WaterMark Publications

Dancing with the Serpent by Patricia A. Bloise Chapter One

THERE WAS THIS GULLY bird with big wings spread out over the water of Reynolds Channel. His little cylindrical body looked too small to be carrying around such big wings. I thought he looked like a baby, all grey and out of proportion. And he had teeny tiny eyes that shone like black diamonds in the sun. I could see them from where I stood in the hallway. Gully tipped his wing and swooped down to the waters surface gliding along nearly touching it. In one motion he scooped a fish into his beak and climbed to the top of wind currents that carried him effortlessly towards the Manhattan skyline. He was late for lunch. A bell was sounding. The bell I hated that said move along, next class, next forty-five minutes of doodles, hard wooden seats and blackboards of nonsense and inconsequence. Students buzzed by in ragged blue jeans, tie-dyed T-shirts, leather boots, head-bands and tattoos, cigarettes sticking out from denim pockets. They were the pot-heads, the rock and rollers, the hippies - who always wore patchouli oil that filled the air, making the hallway smell like Greenwich Village on Saturday night. They hid behind dark glasses, pretending not to notice they were sharing the hallway with the nerdy-jerky jocks, the sweat-men, the sneaker-wearing, muscle-pumping, ape-head jocks. The tension was impossible to ignore. It manifested like the stench of old socks in a basketball locker room. It was the kind of tension that hangs in the air waiting to be consumed like kindling for a fire. Tension that waits and waits until it gets used up, never dissipating but always waiting, always ready for action. It came from fear and lodged itself in the hearts and minds of the students. It came from the fear of going forward, of stepping out, of leaving the familiar safety of childhood. It served a purpose then but who knew it? We could not see beyond the ends of our own noses. We were simply too young, too much inside ourselves, too much inside our differences. The pot-heads and the jocks were at war, like Godzilla meets King Kong. That's how it was, that stupid I mean. A student had been stabbed already that spring so we had to endure the presence of these menacing looking security guards with holstered guns, who stood around from eight to three with glazed eyes and lips turned down into creepy little grins. They had these ugly round noses. They all had the same kind of noses, sort of fat and red on the ends. And they all had a little too much around the middle, making the buttons on their shirts look like they wanted to pop and fly through the air any minute.You couldnít help but feel, walking in those halls, like you were in a low-budget horror film stuck in freeze frame. Well, let me tell you this wasn't my favorite place to be. I felt there had to be a better way to spend one's time than listening to teachers talk about stuff in text books, like the history of the American Revolution and how many soldiers died on the battlefield at blah, blah, blah... or how many layers of bedrock sonic waves pass through at minus three degrees Celsius, or about how the Chinese kill all the girl babies in China and awful stuff like that. I mean who cares? I wanted to learn what I wanted and it wasnít in books. The stuff I was interested in people didnít write about. The stuff I wanted to learn about was - well - it was the quest for enlightenment. I was still standing there by the window when I saw my friend Larry fighting to cross the hallway against the river of students buzzing by in their change-of-class frenzy. He was wearing a cowboy hat; he always wore a cowboy hat and he was the tallest guy in the whole school, so he was easy to see. All you had to do was look for his hat. We called him LSD Larry because when you wanted it, he was the one to ask. I watched the hat cross the streaming hallway moving in a zig-zag way stopping and starting like Pac-Man in a maze. It took five minutes for him to cross the damn hall, I swear. He came over to where I stood and towered above me. He was six-foot-three, plus two inches if you added on for his boot heels. He always wore boots, just like he always wore a hat. They were black boots with silver-tipped toes and silver buckles to match. They were pretty nice boots I thought, and besides he made an impression when he walked