45 Love

Undreamt of miracles proliferated day and night, night and day for a week, two weeks, three weeks, four, five, two months, three months, four, five, six. I yearned to go to sleep so fantastic were my visions and so true and I yearned in my sleep to wake so powerful and so firm were my realities and so strong and so good my new commitments and so beautiful my friends, so wondrous and alluring their bodies, their shapes, forms, voices, their sexes, ages, experiences, lives—I loved them, loved them, loved them, I had never known love like this, I wanted to embrace them, join with them, fuse with them, swarm them, hold them, hug them, kiss them, protect them and provide for them, help them, or as often just watch them, listen to them, hear them, be with them, be present near them, hear their stories, pasts, memories, confessions, dreams, hopes, fears, questions, answers, visions, ideas, hymns, and poems.

Their song.

Their lives were inconceivably beautiful to me, perfect to me, and so my life was perfect to me, too, and so in my sleep I soared above the earth in flight and woke one night lying on my back in the bottom of a swaying wooden boat rowed by a strong, heavily breathing, straining man across a vast, black, shoreless, motionless space and sea, and as I lay with my eyes closed, or open in the dark, I did not know which, I wondered in awe at the rocking and swaying and heaving and rising and falling of the boat to the simple dip and pull of the oars and I heard the chanting and singing of choirs of men whose sleepbreathing breaths were together the spirit and power of propulsion for the bigger, greater boat, the great boat and vessel which held us all, the mahayana, the big boat crossing the vast, the infinite, cosmic sea toward our one great collective great awakening.

Reunion.

The infinity and infinitude of life astounded and astonished me and dumbfounded me and I saw the trillions upon trillions upon trillions of starry choices available to me in each day, in each moment, the fantastical and unspeakable variety of facts and words and silences to be chosen or to be rejected, to be performed or to be left unperformed, to be spoken or to be unspoken, to be maintained or to be violated in every moment and in every instant that lay between birth and death.

I communicated with the spirits of men long dead, with the spirits of Jesus and Buddha and Shakespeare, and I was shown marvels and mysteries and cosmic axioms and laws and the sources of inspiration and superstition and I experienced the totality and end of time and timelessness.

Now.

I read the minds of the living, both present and distant, and received and sent thoughts by the simple fearless expedient of opening my mind and surrendering it and welcoming them into it.

Moons turned red and orange for me and fattened and swelled to twice and three and four times their normal size and bright white stars fell near me from the night sky—radiant spheres like bright lamps—in slow motion to the dark green fields surrounding me.

Books opened at my touch to pages meant for me and guided my eyes to their fierce glowing sentences, and songs filled my ears and mind with personal melodies intended especially for me and my experience.

I received gifts, gifts, gifts, more gifts, a succession of rare, priceless gifts and arts and strange intricate objects and devices and instruments; and children loved me, and laughed at me, and for me, and sought me out, and clapped and squealed joyfully for me; and in my dreams their mothers, and mothers to be, and many women loved me and desired me and kissed me and petted me, and let themselves be petted, and kissed me and kissed me and held their lips to be kissed, and their breasts and nipples, and fondled me, and brushed and combed my hair, and bathed me, and washed and rubbed my feet and massaged me, and whispered to me and laughed, and whispered and laughed, and leaned and rested upon me, and played round and about me, and whispered, and drank, and ate with me, and loved me, and made love for me, and to me, and were clean and naked and unashamed.

It was more still, more yet—

It had been, too, an immersion in ice cold water, a sudden dunking, a baptism, a chill splashing in a carnival tank, a cold wind, a cold air, a brisk breeze about my head as if my hair were standing on end.

Electrified.

I had been drunk with the spirit, splashed with it, soaked sopping, drowned by it, drowned in it, sunken, saved, and rescued, resuscitated, and reborn to new life.

Certain of it!

It had become a reality instead of a word or a concept.

It was not an idea.

Neither thought nor feeling, it had an objective reality.

It was an invisible visible fire, a white fire, a white light, a bright radiance, a clear light, its fire and flame as real as the gas of a blowtorch and I was reminded of the Pentecost and of tongues of fire.

Jesus!