Mar Adentro

BAM! Once again, the Kindle or something else just slid off his bed and dropped heavily onto the floor. In the middle of the night, I am wide awake, once again.

“Oh no, get off me! Leave me alone!” He whimpers in his sleep, then heavy panting. A nightmare. Again. Since Donald Trump was elected president, my housemate’s paranoid bipolarity has blown out of proportion. Now he drags himself over to the ensuite bathroom just above me, in the attic, and empties his bladder in the usual old man’s way.

Through the ventilation shaft in the wall I can clearly hear the night rain’s soft and soothing sound which lulls me in and fortunately helps me to go back to sleep again.

Then the alarm on my phone goes off. First a gurgling waterfall in the front, fading away to hand the stage over to various species of birds – somewhere in the Amazonian rainforest, I suppose – chirping to their hearts’ content. In the background, condensed water is slowly trickling down, from one leaf to the next, and eventually to the ground.

I open the window in my room and see a flock of seagulls floating in the coastal morning breeze right in front of my window. It takes quite some time for my consciousness, which is still a bit foggy with sleepiness, to realise that their calls are anything but pleasant to the awakening ear.

The crescendo of the old kettle’s annoying noise heralds the imminent availability of tea water. The steaming hot liquid being poured into a big cup relaxes me. I was brought up in the mountains, but since I came to live close to the sea, I grew quite fond of the sound of liquids doing all sorts of things.

My cap and on top the helmet muffle the sounds of the street while I am on the bike, cycling to work. The rain is pelting down on the helmet and the new waterproof high-visibility jacket. I can hear and as well feel it, like little pinheads coming down on a wafer-thin sheet of glass. I forgot my gloves today and the ice-cold rain turns the colour of my hands into the skin colour of these Japanese snow monkeys.

The day’s actual overture in shower water is babbling down on my body, wrapping me in a warm, cosy and somewhat transparent blanket. This gets me ready to tackle whatever human obstacle may lie ahead of me today.

The cacophony of an ordinary open space office, I blank out with headphones and a Ravel concerto for string quartet. It carries me off into a land far far away from where I actually am. There, in the concerto world, are no imbeciles talking in moronic corporate platitudes just for the sake of sounding sophisticated.

The canteen around lunchtime is the acoustic version of the Pacific Ocean littered with tons of audible plastic waste. The silence of my after-lunch stroll recharges my battery again. Outside the office, I can even take pleasure in listening to the calls of the seagulls again.

After work, back in town. There is a storm but no rain. So there is no excuse not to go for a walk. Just along the shore, close to the roaring sea. The sound of the waves’ coming and going is like a perfectly arranged symphony to my ears. It whispers, I am the water, I do whatever I want, come and go whenever the moon allows and, of course, it pleases me. I am the sea, I will always get my way, so I don’t really care.

Dinner time at home, in the kitchen. The simple question ‘What’s new?’ triggers a rant, going from Mike Pence over Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon to Donald Trump. In my temporarily desensitised nature, I ask him if he’s had a bad dream last night, and in a swift and unanticipated counter-attack he accuses me of heavy snoring. For no particular reason whatsoever, he continues on with calling me names and starts to verbally abuse me. But that’s okay, we’ve been there before. To me this has become merely some random white noise in the background. Because after a while, as usual, he snaps out of it, apologises and tries to explain himself. I suppose being American these days isn’t as easy as it used to be. He, for my taste however, takes this running-the-country-into-the-ground-thing way too seriously. It’s not that he’s not also in the possession of an Irish passport. But I think, this is what you’d call patriotism – an concept which couldn’t be more foreign to me.

I feel like taking a bath to wash off the muck of the day. Listening to the bathtub filling with water is balsam for my spirits. Once in the tub, I put my head underwater. My ears filling with hot liquid, relaxes me. I lift my head and the water runs out of my ears again. Then I go underwater again. In and out again. I like the feeling and the sound. It sounds a bit like sea waves coming and going. The sea inside. And then, there is this quite liberating thought again: I am out at sea, and I don’t really care – about anything, at all.

It Turns Off Pain

(Please note that this is a continuation of Rite of Passage.)

 

“Am I dead now? Is this what it feels like after one has died?” I say, but no answer comes.

