1

        The Sun is setting in the West over the largest gathering of water in the world.  Every stream and river feeds into the Ocean and while there are different parts of it, naming them only makes them seem more distinct.  There is no clear line between them, though the waves are like a war zone at Kanyakumari, where the boundaries between the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, and the Arabian sea famously meet.  It’s a long commute from there to the middle of the Atlantic or to Lake Erie, for that matter.  

Kanyakumari is where the god Hanuman dropped medicine as he flew to Sri Lanka to save Sita.  Where people go to wash away their sins.  Where Swami Vivekananda swam a quarter mile through belligerent waves -- waves who work in deadly concert with the knives of rocks hiding out along the seabed -- to meditate on a little island where he had his Vision of One India, the flash of insight that shaped modern Hinduism.  There’s a complex temple there now.  The point where he sat still for three days -- I mean for three days -- is marked with a meditation room.

This ocean, this bed where the Day is laying down under its warm sky -- quilted in phosphorescent patches red-orange-pink and purple-blue -- the Day is stretching out, exhausted head pillowed by the Sun, and feet resting on the nearly full Moon, this green Sea is not Kanyakumari, not even the Indian Ocean.  No.  This is the Arabian Sea, though some communities of oxygen and hydrogen, no doubt at this very moment, are rapidly hopping the borders to the Sea of Bengal and the Indian Ocean and back -- with no one to check their passports, x-ray their belongings, or take pictures of what’s under their clothes -- they migrate under the unconditionally loving auspices of that great statue of Thiruvalluvar, the poet-saint.  

Some of these communities of microscopic waterdrops might go airborne out of the sea and into the lungs of a passing sage.  The same, or another set indistinguishable from it, might wind its way to the Gandhi Memorial.  The Great Soul’s ashes have no doubt taken up residence in the valences of these vaporous nations.  No doubt parts of Gandhi have circled the globe a million times while some have set up homes, even cities, on Ramakrishna’s statuesque nose.  I may even be breathing some Gandhi right now, deep into my belly.  I wonder how many particles in this breath of air have wended their way through my body in one form or another already and are just starting their next cycle...

But now I am not at Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, where the two seas and an ocean meet.  l am in Kerala, the month of December.  It is not a cold place, but still, this is winter.  Night will begin at six on perhaps the most important day in history.  Time will tell.  Now I am doing qi gong.  Actually, I am finishing.  My mind has wandered a long way.  It should be at Dan Tien, the garden where the elixir grows, the center of gravity.  I should be thinking about my belly, feeling my belly and only my belly.  So it goes.

        “Now, bring your hands to your belly.  Left over right, Shivakrishnan.  And very good.  Feel your qi flowing to this place as a ball of flame on the exhale and on the inhale, feel its expansion.”  There’s a brief pause.  “Exhale.  Now feel it.  See it.  Lit like a sun.  Condensing.  A deep ball of flame.”  He pauses for several breaths to let this sink in.  “Now let this go.”  Solomon rubs his hands together.  “Rub your face several times.  Not ungently, but firm.  Then, rub your fingers through your hair, flicking off the stale energy.  And pounding your neck.  Good good.”  He finishes the routine and then stands up.

        We’re all kneeling in a circle, closing up the evening qi gong.  The water of the Arabian Sea is particularly sticky.  Flies buzz around us as sporadic dots of annoyance.  “Jolly wot!”  I say, coming straight to my feet after an hour of kneeling and letting the mishmash of pain and pleasure soak back into them with the blood.  “Not long until we find out if you’re just another wanking British fraud like Crowley or if this business about the spiritual jump you’ve been going on about is true.”

        “Yes, yes.  I’m sure it matters.”  The slant-eyed limey says dismissively.  “The important thing to remember here, Ramadupa, is that the spiritual shift has been happening gradually since the beginning of time.  This is only a major point in the cycle.  This is just a spoke in the wheel.  Creation rolls on, on either side.”

        I stomp my feet futilely as I wait for the heavy sizzling in my legs to end.  “Or perhaps this Twenty Twelve business is just a bloody load of bollocks and that book you put out is not worth as much as my scrotum.”  I say the last with my imperfect imitation of the Indian accent of a certain Karnagapully statesman who killed a certain monkey over a particular scrotum quite recently.  I’ve been trying every night for three weeks now to use the supposed spiritual effects of the astral alignment to my advantage.  No luck.

        “Who on Earth would drop a tenner on your scrotum, Dupa?”

        “I sure as hell would.”  I retort,  “Although, I’m not sure whatever monkey rips it off will take cash.”

        Shivakrishnan groans from downward dog, dealing, as we all must, with the feeling that his legs are about to explode in agony.  It is the anticipation of that pain, a pain which never actually comes, that I find to be the real core of the discomfort in standing up after a kneeling practice.  “Why would he when he’s already got a meaty banana in his mouth?  Monkeys do not think ahead.”  His Spanish accent is not particularly thick, but his mentality is gloriously so.

        Hilde asks Solomon, “So what is to happen?  Would it be good to wake for that night?”

        He shakes his head, “Hilde there is nothing to worry about.  If you sleep then your dreams may be particularly meaningful.  If you do not, then maybe your experiences will be.”

        “Amma doesn’t seem to care what day it is,” I point out.

        “Amma does not care what second it is,” Solomon leads the walk off of the beach, one step at a time, leaving little divots for tracks in the sand.  Just like mine and everyone’s they disappear the moment I stop noticing them.  Already the trenches our knees made are indistinguishable from the rest of the red beach.  A seagull sings a single note, etching the palm trees and the sunset with its song for just that moment.  And then the note ends and the echoes it leaves in my ear are swallowed by the drumming of the sea.  “Dinner shortly.  I haven’t had a bite since high tea.  Owi-ow, fruit and yogurt!  Maybe some jaggery.  Yum yum!”  

He says “yogurt” with the short “o.” I snicker.  Brits.

“So here’s the thing,”  I begin to say, laying out my understanding of this Twenty Twelve business, “the Earth orbits the Sun.”

Solomon interrupts, “Can you prove this?  As near as I can see the Sun goes around the Earth, and certainly the world is a circle around my self.”

