any other. I’ll stop him from reaching them or die trying. Maybe I’m the crazed and ravenous one. Regardless, he’ll not pass on my watch, one way or the other.

I hold my staff over my head and speak from the very pit of my stomach so this creature knows I’m not fucking around. And I’m not.

“I mean you no harm, creature. You and I are One and it serves my purposes just as well to let you live. Turn in your path or force my hand.”

It saunters forward, my hand forced. I strike him quickly right in the snout with the blunt end of my staff. These beasts have thick skulls and I know better than to think I’m gonna knock the sucker out butI might scare him off. Or piss him off worse. Fuck it. All roads to Rome, all rivers to the sea, eventually. I land a home-run swing to the temple that backs him up a few steps. He climbs to his feet and roars a blood-curdling battlecry. I do the same. Both beasts. One beast.

Mindful of my oath to the Cosmos I lift my staff to shoulder height in my right hand. I hurl, it strikes and it strikes to kill. I’ve struck the beast in the heart and its howl of pain brings me no pleasure nor sorrow. I slay him in the defence of those I love and in the ways of the Ancients I eat his heart, I drink his life-blood. We were and are one, and always will be. My spirit animal is attained.

The darkness lifts. Has a day passed or was it ever even night? I return to my friends, dizzy but so alive. Rachel greets me and tells me she believes we will always be friends. I’m filled with the love I always have for her and tell her it is my most fervent desire for it to be so. And it is.

The girls tell me of an expression in the yoga culture and it cannot be more perfect in the face of all I have learned and that has transpired on this day, blows me away again. “Namaste” they tell me is a means of greeting in which you are really saying

‘I am in that place within me that comes from truth, love and oneness and if you are also in that place within you then we are one.’

The vibe I’m tripping on these chicks are already totally hip to. All roads, I think for the billionth time that day, even as I meet one of my little yoga buddies for our clandestine kiss. It is sweet and rich and paves the way for the perfect ending for the perfect day, a mad, passionate, sweaty session on the rough floor of the cottage, trying not to make any noise but not caring in the end and when we come we cum as one. It is every bit as beautiful as anything else I saw that day. the next morning I was asked of it and I said only what I needed, that I admit and regret nothing. I was told I was a brat but it went no further.

I go back the next day to where I'd killed the beast and there was no trace. Had its carcas been claimed by the tide, taken to sea and joined the ocean or had it ever even happened? I'd never know. And I'm cool with that. It is to be that way.

Namaste. And thanks to my friends. I love you.

iSenseChange

RandomMP3age: “Say Hello to Heaven” by Temple of the Dog. Totally random, I swear it to the Cosmos to be True.