The Nyxall Chronicles: The Now or Never

  *******

  Whoops, indeed. Let’s terminate this creative writing before I expose too much of a psyche in hunky-dory hiding. The previous paragraph tested the waters to see if my self-image is ready to be viewed by my family as someone who could use the ‘f’ word and make crude, incestuous jokes. Nope, I draw back with aversion, fighting the urge now to implement a block and delete editing function to wipe the computer screen clean.

  “Yo, homeboy, why delete it?” queries my inner Bubha as he suddenly pops out from my psyche. “I thought a Fool on his journey wanted to expose and love forth all parts of his hidden shadow.”

  “Expose it all to myself, true. But I had been writing my gut-level response to sister’s Christmas letter with the idea of sending her a copy to show her a bit of my inner journey in India.”

  My imaginary friend catches on and states, “And you fear your suggestion—of letting siblings fuck each other senseless as a healthy outlet for repressed feelings—might ruffle a few feathers?”

  “Precisely. Moreover, I can picture my sister’s gut-level response mailed off to the whole clan warning of the creature who swallowed their sweet little Stevie and who may someday return from the black lagoon of India.”

  “Aren’t you overreacting, pal?”

  “Possibly, but whatever emerges now on the topic of repressed incestuous urges stays safely here in the computer between you and me, clearly rated not suitable for family viewing.”

  Bubha leans close to whisper, “So just between us chickens, what do you really feel about repressed sexuality between family members and folks in general?”

  I look at the glowing computer screen for a moment before typing, “That the more that sexual feelings are denied and buried, the more they wreak havoc and play out unconsciously in potentially destructive ways, perhaps on many levels.”

  “Many levels?”

  “So say Betsy, Roger, and others with special vision who claim to actually see these hidden desires or thought-forms, as they are called, express physically and enthusiastically on the astral plane. Plus, the theory goes, the more that a ‘nice’ family denies having natural sexual urges, the more their subtle energy bodies are likely to be out doing the nasty together.”

  “You nice boys, then, are really closet motherfuckers and sister suckers on the astral plane?” Bubha asks skeptically.

  “Maybe so, maybe not. All I know right now is that Big Ed should be loosed from his repressed underworld and, for catharsis and honesty’s sake, go all the way with this topic.”

  Bubha takes a step back. “Then it sounds like time for the fingers to fly for another spell.”

  Sure, a spell sounds good to ferret out the astral world where repressed desires alight like fires. Rhymes as incantation, jingles as source. Moola coola, what a foola. Hex a brother, sex another. More spells and bells in carrot-topped tales. Red heads are the recurring threads that unravel as I love Lucy, my mother, and a niece of the crimson persuasion; no, cardinal if you please. Priestly and beastly if you peek behind the confessional at flashing panties that fly off with high kicks to take to the hair with hot licks. Off we go into the wild red yonder, which lost its blue to a hue far fonder.

  My oh my, how fingers do fly into topics taboo, breaking house rules with pubic cubic and roots squared. Hairy equations for shadowland play, under cover of darkness to make it okay. Playing at doctor and lawyer and such, or sucking my sister though dare not we touch. Just sucking and fucking, the Ogre’s one goal, to suck up the pantry and fill up the hole. So dream of dear Mother, in oneness once known. Return up the birthway in search of true home. An astral attraction, a climax of shame, so act like a zombie asleep to my name. A writer, a seeker, a guilt-ridden beast, longing for freedom, for cosmic release.

  Silence reigns in the library until my imaginary Bubha exhales loudly and asks, “So, buddy boy, is that something from the classic novel, Dr. Seuss and Mr. Hyde?”

  “More like an excerpt from Horton Hatches a WHAT?” Then, after taking a minute to reflect I answer soberly, “It feels like a karmagram coming home to roost, as if I need to see within myself all those mother-fucking perverts and others that I have judged over the years—and a nice boy and politically correct adult has judged plenty in his day. The bizarre cast of characters recently emerging from my psyche will keep on making guest appearances, I suspect, until I come to know that the whole of humanity lives within me—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and I claim that fact utterly, whatever the cost to my comfortable self image and family relationships.”

  “And your judgments clear out like main street when Clint Eastwood enters with a fistful of dollars?” Bubha queries.