“Right right right.”  I talk him down.  “The sun orbits a hole in space and time.”  I am using a pair of coconuts to demonstrate for the table the path of the Earth around the sun and the sun around the black hole. My audience consists of some six people enjoying the simple art of after dinner conversation, a ritual for us English speaking residents of the ashram where there is little else to do but meditate.  Naval contemplation can only take a man so far.

“Wait, is that hole at the top of the coconut, with the straw sticking out, is that the black hole which is going to kill us all?”  Solomon cuts in in mock shock and terror.

        I choose to ignore him this time.  “The Sun, right now, is here, in the Northern Hemisphere of the Milky Way, still just barely.  We’re on the edge of the equator.”

        Shivakrishnan chimes in, “Ah... that’s why it’s so warm.”  He, too, is a mocker.

        “No, Shiv, it’s so warm because we’re in Southern India.  Will you gentlemen please let me get to my point?”

        “What is this ‘me’ you speak of?  And more importantly, perhaps, given the dire straights in which this ‘me’ seems to be finding itself is, ‘What is the point’?”  Solomon asks me, over the thick steam in his tea cup.  In my mind he is already out of the lecture.  Dead to me.  A ghost.

        “The point is that the only ‘non-imaginary’ effect I can possibly see from this Twenty Twelve hullabaloo, is that when the Earth crosses this equator, as it is apt to, being connected to the sun, as it is,” I motion with my coconuts, “is that on one hand--and I arrive at this through syllogism -- it may begin to spin the other way.  You know, the Australian Toilet Effect.  Or two, that the poles will reverse.  They’ve reversed in the past.  It seems to me there should need to be some sort of impetus for this sort of thing, and the passing over the equator seems like just the thing.”

        “Bravo.  Bravo!”  Solomon puts on his American accent, “Shit man, we’re in trouble, aren’t we?”

        “Solomon, these things I can see.  I can actually imagine the Earth shifting its rotation.  Or else flipping on its axis.  In my mind’s eyes I can see the planets all lining up like toy soldier dominoes, but there’s not a single interview in that damn book of yours that makes any sense to me.”  Solomon has come into some recent wealth, comparatively.

        “You must not lust after results.”  He says with a snaky grin.

        “But this sort of a situation, this astral configuration, is not going to come along again in my lifetime.  It would seem to me that one should take advantage of it.”  I am tempted to tell them that I have been trying my hand at time travel.

        “Dupe, do you ever listen to anything I say?”  He plays exasperation as only the British can.

        I am in my flat.  For just around 1000 USD, and with the right friends, you too can own a modest sized condo in the home of the world’s strongest incarnation of the Devi!  Three free meals a day if you can stomach Indian food for three meals a day.  Western food costs money.  You might like Indian food.  You might think this is a great deal.  But one needs the culinary fortitude of a monk to stand tall against the barrage of watery rice with fried, stewed, and spiced vegetables.  There is nothing better than Indian food once in a while.

        I put the stone around my neck.  It dangles over my heart.  It cost nearly as much as my flat.  They said it came from the Moon, or was the Moon.  Maybe they said this because it was true.  This is unlikely.  

        What is true is that it is a very remarkable stone and it does have some connection to the Moon.  How do I know this?  I know this.  That is how I know it.  I believe it.  What else matters?  For my purposes, nothing.  It settles over my heart.

        I’d wandered away from the group during the middle of the bhajans.  It seemed like the appropriate time to leave.  I felt it.  I can still hear the inscrutable songs of praise to God, to life, to existence, shaking the sky-scraping monastery from my room on the twentieth floor.  They tug at my soul.

        I lay down in corpse pose.

2

        I am on my back.  I put my hands down on the thick straw mat a comfortable distance from my sides, palms up.  This is where I meditate and sleep.  Simplicity is the father of discipline.  

The ceiling, looking at it from this angle, could be a floor.

I close my eyes.  Behind them is not blackness.  The room goes away, but there’s still points of vibration in my field of vision.  Some of them are red, like pools of water with worms moving around inside of them.  Some of them are blue.  Or yellow.  I stop differentiating the colors.  There is only what I see.

I breathe in, like a balloon that fills itself.  I let go and my body shoots around the room.  Another slow, easy breath and a collapse.  After a third, I let my body take the breath itself.  

I am the highest point of my head.  Mathematically, you can fit an infinite number of points on the tip of a pin.  A straight line is the only distance between two points.  There is no limit to the number of lines which can dissect a circle.  I become a nomadic colony of circles spilling from my head through the planes of my brain.  

A swarm of horsebacked, scalplocked cossacks charge snoring through the gluey steppes between throat and nostrils to the foothills of the spine.  Rhesus monkeys dance a calypso along its meridians, sailing like swans through those channels within my vertebrae.  A waterfall.  Beavers come floating to the surface of my navel and burrow through the dams in my abdomen.  They break into snakes which swallow my ribs all the way back to my spine.

I am liquid light.  I splash down to my toes and back up, feeling every edged cornered nerve explode and then implode.  And then explode and then implode.  Then both at once.  I rock from toes to head and head to toes, and finally

my skin, skull, nails, teeth, eyes, and everything between evaporates into stars.  They twist and turn in some equation which needs no fathoming to wrap and circle orbits with each other.  They sing a silent song with no composer.

Ashes to ashes.  Dust to dust.  Body to light.  

My breath is my body.  

My thoughts are spasms in my brain

points of tension

dissolving like puddles

under a magnifying glass.

Whole as the ocean

my blood pumps in full note waves.

The stone is a hole on my floor and I start swirling in.

I am a cyclone funnel pulling in oil-black silence, emptying myself.  The silence swishes in my chest, replaces me, and I am uprooted into that cold white stone.  

Slowly the body Ramadupa is drained of life and the stone is Ramadupa.

Being a stone is different from being a person.  I have done it before.  I got this far last week.  So excited I sat bolt upright on my mat.  So much for projecting.  It was frustrating.

Curb that!

My walls are layered cells. Each block holds more blocks holds more blocks but between the blocks are tunnels too small for the naked eye.  I exist within those spaces.

This is the problem.  I am a little piece of rock, although that rock is the moon the Moon.

I am the Moon.

Grey and cold with no atmosphere.

All I have is a reflection of the Sun.

I shed myself for the Sun.