down the hall. His feet were heavy and slow in a John Wayne kind of way. He leaned over and whispered in my ear. Tomorrow morning, eight-thirty at the Nook, interested?" I looked at his face. I could never figure out his nationality and besides he was adopted so I couldnít even tell from his name where he came from, but he looked part American Indian to me. He stood there leaning over me, smelling like that damn patchouli. His coal-black eyes were wide open and dilated, his long black hair was sticking out from his cowboy hat and he reminded me of a Halloween poster I had seen once on the back of a bus on 34th Street in Manhattan. I reached into the back pocket of my jeans, pulled out a five-dollar bill and without saying anything I handed it to him. He smiled and walked away real slow, just like in a John Wayne movie. I stood there for a few minutes thinking about what I had just done, thinking about the quest thing, thinking about why I was doing it. I didn't need to justify my actions, I told myself. I mean, it was after all about the search for truth. Everyone did it. At least I thought everyone did it. We want to know everything when were in high school, and even though we think we know it all already, we still believe we have it all to learn. We live in a state of constant contradiction when were at that place in our lives. We want our independence but were afraid, we want to be adults but we want to be kids, we want to change the world only its really ourselves that must change... God Iím glad Iím not in high school anymore. MY BROTHER WAS meditating. I could hear him. He wasn't making any noise. The only time my brother was quiet and his mouth didn't go flapping about like a flag in the wind was when he was behind his closed door. I assumed he was meditating. What else could he be doing in there so quietly? Maybe he was a wizard and he went through a black hole into a parallel universe for a time. For all I knew he could have done that. I saw all those strange books lying around the floor of his room, and he knew how to read real well, even though I remember how when he was in the third grade he pretended to not be able to read just so he could get attention. Boy, he had everyone upset because they couldnít figure out how come he couldnít learn. They gave him all these tests in school and then had to tell Mother the bad news. "Mrs. Bloise," they said, "were sorry to have to tell you that your son is incapable of learning to read." It was a few days after that when Mother heard him reading quietly to himself in his room. Well, you can just imagine how angry Mother was then. Raymond always went about things the wrong way in my opinion. I never could figure out why he did the things he did anyway. I rattled into the kitchen on a food search, found some peanut butter and an almost ripe banana and noticed a note on the kitchen table. Genie, Dave and Larry tomorrow morning, 8:30 at the Nook. And then in capitals, I'M GONNA TELL! I grabbed the note, crumpled it up and tossed it in the garbage. I had the smallest room in the house, except for the bathroom. It was a little bigger than the bathroom. But it was sunny and cozy and suited me just fine. It smelled of incense and cigarettes and the east wall was done up in abstract bright colors that told a story without shyness all over the place. Everyone that came to the house admired the wall, all of Mothers friends, especially Elmo Russ. He was a famous piano player. We had his Baby Grand in our house once. I don't know why we had it, but we took care of it for him for a while. That's when Raymond learned to play the piano. Well, he sort of learned how to play. Sanctuary...sanctuary...sanctuary... I was in my room, in my sanctuary and no one could bother me when I was in there. That was a commitment I made to myself and I never allowed any transgression. I tossed my school books onto the bed and eyed my wall lovingly - there was my subconscious mind spread out all over the place, and well, it didn't look too scary to me. There was my bookcase to the right. Ah ha! Just what Iím in the mood for: The Basic Writings of C.G. Jung. I jumped up from the floor, grabbed the book from the shelf and stuck my face in its pages, feeling like I could absorb all that stuff by osmosis or something. Genie was on the phone. She wanted to know what it would be like to take the stuff she