I Could Be Wrong

139.

 It was either the magnificent mind of Kurt Vonnegut or the well spring of spiritual richness of Richard Bach from which the rapid eye movement session germinated. A dream so fertile that even I, as innocent bystander, stood awestruck by its depth of field and color palette.  I remember dream thinking that I my long tardy ship had finally come to port and I had been hired as cinematographer for Avatar III.  A second later I was a soaring butterfly looking for a Yes album cover to land on and take a thirty-three and a third spin. Stimulated by the splendor of my kaleidoscopic surroundings, I hear a melody, soft and pure calling my name. I recognize it as the song of my soul, fitting perfectly between the minor-key disappointments of the past and the eight bar anxiety blues of the soon to take place. A quarter note captures my attention with an unmistakable accent on the now. I did not exist in the opening, but now, this sudden shift in awareness and WHAMBO, we got a whole new variation. Listen to this CLOSELY, and with a little help from the cosmic philharmonic, you might see, hear and feel some not-so-subtle changes in tone, pitch, frequency and vibration. Please also take into consideration that it was forty years ago, four decades in the past, that you witnessed from thirty-three thousand feet the same powerful musical passage of boom, and a mountain named Helen’s top is gone, her lid blown sky high, ashes spread across the mountains, past the plains and into the imaginations of a million sleeping poets. 

I fully indulge in this deep restorative light show. I can feel the tension leave my tired body and wish it could last a half-hour past eternity. But I have been here too many times before to expect that by doing the same things the same way and wistfully expecting different results just because it suits my current needs or cravings, is, even in a vivid sexual dreamscape, a valid definition of an unhealthy relationship with reality. 

Such are the cards I have been dealt in this paradoxical game of existential solitaire. 

Just prior to my entrance into this modern alternative wonderland I took the notebook I have been faithfully making journal entries into since well before the memorable date in 1980 when I was transitioning from Los Angels to Seattle for the second time and sat in the belly of an aluminum bird at a height that put us ABOVE the plume, and read a few of the entries from the chapter, dated: MAY 1980. 

It is like yesterday. I am putting thoughts onto parchment much like I do today, and the thoughts are the same as those of yesterday. What is all this about? What is its meaning? Who am I? What am I? What is my connection, responsibility and duty? In one of the more interesting passages I recorded my tossing of the Chinese coins and the resulting textual hexagrams of divination. The book of changes, never failing to offer a solution to an issue - assuming one is dedicated to the relentless pursuit of becoming a superior man - answered thusly when I asked, wholeheartedly, “What is it that I should do, who will I become, and which career path will challenge and fulfill my desires to be among the superior men whose valor, wisdom and compassion is spoken of so often in these texts?” I cringed while reading the pompous, sophomoric rhetoric, but the intent, my fervent vocation to excel and be challenged by the masters, is, and remains to this day, sincere. 

It has been forty years. The practice continues. The challenge endures with relentless tension and dramatic implication. You might say that I have found my calling, or you might consider this all a neurotic and extreme fascination with the esoteric art of war amid a quest for peaceful mitigation. 

In this third-level relaxation body and mind are at rest, a peaceful and harmonious multi-dimensional opera of pure light and energy. Under these all too rare conditions, with the physical and the emotional in perfect sync, I am always amazed by how quickly the spirit asks permission to join the party. 

We are in full swing with the universal big band when I remember the line from Vonnegut (or Bach). Upon completion of an existential oratory that might cause Socrates to blush, Kurt, Richard, or perhaps even myself in a former REM lifetime, ended a brilliant meaning-of-life soliloquy with the caveat,

“But I could be wrong.”