Immolation.  Immolation.  Immolation.

Hal-le-lu-jah!

And with the speed of light the Sun swallows me.  I am the cold space between Sol and the Moon’s atmosphere just long enough to empty into it.  I am groundless bottomless fear and then Ra --

bleeding ecstatically

        out into space the eternal sound

        of heat and life and joy

        the churning stomach heart factory

                it takes a million years

                        for a fleck of my light

                to escape

        and less than a touching beat

for entering form’s digestion

incorporation

hydrogen cells

infecting inflecting inspecting

the planets

Mercury pulls me free as though to say, “You don’t wanna be there, Brother.  Don’ you think that if it was a good place to be I’d have hopped right on in eons ago?  And yo momma too?  There’s a reason she keeps her distance, you know.  Come now, what you tryintodo?”  I am Mercury.  “You are not me!  Quit that nonsense, little brother.  Now, where you goin?  I’ll get you there, I swear.”

I fear to wake.  

“No worries.  You’ve put yourself out pretty deep, chil’.  You’ll be asleep until old Sol comes to wake you.  Now, would you be so kind as to talk to me?  Open yaw eyes.  It’s polite.  Not only that, but it’s a helluva great view.”

I open my eyes, “I’ve finally done it then?”  Light comes flooding in, every color at once.

The light resolves.  “Done what?”  I walk on shiny thick grey water.  No, liquid silver.  I look around for the source of the voice.  Snakes of molten metal rise at my feet, hissing amicably.  Their heads circling one another, their bodies merge into the figure of a smiling human.  “Is this better?”  All but the teeth are shimmering silver.  They are the white of bone.

“Yes.  I think it is.  So I’ve done it then?”

“We’ve said this already.  What you tryin’ to do?”

“Oh, sorry.  It’s hard to explain in words.”

“And I thought you was a writer.”

“Not a very good one.”

“That’s not your honest opinion.”

“I’m trying to travel into the future.”

“Well then, you been succeedin’ at that all your life.  Yore succeedin now.”

“I’m trying to travel into the future and then come back.”

“Ah.  Eye sees.  How exactly do you intend to be doin’ this?”

“Well, I thought that with the alignment with the galactic rift and all I could sort of slingshot around that, like Creighton tried to do with the Sun and wind up back in my body in the morning.”

“It was the Earth, actshly, and Crichton tried to slingshot round Earth and wound up going through a wormhole and travelling to the other end of the un-i-verse.  The science there was way off, but dat’s unimportant.  Exactly how you plannin’ do this?”

“Well, I figured that if I could pass an orbit between this stone I bought and that cosmic yoni at the center of the galaxy, I might be able to go around it at the speed of thought and thus come back maybe three hundred years or so into the future.”

“And the purpose of this is to make money?”  Laughter jibbles waves all over the surface.

“The purpose is adventure.  Knowledge.  Growth.” I retort!

“No.  You wanna be a prophet.  You wanna come back with knowledge uh the future, and be respected, loved, followed for it.  You want to be a celebrity.”  The smile gets bigger.  “I think I can help you out.”

“You’re mighty obliging for a Roman god.  Don’t I owe you payment?”

“Who you think I am?  Regardless, I help you for the sake of adventure and I will take from you what I want no matter what you want.  But hush now, you won’t know the diff’rence.”

I wonder how Mercury is going to help me.  Step one was getting into the stone.  Step two was shooting from the stone towards the Moon and slingshotting around it to do the same with Venus and then Mercury and then ride the waves of the Sun past Mars, around Jupiter and the outer planets, building momentum and using the stars along the way to the rift in the same way until finally passing around it fast as insanity and following the stone which held me, back to Earth at unpronounceable speeds.

“Tad nevah woke faw saw many reazons.”  I am told  “But if goin round the planets gives you enough structure to keep your mind together then more power to you, brother Man, though I’d apologize to Luna along the way for your surface-level misunderstanding of her, were I you.  She doesn’t seem it, but she’s got a lot o’ pride.  Also, it’s best you don’t let Mars think you’re weak... Eh, you’ll figure it out.”  Quick as silver I’m swallowed by the surface and I am Mercury, “No, you are not.” and spit out like a cannon ball towards the distance.  Where am I going?  Faster and faster I’m going. “Cheerio, Soul Brother!  Oh!  And don’t let Venus pull you in!”  The words follow me like a mantra follows silence.  “She’s a fly--” aummmmmmmmmmm

3

Is that Earth to the right?

Port?  Aft?

I spin around and watch the blurred streaks of red and blue blanket into white.  No retinas to burn and now no black.  Faster and faster I catch more light, and images start to form like in a primitive cartoon.  A bull morphs into a ram and then a lion.  The lion grows a woman’s body and stares at me.

“Stop spinning.  I can’t see your face.”

I stop, but the universe continues a moment before the picture collapse back into blank.

“Shh.”

Spots of black bubble into my vision, cutting through the colors and the white.

There’s a patch that does not dissolve.

I focus.  It comes closer.  The white tinges green.  Then woman.

“Om Namah Shivaya,” A voice like lips but no sound except laughter.  “Or as any normal American would say, ‘Hello.’ Or, maybe, ‘Howdy.’”  She speaks the last with the drawl of a Southern Belle.

I list towards her, moving faster.

“Your hair is very nice.  A good long blond.  Like a lion.  Are you a Leo?”

she purrs ripples of joy

ripples of joy ripples of waking up in the morning rose perfume drifting from the other pillow rippling ripples of white sheets staining themselves with ice skating it’s not pianos playing the song is not by Mozart or Spektor it’s not music that I smell.

“You look like a poet.  Are you a poet?”

Red room bookshelves wardrobe green padded bench a pipe collection by the poker table.  Brunette by the pool table.  She’s playing with the balls.  She puts the Earth in the middle, the Moon next to it.  “Have a seat.”  beckoning  “You’re playing billiards right now, aren’t you?”  She wears an ermine coat covering her thickly from ankle to ear, a long cigarette holder balanced between her fingers, nails painted lime green.  There is no cigarette in it.  She is barefoot.  It is as though I am standing still in the center of this parlor, but still I feel the movement.