“Val, are you there? Somewhere? Anyone?” I say. Again, there is no reply. Only darkness that seems to swallow every sound.

“What is going on here? Is there anybody out there? Where am I?” I try, getting the same result. Isn’t trying the same thing all over again, yet expecting different results kind of insane?!

At some stage the darkness moves on and gives way to the light again. The mountainous jaws, as they were closed, have start gradually to open up again. The sun is rising at a familiar pace. That bit at least is reassuring.

With my eyes gradually adjusting to the light, I am able to make out Val’s slender figure, sitting comfortably on top of one of the pillars of piled up stones. But it isn’t until I can see Val just across from me when I realise that I am residing on top of one of those pillars myself, too.

Its knapsack is stirring again and out of it Val produces a roundish fluffy creature. The little bugger is twisting and turning in its slender hands. Then Val just lifts the rodent up to its mouth and sinks its teeth into the guinea pig’s flank and sucks until the motivation for resistance has completely vanished from the animal’s deflated body.

“Why are you doing this?” I say.

“Why am I doing what?” Val says.

“Killing these animals. First the birds and now this poor thing here. Why do you keep doing this?” Val looks straight at me, holding my gaze, yet smiling. In the corner of my eye I see how it drops the lifeless animal body nonchalantly to the ground.

“You have to understand that I live off the lives of the dying.” Val simply says, “I am merely making sure nothing goes to waste.”

“Just like this?”

“Just like this!”

“So, you are Death? You kill animals for a living?! Is that it?”

“No, not exactly. Me as a concept is probably a bit too complex for you to comprehend, given your human limitations. Technically speaking, I am Life. You may even want to call me by my other name, Love. Only Life can give, but also take life. There is no such thing as death. That is one of your kind’s quite popular misconceptions, because you people fail to see the big picture.”

“You call yourself Life, and yet you kill these animals! But wait, humans, as well? Am I here because you slaughtered me, too?“

“Your remarks are getting rather offensive now, I find. I wouldn’t want our conversation to continue if you kept going on like this. Ungratefulness seems to be strong in you. I don’t kill beings. They are already on their way out, dying. That’s what living beings do, they die. Because at some stage, if you like to put it that way, their host bodies are old and worn out. I only take what life is left in them. And redistribute it.”

A blank stare from my side gives Val all it needs to know about me and the current state of our conversation.

“Let’s just take you as an example, shall we?!” and Val goes on, “You were dying on that road, when I picked you up. On the way up to the top of your mountain, you died a little more.”

“But you didn’t suck the life out of my body, did you?”

“It looks different from the inside, right?! To be quite frank with you, I did and I am still doing it, as we speak.”

“How do you mean – as we speak?”

“Some creatures don’t put up fights, like birds and guinea pigs for instance. But for others, like your kind, it takes longer to understand the fundamentals.”

“What are those fundamentals? And what has this to do with you drawing off the remainder of my energy?”

“Well then, I am taking the energy from your dying body and directing it back into the circulation. Or better, I am re-channelling it to be creative again.”

“I am sorry, but you lost me here again.” I say.

“What I would like you to understand regarding your energy is that it is known in other circles as spirit or even soul, if this makes more sense to you?!”

 

After a while I look down to see where Val dumps all the empty corpses whose energy it is continuously re-channelling. When my eyes are on the way up again, I see that for some reason my feet and legs have become slightly transparent. A look at my hands tells me that even they are fading away.

Val notices my confusion, realises that the time has come, leans over and hands me the wineskin again. It is rather difficult to drink from the skin with gradually fading hands and fingers.

“Is this preventing me from disappearing altogether? I say.

“No, it is not. It turns off pain. And it smooths the transition.” Val says, which doesn’t help at all. “In the end, not only your body will have faded away but also your consciousness and memories of all this and the things passed, and you and your energy will eventually re-join the circulation and pass over to the yet unknown.”

“For some reason, I am failing to comprehend the painful part in this.” I say.

“Oh, it will be painful for you, believe me, I have seen it many times. The way you cling to the past makes parting so painful for the likes of you.” Val says, and adds, “But we don’t talk about physical pain here.”

My face is a blank stare again, yet riddled with question marks. And so, Val goes on, “I usually tend to have less or close to none of this kind of conversations with animals. Because they seem to have a natural understanding of the circle of life. They don’t fail to see that the finale is actually not an end but a beginning and that the goal is simply to be open to whatever change lies ahead.”

