Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

  "Do you think that maybe if you say impossible over and over again a thousand times that things will come easy for you?"

  "I'm sorry. It is possible, and I'll do it when it is right for me to do it."

  "He walks on water, folks, and he is discouraged because he doesn't walk through walls."

  "But that was easy, and this . . ."

  "Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them," he sang. "Did you not week ago swim in the earth itself?"

  "I did that. "

  "And is not wall just vertical earth? Does it matter that much to you which direction the illusion runs ? Horizontal illusions are conquerable, but vertical illusions aren't?"

  "I think you're getting through to me, Don."

  He looked at me and smiled. "The time I get through to you is the time to leave you alone for a while."

  The last building in town was a feed and grain warehouse, a big place built of orange brick. It was almost as if he had decided to take a different way back to the airplanes, turning down some secret shortcut alley. The shortcut was t rough the brick wall. He turned abruptly to the right, into the wall, and he was gone. I think now that if I had turned- at once with him, I could have gone through it, too. But I just stopped on the sidewalk and looked at the place where he had been. When I put out my hand and touched the brick, it was solid brick.

  "Some day, Donald," I said. "Some day , . ." I walked alone the long way back to the airplanes.

  "Donald," I said when I got to the field, "I have come to the conclusion that you just don't live in this world."

  He looked at me startled from the top of his wing, where he was learning to pour gas into the tank. "Of course not. Can you tell me one person who does ?"

  "What do you mean, can I tell you one person who does. Me! I live in this world!"

  "Excellent," he said, as though through independent study I had uncovered a hidden mystery. "Remind me to buy you lunch today . . . I marvel at the way you never stop learning."

  I puzzled over that. He wasn't being sarcastic or ironic; he had meant just what he said. "What do you mean? Of course I live in this world. Me and about four billion other people. It's you who..."

  "Oh God, Richard! You're serious! Cancel the lunch. No hamburger, no malt, no nothing at all! Here I had thought you had reached this major knowing-" He broke off and looked down on me in angry pity. "You're sure of that. You live in the same world, do you, as . . . a stockbroker, shall we say? Your life has just been all tumbled and changed, I presume, by the new SEC policy-mandatory review of portfolios with shareholder investment loss more than fifty percent? You live in the same world as a tournament chess player, do you; With the New York Open going on this week, Petrosian and Fischer and Browne in Manhattan for a half-million-dollar purse, what are you doing in a hayfield in Maitland, Ohio? You with your 1929 Fleet biplane landed on a farm field, with your major life priorities farmers' permission, people who want ten-minute airplane rides, Kinner aircraft engine maintenance and mortal fear of hailstorms . . . how many people do you think live in your world: You say four billion people live in your world? Are you standing way down there on the ground and telling me that four billion people do not live in four billion separate worlds, are you going to put that across on me ?" He panted from his fast talking.

  "I could almost taste that hamburger, with the cheese melting . . ." I said.

  "I'm sorry. I would 'have been so happy to buy. But, ah, that's over and done now, best forgotten."

  Though it was the last time I accused him of not living in this world, it took me a long time to understand the words where the handbook opened:

  If

  you will

  practice being fictional

  for a while, you will understand

  that fictional characters are

  sometimes more real than

  people with bodies

  and heartbeats.

  13

  Your

  conscience is

  the measure of the

  honesty of your selfishness.

  Listen to it

  carefully.

  We are all free to do whatever we want to do," he said that night. "Isn't that simple and clean and clear? Isn't that a great way to run a universe:"

  "Almost. You forgot a pretty important part," I said.

  "Oh-"

  "We are all free to do what we want to do as long as we don't hurt somebody else " I chided. "I know you meant that, but you ought to say what you mean."

  There was a sudden shambling sound in the dark, and I looked at him quickly. "Did you hear that?"

  "Yeah. Sounds like there's somebody . . ." He got up, walked into the dark. He laughed suddenly, said a name I couldn't catch. "It's OK," I heard him say. "No, we'd be glad to have you. . . no need you standing around. . . come on, you're welcome, really . . ."

