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6. IN PERSONAL TIME
Home
in time for supper, I found a visitor seated at the table, a distant cousin of
my father's. I don't remember meeting Uncle Jack before, but I had heard about
him—he was referred to as the black sheep of the family. He sat erect in his
chair, his body wiry and tense, a faded jacket hanging on his shoulders. The
well-trimmed mustache under his delicate nose made him look foreign.
Mom
and Dad seemed delighted to see the much talked about drifter. We lingered at
the table long after dessert was finished and listened to stories of his
travels in faraway lands and unheard-of countries.
During
a pause I asked him, "How do you know what turn to take, where to go
next?"
He
smiled. "It's simple. Once you get the hang of it, there's nothing to it.
Let's say I'm on the coast of Africa feeling homesick. A week or so later,
while having breakfast in a joint up the street, I hear a guy say that last
night a ship en route to the States has docked in the harbor. I go to the
harbor, find the ship's captain, and tell him I want to go home but have no
money for a ticket. He tells me to show up at six on Tuesday morning and gives
me a job. Off we sail, and here I am."
He
shrugged his shoulders. "All I had to do was know where I want to be next,
then keep my ears and eyes open. With ears cocked to hear specific things and
eyes on the lookout, I pick up what I need to hear or see. Before I began
feeling homesick, people would talk about ships bound for the States every
other day, and it had no effect on me because I'd say to myself, so what, let
them come and go, they have nothing to do with me. But not this time. This time
it struck the bull's-eye. Don't things like this happen to you?"
"I
think so. A few months ago my teacher was talking about deserts. I wanted to
learn more about the people who spend their lives in such a hostile
environment, and on my next visit to the library, on the librarian's desk
"The People of the Kalahari Desert" was staring up at me. Is that
what you mean?"
"Exactly.
Of course, wanting comes first—it fixates your attention on specific things.
And by wanting I don't mean wishing for things that money can buy. It's wishing
for changes in your life that will take you out of one situation and place you
in another." He leaned back in his chair. "And for that you need to
listen to your innermost self and also observe what is going on in your
surroundings. When the two converge, it's like a lightning bolt had struck you,
and you know the time has come to act—to take the chance which offers itself
and so make change happen. You've simply got to listen to what your inner self
is saying."
Dad
shifted uneasily in his chair. "Jack, don't you think, that the heart can
be misleading, especially for the young?"
Sitting
up straight again, Uncle Jack continued. "The yearnings I'm talking about
are not rooted in the heart, which is finicky and apt to change from moment to
moment. They spring from the quick of your being, from the soul or the spirit,
or whatever you call it. Actually, it doesn't feel like wishing, but more like
anticipating for something to happen, like a premonition hanging in the air.
And you know it's not frivolous when this deep unrest begins to cast a shadow
on your daily activities. That's how you know it's time to move on, to change
either your surroundings or your frame of mind. If you wait and do nothing, by
choosing to ignore that internal urge you invite more dangerous changes than
those your spirit urges you to make."
Flashes
of me in the cocoon swirled through my mind. Uncle Jack was looking at me.
"A true yearning pulls you toward thoughts or actions that renew your
sense of self—make more of you, not less, give hope, incite, push you on."
Now I
understood. Shutting out the world, as I did by spinning a cocoon, did not make
more of me. Isolation made me shrink and shrivel, and that was the opposite of
what my Uncle was talking about.
Uncle
Jack's eyes remained on me. He looked deadly serious. "Though most people
tend to ignore these deep-rooted longings, they never really go away but gnaw
silently at the core of your being. Some may even haunt you for the rest of
your life."
A
silence settled over the table. Somewhat hesitantly, Mom asked, "And are
you happy, Jack, about where this kind of life has taken you?"
Playing
with his fork, Uncle Jack answered softly, "Looking back on it all, I have
to say no, not really. As you know, I wasn't fit to hold a nine-to-five job.
Not all of us are. But where I failed, really failed, is that I never found an
objective or had a dream to guide me—something that would validate all my
wanderings. Some kind of a scholarly pursuit could have done it, or an
exploration of sorts could have taken me to certain places to gather specific
information. And if the pursuit proved to be worthwhile, I could share it with
others—write a paper, publish a book. I traveled in search of something, but I
never gave enough thought to what it was I was really searching for. I guess I
was hoping to stumble upon it—actually expecting for that dream or vision to
come and hit me in the face."
Looking
straight at me, Uncle Jack added: "You must do better than that, Alya.
Start forming a vision of yourself doing something exciting in the future. The
vision doesn't have to be all that grand. It only has to spark your curiosity
and lead you from one point in life to another." A faint smile washed over
his face. "That I did not have."
