A HUG AND A TEAR
It didn't surprise me to hear, “Mom?” out there in the moonlight. I had felt Sam's approach ever since coming up from the notebook Sari had handed me.
“What's going on, my man?” I asked, stock response to my little boy, all grown up.
“Well, Running Man and I have remembered a whole lot, and they are planning on taking off here in a little bit,” he paused and drew a line in the ancient red dirt with his sneaker.
“Well, I sure hope they don't charge a lot for a ticket. Did you bring any cash?” I asked
Sam looked up from his idle drawing to look at my face. I was smiling, as I handed him the notebook. He took it into his hands, chuckling, reset just as quickly as always. He opened the notebook.
Twenty minutes later, Sam joined Sari and I on our rock. Sari was still serenely floating. My ass was cold and sore, bony as it was. “Mom,” Sam said, “I just can't believe it. It's a dream come true, Mom.”
I got up and gave him a hug. He'd grown into the gentle giant I always had known he would to be. Well over 6'6” and 350#, he is the most gentle person I have ever encountered. He'd incorporated his lesson mighty well.
I looked up into his sweet, bearded face, and saw his rosy cheeks, peeking out from his tangled red beard, were wet with tears.
LILY'S GONNA GO NUTS
I called out to Sari in as unobtrusive a way as I could, to make sure she knew we were ready to head back. Before I could get the “ee” sound pushed out of my mouth, the path ahead suddenly lit up real bright, and as we turned the corner of the rock formation, there floated Sari, glowing more strongly than when she'd been doing her yogi thing.
“You'll get used to it,” she said, grinning, as she moved ahead of us, lighting our path back to the astronomy hut.
Lily had done what I knew she'd planned on all along. There she was, sitting on the bench outside of the hut with Running Man, filling her old pipe from the leather pouch she'd asked me to pack. Good Virginia tobacco was her favorite, and we'd just gotten a big bag of it last week from Delores' daughter.
Lily packed the pipe, and handed it reverentially to Running Man. He said some words, and then it lit up. That was pretty cool. There wasn't a spark or flint or anything. One minute the bowl was dark, the next minute, it was smoking, as was Running Man. He let out a little grunt of pleasure, then exhaled a big ball of smoke. I reached for my Viceroys and lit up.
I approached them, sat next to Lily, slipped my free hand into her free hand, and then just leaned back, enjoying the blanket of night we found ourselves settling under. It felt good, sitting here in the dark, surrounded by these amazing people. How could things get better?
Then I remembered.
I turned to Lily, knowing that this was, for us, once again, a very before-and-after moment.
At this, we were veterans of the highest order.
Still, I think, she's probably gonna lose her shit.
MORE INTRODUCTIONS
“Yes, dear,” Lily said quietly, looking up at the stars, knowing full well I was now staring at her with full focus, focused intent.
“Well, I got some news about our vacation, and I wanted to know if I can clue you in,” I said, as matter of factly as I could.
“God I hope it's the water. I really do think a cruise would be best,” Lily mused. “I need to do some talking with the whales, I think. Don't you feel that would be good?” Idly, she added, “It just seems like a logical progression,” and trailed off. I sat beside her, grinning from ear to ear, fit to burst.
“Well, I think that is a lovely thought,” I agreed. “You know how I feel about our whale brothers family. Heck, where is that whale song CD anymore? Do you remember?”
She'd gotten so tired of starting every morning listening to whale song, my routine as a single hippie, that she'd flung it out the window one morning. I'd fished it out of the bushes and stuck it in my sock drawer. The next morning, no CD. I have to listen to whale song on my phone now, with my headphones firmly plugged in, please.
Lily's face crunched up in an uncomfortable way, that told me all I needed to know about the fate of my CD.
“But, dear, I think they have plans for us that will make you very happy,” I began. “There is a woman here, Samisari, she goes by Sari, and she's Running Man's sister, right, Running Man?”
“How right you are,” he said. He then morphed, and it made a really weird noise, I'll have you know, back into the park ranger.
I couldn't control my tongue, “What is it with this persona. What is your name anyway? You are like sex on a stick in this meat suit. What's your name, anyway? Can I call you Sexy Man?”
“I like Al. Shall I tone it down a little bit, sister?” he asked me, very earnestly.
Lily interjected, “God, no!”
Everybody blushed, even Al.
Lily looked at Al, then at me, then just gave up and looked up at the stars again. I looked at Al, nodded to him, and was quite relieved with how seamlessly he took the reins.
NEAT INVITATION
Al apparently did dial it back a bit, because when he took off talking to Lily about their plans for us, we were actually able to pay attention to the content instead of his delivery. He adopted the persona of a benevolent big brother, muscle bound and sweet, all wrapped up in a park ranger outfit.
Sam, Eddie and Sabrina had found us, and as Eddie smoked a clove cigarette, Al began.
“There has been a bit of a conspiracy with the three of you, getting all of this arranged,” Al adjusted himself on the bench. Nearby, we heard scurrying and a yelp, then silence, then the crickets again. God only knows what goes on at this time of night in the desert. We turned our attention back to Al.