  The voice was heavily accented, not quite Russian, nor Czech, more Transylvanian. "Thank you. I do not wish to impose myself upon your evening.. ."

  The man he brought with him to the firelight was, well, he was unusual to find in a midwest night. A small lean wolf like fellow, frightening to the eye, dressed in evening clothes, a black cape lined in red satin, he was uncomfortable in the light.

  "I was passing by," he said. "The field is a shortcut to my house..."

  "It is-" Shimoda did not believe the man, knew he was lying, and at the same time did all he could to keep from laughing out loud. I hoped to understand before long.

  "Make yourself comfortable," I said. "Can we help you at all?" I really didn't feel that helpful, but he was so shrinking, I did want him to be at ease, if he could.

  He looked on me with a desperate smile that turned me to ice. "Yes, you can help me. I need this very much or I would not ask. May I drink your blood? Just some? It is my food, I need human blood . . ."

  Maybe it was the accent, he didn't know English that well or I didn't understand his words, but I was on my feet quicker than I had been in many a month, hay flying into the fire from my quickness.

  The man stepped back. I am generally harmless, but I am not a small person and I could have looked threatening. He turned his head away. "Sir, I am sorry! I am sorry! Please forget that I said anything about blood ? But you see . . ."

  "What are you saying?" I was the more fierce because I was scared. "What in the hell are you saying, mister? I don't know what you are, are you some kind of VAM--?"

  Shimoda cut me off before I could say the word. "Richard, our guest was talking, and you interrupted. Please go ahead sir; my friend is a little hasty."

  "Donald," I said, "this guy . . ."

  "Be quiet!"

  That surprised me so much that I was quiet, and looked a sort of terrified question at the man, caught from his native darkness into our firelight.

  "Please to understand. I did not choose to be born vampire. Is unfortunate. I do not have many friends. But I must have a certain small amount of fresh blood every night or I writhe in terrible pain, longer than that without it and I cannot live! Please, I will be deeply hurt--l will die if you do not allow me to suck your blood . . . just a small amount, more than a pint I do not need." He advanced a step toward me, licking his lips, thinking that Shimoda somehow controlled me and would make me submit.

  "One more step and there will be blood, all right. Mister, you touch me and you die. . ." I wouldn't have killed him, but I did want to tie him up, at least, before we talked much more.

  He must have believed me, for he stopped and sighed. He turned to Shimoda. "You have made your point?"

  "I think so. Thank you."

  The vampire looked up at me and smiled, completely at ease, enjoying himself hugely, an actor on stage when the show is over. "I won't drink your blood, Richard," he said in perfect friendly English, no accent at all. As I watched he faded as though he was turning out his own light . . . in five seconds he had disappeared.

  "Shimoda sat down again by the fire. "Am I ever glad you don't mean what you
say!"

  I was still trembling with adrenaline, ready for my fight with a monster. "Don, I'm not sure I'm built for this. Maybe you'd better tell me what's going on. Like, for instance, what . . . was that?"

  "Dot was a wompire from Tronsylwania " he said in words thicker than the creature's own "Or to be more precise, dot was a thought-form of a wompire from Tronsylwania. If you ever want to make a point, you think somebody isn't listening, whip 'em up a little thought-form to demonstrate what you mean. Do you think I overdid him, with the cape and the fangs and the accent like that? Was he too scary for you?"

  "The cape was first class, Don. But that was the most stereotyped, outlandish . . . I wasn't scared at all."

  He sighed. "Oh well. But you got the point, at least, and that's what matters."

  "What point?"

  "Richard, in being so fierce toward my vampire, you were doing what you wanted to do, even though you thought it was going to hurt somebody else. He even told you he'd be hurt if. . ."

  "He was going to suck my blood!"

