It is night here in the Oasis, and that is rare. The Oasis usually hangs in the inbetween times of sunset or sunrise, because I dwell far too often in possibilities.

But tonight is not one of those times. And so stars burn fiercely above, each one a beacon to the next step towards desire. With a thought the roof above my quarters in the Hacienda is gone, and the light shines down on me with cool, cool clarity.

From Wikipedia:

James Truslow Adams coined the phrase “American Dream” in his 1931 book Epic of America:

“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.

Winds sweep in over the Oasis, winds from the East that blow through the lush greenery, making it sound like the ocean rushing in. The stars look close enough to touch, and so I do…

“Really, this much thinking can’t be good for a person. Why am I doing this again?”

“You’re not thinking. You’re conjuring. And it *is* good for you.” Harley and I are up on the ridge, looking out over the Jungle. The house in the clearing below the ridge is gone.

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This morning is not a morning for lounging; there are things to be done! I simply do not know what things….

The Oasis is quiet today, and everyone seems busy taking care of life. I wander the paths, and feel slightly out of place and at loose ends.

“I have plenty of things to do,” I say to Ishmael.

“In the outside world, you have plenty of things to do,” Ishmael says.

“I don’t usually come here when that’s the case,” I reply.

“Hmmm,” Ishmael says, and gives me a wink. It’s strange to think that I have to find a place for myself in my own place, which is, essentially, in my own head.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Harley says with her usual impatient twinge to her voice. She’s appeared out of nowhere, but then, that is not unusual in the Oasis.

“I thought you said I’d have to explore,” I say. Well, that’s *something*, isn’t it?

“A quest!” Ishmael says with the lunacy of a sidekick.

“You want to come along,” I suddenly realize. “Does curiousity kill angels?”

“Often,” Ishmael says, and he is not smiling.

“Harley,” I say, “why is everything working out now, and last week it wasn’t?”

Harley shrugs. “What’s different?”

What’s different? I feel better. I feel like there was something I couldn’t get enough of, and then I did. And that having whatever that was slaked now left enough time and attention to parcel out among other parts of my life. And at the same time that one need was fulfilled, something else that was overwhelming feels to have left. All I can think of was a huge monster sniffing near the place I was hiding, but then overlooking me and leaving instead (Shire! Baggins!).

“There’s a metaphor in my metaphor,” I complain. “Can’t I just think in straight lines?”

“Then you’d have been crazy a long time ago,” Bagheera says affectionately. I pet his great big head and he butts me playfully.

“Where have *you* been?” I accuse. “I could have used your help.”

“Then ask,” Bagheera says, without a trace of bite, figuratively or literally.

“Which would be the other problem,” Harley muttered.

“Fine,” I reply. “Then where do we start?”

“The Jungle,” Harley says. “You’ve left it woefully untended. You shouldn’t ignore gifts. Especially when given to you by a god.”

“Mercy,” I say, throwing myself down in the Conversation Tent.

Darzee cracks a lazy eye. “You give up?” She’s all snuggled in with Balthazar. It’s a warm, lazy day.

“I’m done in,” I acknowledge.

“Well, you’d have to be,” Harley says. “Going on like you have been for way too long.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re insufferable?” I ask her. Harley is my worse-if-wiser-self, and also is the sole keeper of any and all creativity that I might ever possess.

“Often. Though usually it’s Anne saying it. Speaking of, is there any particular reason you’ve been letting her have her head lately?”

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I think I want too much at once.

“Not possible,” Darzee says. We are sitting in the Conversation Tent, lazing about and chatting idly.

“How do you know these things?” Balthazar asks, half awed and half frustrated.

A question I’d love an answer to, but a thoughtful voice breaks in on the conversation. “It’s not wanting too much. It’s wanting it all right now.”

A man made of blue lounges in the tent. He is not a man; he has simply chosen to look like one. He is a water dragon who followed me home from a Chinese exhibit at a museum a few years ago. His name is Tau.

“There you are,” I say. I have not spoke to Tau in months.

“I am always here,” he reprimands me lightly. “You have such trouble listening.”

There’s no point in going over that. How does one correctly balance life in two worlds? I route the conversation back to the topic at hand.

“How can I want it too soon? According to all reports, once you line your thoughts up with your desires the universe should bring it to you *poof!* In an instant.”

“You know that’s not how it works,” he says. “That’s just how you *want* it to work.”

“What do you mean?”