wanted to know about Alice and the rabbit hole - she wanted me to tell her it was safe, and it would be OK. I was no expert or anything you know. I mean, it was only going to be the second time but I told her shed have fun. Yeah, wed all have fun. What could go wrong? After all, we were friends, buddies, we always had a great time together. We were the best and besides Larry knew what he was doing, he knew about staying away from bad stuff. He had connections. "But hey Pat," she said, "there's just one thing. I mean, well, I was wondering if you ever heard of it before?" "Yeah, what is it Genie?" I said. "Well, I was wondering if you ever heard of anyone getting stuck in the rabbit hole?" "You mean like fritzed in the head? Nope. Come on Genie donít be such a putz. Loosen up girl, youíre in for a high time tomorrow. Just relax and think about that beautiful beach and blueberry-cheese knishes under an umbrella on the boardwalk. OK? See ya tomorrow morning at eight-thirty." I went to sleep that night with nightmares about a rabbit in a cowboy hat and black silver-tipped boots chasing me up and down the boardwalk on a Baby Grand with a sack of blueberry-cheese knishes and a copy of Jung's basic writings in his pocket. A BIRD WAS CHIRPING in a tree outside my window. Sunlight felt warm on my cheek. I heard the morning news coming from the kitchen. The man on the radio said, "Its currently seventy with a high of eighty degrees coming at us folks. What a great Thursday we have in store for us! Are you ready?" Such enthusiasm was disgusting before seven in the morning. I stretched my neck turning my head to look at my cat clock with its big round plastic eyes that moved back and forth left to right, all the while swishing its tail in a predictable metronomic rhythm. Cat said: 6:58. I had just enough time to shower and grab a cup of coffee. I made my way into the kitchen mumbling words of greeting to Mother, who was seated at the small round breakfast table. "Hi mom," I said, stumbling across the room. I walked over to the refrigerator, opened the door, took out a quart of milk, put it on the table and sat down to wait for the coffee to finish perking. Mother looked up from her breakfast of fruit and crackers. She always ate fruit and crackers in the morning, usually bananas and oranges or pineapple, or sometimes she ate these funny little Jewish cookies that were shaped like stars with the points taken off. "Good morning daughter. Did you sleep well?" Her words blended with a Ritz. "OK, I guess. Where's the paper?" "Didn't come yet sweetie," she said. She got up from the table to pour cream into her cup. "Oh, yes. Can you please see if your brother is up yet? Thanks." I went to see the bear, it was still sleeping. "He's in la la land," I yelled across the house walking towards the bathroom. "I'm off to shower. Save me a cup of java, Mama." LARRY DAVE AND I stood in front of the Cozy Nook at eight-thirty that Thursday morning waiting for Genie to show up. We just stood there together not saying much, each of us inside our own expectations, inside our own heads, anticipating what was before us, making ourselves real small inside so we could fit down the rabbit hole. I kept looking in the direction of Genies house to see if she was coming, till there she was walking down the block, real slow like a snail in molasses. It looked to me like her feet were not sure of the way to go and I figured she was having second thoughts about the whole thing. Larry handed me a little piece of white paper. It was about half an inch square with a blob of brown material in the center. I popped it in my mouth and it dissolved almost immediately. It was tasteless, odorless, unidentifiable, mysterious. I felt the inside of my mouth with the tip of my tongue. I couldnít feel anything. My tongue had gone instantly numb. Genie joined us and stood next to me smiling hello. She wasn't in the mood for talking, I could tell. Without a word Larry handed her the dot, and she hesitated for a moment just looking at the thing in her hand, not saying anything. I thought she was acting sort of strange and I was already starting to wonder about the day, wondering if we were going to regret our choices later on. She just kept staring at her hand, like she was waiting for something magical to happen there. Finally after forever passed by she popped it in her mouth.