“The only one here who has not seen the notebook is Lily,” Al pointed out. Sari floated over, and with a bit of a flourish, handed Lily the glossy, gold-crested notebook.
Twenty minutes later, she looked up at us in full-on enchanted mode.
Within the pages of the notebook is a holographic experience. Do you remember the scene in Harry Potter, when he gets yanked into one of Voldemort's past self manifestations through the pages of a book? Well, it was sort of like that.
You open the notebook, and the awareness you once had, of your itchy scalp, the night air, that someone's watching you read a fancy, glossy white notebook with a godl crest stamped on it, all of that goes away.
It's as if a stage of activity opens on a stage right in the center of your awareness. And, clearly, this particular holographic loop lasts precisely twenty minutes. Twenty eight with commercials, I'd imagine.
EXCHANGE PROGRAM
It turns out the the notebook is like a fancy, joyous invitation. The Pleiadian Council had decided that it was high time to get our civilizations communicating consciously, and they'd become aware of our eagerness and aptitude from Bashar's people.
We were to come to learn it was quite the interconnected network. We were all pretty well known to one another in these circles.
So at first, when all this started to come into our lives, we had to get over the high weirdness of it all, that “we're the chosen people” crap that comes up for anybody who finally crawls off the wheel and starts getting aware of the true nature of things.
When we would discover a new level of awareness or ability, we have just come to expect a period of plasticity, when our identities would sort of slide around the new consciousness, the new possibilities. We called it the ego-eggo dance, because, even with all our practice, our egos get just as fragile as egg shells when in the middle of these energetic shifts.
So here we were, thinking that this could never happen, not really, because there is no way we can become more expanded than this, this is it, and then BAM, a new level of experience. It can make a person feel special. But that fades. Then the miracles begin to start looking like the norm, and then, it's just all a matter of staying in the flow of it all.
So, here were Lily, me and Sam, trying real hard not to get big heads about what we knew was to be our next adventure.
Impeccably timed, Sari said, “You understand, everything has to start somewhere, so to speak. We are, after all, still playing with linear time, here. And as such, somebody's got to go first. There are small collectives, such as your family, many individuals, and many large groups, they are all coming to us now. You three are part of the first wave, you see.”
Ego satisfied, feeling balanced again, we proceeded.
Sam cleared his throat, still holding onto the stick with which he'd been drawing in the sand. “Well, it seems to me,” he said, “that we've, actually been making this trip all the time, in our sleep. I mean, that's where we go, after all, or that, among other places, actually,” he just had to add. “It's just that we're going to do it fully aware this time. Do I have that right?” he asked Al, in a clearly private way.
Al laughed, patted Sam's back and said, “Brother, you understand.”
THERE'S A KIND OF HUSH
We sat with that then. There was an uncanny stillness in the air, and a pregnancy. Do you know the feeling in the air right before a really, really severe storm hits? Yes, that sort of stillness.
And then, it happened again.
Only once before in my life has it happened, but it's so very improbable to be impossible, doubly impossible for it to happen twice.
Suddenly, it seemed that all over the globe, as one, all the creatures on earth went silent.
ONCE UPON A TIME
When I was still in high school, I had had a UFO experience that began with all the crickets in the whole world going silent all at once. Then came a ship, and then lost time.
It's an unforgettable event, when you no longer hear something that should be there. It's like when you stick your head into the water of your bath, and you can no longer hear. It happens every time, but it's still so surprising, because the deafness is always so complete.
Well, there we were, in complete darkness, only the moon lighting up our frames, silence. As still as a warm, starry bathtub.
Al stood up then. He walked away from us, and as he did, his form morphed into Chief Running Man, but much larger than he appeared to us initially. Everything was still in perfect proportion, but now he must have been fifteen, sixteen feet tall.
He lumbered over to a cliff face, and he place his arms, all the way up to his shoulders, into a hole in that rock face. As he did so, he howled, and we all jumped. Each of us held a fear for him, mine having been that he'd had his hands lopped off by a booby trap, like in that one National treasure movie with Nic Cage.
But, no, that had been part of the ritual. He did that so that our fear would jump out of our energetic bodies, for our inspection, so that then we could get to the honoring, and release, using that one fear as the symbol, a totem, of our fear selves. The fear self dissipates in full light.
The ceremony continued, with we understanding its significance and meaning while requiring no additional gestures, no song, no words.
Once he turned from the cliff face, the dress of a great warrior-dance unfurled from him like colorful angel's wings. He started a dance that was as holy as it was profane, so rich with self knowledge and deep acceptance of The Other as Self, Self as Other.
Soon, I could see all of us, big as he was, dancing around him, with him, all of us balls of light, dancing, morphing, chanting, laughing.
This went on for who knows how long. There was a natural ebb and flow of the dance. It was a good thing. A ritual we all seemed very well versed at. It was fun to watch all of us, these little slivers of personality, dancing in our clothes, shaking our delicate hands, stomping our calloused feet, while still, bigger, higher, but within the circle, there danced our lighted up souls.
