Homeward Bound: Chapter Fifty-Four

Homeward Bound: Chapter Fifty -Four

      As I ruminate with my coffee under the acacia tree, a bee lands in the cushiony pillars of one of its flowers. It strokes the silky petals, eating and at the same time fertilizing the flower. My thoughts are carried to E. Graham Howe's "Flower and Bee." Howe says, "Let Be!"

     When I look back at the flower, the bee is gone. Was it ever really there? I ask myself.

     To be or not to be?

     It strikes me that the bee is a one-brained animal. Its total relationship to its environment is through the moving-instinctive center. Isn't that true? I ask myself. You have to be a vertebrate to have a feeling center, right? And, only man and a few other earthly animals have a thinking center…

     And, I wonder how many brains I was working with back then on the streets of Anchorage. My feeling, or emotional center fed with my love for Anne, and the adventure of our trip surely must have been growing. Hundreds of new sensations were feeding my moving-instinctive center. The thinking center still puzzling over the revelations that it experienced at the Triv. must have been working over time…

     The bee returns to my line of vision. I see that it was hidden by the pillars in the flower's center. Sensing my presence, it shakes the pollen from each of its four pair of legs, caresses the petal, and lifts away.

     If you combine the "Let Be" of Howe with the "Be Conscious" of Gurdjieff, you can watch yourself letting go, I tell myself as I try to remember without thought. Sounds of the sleepy Sunday morning join the cosmic vibrations of a rising sun. Dew freshened air enters my nostrils and feeds the waiting cells.

     Being out of your mind…

     But, which mind? I ask myself.

     The thinking mind! Only quit thinking! Remember Henry Miller, Krishnamurti… Quit thinking, and be conscious of what's there, inner as well as outer. Remember Yourself! Let Go! Be! myself reminds me.

     Colors inside my head mix with the radiance of the rising sun. Geometric patterns of light burst in a hundred directions. A single diamond glow catches my attention. Lights explode inside my head a million fold…

     We are a trinity, I tell myself. Holy Affirming, Holy Denying, and Holy Reconciling…

     It's February the eighth, 1984. I'm at Vance's parent's house. Everyone is home from school celebrating Spring Vacation. Anne and I are the center of attention with Vance's sisters, cousins, and aunts crowding around us and asking where we've been all these years and what we been doing.

     Vance is hurrying in and out of the family room setting out hors d'oeuvres and serving drinks. He looks exactly like he did in 1961. I'm anxious to get a moment alone with him so we can plan what we'll do over the weeklong break.

     Next morning, I'm in the kitchen. Vance's older sister, Veronica, comes in and mixes a fancy drink of hot buttered rum, coffee and whipped cream. I ought to make myself one of those, I tell myself, but instead, cut myself a large slice of chocolate coffee cake. It slips out of my hand and splatters all over the floor. As I glance around to see if anyone has noticed my clumsiness, I see that the sisters and aunties have surrounded Anne in one corner of the family room. I smile, and think how beautiful she looks. At the same time, I feel a slight touch of embarrassment that I'm not a part of all the wealth that surrounds me.

     Vance's father enters the dining room. One of the uncles calls out that it's time to start the poker game. Good idea, I tell myself as I carry a second slice of cake to the table. I figure this will be a good way to pick up a little side money as I watch the uncles empty their pockets of loose bills…

     I'm taking a final exam in a college classroom. The professor, a rather attractive looking woman in her mid- thirties, is quoting from a book while we copy her words. "'But, he sat with his morning coffee. He had been up all night at a coffee house hanging out with barely respectable idle dreamers.' Your exam will consist of showing how this opening statement foreshadows the events of the novel,” she tells us.

     I picture in my mind how I'll write that he could have been led astray by the crowd, and the life that he lived, but that he used this obstacle as a stepping-stone to a deeper level of understanding…

     We move to another room. I'm sitting at the front table with the professor. Students are raising their hands anxious with questions about the exam. "What's her name?" the professor asks nodding to a black girl in front who is waving her hand back and forth. We move closer together. As she bends her head towards me, my arm brushes her breasts. 

     "I think it's Aretha," I whisper.

     "Well, we better not try that one in case you're wrong," she whispers back. I slip my left arm across the table, and with my finger tips slowly caress the woman's breasts holding my breath as I try to sense her reaction.

     I'm outside with my bluebook ready to write the exam. Someone from the group of a dozen or so students says that we have to finish by five o’clock. I figure I should knock it off in a couple hours and have the rest of the day to myself. I ask a girl sitting at a picnic table next to me if she finished the novel.

     "No, it's a huge tome that no one has ever finished," she tells me.

     "I'd sure like to know how he dies," I tell her.

     Four days later, I find myself at a Gurdjieff school with a young teacher. He's a giant of a man with a baldhead, and deep mystic eyes. I stand in silent meditation picking up vibrations that stir my very soul. I realize that I learn more from my teacher's presence than I could learn from all the books in the world. I feel that I'm very lucky to have been accepted into the inner circle.

     Next morning, I'm at our old apartment house at 1859 N. 13^th Street. I lie at rest on a bed in the front room. My father comes to the outside door. As he takes out his keys, two men approach. They ask him for the money he owes them. He tells them that he's a little short, but that he'll pay them back as soon as he can. My mother rushes to the front door. She tells the men to leave or she'll call the police. They push her aside, and slam the door. Though I hear nothing, I picture the men beating my father. 

     "Jackie, Jackie… Your father needs you," my mother calls.

     "I'm coming…I'm coming," I cry as jump out of bed and reach for my pants. As I pull on a shoe, I tell myself, I'm going as fast as I can. I can't fight them in my bare feet. My hands are shaking so badly that I can't get my laces tied.

     As I sit beneath the same tree a year later, I remember that Ouspensky says that to be in the intellectual part of each center means controlled attention. "...In intellectual parts of centers it needs directed attention," he says.

     Is it the chief steward that is in control? I ask myself.

     North takes on a new meaning for me when I read Seven Arrows, and discover in Stone's description of the Medicine Wheel another part of the Work.