THE BEACH WAS CHILLY. Springtime morning chilly, like when you can't wait for summertime to come so you pretend it's already the season for bare backs and tanning lotion. The rising sun already about thirty degrees above the horizon warmed the air currents bringing to life a wind dance that played over the water. Ocean waves tumbled and turned reaching into the air in perpetual motion. The life pulse of the sea could be read on the shore in the rhythm of the waves. Not a soul could be seen along the stretch of beach as far as your eyes could see. Except for a few brave surfers in wet suits trying to catch a wave here or there, no one was around. The four of us walked across the empty beach down to the waters edge and decided to climb out onto the jetties. You had to be real careful out on those rocks because they were so damn slippery, being covered the way they were with this slimy green moss that was always wet from the spray coming off the waves. You had to be real careful that you didnít slip down in between those monster rocks. Boy, youíd really be in a fix if you did that. Its pretty interesting how those giant boulders got put there on the sand like that, all neat and even in rows up and down the length of the beach. Elephants put them there. Yeah, back in the 1920's or some time around there some- one had this great idea about getting a bunch of elephants to push these giant rocks all around into these neat and tidy rows about five-hundred feet apart up and down the waters edge to act as breakers for the waves. Those elephants did a really nice job too, a really nice job I think but of course that's only my opinion. I donít know anything much about that sort of thing. I sat down on the flattest spot I could find and stared out over the water. I watched the waves breaking along the end of the jetties ten feet in front of me. A fine spray misted the air getting my hair wet. I sat there quietly for a while thinking of the last time I visited that spot on the rocks. I had taken LSD then too. That was the first time, first time down the hole. Only it hadnít been a hole. It was more like a different dimension. Light bent in funny ways there. People walked backwards and disappeared through walls. Funny colored lights materialized in thin air, becoming shapes, then melting away into nothing. Trees talked, flowers hummed, electric wires made noise. There were magnetic fields everywhere that pulled against your skin teaching you things you would never believe if you had not seen it, felt it, learned it, through your own senses. Time expanded and lost its meaning. The sunset became the sunrise and yesterday and today lost their separation. All the moments of all the tomorrows one might ever hope to know, became known and felt in the bones, in the blood, in the beating of the heart. I remember after a while I had gotten used to all that and then there I was standing there looking out over the sea. The wind was blowing pretty good that day and I thought to myself - everything. I want to know everything. Miss Know It All wanted to know everything. Big mistake to ask the universe a favor like that. But I did. I asked the sky, the wind, the clouds, and the ocean to tell me all their secrets. The universe whispered back at me, "It's only an illusion. There is nothing to learn, nowhere to go. Remember the laughing Buddha..." "Are you going to the Hendrix concert, Dave?" Larry's voice brought me back to the group. He loved Jimmy Hendrix and he was always looking around for someone to go to concerts with. Dave pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket. "Don't know about next week Larry. Probably try for the Jersey concert in August. Heard it's a great show." "Hey if you do it, pass by one for me, I donít mind crossing the river, OK?" "Yeah, no problem, Larry. I'll get what I can get and well do it, man." I wondered why Dave didn't ask me or Genie along. Probably some kind of male thing I guessed. I didn't want to make a big deal about it even if it did seem rude. I thought about that Dave guy for a while. He really seemed different. I mean, take for instance his clothes. He always dressed in black: turtleneck, jeans, boots, rims of glasses - black. Then there was his disposition: sometimes animated, joking around and stuff like that, but sometimes he was too damn quiet. He had a good sense of humor too, but it was subtle, you had to pay attention. He was very smart, you could tell just by looking at him how smart he was, honor classes at school and all that. One of those types that didn't even study or hardly open a book. He only liked to read Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov. He was really into that science fiction stuff. Genie pulled a lighter from her pocket, a cigarette from her pack, and tried to light the thing, but it was too windy. She decided she needed some exercise and jumped down off the jetties and started running like mad along the shore. I jumped down right behind her, my feet sinking three inches into the sand. I loved that feeling the feeling of sand between my toes. It always made me feel so connected to the earth, so grounded. Fifteen feet in front of us, sand pipers ran frantically along the receding waters edge, searching with their razor sharp vision for hermit crabs hiding just beneath the surface. Each wave of the out going tide brought a piper closer to its next meal