  “Maybe, but we might need a few dollars more since that Oedipal verse seems to indicate that—”

  TRAIL BOSS: Oh, for Pete’s sake, missy, ain’t that enough already of our character’s sexual psychobabble?

  SHOSHONI: Yes, trailmaster, that should serve our purposes nicely. You may now take back the reins of the narrative if you wish.

  TRAIL BOSS: Damn straight. Begging your pardon, folks, for not bypassing these latest impediments to the trail that assault the sensibilities of decent society. As you might have guessed, when I started to gee around them, my shotgun rider hawed to insist that we remain on steady course to encounter head-on these secrets of the sexual psyche.

  SHOSHONI: Indeed I did. If Steven is serious about letting go of the old Identity, particularly with his family, he must allow his true nature and self to be seen in full exposure. Plus, as you will understand by story’s end, Guruji and I have a compelling interest in seeing that these family skeleton writings are taken from the closet and aired in the light of day. Does not the truth set us all free?

  TRAIL BOSS: So they say, little missy. But I’m beginning to worry that you have more up that time-traveling sleeve of yours than meets the eye. [An itch and a pitch by a miss who plays games with the reins. Driving the show and letting it go towards a path of distraction and family destruction. A scheme under construction whose building blocks out the ties that bind.]

  SHOSHONI: Listen, wagon jockey, let’s call a truce and skip hand-in-hand to the spot in the story, two days hence, where Steven is pondering a recent epiphany and Bubha shows up at the ashram to bring him back to issues of currency. Agreed?

  [Agreed in the greed that picks up with speed. Tallyho.]

  FEBRUARY 1 – late afternoon

  Epiphany, a lovely word to speak but a difficult concept to describe once it happens, you think, as you hit delete on the keyboard once again. You have made some progress in describing this morning’s experience that felt like an epiphany, although the insight keeps getting fuzzier in your mind as the hours pass. With dinnertime fast approaching, you decide to take a break and head out for a stretch of the legs. As you walk past the ashram office door, you spy movement through its glass and are pleased to see Bubha inside. Drawing nearer, you notice that he is methodically placing hundred-rupee notes into a large stack on the desk in front of Guruji. Curiosity makes you enter the office, a feeling that grows into consternation as the two men respond to your arrival with furtive attempts to hide the money.

  “Howdy, Bubha,” you say with a questioning look.

  He nods in response as Guruji politely states, “Steven, if you please, Cyrus and I are finishing up a meeting that will take some moments to complete.” He indicates the door with a tilt of his head.

  “No problem,” you falsely remark as you retreat to the courtyard and sit by the blue statue. While waiting for Bubha, your thoughts bounce between high-flown notions of epiphany and the low down memories of past betrayal that the scene in the office has conjured.

  After a few minutes, your cogitation is interrupted. “Hey there, homeboy,” Bubha greets you cheerfully as he walks from the office to your resting place.

  “So what do you have up your sleeve this time?” you respond curtly to his arrival as you wonder about the hundreds of rupees he passed to Guruji.
r />   Bubha investigates the sleeve of his orange robe and replies, “Unfortunately, no cure there for a recurring case of paranoia that hinders one’s joy in the journey. And rudeness, I might add, is no way to greet a man accustomed to Southern hospitality.”

  “I’m surprised that you pay Southern hospitality respectful due,” you reply, “considering how shabbily it treated you on the schoolyards of your youth.”

  “Well, the chocolate nigger has learned to forgive and forget. Check that—I forgive while you are the specialist in forgetting.” Bubha glances at your unsmiling face and remarks, “It appears that you could use a bit more schooling in forgiveness at the moment, my friend.”

  You look sharply at him and state, “Come on, Bubha, just tell me why you were giving Guruji all that money that used to be mine.”

  “How I obtained that bounty of rupees was indeed your business,” he replies with a bow, “but how I spend it is my affair.”

  You sit for a moment staring at the ground as you shake your head. “Damn it, Bubha, I still feel like I’m missing something here at the ashram, that a big piece of the puzzle is just beyond my reach.” You glance up at your friend. “And Cyrus the Wise trickster is usually at the other end of mystery and intrigue.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t argue if you said that Guruji is not looking well and is still hiding something. But,” Bubha adds as he puts a hand on your shoulder and looks you straight in the eye, “I swear on my long arms of sinew that I know nothing more about any mysteries here at the ashram.”