I see the room and through it both at once.  “Sorry ma’am,”  I find the voice to say through my momentum, “Can’t stop to chat, got a plane to catch.”  I think myself faster and I am.  I angle a little towards the planet to let it pull me fast enough that I can arch off hard and fast.  Fast!

“Well, that’s a shame.”  She sits down on the pool table and picks up a cue.  “I was going to throw you a party.”  She is all let down.  Her silver green hair unpigtales and she picks up a ball.

There’s no holes in the table, I see.  “Another time then?”  It’s an actual billiards table.

“If I feel like it.”  She smiles and drops the white ball back down on the table.  “You’re nothing special you know.”

“I am you as you are me and we are all...”  I find myself singing in tune.  

Now I know I’m sleeping.

“Korean children just say, ‘Pansa!’ don’t they?  Nice and fast.  But you’re right.  I am just a reflection.  You are talking to yourself,”  Her pout transforms into a smile and her eyes glow bright blue, “you handsome devil.”  She does not have to add, “As always.”

“Well, what can I say?”  I am accelerating effortlessly towards her while relatively neither of us move.  Got to punch up a gear.  Then she hops down and steps towards me.

“Nothing good so far,”  She walks to the standing mirror, on the other side of the nightstand with the Go board on it from me,  “But Venus doesn’t care.  I mean the planet you call Venus.   I care as much, about as much, as you do.  If a projection can care at all.”  Somehow she pouts and laughs at the same time.

“Ah.  I’d thought you were too good to be true.”  

“It’s the explaining.  Most women don’t explain, then just expect you to know.  Luckily, I’m not a woman.  I’m a planet filtered through your mind?”  Her voice interrogates the statement, or states the question,  “Or maybe just a hallucination?”  She turns towards towards me, the black of space shining through behind her absolute opaque figure.

“Just a hallucination?  A hallucination is as real as it gets.”  I focus on the blackness beneath the mirage.  Orpheus’s deal was that if he did not look back, then he’d have his wife returned to life.  Lot’s was the brimstoning of Sodom and his wife was made a pillar of salt.  The point is clear:  Look wherefore thou goest whenst thou movest amongst the gods.

She is close enough for the breeze of the words to lick my face, “To you.”  The two words are like squirrels hollowing out and nesting in my pride.

I reach for the cold space under the silk carpeting.  “Yes, to me.”  Silk carpeting?

There is just the width of a scarf between us and she looks up into my eyes, only slightly above hers, “Well, we don’t have long together, do we?” she yawns, “We are moving pretty fast.”

“Not nearly long enough.”  I joke through my smiling teeth, she smells of lavender and ocean.

She hums, “Best to make use of the time as well as possible.”  Her body grins like rising dough, “A game of Go, maybe?”  She asks, somehow coming closer, still not touching.  “You’re not very good at pool.”  The table has holes in it now, I notice, looking around her.

“Mmm... indeed.”  I decide my best route is to close my eyes to this, but I do not want to offend.  And how can a man, a man who ignores a lady, continue to call himself a gentleman with any degree of honesty?  Even if she is a manifestation of Venus’s energy working its way through the creative centers of the soul?  Is that not all the more reason to treat her with close attention and respect?

“You know you’re really just sprawled out on the floor in Amrita Puri, closed eyes staring up at the ceiling, sleeping your little dreams.  Swimming around in your own subconscious.  Might as well swim anywhere, right?”  Her finger runs a teasing circle over my chest without ever quite touching it.  I feel my heart moving in concert with it.

Is there steam rising from the pool table?  “Mmm.”  I have to concentrate very hard to continue to accelerate and to speak at the same time, “I’m swimming now.”  Is she putting off heat?  I swallow.  Eyes straight ahead, ready to sprint the moment Earth comes into view again.

“Might as well swim to Mars and make sand castles there.”  She says this mockingly.  Then her eyes wide and swallow mine.  “Or swim here.  You know, I really do have a party planned.  There’s a lot of women inside of me.  All of them, actually.  Every last woman you have a memory of and every mix of their characteristics that can be scissored together. You think you’ve been in love?  You’ve never been in love.  That’s why you’re a monk.”  She titters.  “But all of them right outside that door.  You know them.  They hurt you.  Deep ringing pain, isn’t it?  A tuning fork in your gut trying to grip its way out.  Unrequited love is always such violence.”

“I’m sure you’re all quite wonderful, but if you could just point me in the direction of Earth?”  I manage to quip, seeing it come into view without her help, poking around the unbroken white sphere I am plummeting towards.  I push myself further into the fall a little more.

“Hell hath no fury.” She runs her fingernails across my face,  “If you want fury...”  She licks her lips.  “Then I want fury.”  I pool my desire to stay into my sudden burst away, on a perfect, blinding course towards Mother Earth.  I swallow all the space between.

4

        She’s big enough to see before I even feel her pulling.  Sweet blue green, then bits of brown and puffs of white.  The blue and the green diverge.  Familiar oceans and continents, not just flat representations or three-dimensional masquerades, but livid features of the living breathing Earth.

There are no borders of countries and no words scrawled over her surface.  Just the scribbling of rivers, the silver peaks of mountains, forests popping up like spines on a hedgehog.  There’s the sheets of ocean.  There’s the lakes that freckle her lit face like mirrors.  

The world looks like one of the adorable art projects of this girl I had a crush on in college.  It’s all bright greens and yellows, slivers of wood and genuine grass.  She is clothed in roads and cities.  Magnificently straight lines and rings and diamonds.  There are no people from up here.  No one owns these things.  I cannot tell the White House from the Moon here, the Federal Reserve Building from the North Pole.  

Looking at the Gulf, I cannot see the oil staining it.  It looks as pristine as the rest of the globe.  For all of humanity’s pollution, there is not a mark of the Earth out of place.  No way to know that there’s a hole in o-zone.  No way to see the insanity of the central banking system.  From this distance I can not even see the Pyramids, just the Great Wall, and even that fades to a blur as I flow along the tunnel of shared gravity from the Earth to the Moon.

The grey surface should not bore me.  There are plenty of craters and shadows.  There’s an American flag to look for, if that ever even really happened.  I heard one theory that as the Apollo mission touched down, they were filming a Moon landing in California, just in case it failed.  Then, maybe because the choreography was better, this is what they showed the public.  Certainly, we have the technology.  Certainly we could land on the Moon.  It’s just the same whether we did or not, I suppose.  I’ve never been there.  I’ll never be there.  Not in the flesh.