as a small measure of sand was removed with the movement of the water. Eventually the little crabs would be revealed and consumed by their destiny. We're just like the little crabs hiding under the sand, I thought. Each wave comes along like a dream in the night bringing us closer and closer to our truth, but all of a sudden - there's the piper! The four of us walked along the shore playing tag with the waves in the sun, happy in our rebelliousness, happy to be there on that beautiful beach. I noticed a mild euphoria and changes in my perception. The blue sky was bluer, the warm sun was warmer, the ocean sounds were louder. Sea gulls flew above the jetties in a graceful dance that described wind patterns blowing off the waves. The birds, the wind and the ocean were one being, existing together, for each other. There was complete harmony. Time became meaningless as patterns of perception blended together and I became the gulls, I became the wind and the ocean. For an endless moment I was free. "Hey, let's go sit under the boardwalk for a while!" Larry was motioning towards the shade. By now it was ten oíclock and people were slowly appearing on the beach, dragging along the kinds of stuff people always drag along with them when they go to the beach: umbrellas, beach chairs, frisbees, radios, volley balls, little kids, pails and shovels for the little kids, snacks, drinks, sandwiches, a dog or two. We made our way towards the boardwalk. Sand moved under my toes. I could feel each grain like tiny needles in the soles of my feet. My legs felt like rubber bands kind of springy and wobbly. We sat together on the damp sand - no one had remembered to bring a blanket. Larry suddenly started to laugh out loud, but he didn't let us in on it. Say, Genie, I said, did you finish your English paper yesterday? She shook her head no. Her hair looked blue, then yellow. Her eyes flashed like suns going nova. I could see through her. Right through her body I could see the waves turning on the shore. She was really an angel, that had to be why I could see through her. She wasn't a real human after all. Boy, wasn't I lucky to have such a friend. I felt honored. I'm always late for Randolph's class, she said. I must have a block about writers of the 20th century. It was a lousy paper anyway. It's just as well I do it over. Genie pulled another cigarette from her pocket, and Larry lit it for her. The lit end looked like a bright red light bulb. "Hey, look at that cloud!" Larry was pointing out over the ocean. "It looks like a pyramid made out of some kind of iridescent crystal. Wow, that's awesome!" Each of us became lost in our own experience of the clouds, of the wind, of the moment. I thought I heard the sound of a woman's laughter. It was the sound of the wind playing under the boardwalk. I could smell the scent of the ocean. It reminded me of something very ancient, something I could not name. The sun was melting in the sky, dripping ribbons of yellow light across the horizon. The breeze blew them into giant petals of color. The horizon began to wave and wobble into an arch making the world circular. Life was a circle. I was a circle. My body began to turn in a circular motion. The world turned upside down. The world became yellow light. I lay down in the sand, closed my eyes, and my body disappeared. I had no beginning and no end. I was expanding out and away from myself. All my edges were dissolving into nothing. Everything became nothing until there was only the sound of the ocean in the distance, and yellow light. "Let's see about something to drink, guys. I'm getting kinda thirsty," Genie said. She got up and brushed sand from her clothes. So we all got up and brushed sand from our clothes. "Say Genie, so what do you think about this stuff anyway?" I asked as I walked out into the sunlight. "Gee, I donít know," she said, putting on her sun glasses. "I guess it's like being in a dream only I'm awake. And everything in this dream is spontaneous and free. Anything can be created and the world just keeps enlarging itself." She started rubbing suntan lotion all over her arms and legs. "Sounds like a pretty good description to me. What do you say Larry?" I noticed that funny little grin on his face. "Well Pat, I say it sounds like were in control, so we must be OK." We laughed together at the good fun of it all. We made our way towards the ramp that would take us onto the boardwalk; there were concession stands up there that sold food to beach goers during the warm months. One of the best places to go for a bite was this great spot called Izzy's Knishes. They had the best knishes in the world: cheese and fruit; blueberry, strawberry, pineapple. No one else on the planet had anything like them. I thought about the nightmare just then, about that stupid rabbit in a cowboy hat with a sack of blueberry-cheese knishes on top of a piano chasing me up and down the boardwalk. I never did figure out what that dream was about. THE BOARDWALK WAS crowded for a weekday morning. There were mothers with small children in strollers, and mothers with older children testing their independence by running across the boardwalk zig-zagging their way through the bicycle path, as their mothers yelled at them for safety's sake. I saw elderly folks sitting in the sun out of the wind engaging in casual friendly conversation. "How was breakfast?" "Did your son visit