Mom
had been listening to Uncle Jack with a distant look in her eyes. "Not
everyone is fit for that kind of life either," she said. Then she turned
to look at me, and seeing how attentively I listened, said firmly. "It's
getting late, Alya. Uncle Jack is staying with us for a whole week, there will
be plenty of time to talk about many things."
At
the door I turned and asked my Uncle, "Is it too late for you to have a
vision?"
After
a long silence, he finally looked up and said, "Maybe that's why I came
back... to find out."
Climbing
the steps to my room, I grasped what Uncle Jack was talking about—not of the
world out there, not of the rational world, but about that very personal world
we call our own where we make sense of it all. So the mind was also divided,
part rational and part irrational. And why was the irrational, made up of
dreams and all sorts of unexplainable urges, constantly baffling the rational
mind? Did dreams have a logic different from the linear logic of cause and
effect on which reasoning depended? If so, what was this logic? Where would one
look for it?
That
night I dreamt that I was walking along a path across a meadow, a shortcut home
I was taking often. Halfway along the path I felt an urge to look back. Seeing
nothing in particular, I walked on. The urge, however, persisted, and before
leaving the meadow, I had to look back once more. Now in the middle of the
meadow stood a blue door with three white steps leading up to it. I walked back
to the door, climbed the three steps, and knocked, and the door opened a crack,
and a hand holding a blue lollypop reached out. I took the lollypop, the hand
withdrew, and the door shut tight again. Curious to see who was so generous, I
knocked and knocked again, but no one answered. Walking around the door and
seeing that it lead nowhere, I opened it.
Behind
it lay an empty chalk-white room with another door on the opposite wall. I
crossed the room and without knocking opened that door as well. Behind it was
another empty white room, only smaller in size, my head almost touching the
ceiling. Feeling crammed already, I thought I'd better go back, but when I
turned around, the door I had just passed through was no longer there. So I
opened the door in front of me and found a smaller room, and then another
smaller still. I was already crouching when I crawled into a room so small that
I could hardly move. A doorknob was pressing against my shoulder, and when I
reached for it, a door behind me sprung open. Like a contortionist, I pushed
myself limb by limb through the small opening, and when I finally emerged on
the other side of this obstacle course and stood up, I was ankle-deep in a
sunset-pink cloud.
Drumbeats
underfoot prompted me to stand still. And as I stood, inches away from me a
bold head pushed up, then the shoulders, back, and buttocks jerked upward as if
the person were climbing steps inside the cloud, man or woman I could not tell.
Suddenly cloud-dwellers were everywhere, walking as if on different levels
fixed below the misty surface—heads bobbing here, torsos swaying there, others
wading knee deep. All the heads were bald, the faces pallid, expressionless,
all wearing identical tunics the color of the cloud, all moving in step to the
thumping beat underfoot.
I
asked a passing cloud-dweller, "What do you people call yourselves?"
Somnambulant faces turned in my direction as if searching for the source of the
sound.
"What's
the name of this place?" I inquired again, but the cloud dwellers merely
looked at each other as if they were hearing a foreign tongue.
"Where
am I?" I insisted.
Now
they all started talking at once in a language I didn't recognize, pointing at
the sun, the moon, and me standing among them, as if I were part of some
celestial triangulation. As if I held the answer to their misplaced or
misbegotten lives, stuck on some interim, dreamy level of existence from which
they wished to escape. But how could I point out a direction if I had no idea
where I was, only a wish to find the door behind which living seemed as
effortless as breathing.
A
muffled, cloud-locked voice echoed in the air:
"Here
the laws of attraction will guide you. When your heartbeat quickens, trust
whatever offers itself to you, and it will take you where you want to go."
By
then the inhabitants of the cloud were swarming around me, and in a swirl of
confusion I was sucked under.
Falling
through layers of clouds, I landed softly in some deep underground passage, the
light so dim that it took a while for my eyes to get used to it. What I saw was
not encouraging: on the right and the left of me the walls were lined with
doors, all shut. Most of the doors were marked with strange signs—some had deep
scratch-marks on them, some were stained with blood-red splashes, and others
were bulging, as if the space behind them were stuffed to bursting.
Noticing
an unmarked door, I knocked three times. A man with a face of bark opened it a
crack and looked at me. "Yes?" He asked in a small voice as if
talking were painful, his eyes imbedded in the cracks of bark blinking fast.
"I'm
looking for the door to a hidden chamber..." I blurted out.
"A
hidden chamber? Never heard of it. Try the last door on the far right. The one
who lives there might know of such arcane things."
I
thanked him, and walked over to the last door on the far right, the hollow
echoes of my footsteps running ahead of me. I knocked twice on the door, and an
old woman, overgrown with pale blue lichen, appeared in the doorway. I told her
what I was looking for, and she said, "Yes, there is such a chamber. But
I've forgotten where it is or how to find it." Her voice as soft as the
whisper of wind rolling over a mossy stone. "Try the last door on your
left. You might have better luck there," she said, shutting the door.