To get to the Moon you need a record as pristine as her surface, more ambition than Mars, or enough money that if it were ever converted into pennies you could make a space elevator if someone is willing to lend you enough glue.  I curl around the Moon and arch away again.  It still amazes me that money works the way it does.  At some point in the past there was a link between money and value.  At some point in American history, you could take one of those dollar bills and get a dollar’s worth of gold.

Of course the people who own all the gold, the same ones that bought out the deposits from Fort Knox on a five finger discount, the same ones that sit on the board of directors of every central bank in the world with no government oversight, these people released us from the gold standard.  In America they used Nixon, the stooge.  Now the whole economy is based somehow on what part of the massive national debt is represented by the slips of paper in your hand.  And counterfeiting is illegal!  What precisely would you be counterfeiting?

Inside the IRS building are signs exclaiming how high the debt is, the implication being that we’re supposed to buckle down and pay it off, that the IRS wants to pay it off!  We’ve all got to tighten our belts here they imply, though nothing goes to the principal of the debt.  Well, the government can just keep borrowing as much as it wants, its just a matter of making payments on the interest.  What else are taxes for?   Jesus God!  Is that Olympus Mons?  Pull up!  Pull!

Gotta pay attention to where I am.  I burst through the asteroid belt like it was a finish line before I even knew it.  I am moving too fast to continue letting my mind wander to those traitors to humanity that have been holding us back.  They killed Stanley Meyers when he replaced oil with water.  They put us on the central power grid.  What is this power they crave so much?  What is the purpose of such power?  Such hideous strength.  There is no end to the effort taken to maintain it.  It doesn’t provide anything, only changes the positions of what’s there.

It’s inevitable that every ruler will fall, whether they rule from the top of the tallest mountain or from its shadows.  There is always someone who will topple you.  Age weakens people like it does machinery.  In the end age wins out and the machines fall apart.

Focus!

He’s like a gentler sun.  Surrounded by rocks of every size, some larger than the other planets.  I am plummeting, dodging around asteroids and moons swept up in his wake.  I move faster and faster.  I surpass light, I am sure, I surpass thought.  I am aimed straight for the heart of the golden planet.  Every turn I make and make hard and still that is the only direction I go.  I’m going to die.

No!

I can shoot straight through.  I move with the currents, faster, and faster.  I thin myself, increase my speed.  I am shapeless, massless.  The universe stands still and so do I.  The impact is like putting a pillow through a wall.  With every chronic atom I am squaring my speed.  I am speed.  Back into the black and there is only a flash before I burst through a flash of black then silver-yellow in exactly the same way.

Then there are flashes and hums of different hued blues.  Then reds.  Yellows pinks  stars shapes sounds.  I am a hum through every conceivable color and some that cannot be conceived or perceived and then nothing.  Everything.

I am the black heart that beats the Milky Way.

5

Humming neither felt nor heard.  Not seen either.  Humming is not something smelled.  Is not something tasted.

How do I know of humming, then?  How do you know of humming?

Humming.  I do not even see the color black, and not white.  I have no sight.  Humming.

I do not hear silence.  I do not smell nothing.  There is no body.  No astral body.  No dreaming body.  No stars.  There is the humming.

It is not the omnomnom of eating.  Not the ummmmmm of desperate stalling thought.  Am I thinking?  Humming!

Why that’s a silly question, if you weren’t thinking could you ask if you were thinking?

I open my eyes.  I have no eyes to open.  There is the humming.  Well, that’s not me, I think.  Still, I try to see.

The first color, oddly, is the tan of bamboo.  Why should that be the first color?  The second color is black, but really, it is not true black.  It is the color of not bamboo.  Yes, the second color is border-bamboo.

I try to pop my ears.  This is what I do:  I push the base of my tongue toward my tonsils and there’s a small click, usually.  In this case there is no tongue and no tonsils.  There is, “Ontay ontay ontay hano wohay umah!  Ontay ontay ontay hano wohay umaho!”  loud enough to shake me.  “Ontay ontay ontay halleloooooooo...”  and it fades away at the oooooo into a windy hum.

That bamboo.  That’s a wall.  And that sound.  That’s a voice.  An old voice heavy with spirit and passion and age.  I need a focus.  I decide to look for the voice.

The Enochian words build strength:  “Ahura omoro ashugawa wanay!  Ahora ahumur ashugawa wanay!  Wanay!  Wanay!”  It has a beard growing out of it, I’ve decided.  Or at least there is a beard.  There’s a white waterfall of a beard over a white Taekwondo uniform.  In the uniform is a very old man.  The man comes from the voice, “Ashura osmoro ashushawa shwanay!  Ash sha sha sha! Sha sha shash ash!”

There is a stone in front of him.  The moon stone around my neck.  That was around my neck.  “Enkora enkorawei!”  I have no neck.  “Ankarank!”  No eyes  “Jumilobal.  Jumil.  Jumilobal!”  The stone is glowing now.  Now, the stone is expanding, “Ashira takiramay!  Amay!  Amay!  Hom.  Hom!”  The old voice uses the body to lift a silver hammer.  “Hom!  Homomom! Homomomomomomomomomom!”  The hammer screams with the voice and smashes down on the stone, shattering it.

Shattering it into a billion pieces:  A trillion pieces taken to some unfathomable power and then squared again! Shattering it into me.

It’s not every day one gets to see oneself, particularly without a mirror.  I am a ball of dust and light.

There are two men in the room.  One of them leans against a wall, “All right Mister Songsang, quite a show.  I tell you, I am moved.  Now, can you make it speak?”

“Namoo,” I am dragged into the intonation and the intonation emanates from the heart of the cloud of dust, which I am.  “Namoo.  Namooooooo.”  And I find myself quite unable to see myself anymore.  Instead, I see in a perfect sphere the whole room.  I have to focus in one place, sort of binocularly, to keep anything straight, though.  Binocular vision is familiar vision.

“You are here to make sure this man comfortable, not be impressed.  Get off of my wall.  I have no patient for your postures.  You speak English.  He speak English.  You study the past.  He is past.  This is good.”  His accent is almost familiar.