on Sunday?" "Did you hear about Martha's husband? Its such a shame." Genie and I walked over to Izzy's while Larry and Dave headed for a hamburger stand. "Hey Genie, you know what I think?" I said it real quiet, like I was going to tell her the worlds best kept secret. She looked at me. Her pupils were wide open and dilated even in the light. "I know, you're going to tell me you like Dave, right?" "Get off! How'd ya know? It's not that obvious is it?" "Hey, I've known you since the third grade, remember? Besides, don't you know you can't hide stuff from best friends?" We stood in line and waited our turn, but when it was time to order, I had no appetite, not even for a knish, so I just bought a soda. Genie asked for a cup of water. The guys were sitting at a wooden table near the hamburger stand, so Genie and I walked over and sat down without saying anything. We all just sat there looking out at the beach, looking out across the wide blue ocean, and I couldn't help but notice how the sunlight played against the expanse of white sand, sand that stretched out in opposite directions east to west as far as I could see, sand that was clean and fine and beautiful and too often taken for granted by those who didn't stop to appreciate it like we were doing then. I breathed in the clean salt air, I breathed in my life trying to suck it up inside myself, trying to fill in the blanks like a hangman's game - watch out! fill in the letters before your head gets in a noose. We decided to walk on the boardwalk with no destination or thought about what to do next. As we made our way along, I noticed David was especially quiet, so I asked him how he was doing. "Hey Dave, how are you feeling? What do you think of this stuff anyway?" Silver light danced in his hair. I saw alien worlds alive in his eyes. I figured he had Asimov and Bradbury in his head taking notes for the next best sci-fi adventure. "I'm fine, just taking it all in. Say, Larry, can I bum a butt from you? I have to get a pack." Larry handed David a cigarette and he lit it without losing his stride. Such a mysterious one, I thought. It was his quiet and deliberate mindset that observed and was unaffected by what it took in. Still waters run deep; that statement was made for David. "Hey, you guys," Larry said, "how about we head up to Park Avenue, maybe we can see if Pig-Man Mike is back from class." Pig-Man was this really cool friend, who had a sort of extraordinary talent in art and science. He liked to put together light shows at a place called the Fillmore East. We all had had enough of the beach and the boardwalk so we headed towards the center of town. The four of us were just walking along cutting school, thinking we were cool because we were doing what we wanted. We were making a statement being rebellious and all that, walking along heading towards Park Avenue. Long Beach has a Park Avenue because in the 1920's and 1930's it was a place where rich people would go for the summertime, leaving New York City and places like that. And when they made up the street signs in Long Beach they figured they should have a place called Park Avenue so the rich people would feel at home. Well, I don't really know if that's true. I just made it up, but it's probably some stupid reason like that. Well anyway, so there we were, Larry and Genie and Dave and me. I was minding my own business. Just walking along Magnolia Boulevard, and this impression came to me from somewhere, only a vague sense of awareness really, of being so open, so vulnerable, so small. Well I just said the words, "I feel open to attack," just like that. I said them to no one in particular, just for the hell of it. I didn't even know why I said them, and I didn't think anything of it. But David did. It took a while for us to notice the change in him. Something happened to him that day somewhere along the way. He stopped talking and retreated into himself into a place none of us could imagine. He just walked around with us, sort of there but not there. We were afraid to press him for conversation. We became quiet ourselves, feeling his need for silence. There was an odd sort of vulnerability that had become exposed. We all felt it. There was an awareness in my mind then, of the fragility of the human psyche underneath its outer layer. Underneath that exterior part we display to each other, to the world, another self is quietly hiding. It's the piece of ourselves we never allow out except in our dreams. David had entered that place that day and it was frightening for him to be there. It was scary to us too, seeing him like that, so quiet and unreachable. None of us knew what was happening to him. Hours passed but he didnít speak. What could we do? None of us knew about "bad trips," none of us knew how it could get, or what to expect. We just went along in a kind of silent limbo trying to be supportive of our friend. The day passed us by, and we never did get to see Pig-Man Mike. We hung out just walking around the streets of Long Beach waiting for our friend to come back to us. Finally by eight oíclock that evening things were beginning to lighten up as the effects of the LSD were wearing off. We decided it was time to call it a day. When we were saying our goodbyes David finally spoke to me. Can I call you when I get home? His eyes were pools of dark fear. I felt his sense of urgency. Of course you can call me, I