  “Your what kind of arms?” you ask incredulously.

  “Hey, just because you perceive my arms as short and flabby doesn’t mean that’s how they really are.”

  “Oh, for pity sake, what are you up to now, Bubha?”

  “Just humor me on this one, pal. Or at least listen for the sake of the chocolate nigger.”

  You give Bubha a questioning look as he continues, “When I was a little brown kid on the Texas playground being called names and beaten up regularly, I tried to come up with ways to survive and keep my dignity. I got my break one day from this book about the Alamo and how, after the defenders ran out of ammo, Davy Crockett stood atop the fort’s wall, “hurling enemy troops to the ground with his two long arms of sinew.” I thought this was pretty cool and, although I didn’t know exactly what they were, I sure wanted two long arms of sinew for hurling my tormentors to kingdom come.

  “So I just sort of began to assume that I have them—and when you get around to writing a book about the enlightened Shri Shri Cy Bubha, I would appreciate it if you would clearly report their existence.”

  You chuckle and respond, “As much as I want to support your inner child, I’m certain no self-respecting editor will allow me to get away with describing a short, fleshy guy with two long arms of sinew.”

  Bubha shrugs and says, “Just think big and go for it. As my grandpappy used to say: Small dreams make small men. Big dreams make money.”

  “It seems like ol’ mercenary grandpappy had a one-track mind.”

  “He certainly was the pragmatist of the clan. Auntie Giri Bala was the family theorist, although her philosophy was limited to one all-purpose phrase she used for every occasion: If wishes were fishes, we’d all be well fed!”

  “And what are the nuances of that theory, professor?” you ask.

  “Something to the effect that physical reality—everything from rainbows to electrons—is simply a reflection of our mind’s perceptions. I still don’t know exactly how imagination fits into the picture, but I reckon if I can get a couple of million people thinking I have two long arms of sinew, it’s got to have some effect.”

  “You’re as nuts as I am,” you smile at Bubha in response to his hypothesis. “Come to think of it…” Your voice trails off as you consider how his notions relate to your recent epiphany.

  “…I’ll have a Heineken’s?” Bubha postulates the end of your unspoken thought.

  You grin and declare, “You just proved my point about our mutual state of nutty mind. I bet we’re the only two people on the Indian subcontinent who remember that old Heineken’s beer slogan.”

  “Don’t count on it, pal. The tentacles of Madison Avenue stretch wide and deep into the collective consciousness. Anyway, whassup?”

  “Well, I was just thinking about a vision I once had of a Fool on the hill listening to the music of the spheres, demonstrating that no matter how masterful the maestro is that sends forth the many tones of creation, the notes only merge into beautiful music when actually heard by a listener.”

  Bubha ponders a moment and then queries, “So we human fools are the eyes and ears of God, the vessels of perception that give form to the void as partners in creation?”

  “Something like that although I need to work more on the concept at the computer after dinner.”

  Bubha stands and stretches. “Well, while you’re composing the sheet music for the next dimension of reality, I’ll return to Neelkanth to prepare for the grand voyage to Del Norte.”

  Your mood suddenly drops a shade. “When do you and Alberta leave for Canada?”

  Bubha replies while heading towards the ashram gate, “We’ll catch the train to Delhi in forty-eight hours and then take off into the wild blue yonder from there.”

  “Well, tell Alberta to get her butt back down here to say good-bye before she leaves,” you say a little more harshly than you meant.

  Bubha turns to you and states, “My good man, I have learned that one does not order Alberta anywhere. But I will pass on your request with more respectable imagery and a less demanding tone.”

  “Sounds as if you may have met your match in that fellow trickster,” you note with a smile.

  Bubha raises a long, sinewy arm as he departs and concludes, “We’re just like a pair of twins.”

  You continue sitting in the courtyard pondering the topics at hand while waiting for the dinner bell. When it rings, you proceed to the dining hall and take your spot on the floor, surprised that no other place settings are laid out in the room. Another surprise appears as Guruji emerges from the kitchen and fills your plate with a heaping serving of rice and lentils.