 

A look around makes me realise that the sun has disappeared and the valley is now covered by a misty yellow dome. A closer look reveals that the foggy dome only reflects the flickering yellow light coming from numerous fires. The valley itself is now a bottomless pitch-black pit. Out of the pit’s endless darkness, countless huge rock pillars stand out. On top of each of the broad pillars fires are burning. I am now on top of one of those big pillars, as well. Between Val and myself a fire is happily eating its way through the heap of bone dry wood.

Once in a while you can see how some of the fires die out. Val looks at me and points in the direction of one of the fireless pillars.

“Do you see? This was one of your kind. The fire died because she was fading away until she understood. I don’t understand why you people always have trouble with letting go. The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next. One of your famous writers once wrote this in one of her early books. And she is right.”

“How do you know that it was a she over there?”

“The fact may challenge your mind, but I am sitting at every fire you can see here, having almost the same conversation everywhere. This is you on your so-called deathbeds regretting things you did or things you’ve never risked to do or asking questions you never dared to ask before. I am your life; I am everybody’s life and I am also everybody’s realisation of that very fact. That’s how I know.”

I nod, since I am beginning to understand. Another sip from the wineskin makes me even more drowsy than I already am.

Val, of course, notices that, and with a smile on its face it gets up and motions me to do the same. Then it comes over to me. We stand face to face now. One last look at Val’s cruel and yet beautiful appearance.

“Time to let go!” Val says, comes even closer now and puts its elegant hand in the nape of my neck, then draws me gently towards it, and kisses me on my barely visible lips.

 

A pause. After which everything has vanished. There is nothing, only silence and darkness. There is neither valley nor pit, neither Val nor fire, and there is no human being, either. Then a long-stretched, booming sound – although inaudible, yet very palpable – is swelling up, causing ripples while expanding throughout the universe. Vital energy in space, re-joining the circulation.

 

The End

Rite of Passage

 

I could not tell if it was a man or a woman. The face was that of a woman, a pretty one, as I clearly recall. The lips were deep red, like blood, yet the colour seemed somewhat clumsily applied. The body, rather slender, was that of a delicately featured young man. The word androgynous comes to mind.

I had just landed with a boat on the coast of the continent of inevitable times. The weather, even though still sunny with only a light breeze, was yet urging me to move on. It didn’t seem to me that the town, an even uglier appendix to the filthy port itself, had anything special to offer. I decided to head off.

The way the person moved had something otherworldly about it. Every step, every motion with its legs and arms and hands seemed perfectly in harmony with its surroundings. No move was unnecessary or conducted in haste.

I was walking the dusty road, which was leading me outside of town, when after no more than three miles, a person suddenly stepped out of the bushes onto the dirt road; some ten yards ahead of me. I stopped. The person came up to me and put its elegant left hand gently on my right, which itself was resting on my old walking stick.

“My name is Val. Would you like some refreshments?” the person asked in a dark yet female voice. If I hadn’t felt thirsty before, after Val had asked me, I certainly did.

“Yes, please.” I said.

“Then follow me, my dear.” Val said. And with its delicate left hand, it parted a thick elderberry bush like it was nothing.

“The staff.” Val simply said, before stepping effortlessly through the row of hedges.

“What about it?” I said. But Val didn’t even turn around, it only pointed with its roundish right hand to a spot near the bushes to its right and said, “You will have to leave it there. You won’t need the staff where we go.” Where do we go? I thought bewildered. And to my very own surprise, I left the walking stick at that spot and followed Val through the bushes.

 

I could not tell – at first – if Val’s right hand was injured. Because I didn’t remember the elderberry bushes having had any kind of thorns for protection. However, Val’s right hand was clenched and blood seemed to be running in a thin red line out from inside its fist.

After the bushes, we walked up a steep hill. Even though I was in good shape, due to my journey for all my life all the way to here, I ran out of breath after only fifteen minutes of steady hill climbing. Val, however, seemed to manage effortlessly.

After a while, though, I decided to have a break. At the foot of the hill it had been just a breeze, but the higher we were climbing the stronger and colder the wind got. When I turned around to have a look at what we already had accomplished, I was astonished not to see the waters I had crossed before landing on this shore. I had run into Val only a couple of miles outside of town, so I clearly had to be able to see the ocean from up this hill, had I not?!