“An instant is never an instant,” Tau says. “*Poof* is never like snapping your fingers. In other words, you can’t get something for nothing. You can want it, and you can be in line with it, and the universe can bring it to you, but without motion there cannot be shifting, or change. You move, and in your movement the opportunities come.”

“So you have to move towards something to get it.”

“Exactly,” Tau says. “That’s your biggest problem. You’ve already got the physics of it. Initial inertia is the hardest to overcome. And in this particular scenario, the universe can’t overcome it. You have to push. You have to start the movement. However hard it is to get momentum up, that is what you have to do. And that is why it seems to take so long. Because you have to get continuous motion going. Once you have that, the universe can work with the energy you’ve created.”

“That almost makes sense. But why is it so hard to get things in motion?”

Tau sniffs and leans back in his chair. “Oh now that,” he says. “That’s the thing you keep struggling with and making a huge mess out of, isn’t it?”

The grassy hill above the Faire is warm and drowsy with sunlight. The elves are busy below, constructing God-knows-what in the groves between the trees.

“What are they working on?”

“Don’t you know?” Balthazar asks, amused.

“Rarely,” I reply. “This whole creativity thing is bailing wire and duct tape.”

“You could work on that,” Darzee says. She has a leaf, shaped like a delicate spade, and a sketchbook. She is sketching with her finger, and it marks on the paper like graphite. It reminds me that I downloaded a drawing program for my iPod so I could practice drawing whenever I wanted to.

“I could?” I ask. I lay back, too lazy and weary to take her very seriously. The sun is warm and nice, and baking in it is much more pleasurable than thinking.

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I am standing by the river, watching the bonfire. The flame warms me until I am too hot, but I do not back away.

“So,” Anubis says.

I turn my head to see him walking up to me. He wears his jackal-head and is tall and thin, his skin ebon-black. But at each step the sign of the jackal melts away until he is a bronze-skinned man with dark eyes and hair. His complexion is rather ashen, and his dark eyes are sunken with eons of wisdom.

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I shake Ismael’s arm. It’s not moving but I continue trying to shake it anyhow.

“TBC has a *you*?”

Ishmael looks disgusted. “Of course he does. Everyone does. Everyone means everyone.”

“I want to meet him! Can I meet him?”

Now Ishmael looks amused. “Sure.”

“In the Conversation Tent?”

“If you like,” Ishmael says. His mild reaction to my excitement gives me a twinge of annoyance. I hate when I am excited and others don’t share in the fun. I punch his arm.

“Ow. Look, I talk to angels all the time. It’s of no great consequence to me to talk to another one.”

“Well why didn’t you suggest it to me before?”

Ishmael looks uncomfortable. “That’s not really the way it works,” he said nervously. “That’s a little too….meddling.”

Bagheera snorts. “Idiot pansy angels.”

Ishmael glares at the panther. “I’ll get him,” he says, and vanishes.

“C’mon Bagheera!” I rub the big kitty’s head. “We’re going to meet TBC’s angel!”
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4 of Wands, ©Stephanie Pui-Mun Law

I don’t even know who to ask for help. I feel like I am overwhelmed by possibilities on so many sides that I don’t know where to look first. I am standing on the gate wall of the Oasis, looking down over it, trying to decide.

Seph comes over to me. He lowers his great eagle head for a pet. “If the answer is not within,” Seph says, “look without.”

I try to surround myself with wisdom. “Will you go flying with me?”

Seph snorts. As if I have to ask a gryphon to fly. I hop onto his broad lion back and we are sailing across the deserts on warm, bright thermals.

An answer from without meant calling on one of the Ladies. I did not know whom to call on. I didn’t even know if my question was about love or meaning. And then suddenly I know.

“Seph,” I call out. “Please, take me to the garden of Anath.”

I am a wood tiger. I don’t dabble much in Chinese philosophy, because it feels very foreign to me. There’s thousands upon thousands of years of nuance to it that I simply don’t get.

But I got this one. A bit of a description from a meld of my Western astrology sign (Libra) and the Chinese:

Love acts as a motor for you. Thanks to it, you can move heaven and earth and achieve feats. Your love affairs are never tranquil they are ordinarily fraught with storms and reconciliations, desires of freedom and oaths of fidelity. In order to reach sentimental happiness, you should in the first place find good interior balance.

This has shifted everything in me like a earthquake. But there is more land now, more room. A different vantage point. A way out of the same old wall I’ve been beating my head against.

Love acts as a motor for you.

It’s time to do.