  “What’s the special occasion?” you ask in a whisper.

  Guruji just tilts his head and maintains the code of silence in the dining hall. He retires to the kitchen and soon reemerges with two plates of food that he carries out the exit. He does not look at you nor does he return as you are left to eat alone in the dim room. Consternation becomes the main course at dinner as you can deduce no logical reason for the absence of the usual contingent of swamis and sadhus. When finished with eating and washing, you decide to get some answers to the growing mysteries of the day.

  “Guruji,” you call out in his empty office hoping the swami will hear you from his private chambers in back.

  Guruji quietly enters through the rear curtain and sits behind his desk. “What can I do for you, Steven?” he asks politely, although his face reflects irritation at the interruption.

  “I was just wondering why no one is around this evening.”

  “It is best for you at this juncture of your practice to minimize distractions from other persons at the ashram,” Guruji replies obtusely. “In fact, you had a visitor today whom I directed to refrain from disturbing you.”

  “You’re my social secretary now?” you respond feeling vexed. “What in blazes is going on around here, anyway?”

  Guruji’s voice sounds strained as he answers, “If you can be more specific in your questioning, perhaps I can help clear the air.”

  “Okay, why was Bubha giving you all that money today?” you demand.

  “Cyrus has asked that I not discuss that point with you, Steven. Please limit your questions to those personal to yourself and your Vedic hypnosis and recovery process.”

  Your irritation increases as you query, “So why am I sleeping so much this week?”

  “Sleeping late is to be expected as a part of the ending of the a
mnesia procedure you selected. Plus, after one starts…” Guruji’s voice trails off into silence as he absently stares out the window. A tick suddenly develops in his left cheek that causes you to notice as well the dark circles beneath both of his bloodshot eyes.

  Concern replaces your sense of irritation as you ask the aging swami, “Are you okay, Guruji?”

  His attention snaps back to the room and he responds with a weak smile, “Maybe I need some of that deep sleep that you seem to be getting.”

  “Maybe so,” you respond. You can think of nothing else to say. The awkward silence is broken only by the periodic tapping sound of spoon against metal plate coming through the curtained doorway.

  “I need to return to my guest,” announces Guruji. “Is that all, Steven?”

  “I guess so,” you reply even though you feel as if clues to a mystery are close at hand. “Sorry to have bothered you, Guruji.” You turn towards the door to depart and then add, “It’s just with all that’s gone on lately, I’m having a hard time trusting people these days.”

  Guruji immediately rears back while striking his fists on the desk. “Damn it, man, either you’re in an internal state of trust or you’re not. Don’t pretend to give away your power of trust to me or to any of those jerks watching us out there!” he shouts as he sweeps his arm towards the window and the darkness outside.

  You edge towards the door and attempt to appear casual as you state with a nervous laugh, “You know, that’s just what Bubha said to me at the German Bakery last month.”

  Guruji stands and heads for the curtain to his chambers. He stops at the passageway and with sudden gaiety states, “Say, maybe I am Cy Bubha. Or he’s my dreamtime duality twin. Or, heck, maybe this is all a dream,” the swami concludes as he again sweeps his arm to indicate the setting. He grins wildly and without another word slips behind the curtain.

  Good grief, you think, that was precisely what Bubha spoke to you at the Kumba Mehla after taunting you with the kamikaze dream. You walk unsteadily out the office and take a deep breath of the evening air. Confusion and concern share center stage as you speculate as to what is happening with Guruji. Is he going mad; or is it you who is losing touch with reality?

  You are grateful that a visitor is with the elderly swami in his chambers in case he needs help hanging on to his faculties. As for yourself, you decide to enter the library to refocus on this morning’s epiphany and whatever springs forth in a Fool’s Journey at the keyboard. Worry about Guruji’s sanity does no good and, as Bubha pointed out, paranoia has no place in the journey either.

  You sit in front of the glowing computer screen recalling the important inner experiences and insights of the morning. After growing frustrated with futilely trying to recapture this epiphany, your typing fingers once again probe into issues of historical gender conflict.