The man against the wall looks at me, “I do not think it would be presumptuous to suppose that what the old man here means by all of this is, ‘Welcome, traveller.’”

“What I mean I say.”  The old man stands as steadily as a newborn horse.  “Now I am tired.  Corporation is not easy.  Go away.”  He shakily turns and gaits toward a bed in the corner.

“Best not to upset the old man.  He can be extremely volatile, Mykola can.  Please, follow me.”  I follow instinctively before I even wonder how to move,  “I’m Raoul.  They’ve asked me to look after you until the Captain’s finished with his current affairs.”  We are in an elevator big enough for five or six to fit comfortably.  I notice for the first time as it disappears the taste, smell, feel... scent of incense in the old man’s room.  Too mixed and strange to name.  And then it is gone with the idols and the altar when the doors close.

6

        “It’s designed to jettison into space in case of a boarding.  But if you do jettison, then you need a code to keep it from blowing up.  Benj, the Captain, never gave me the code.”  He says this idly, as the doors close.  “You come from interesting times, you know.”

        “I come from interesting times?”  I extend a pair of tendrils like arms gesturing at the walls, movement has turned out to be almost as simple as thought, “You say this will jettison into space in the case of a boarding.  That means we’re on a space ship?  Do you have any idea how many times I’ve thought about being on a space ship?  How many people like me have dreamed of it?”  I pause a moment, wondering at the source of the sound I am making, wondering at the shape of myself.  I am confused, but steady.  What strange and familiar sensations I bring.  My thoughts are clear, “How the deuce do you know what times I come from?”

        He laughs.  “You know it’s a little eerie to talk to you.  I’ve never met a free spirit before.  According to the textbooks, that’s because they don’t exist.”  His teeth form a piano and he smells amused.  “Benj told me that they found you in some Martian ruins.  It’s part of my price of hire that I act as a sort of chaperon for you.  Mykola--that’s the old man--Mykola has been working on the stone for decades, and I’d imagine he knows more about you than you do.  He’s told me a bit, but I’m not all that clear, honestly.  Asking him questions is like putting your hand into an open flame.”  The box comes to a stop.  I hadn’t even noticed it moving.  The doors open into an amphitheater.  “Here,” he says, walking down a flight of stairs towards the stage, “Skipper!  Get us a picture of the Solar System.  I’ll try and catch you up on the history.”

        The room goes pitch black for a fraction of an instant and then is lit by a globe of pure lava.  Wait, no... that’s the sun.  And there’s planets surrounding it.  It looks so totally different from what I remember of going through it, “That’s the Earth.  The continents are wrong.  It’s upside down or something.”  Continental drift wouldn’t account for this.  The basic layout is too similar.  I’m not that far in the future, it seems.

        He laughs at me.  “Upside down?”  He takes the Earth in his hands and brings it over to me.  The whole Solar System moves in concert with it.  “There’s no such thing with a ball.  Regardless, it is aligned North-South.”

        “No.  Antarctica should be on the bottom.  What year is this?”

        “The year?  529 UN.  You used the energy released by the polar shift to bring yourself here.  Skipper, take us back to UN 67.973 and hold.”   The Earth flickers into a different position.  “Bring up the stars, please.”  The room instantly becomes almost bright.  “Now, this point of the year should be the Solstice, when winter and summer begin, depending on your hemisphere.  This is the point when one end of the Earth is pointed most directly at the sun, and the other end of the Earth is pointed most directly away.  At this point the North Pole is experiencing perpetual night, while the South Pole is basking in an endless day.  Skipper, play it three million times.”  Why would anyone want to watch something three million times?

        Oh, he said, “at” I realize as the Earth spins at what is probably three million times its normal rate.  Oddly, though, the planets behind us are moving down until they fade into the floor and the planets ahead, and the sun, are all moving up.  “What’s this all about?”

        “Slow to one thousand times.”  The Earth spins at a rate where I can focus on its surface.  “The computer is holding the Earth in front of us so we don’t have to move to watch it.”

        “Yes, I get that, but why are the planets all moving?”

        “Only in relation to the Earth.  Here.  Skipper, return to UN 67.973 and give us a meter distance, top-down view of the whole system.  Play at fifty million times.”  The planets flicker into a wheel in front of us.  “So now you can see a little better, maybe.”  I can see.  The Earth flips over within about fifteen seconds.  The other planets turn, too, but I’m not watching them.

        “Well, at least it’s quick, I say,” wryly.

        “Twenty three years,”  he says.

        “Goes by like that.”  I have no fingers to snap so the statement is a bit meaningless.  I see it in my mind, though.  The tilt of the Earth shifting more and more, making summer and winter both more drastic.  Twelve years into this, day will have been seasonal in the tropics and a constant teasing twilight along the equator.  The weather wouldn’t know what to do with itself, like God Himself has gone manic depressive, laughing and crying in random ecstatic bursts.  Twenty three years of the science of meteorology disappearing down a toilet.  “What did people do?”

        “Skipper, access tube archives for news for the decade of UN 70, as well as personals.  News on the right.  Personals left.”  He orders.  “Better that I show you.  It’s not exactly my focus.  Not exactly required reading.”  There’s a list of videos like on Youtube, splayed in a wheel just in front of the Tropic of Cancer.  “Pick one that looks interesting.”  

        Is that Ron Paul?  “Ron Paul?”

        “Ladies and gentlemen,”  He begins.  He looks haggard.  More haggard than he’d been while campaigning in LA and he’d been a skin-made costume for the god of sleep then.  “Ladies and gentlemen of the congress, it is time that we face facts.”  It is almost as though he were a silicone copy of himself left in the sun too long and sagging. “It is the thirty-first of March.  The sun set two hours ago.  I myself woke up about four hours ago.”  His smile is forced and the laughter is nervous.  “These are not ordinary times.  I remember only a few years ago, there was a scare about oil scarcity.  Wow.  With the heating bill, and the national debt, being what they are, I’m amazed now that the heat here is running.”  His voice rises to a punchline pitch.  “There’s more empty seats here than full.”  