But what I saw could not be further away from what I expected to see. The only bodies of water I did recognise were two rivers. They were coming from different directions, bent around the flanks of the hill, and eventually converged roughly at the spot where we must have come through the elderberry hedges. But to my very own puzzlement, there were no elderberry bushes at the bottom of the hill.

On top of it all, we were not even climbing a hill any longer, but a full-grown mountain, which seemed to be located in the middle of what appeared to be a vast valley surrounded by even higher, snow-capped mountains. The valley and the mountain, we climbed, didn’t have any kind of notable vegetation, neither trees nor bushes, at all. Only grass and moss which mostly clung to the rocks, that were scattered all over the place. A dreary and inhospitable scene, I must admit.

Further up in a distance, I saw Val joyously hiking up the mountain. And every so often, I happened to see how Val raised its right hand up in front of its face. To inspect the injury on its hand. That was at least what I used to think. I didn’t catch up with Val on our way up the mountain. I held its pace, at a distance, though.

And then I saw a bird. A little redbreast was lying on the ground. It looked like it had been crushed by something heavy. Feathers were missing here and there. Underneath, tooth-marks were visible, which looked like they had been caused by a predator’s bite. Vivid red bloodstains were spreading. Otherwise, the bird seemed strangely deflated. However, this was only the first bird among quite a few others on the path up to the top of the mountain.

The sun was already setting when we reached the mountain top. We had been climbing for many hours and the refreshment that was offered to me earlier that day was now more needed than ever. But the crest of the mountain didn’t have much to offer; only mysterious piles of random rocks of different heights. And then there were the skulls and bones. On a second look, the area around the obscure rock pillars was littered with animal carcases. Mice, rabbits, rats, and among others birds.

It wasn’t before Val turned around to look at me that I saw its crimson lips, redder and seemingly bigger than before. And in the corners of its mouth there stuck little feathers. When Val noticed me staring at its mouth, its tongue flicked out, caught the feathers and sucked them in. Almost instantly thereafter, Val spat out a bloody knot of feathers onto the ground close to the rock formations.

“Welcome to Val.” Val said smiling, “Time for some refreshments, right?!” I didn’t say anything, whereupon Val took a wineskin out of its leather knapsack and drank from it. It wasn’t wine, though. Although the colour was deep red, the liquid was too thick.

 

I could not tell what I had for a drink. The way Val handed me the wineskin felt like part of an ancient ritual. Val went down on its knees, lifted the wineskin above its head and handed it over to me. Already with the first sip, I noticed the unusualness of taste and texture as soon as the liquid reached my tongue. An odourless, thin puree with a taste that comes closest to a smooth combination of beetroot, spinach and Hokkaido pumpkin. The drink didn’t keep its promise, though. It was refreshing at first, but it made me feel surprisingly exhausted later. Like a leaden blanket of fatigue descending onto my shoulders. The sun seemed to be setting quicker after that, darkness was creeping up on the mountain’s body.

“Val?” I said after a while. And Val knew immediately what I was going to ask. Val spread its arms ceremoniously and moved slowly in a circle as if presenting the outlandish scenery to me.

“Welcome to the valley of Val.” Val said.

“The valley of Val?” I said.

“This is where you have to be strong. Because this is exactly where you are supposed to pass over.” Val said without any stir of emotion. I, however, was shocked. And then it dawned on me. I hadn’t failed to notice that with every inch of the sun’s setting the surrounding two half circles of snow-capped mountains bent upwards and closed in on each other – like a pair of giant jaws.

Val looked at me and it knew that I was slowly beginning to understand. For some reason, this put a smile on its face. It didn’t take long for the sun to set and the mountain jaws to close entirely. The last beam of sunlight felt warm on my skin. Then the darkness swallowed me. Once it was completely dark, I stopped feeling anything. I suppose that is what you are going to experience at the threshold to the unknown.

 

I could not tell why Val had to bring me up here, why it had to be me, and the birds of course, and why it had to happen the way it just did. Maybe just because my time simply had come. But this remains yet to be seen.

 

(The story will be continued with It Turns Off Pain.)