said. I was grateful to hear him speak after eight hours of silence. When I got home, Mother was sitting in the livingroom. I didn't say anything but went straight to my room. Within twenty minutes the phone rang. It was David. "You read my mind!" he said, in frantic monotone syllables. There was a heaviness on the line and I wasn't getting the message. "Do you remember when you said those words, open to attack? Well you read my mind!" It was telepathy! David was talking about telepathy! I knew the significance this would have for him. I knew instinctively that this was profound for him. I didn't even know how I knew it, but I did. We talked until the sun came up. We became inseparable. We shared ideas, philosophy, science fiction, fantasies. David had a fertile imagination and a keen intelligence that was also deep and broad. But he carried within himself a deep cynicism. There were things that bothered David - things he wasn't willing to share - things too difficult to talk about. He was a private person even at that young age. But I came to understand later on how vital our early relationships are. David suffered from a terrible grief, a profound sense of disconnectedness. He had witnessed the death of his father at five years of age, and his young mind had not been able to understand the tearing away of his father from him. He suffered the loss of himself in the loss of his father, and his burden of sadness had been overwhelming. Time passed. We smoked pot, went to concerts, lit candles and incense and listened to the Moody Blues. We were young people in love, trying to find completion in each other, because we felt so incomplete. It seemed as if the missing parts of our souls could be found somewhere beyond the boundary of ourselves. We began to meditate together. We would sit cross-legged on the floor of David's bedroom holding hands. One day we decided to do this after taking LSD. It was evening, the room was dark. A candle's timid glow cast dancing shadows against the walls. Incense was burning. Music was playing in the background. David and I sat in the middle of the floor with our legs crossed and hands held together. It was comfortable sitting like that. I faded into the music in a relaxed way. I had no knowledge of meditation technique, I only knew that it was something I wanted to do, so I trusted my instincts, and I played it by ear. Minutes passed: ten, fifteen, twenty, I'm not sure. At first there was only an awareness of peace and serenity and the heaviness of my body on the outside, but of a lightness within, as if I could move to an interior part in the middle, almost as if I had two bodies. I felt a sensation in the center of my forehead. I saw a light there beginning to form. It was a white light, very soft at first, not strong. It seemed to have a magnetic pull to it, and I felt its field. My body was very relaxed, my heart rate had slowed down, and my breathing was no longer noticeable to me. My whole attention had become fixed on that white light. Suddenly I felt myself moving. I was moving through a tunnel. The tunnel was very long, but at the end was that white light. The tunnel did not frighten me and the light did not frighten me, but suddenly I was in a panic because I felt my body being pulled through that tunnel at an incredible speed. I didn't have time to think about what was happening. The sense of speed was beyond my comprehension. I knew that if I let myself go into that white light there was no coming back. I jerked my hands away from David's. My eyes flew open - my heart was pounding. David was sitting with his eyes closed. A moment later he was looking at me. We never spoke about this experience and we never meditated again.

IN THE SUMMER OF '69 WE went to Woodstock where everyone ran around naked, listened to loud music and took drugs. I had a wonderful time except I didn't run around naked or take drugs because I knew by then that taking drugs wasn't going to answer any questions for me. It just made things more confusing after a while. But I loved the atmosphere of it all, just like everyone else. It was a kind of phenomenon I guess, Woodstock I mean. And all of us together like that, so many of us in one spot, well, the vibrations were pretty strong. David and I talked about joining the Pig Farmers. They were a group of free spirits that had taken to living off the land on a farm somewhere in the Midwest. But we were too bound by convention and unwilling to take that kind of risk. We chose to stay caught up in the boundary of the familiar because we lacked the courage to step out into the unknown. It was something I would come to regret later on for David's sake. School continued to be a drag and became more and more boring to me, as my desire to learn a broader knowledge grew. I simply could not relate to high school material. I wanted to know about truth, about what could not be perceived with the limited instruments of the human mind. I was Miss Know It All standing on the jetties asking the universe to tell me all her secrets. If the universe wasn't going to tell, then I thought I could use my ESP. I knew I had all the answers already anyway, all I had to do was dive deep and find them. The only problem was, I never learned how to dive. But what the heck? I could learn as I went. How bad could it get? How confusing could one tiny universe of knowledge be? This was my soul