An
elderly woman, a spindly shrub for hair on her head, opened the last door on
the left, the few buds tipped shocking green promising change. After hearing
what I had to say, she pointed to the dark shadows down the corridor, and
catching her breath, she said, "You might—you just might—find a passage
there."
I
thanked her, and entered the shadows.
Groping
in the darkness, I climbed a steep and slippery incline, water dripping
insistently measuring the passage of time. And when at the end of the seemingly
endless corridor I came to another closed door, grim forebodings invaded my
mind. Heart pounding, I raised my hand to knock when squeaking the door swung
open by itself.
A
blast of white heat hit my face. Squinting I saw a radiant clock the size of a
blazing sun suspended in mid air, its many hands pointing in all directions—the
short ones upright were moving fast, the long ones grazing the outer
peripheries of the clock's blank face. Some kind of a universal joint at the
core rotated all the hands from left to right, one timekeeper taking care of
all the movements at once. The clock was timing the duration of every event in
my life, from start to finish: the short hand I was looking at was timing the
healing of a cut in my finger; a much longer hand was ticking away the time
allotted to my schooling, the longest one, its point outside the clock's rim,
was timing the span of my life. The monotonous hum of an event's duration was
set to end after a hand completed a predetermined number of revolutions; the
short hands wound up to run for hours, days, or weeks, the longer ones for
months and years. The glow was so intense that I had to turn away.
Not
far from where I stood a flock of white geese was feeding on the sun-bleached
grasses lining the banks of a reflective pond. I took a step forward, and the
invisible clock chimed the hour of beginnings—that's it, is it, go for it!
A
startled goose lifted its head at the sound. Seeing me, she waddled over.
"I
found the door, I've seen the clock!" I shouted excitedly.
The
goose replied curiously. "You have? Then come with us!"
I
followed the goose as if pulled by a magnet, and by the time I reached her I
was so small I could hardly see over her shoulders. She lowered her white wing
to the ground, and climbing the feathers like rungs of a ladder I sat down on
her back, legs dangling around her neck. With an outbreak of cackles the flock
took off, and in a V-formation I was carried away.
And
what a delight it was to be in the air, to feel the wind in my face! To see
from up high the airy distances waiting for me. all directions favorable! The
whole world was offering itself to me—all for the taking! I could hardly
believe what a promising life lay before me! This is how life was to be lived!
This is how I was to live from now on!
With
my heart pounding, I leaned into the wind and shouted, "Take me down! I
have no time for this!"
"Time
is the password to change!" shrieked back the goose, slowly beating her
wings.
Eager
to plunge into my new life, I insisted. "Where are you taking me?"
"We're
riding a current of changes and that's what you need!" answered the goose.
"Change in time will take you from point to turning point, each point
bringing you closer to where you wish to be."
"How
will I know which turn to take?"
"A
host of sensations buzzing inside you will tell you.Ttrust what suggests itself
to you."
We
were flying over a range of snow-capped mountains, and feeling a chill I buried
myself in the goose's feathers. I must have dozed off for when I looked down
again, we were on the other side of the mountains. There, in a field of summer
wheat, the flock descended. I thanked the goose for the ride, slipped off her
back, and regained at once my normal size.
Close
to where I stood, white cranes were dancing. Struck by the beauty of their
courtship ritual, I watched them standing still. A crane glanced over and,
without interrupting its dance, asked in an air-splicing voice, "Can you
dance?"
I
blinked. "Not really..."
"Too
bad, we could have taken you to heaven!"
"I've
no time..." I started to explain.
"Then
look for what's moving—moving away from where you are." Still dancing,
step-by-step the crane moved closer. "Don't be fussy about the
direction." It spread its wings, raised its head. "Hitch on to the
nearest thing—the thing that moves." The crane made a slow turn, the tips
of its wings brushing the ground. "Hitchhiking will take you there."
"I
must go back..." I said, anxious to start living in earnest, already
envisioning and planning ahead my new adventurous life. I had no patience to
listen to what I was supposed to be doing next.
"In
this time frame planning is futile, it invites frustration." With a hop
the crane rose into the air, then descended, wings raised high slowly slicing
the air. "Toss a wish into the future, then listen to—listen to where it
falls, and then trust whatever offers you a ride in that direction. Take the ride."
After making a half turn, poking its beak in different directions, it
continued. "The road is not straight—it will twist and turn, and if the
vehicle starts slowing down or changes its course, look around again."
Wings spread wide, legs dancing to a silent beat, the crane said, "Change
will bring you there." Raising its head to the sky, it added, "There
are no shortcuts here."