He wheezes like a ghost,  “This is not how I ever pictured the Rapture.  I remember an old spiritual, ‘God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water but fire next time.’”  He sounds almost as though he is singing.  He is laughing.  “Is that really important anymore?”  His laughter sobs itself away.  “Right now work is beginning on a new UN headquarters in Antarctica.  I’ve heard rumors that they’re really just renovating ancient ruins there.  Of course it’s impossible to get there and see, security measures being what they are.  I do not have to tell you how strange this is.  With calls coming all over the nation to ratify this bill ceding US sovereignty to the United Nations, I myself am tempted to urge you on in favor of it.  Even despite its innapproachability.  Desperate times.  They say desperate times call for desperate measures.”  He trails off momentarily.

“I’m not finished.  Are you finished?  Finished fending for yourself, making your own decisions?  Living.  No.  But I know this bill will pass and with it goes freedom.  We’ll all be implanted with international ID chips so that evacuations become easier.  There will be a lot of evacuations, this is true.  The world has turned upside down, and now the Earth’s crust is catching up.  And then how long until the weather stabilizes?  There’s the violent storms, the tidal waves, more and more every year.  But worse than that is the bone-shattering cold.  Already more and more young children and old people are dying.  I lost--”  He chokes up.  “I’ll be dead before I finish speaking.

“I suspect I will be, because I swear to you I am not going to stop speaking while there is any chance that we are going to turn over the lives of two-hundred-seventy-million men women and children to an international bureaucracy with no sense -- no mode -- of accountability!

“Sure, sure, if the Earth is really not going to stop tilting until it’s flipped over completely, then we are going to need a government that can remove and house an entire hemisphere of the globe.  The US government can’t do that.  We just don’t have the authority to migrate our people to the other half of the globe!  But what’s to say that the UN can?  Or will?

“And as for the Federal Reserve--”

“How long does this go on?”  Raoul asks.

“After a ninety-two hour solo filibuster, Representative Ron Paul was rushed to the ER.”  Gretchen Carlson says, her name written under her face in the new video.  Fox News.  “Doctors say it is unlikely he will survive.  More and more of our elderly are dying every day in what experts are calling, ‘The Worst Winter in History,’” the title appears at the bottom of the screen.  “In light of the fact that the world is being turned upside down, the House rushed a bill through detailing the cession of authority to the UN until this state of emergency comes to a close.  A similar bill is making its way through the Senate.  President Obama urges compliance with new codes, stating, ‘This is an unprecedented level of danger on a global scale.  It reminds us that we are not truly Americans, but human beings.  Earthlings.  If we are going to survive then we have to work together.”

“How about some personal videos?  That guy looks angry.”

“The international bankers have controlled the world economy since before there was a world economy.  They financed the Communist takeover of Eastern Europe.  They have killed presidents, inventors and revolutionaries.  They have loaned money to every side of every war with cynical, diabolical mathematics to make the winners pay as much as possible before the end.  They hyped up the Year Two Thousand so that we would ignore the warnings about Twenty-Twelve.  And now, with all of human history at its climax, what do they do?  The Rothschild family relocates to what used to be the South Pole.  Ford releases its Sky Rover, a flying car which runs on water, which we as a species have long had the technology for...”

7

        “The Universe is shaped Exactly like the Earth,” A grey-haired Brock croons in three simulated dimensions with perfect fidelity sound, “if you go straight long enough you end up where you were--”

        Disturbing the rapturous dancing of my particles, Raoul’s voice, “This isn’t particularly productive.”  The music stops.

        “Come on now, bear with it, Raoul.  Hardly anyone likes Modest Mouse the first time they hear them!”

        “I can’t imagine why,” he holds the words out with all the dryness of British butler. “You come centuries to listen to music from your own time?”

        “Well, where else am I going to do it?  I’ll have you know I spent the last year performing righteous austerities” the phrase clearly confuses him, “to get here.  Haven’t listened to music in ages.  I’ve seen enough of these ‘tubes’” they call videos ‘tubes’ now, or then, the weirdos, “to get the gist of what happened.  Big disaster, UN takes over.  A lot of progress... yada yada.” he’s clearly confused by those words, tries to understand their meaning for a moment, gives up,  “Now this is an important historical event.  The celebratory concert!”

        “Yes, but it’s such clumsy music.”

        “You’re boring.  Where are the interesting people?”

        He laughs.  “The singer’s voice never quite hits pitch and it’s like they’re using one scale as a chisel.  What they’re cutting into is my nervous system.”

        “That’s what makes it organic.  It’s real.  It’s not computer generated and over mixed to some godless degree.”  I make a puffing noise with my whole body.  “Puhh!”

        “Would you care for some real music?  You like this,”  He points at the holographic Johnny Marr where he is silently shredding his illusory guitar, “I can show you sound where it becomes color and music where it becomes motion.”

        There is a sliding of the elevator doors and Hanuman walks in, the light behind him haloing his whole body.

        “Hanuman?”  The word shakes me but I don’t even know if I say it aloud.

        “Skipper!  The captain is ready then?”

        “What is Hanuman doing on a spaceship in the future?”  I ask dumbly, noticing for the first time a great oak desk in front of me.  All around me the walls are varnished cedar logs.  There’s even portholes looking out into space, although whether they really look out into space or are simply broadcasting signals from cameras is beyond me.  Beyond the desk is a full-fledged window, large enough to fit a baby elephant through.  On the other side is Mars coming closer at a rate that He blurs purple at His edges.  He has clouds!  Not many, and thin, but definitely there.

        A voice like boulders diving into the English Channel says, “You mean the Skipper?”  I hadn’t really noticed him before.  In fact I am where I am now through a state of fog.  I’d never have expected to see Hanuman in the flesh.  I am a devotee.  How am I supposed to act?  “He’s just a robot.  A fantastic robot, but a robot nonetheless.”  The man is lion-blond, with a full trident tipped beard.  The brightness of Mars behind him makes his figure a partial silhouette.

        “A robot?”

        From the corner of the room, He speaks, “I was originally designed to serve as an actor in Ramayana plays in the New Ayodhya Settlement.  I did this until it was destroyed.  My creator was a true artist and great devotee.  He made me as an act of worship--”

        “Yes.  Yes.  That’s enough, Skipper.  Thank you.”  The man clears his throat.  Raoul is standing next to me.  Is there anyone else in the room?  Back against the window is a man in dark garb, black but glistening.  He does not move.  Maybe he is a statue.  “The reason why we’ve brought you here is simple.  We need a spy.”