  A FOOL’S JOURNEY – February 1

  …After barking up the wrong tree, Rover kindly sends clover right over to bring me the luck of the Irish to cut through the Blarney and get out of this mess. Actually, Irish luck and blood already are in me, compliments of a lass from County Cork who begat my pa who met a highlander of the Morrison clan to begat this wee lad to start the cycle all over again. Scot, Irish, and English blood flows in my veins, a triangulation of frustration with one side fighting the other on little British isles.

  Gilligans and hooligans, the Professor and Mary Ann battling in a fool’s paradise where professorial intellect jockeys with feminine intuition for dominance over the hearts and minds of the islanders. Saxons and Celts, priests and druids, Romans and countrymen lose their ears to swords and words of strange tongue. Cries of a new patriarchal order drown out the whispered secrets of the ancients, shredding the curtains to Avalon, drying up the mists that nourish the sacred feminine flow. The Chalice Well still runs, but with tears of memory where sweet waters once sent blessings to fill hallowed vessels. Hallowed be thy reign.

  I recall now an evening when wizardly Roger reported seeing a queen and king enter the room in another dimension from an Arthurian-like era in which the Goddess prevailed. A place of knights and chivalry championing the feminine cause against a crimson tide that seeped across the channel carrying with it a notion that powerful women were sinful and a tool of a thing called Satan. Concepts strange and deranged to those who knew a gentler truth of the oneness of all. Noble knights of both genders stood ready to answer the call to protect their Creatrix against the onslaught of crosses and swords.

  But by taking up sword against sword, the battle for oneness was already lost, cutting the cause in two, creating a mad dash to duality where the modern god of Demand and the new goddess of Supply reign supreme from their plastic thrones. Shop ‘til we drop is our royal mantra; consume or be consumed is the law of this neon jungle in a god-eat-god world of dyslexic disorder. Mounting bulls and bears, we race to outpace what lies hidden within our fractured souls as we grasp for stock answers, ever clawing for higher interest rates confounded daily. Give me more, sell me more, fuck me more, love me more, hate me more—I don’t care, just make it more so I don’t have to stop and feel the scars that throb with the beat of old battles, with the agony of defeat, the chill of hollow victory.

  Hollowed be thy frame, an empty shell of my former self. A forest of bamboo echoes old cries and new harmonies if one is quiet enough to listen, to sink into the moment and be swallowed into the belly of the beast for delivery unto redemption. Slowly, slowly; step by step, a Fool’s Journey unravels.

  “YO, BUBHA BUDDY, want to come out to guide me through this latest wallow?” I call out with hopes of coaxing my inner playmate to return.

  “You thummoned me mathter?” a hunchbacked Bubha responds as he limps into view of mind’s eye.

  “I appreciate your subservience, Bubha, but what’s with the Igor getup?”

  He straightens up and replies, “We were having a little come-as-you-are party down in the asylum, and Igor fits right in with the other inmates in your psyche. Plus,” he adds, “this is what I looked like as a child.”

  You frown skeptically. “Come on, Bubha, you weren’t really a hunchback as a kid, were you?”

  “Nah, but when I think back on childhood I feel my shoulders hunching and my back bending into this little creature trying to hide from the world.”

  “Sounds like a good opening for some psychoanalysis,” you note while offering your imaginary playmate a comfortable couch. “Are you game to take the hot-seat for me and see what you represent in my shadowy psyche?”

  “Sure, Doc. Type away to your heart’s content.”

  I assume my best therapist tone and begin the session. “Cyrus, I am going to ask you now to become that hunched creature of your childhood, to take his posture and speak with his voice. Just be in the moment and let anything out that he wants to say.”

  Bubha takes a deep breath. “Okay, Doc. Here goes. Actually, I’m a little dwarf, a small earth creature living under logs and rocks, looking out through squinty eyes at a world that seems too big, too foreign to be my home. How did I get here, why do I have this ugly little body to live in?

  “But no one can answer for I am alone, a single dwarf who is left only grubs and insects to eat. What a crazy world in which I have to kill innocent creatures in order to sustain my worthless existence. Kill or be killed is the life of a dwarf as I elude beasts of the forest far greater than I. And they can smell me, smell the fear of a hunched creature trembling behind rocks just staying alive.”

  Bubha stops with a blank look on his face. I gently prod, “And what comes to mind as you cower there, Cyrus?”