As I
stood there mesmerized by the spectacle, it dawned on me that the doors I'd
already opened were but a testing of my perseverance, whether I had the
gumption to go on. Only now, after I'd found the clock that timed every instant
of my life, only after seeing the wide-open distances, was I ready to take the
unmapped, uncharted road paved by sensations. The sweet urge that brought me to
this point was the taste of the lollypop. And I knew at once that failure to
act—to trust what offered me a ride—would be a waste of the time allotted to me
on earth. All that was missing, was a vision flung far enough into the future
to guide me. But that was to come. Animated to the brink of bursting, in a
hurry to start living my own life for the first time, I was ready to run in any
direction.
The
sharp voice of the crane stopped me. "Rushing events? Impossible. In this
personal—personal time zone, change is the vehicle while time merely takes the
measure of distances traveled."
"I
must move on, my time is ticking away!" I said anxiously.
"Look
around—see anything moving?"
A
turtle was walking by. Drawn to it, I climbed onto its back, and as soon as it
started walking, I regretted my choice of the turtle at once—if only it would
go faster... if only I had looked around more... if only—
"You
in a hurry?" asked the turtle in a low, misty voice that came across great
distances.
"Very
much so! There is so much to do!"
"I'm
going as fast as I can," said the turtle, not increasing its pace.
"Hold on... Hold yourself tight..."
The
hypnotic tone, the slow-rolling waves of sound calmed me down. And ever so
slowly a vibrant, deep hum filled me with a delirious sense of well being, as
if in its ancient wisdom the sky itself was leaning over me, taking me under
its lofty wing. And while the turtle took its time plodding onward, I tried to
clear my head of the bickering noises that disturbed the calm.
As if
reading my mind the turtle spoke. "Runaway thoughts are like hurricane
winds... Let them be, don't fight them. They'll spend themselves in due time.
Nothing lasts forever."
"You
mean, doing nothing will help me stay the course?"
As if
talking were useless, the turtle was silent for a while. Finally he answered,
"Letting things be is not doing nothing. It's a decision that impels you
to be not anxious but vigilant." His words sank into me like a handful of
sun-warmed pebbles. "If you take the path that suggests itself, which is
the path of least resistance, you will not be resigning passively but entering
a flow, attuning to what otherwise might pass you by or throw you off course
unnoticed." Pausing again, as if waiting for his words to sink in, he
continued: "And though at times doing nothing may look slower, and
sometimes it takes longer, you will waste neither time nor energy on frenzied
activities and, without missing a beat, will reach your destination. The path
of least resistance is paved by hope sprung fresh at every turn."
The
turtle stopped so abruptly that I rolled off its back. By the time I stood up,
it was nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly
abandoned, alone under a tall, unfriendly sky, I looked around. There was
nothing to see but a quicksilver streak on the faintly glowing horizon. The
streak was pulsating, getting wider and taller, as if an ocean were rising.
Rolling in my direction, the wall of water was gaining on me fast, already nine
stories high when in the heart of this towering menace I saw a whirling watery
eye fixed on me. The wall was almost on top of me when, gripped by a will
greater than mine, I stared back at it. My unblinking gaze shut the watery eye
and the wall stopped in its track.
A
voice pure as a lark's crossed distances. Faint at first, it soon flooded the
air with song. I looked up, and there, on top of the menacing wall, in the high
cresting foam, a huge drop of water was bobbing. Illuminated by a hundred suns,
it cast an eerie glow.
My
heart leaped when the sphere started bouncing to the rhythm of the song, and
when it reached the far edge of the water wall, against which a rainbow was
leaning, the sphere slid down the majestic chute of colors. Bouncing away, it
left a trail of flames behind it. The heavenly voice struck a note so high and
pure that I took the sphere to be the radiant essence of my being—that which
kept the inner clock ticking. When the voice hit a still higher note, I ran
after the sphere. And as soon as I stepped into the trail of flames, I caught
on fire, and though flames danced over me, I did not burn. Whatever I touched
on the run—a blade of grass, a drop of dew, a stone—I set them on fire, yet
nothing was consumed.
I
caught up with the sphere, and when I gathered it up in my arms, in the duration
of a single high-pitched, triumphantly glorious note, it shrank to the size of
a glowing white pebble. I gasped, lest the sphere vanished all together, and
that instant the pebble nestling in my palm leaped into my parted lips and I
swallowed it. The song fading, the sunspot settled behind my breastbone. And
with a singleness of purpose it tugged, the tug familiar to birds in
navigation.
With
an overwhelming sense of freedom—every direction inviting, every door wide
open—I met the world with lungs full of shouting. "The shadows have
lifted! The journey is neither dream nor tale!"
Listening
to the internal clock chime bells of jubilation, I breathed in all the freedom
my lungs could hold, and drank up all the light I could scoop up with my hands.
And true to the nature of waves, the joy slowly ebbed away.
What
I heard next was Mom's voice. "Wake up, Alya. It's time to get up!"
And I ebbed back to the world of words.
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