  "Which is what we do to anyone when we tell them we'll be hurt if they don't live our way. "

  I was quiet for a long time, thinking about that. I had always believed that we are free to do as we please only if we don't hurt another, and this didn't fit. There was something missing.

  "The thing that puzzles you," he said, "is an accepted saying that happens to be impossible. The phrase is hurt somebody else. We choose, ourselves, to be hurt or not to be hurt, no matter what. Us who decides. Nobody else. My vampire told you he'd be hurt if you didn't let him? That's his decision to be hurt, that's his choice. What you do about it is your decision, your choice: give him blood; ignore him; tie him up; drive a stake of holly through his heart. If he doesn't want the holly stake, he's free to resist, in whatever way he wants. It goes on and on, choices, choices."

  "When you look at it that way . . ."

  "Listen " he said, "it's important. We are all. Free. To do. Whatever. We want. To do."

  14

  Every person,

  all the events of your life

  are there because you have

  drawn them there.

  What you choose

  to do with them is

  up to you.

  "Don't you get lonely, Don?" It was at the cafe in Ryerson, Ohio, that it occurred to me to ask him.

  "I'm surprised you'd . . ."

  "Sh " I said "I haven't finished my question. Don't you ever get just a little lonely?

  "What you think as ..."

  "Wait. All these people, we see them just a few minutes. once in a while there's a face in the crowd, some lovely star bright woman who makes me want to stay and say hello, just be still and not moving and talk for a while. But she flies with me ten minutes or she doesn't and she's gone and next day I'm off to Shelbyville and I never see her again. That's lonely. But I guess I can't find lasting friends when I'm an unlasting one myself."

  He was quiet.

  "Or can I?"

  "May I talk now:"

  "I think so, yes." The hamburgers in this place were wrapped half-over in thin oiled paper, and when you unwrapped them you got sesame seeds everywhere useless little things, but the hamburgers were good. He ate in silence for a time and so did I, wondering what he would say.

  "Well, Richard, we're magnets, aren't we? Not magnets. We're iron, wrapped in copper wire, and whenever we want to magnetize ourselves we can. Pour our inner voltage through the wire, we can attract whatever we want to attract. A magnet is not anxious about how it works. It is itself, and by its nature it draws some things and leaves others untouched."

  I ate a potato chip and frowned at him. "You left out one thing. How do I do it?"

  "You don't do anything. Cosmic law, remember? Like attracts like. Just be who you are, calm and clear and bright. Automatically, as we shine who we are, asking ourselves every minute is this what I really want to do, doing it only when we answer yes, automatically that turns away those who have nothing to learn from who we are and attracts those who do, and from whom we have to learn, as well."

  "But that takes a lot of faith, and meanwhile you get pretty lonely."

  He looked at me strangely over his hamburger "Humbug on faith. Takes zero faith What it takes is imagination.'' He swept the table between us clean, pushing salt and french fries out of the way, ketchup, forks and knives, so that I wondered what was going to happen, what would be materialized before my very eyes.

  "If you have imagination as a grain of sesame seed," he said, herding an example seed to the middle of the clearing, "all things are possible to you.''

  I looked at the sesame seed, and then at him. "Wish you Messiahs would get together and agree. I thought the thing was faith, when the world goes against me "

  "No. I wanted to correct that, when I was working, but it was long uphill fight. Two thousand years ago, five thousand, they didn't have a word for imagination, and faith was the best they could come up with for a pretty solemn bunch of followers. Also, they didn't have sesame seeds."

  I knew for a fact that they had sesame seeds, but I let this lie go past. "I'm supposed to imagine this magnetizing? I imagine some lovely wise mystical lady appearing in a hayfield crowd in Tarragon, Illinois? I can do that, but that's all that is, that's just my imagination."