  “That no purpose remains for a dwarf to live now that the mine is closed. All the jewels and gems have been taken from the deepest chambers and given to the Powerful Ones. But even they do not know the true value of these stones mined from the inner earth, from the inner sanctum of the Goddess. Snowy white she is in purity; in skin, a rich cast of brown. A bronze Goddess, an Asian beauty, an African queen, a Latin lover of
all her creatures great and small. But her precious self was drawn and quartered, nickeled and dimed to death by small minds and greed.

  “So I am lost without purpose in this dark forest waiting for the merciful sickle of death to wipe me off the planet. To scythe me with one smooth motion into the heavens to orbit round the galaxy, to give me space in which to unfurl this twisted shell of a dwarf and reclaim my heavenly body. But until that time a dwarf I be, hidden in dark realm, scorned as a chocolate nigger, a white dwarf, a black hole drawing in all life around me until I finally remember how to truly live, love, and give again.”

  My surrogate patient stops talking, looks up with a smile, and stretches his short frame. “Hey, that was cathartic, Doc. Thanks for letting me express this hidden stuff.”

  But I do not respond, staring off into space watching as pieces of the puzzle start fitting together. A trembling dwarf outliving his usefulness; a failed Kamikaze pilot filled with shame; a beast reaching for redemption; childhood nightmares, recent dreams, intuitive writings, this morning’s epiphany—everything tumbles into place.

  “What’s the matter, pal?” My inner Bubha breaks the silence.

  “I forgot,” I reply resolutely.

  “You forgot what’s the matter?”

  “That and everything else. Who I am, how I got here, why I came to Earth. Damn, I can’t even remember when the forgetfulness started. Was it yesterday or a few lifetimes, eons, or dimensions ago?”

  “I thought your amnesia gig had ended.”

  “I thought so too, Bubha, but apparently the hypnotic amnesia project here at Phool Chatti was just a dry run, a little training exercise to prepare me for the real expedition. All the clues indicate it is time now to awaken my soul from its stupor of forgetfulness and remember what the hell I’m supposed to be doing here on Earth.”

  “At least you remember that you forgot. That’s a good start.”

  I nod. “Plus this morning I saw too that an incredible Mind is orchestrating all the clues, all the dreams, intuitive messages, words, actions, coincidences, and relationships of my life in clear pattern and for some purpose beyond simply meeting my petty human desires. And next—well it’s hard to describe—but for an instant I could feel myself at one with that universal Mind, or it being my higher self or something like that.”

  “Did you actually see your true purpose for living then?”

  “No, my guess is that its discovery is a big part of this new mindgame to remembrance that the Maestro-mind is orchestrating.” You pause to think for a moment then add, “The only other glimpse I got of my soul mission during this morning’s epiphany is that the self-identity must give itself up for the cause.”

  Bubha theorizes, “And the trembling dwarf and Kamikaze pilot are reflections of your ego’s fear of death and shame for hiding from mission control?”

  “Something like that. But let me show you a bit of Identity’s response written this morning after my so-called epiphany,” you answer while retrieving an excerpt from A Fool’s Journey computer file.

  “...ALTHOUGH IT WAS LOVELY to momentarily glimpse the Maestro-mind behind the orchestration of life, I must admit that I have yet to merge into its universal oneness and thereby leave my notion of Steven far behind. No, my personality still instinctively responds to that familiar name much in the manner of a housedog who hears the clicking of a can opener at chowtime.

  “So perhaps it is best to quietly resign myself to a destiny of remaining a mere mortal while residing on this planet. True, there may be those who fully transcend their old persona and take on the mantle of a divine Avatar to manifest sacred ash or dispense hugs in south India. But I sense that my relationship with the infinite Mind is more of a partnership than an assimilation that leaves my human personality by the wayside. Or at least that conclusion is as much ground as my cowardly Identity is willing to concede as it hangs on to this lanky vessel of flesh and blood that it has invaded and controlled these past five decades.”

  Bubha looks at you askance. “Don’t sell yourself short, pal, about ultimately liberating from your limited self-identity. Remember what Lorraine channeled in from telepathic source last decade: “In your spirit, you are star children. In your bodies, you are children of the Earth. This is your blessing and your confusion. Soon the polarities fade and you will know you are One.”