        “A spy for what?”

        “I will get to that!”  He seems suddenly offended, “The pleasantries must be seen to.”  He claps his hands twice.  A woman wearing seven veils enters the room bearing a platter of tea, glinting silver.  “Have some cha.”  Standing beside him, her head is just above his elbow.  Is he tall?  Is she short?

        “I,”  I choke on the word a moment, checking to make sure that I am still an animate cloud of bony dust, “I am not sure I can.”  

        “Nonsense.  It’s easy.  You dip a tendril in and some of you goes into it and some of it goes into you.  This brings me to the point.  I need you to infiltrate a government institution.”

        “How is this the right time for you to ask me that and before wasn’t?”  The whole mess skips my mind like a record,  “What?  What?”

        “Ah, now you are not expecting it.  Never let a man know you’re about to ask him to do something extremely dangerous--on your account for nothing in return--without first offering him tea served by a woman wearing the seven veils.  This is the finest blend of qi promoting herbs,” he pronounces the ‘h’ in ‘herbs’ vehemently and ‘qi’ like ‘khi,’ “known to man.  Hinted with potent aromatics” he somehow manages to place an ‘h’ in ‘pot-hent’ and ‘arohamatics’ as well, “and a few mild sweeteners bring it to life.  I am sure it will be a delight to taste and once you have done so, then we can proceed to explain exactly what the issue is.”  

Raoul takes a cup, lacquered green ceramic with a very spartan Japanese appeal to it.  “Eh, Raoul,” he continues with a pause, “it is not that I dislike or distrust you, but your allegiances being what they are, I will have to ask you to leave after you drink with us.”  Saying this, he grabs a cup from the woman.  The statue that was in the back is now standing beside him and lifting a glass of his own.  I did not see or hear him move, and my senses are sharp.

“Of course.  Honestly, I’d rather not know as much as I do now.”  He lifts the glass in a toast.  The woman brings the tray and smiles, gesturing for me to make use of it.  She is very young, though not a child.  Her face is one that has never seen a worry or a disappointment.  An age is impossible to place.  “Salut!”  Raoul tips the glass to his lips.

“Nazdarovya!”  I say, and stretch a tentacle in.  If I was them, I’d be extremely weirded out by the mass of smoke talking and speaking and hearing and drinking tea and all that.  I am not them.  

And then I taste the tea.  It is definitely tea.  Maybe a very well-aged pu’er.  There are hints of stevia and lime to it.  I am not tasting it.  I am feeling it.  “This is,” I begin and fade off as I notice the world sharpening and slowing down.  Is there a touch of chocolate and yerba mate?  I forget what I intended to say.  I feel the cold ceramic surrounding me as I become, additionally, the tea.  I notice a faint buzzing.  The strawberry-cool liquid enters me like water into a cloth.  I sink to the floor under the weight of the rushing world -- cinnamon, bergamot, the cedar boards surrounding us.  A hint of salvia divinorum perhaps?  Only a very small hint.  Maybe a cross with Tulsi?

I realize I am pooling onto the floor and will myself back into a floating posture.  “Good” a voice says. maybe mine.  Maybe someone else’s.

“Well, stay at peace, Captain Bitler.  I will see you when we dock, if not sooner.  I thank you for the tea.  Magnificient as always, Venessia.”  He gives his Sicilian piano grin.

“Yes.”  Bitler nods and Raoul steps into the elevator.  It closes to leave behind the solid ship’s wall which had been there before.  The snaky statuesque man in black is back at the wall.  He has no hair on his head, not even eyebrows, except for a night-black topknot rising out of his crown.  “Now, I can see you enjoyed the cha.  Let’s get to the point.”  There is a faint buzzing again.  Or still.  Now Bitler notices it.

The syllables which escape his mouth cannot be transcribed.  They are guttural and croaking and foul.  Then, collecting himself, “Skipper!  We have an insect on my deck!  Send for Yeoman Cain at once!”

Hanuman does nothing, and Bitler returns his focus to me, “It is a good thing I noticed before I told you anything.  There is a bug somewhere in this room.  Perhaps more than one.”

“So what?  There’s a bug.  Live and let live.”  I am still tasting the cold tea with my whole body, though I’m no longer touching the glass.

“Nevermind that!”  He is frantically searching, “Alric!  Find the bug!”  The statue’s head moves at a quick steady pace, scanning the room, and the statue -- the man? -- himself seems to teleport from vantage to vantage without touching the space between.

The elevator flies open. Out of it comes a man glowing the blue of lightning.  He’s wrapped in a Tesla Coil!  “Where is it?”  His voice oozes hate so thick I can smell it.

“Look around, Abel!” Comes the response.  Bitler is climbing the log walls, now.  Hanging from the rafters, now.

“What are you so upset about a bug?” I am baffled and extend myself in all directions trying to pinpoint the source of the buzzing.  “Bug?  Buh-hug?”  I sing-song as I go, thinning out and filling the room.  I am tasting everything I touch.  Alric bursts through one of my tendrils and I break for a moment then reform.  For a flash the world is as thin and dry as a razor.  Then I see it, on the side of a lamp.  “Hey, here it is!”  I send my voice from my bits nearest the bug.

Then there is a clap of lightning and I clench.  I hear the Captain’s slow and hopeless imperative, “No!” as every part of me fills the room like so much incense smoke.  I sizzle around Yeoman Cain.  God!  I am thinning out.  Parts of me enter their lungs.

I slip into Cain around the words, “I got it!  It’s only got one wing!”  Laughter shakes me, and I see streaks of electricity around my vision.  I see myself, a film of smoke over the air,  “I’ll jar it and take it in for interrogation!”

“False move, Abel!  You’ve got blood over everything!”  Blood?  I have no blood.  “You’ve killed our tool.”  That’s a touch rude.  I am pulled into Captain Benjamin Bitler’s desperate lungs.  “The vessels in Mykola’s temples are going to burst when he knows this.”

“But I got the fly trapped in a jar!”  Sound, sight, smell taste and touch all move into an empty ocean.

“At least there is that.”