  He looked despairingly to heaven, represented for the moment by the tin-plate ceiling and cold lights of Em and Edna's Cafe. "Just your imagination? Of course it's your imagination! This world is your imagination, have you forgotten? Where your thinking is, there is your experience; As a man thinks, so is he; That which I feared is come upon me; Think and grow rich: Creative visualization for fun and profit; How to find friends by being who you are. Your imagining doesn't change the Is one whit, doesn't affect reality at all. But we are talking about Warner Brothers worlds, MGM lifetimes, and every second of those are illusions and imaginations. All dreams with the symbols we waking dreamers conjure for ourselves."

  He lined his fork and knife as though he was building a bridge from his place to mine. "You wonder what your dreams say: Just as well you look at the things of your waking life and ask what they stand for. You with airplanes in your life, every time you turn around.''

  "Well, Don, yes." I wished he would slow down, not pile this on me all at once; mile a minute is too fast for new ideas.

  "If you dreamed about airplanes, what would that mean to you?"

  "Well, freedom. Airplane dreams are escape and flight and setting myself free."

  "How clear do you want it: The dream awake is the same: your will to be free of all things that tie you back--routine, authority, boredom, gravity. What you haven't realized is that you're already free, and you always have been. If you had half the sesame seeds of this . . . you're already supreme lord of your magician's life. Only imagination! What are you saying ?"

  The waitress looked at him strangely from time to time, drying dishes, listening, puzzling over who this was.

  "So you never get lonely, Don ?" I said.

  "Unless I feel like it. I have friends on other dimensions that are around me from time to time. So do you. "

  "No. I mean on this dimension, this imaginary world. Show me what you mean give me a little miracle of the magnet. . . I do want to learn this."

  "You show me," he said. 'To bring anything into your life, imagine that it's already there. "

  "Like what ? Like my lovely lady ?"

  "Anything. Not your lady. Something small, at first. "

  "I'm supposed to practice now?"

  "yes"

  "OK. . . . A blue feather."

  He looked at me blankly. "Richard? A blue feather ?"

  "You said anything not a lady something little. "

  He shrugged. "Fine. A blue feather. Imagine the feather. Visualize it, every line and edge of it, the tip, V-splits where it's torn, fluff around the quill. Just for a minute. Then let it go."

  I closed my eyes for a minute and saw an image in my
mind, five inches long, iridescent blue to silver at the edges. A bright clear feather floating there in the dark.

  "Surround it in golden light, if you want. That's a healing thing, to help make it real but it works in magnetizing, too."

  I surrounded my feather in gold glow. "OK."

  "That's it. You can open your eyes now."

  I opened my eyes. "Where's my feather?"

  "If you had it clear in your thought, it is even this moment barreling down on you like a Mack truck."

  "My feather? Like a Mack truck?"

  "Figuratively, Richard."

  All that afternoon I looked for the feather to appear, and it didn't. It was evening, dinnertime over a hot turkey sandwich, that I saw it. A picture and small print on the carton of milk. Packaged for Scott Dairies by Blue Feather Farms, Bryan, Ohio. "Don! My feather!"

  He looked, and shrugged his shoulders. "I thought you wanted the actual feather."

  "Well, any feather for openers, don't you think?"

  "Did you see just the feather all alone, or were you holding the feather in your hand?"

  "All alone."

  "That explains it. If you want to be with what you're magnetizing, you have to put yourself in the picture, too. Sorry I didn't say that."

  A spooky strange feeling. It worked! I had consciously magnetized my first thing! "Today a feather," I said, "tomorrow the world!"

  "Be careful, Richard," he said hauntingly, "or you'll be sorry . . ."

  15

  The

  truth you

  speak has no past

  and no future.

  It is,

  and that's all it

  needs to be.

  I lay on my back under the Fleet, wiping oil from the lower fuselage.

  Somehow the engine was throwing less oil now than it had thrown before. Shimoda flew one passenger, then came over and sat on the grass as I worked.

  "Richard, how can you hope to impress the world when everybody else works for their living and you run around all irresponsible from day to day in your crazy biplane, selling passenger rides?" He was testing me again. "There's a question you are gonna get more than once."