“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.
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?”
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?”
I have pulled Darzee up to the top of the thick adobe walls of the Oasis. We are sitting with our legs dangling over the edge, looking out over the lush greenery. To our left, Seph rises from his perch over the Gate. We crane our necks to watch as the gryphon launches himself downward to crash into the brace of ill-meaning spirits below.
I never know what they are, but there is always something or another trying to force its way into the Oasis, with no intent to enjoy it, only to destroy. Are they negative thoughts, or bad intentions, or harmful emotions? Are they mine or do they belong to others. I look away and back out over the Oasis, following the bright blue winding of the river.
“I’m feeling like I haven’t gotten anything done,” I say to Darzee.
Balthazar watches me put a canister on the ground. “What’s that?” He asks.
“Napalm.”
“Oooh dear. I’ll get Darzee.”
“I wasn’t planning on using it on you, you know.”
The sun is directly overhead, and the Oasis bakes. The blanket of heat is mildly comforting, but not enough to distract me. The Bonfire before me burns without heat. The symbol of fire is all I need, and it won’t throw off warmth until the sun sets. The river slinks by behind the Bonfire, quiet and smooth, looking to keep out of my attention.
“I am Shethged,” the warrior replies. “This is Vantoo. Now get out of the way. We are destined to fight this battle to a bloody end.”
“Really.” I turn to Ishmael, who has walked over to a safe distance. “They can lie to me?”
“You lie to yourself all the time. Incoming.” I hear the swish of the blade and I know I can’t do anything to stop it. This is going to hurt.
Except that I am surrounded by glowing pink energy, shimmery and translucent. I turn to see the warrior’s blade stuck in the pink energy. She is tugging at it, but the sword is stuck fast. I hear chuckling coming from the many-tentacled thing.
Finally I have time to come back to this image.
On Monday I met with Lori and she did a process with me. Her processes generally involve her asking me questions about a subject that is making me uneasy that I asked for help dealing with. The point of the asking is to listen inwardly for an answer.
My answer to one of the questions was this:
Two figures on a plain. One is a woman warrior in full plate mail. She doesn’t have a helmet, and she has long blonde hair. The other is some sort of monster. Most of the monster is outside the image, and all that I see of it is three or four tentacles. They are fighting each other. They are dirty and exhausted and both spattered with blood.
My unconscious is, if nothing else, creative.
“It is created,” Anubis says. “There, in the jungle is the house you wish and the life that you desire. By the power of your will you have created it. By the strength of your desire you have created it. With our help you will find it. Because when you feel frustrated or angry or upset or depressed or anything negative all of us, by the bond you have called us here to witness, will remind you of the feel of this happiness. We will bring you here to the ridge and encourage you to step off into the life you are, to forget the life you have. And you will remember which way it is that you need to walk to get there.”
Anath takes my hands in hers. “Continue in this way, little lion,” she says, “and you will have need of me no longer.”
Hathor has come, and I am so glad to see her I throw my arms around her. “Every day you come closer to me,” she says. “I salute you and all that you are, and I cherish your vision in my heart.”
The others give their well-wishes and fade away. Ishmael comes over to me. “Do you see now?” He asks. “It must come true. There is no way that it cannot come true. Let the universe do the math and know that it is true.”
“Yes,” Balthazar says. “But for the love of little fishes, girl: keep walking!”
We laugh, and all is well, and all will be well, and all is well.
I drop Balthazar’s blanket from my shoulders and stand up from the settee.
“Call Darzee,” I say. “I need your help.”
Balthazar grins at me, a smile full of happiness and pointed teeth. “I’m going to like this, aren’t I?”
“I hope so. I hope we all do.”
The words are barely out of my mouth when Darzee appears before the fireplace. There is no dramatic entrance, she is just simply there. She too is an air spirit, but she is an elemental. She began as a simple sylph, but through bonding with me (she is my familiar as much as I am hers) she is now an elemental, strong enough to effect the weather and in service to angels. All I know on that point is that ever since I picked up Ishmael (or he picked up me), Darzee has been working for him.
That makes me wonder–do I work for Ishmael, too?
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