quest, my mission. I was frustrated with learning, and I was disillusioned with school. This prompted me to make a major decision. I would leave high school. I WAS IN THE LIVINGROOM. It was a Saturday morning when I made my announcement to Mother as she sat there sorting through some papers. "Mom, I want to drop out of school," I said. Mother looked surprised. No words came from her mouth, she just sat there looking at me. "I can't stand going to school with armed guards in the halls. Everybody hates everybody, they're always fighting and I don't want to be there!" Mother was quiet for what seemed to be a long time. Finally she said to me, "You may leave school against my wishes, but if you are not going to go to school, you must go to work." OK, I said to myself, so I'll go to work. Monday morning I was in the principal's office. Mrs. Schwartz was the secretary. I decided to drop out, I said abruptly. Schwartz looked at me and shook her head. "You'll be back," she said with certainty. She gave me a bunch of papers. "Here, take these home and have your parents fill them out," she said, still shaking her head. I took the papers and left the office. I went straight to my locker, pulled out my stuff and said goodbye to high school. It was that simple. I walked home, dropped off my books and headed downtown. Long Beach had a Headstart program, and that seemed like a good place to begin. I marched myself into the office, filled out a job application and one hour later I was employed as a teacher's assistant. I'M NOT GOING TO tell you the details of my life after high school while I was working as a teachers assistant and all that because I really don't feel like going into it right now. But I have to tell you the important stuff, like David and I got married and had a baby and everything was sort of too much for us - and we separated - and well, I got depressed about the whole thing and had it really rough for a while. Well, we both had it rough for a while. Donna, from high school, who I hardly knew at all came by one day. She had this woman with her, the woman's name was Jana. Now I don't know why Donna brought someone I didn't know at all to my house - except I guess Donna thought that the stranger and I could be friends because we both had little kids the same age - which is actually what happened. We got to be friends after a while. But anyway, that first day this woman Jana stood outside for a while talking about this and that and I could see right away she was a really interesting person. I guess I'd have to say she had a kind of charisma. She seemed young and old at the same time. Her face looked young but her body seemed sort of matronly, slightly rounded in the shoulders, giving a tired appearance to her frame. What was most noticeable to me though was her calmness, her quiet and graceful demeanor. She had a sort of confidence about her. That was what first set Jana apart from other people in my mind. I found her so interesting to talk to I invited her over for tea the following week. That's when my education in metaphysics began. Jana read tarot cards, used crystals and pendulums, felt objects with her hands and knew things about the people they belonged to. She went into trances all of a sudden and said funny things I didn't understand. The first time she did that she scared me to death. Sometimes she played the zither and sang like an angel. She was New Age she said. I didn't know too much about all that myself, it was 1973 and I didn't even know we were having a New Age then, or why we needed a New Age, but it sure looked like it was doing Jana a world of good. But that New Age stuff wasn't really what Jana was about. What Jana was about is much more important than that, and even though I saw it back then I didn't really understand it yet. I was still too busy looking around at nonsense. Jana and her husband were poor. Very poor. They lived in a crowded one bedroom basement apartment with a couple of dogs and not much else. They were simple and easy going people. Nothing seemed to bother Jana. She was always pleasant, always happy, and held this inner calmness that was extraordinary. She and her husband gave to one another an honoring affection and respect. They were possessed by some magic, some incredible inner knowing that was visible to anyone who looked. They lived beyond the constraints of our society, unbound and unbridled by the should's and have to's of most people caught up in the maze. Jana's inner vision was a reflection of a superior way of life and it seemed to me that if everyone in the world was like Jana, then the world would be a great place to be. She became a kind of mentor to me, teaching me about things I wanted to know. She talked a lot about Christ, about his missing years. How did she know I wondered? History is an unreliable source, it has been rewritten countless times. But Jana wasn't talking about history, she was talking about knowledge, the things she spoke about were part of her knowing, part of who she was. The boundaries of understanding began to stretch for me. I began to appreciate more and more that reality is determined by one's interpretation of events and personal expectations. I began to think about history and that it might be meaningless. History presupposes that time flows in linear progression. That idea no longer made sense to me as my understanding of time was beginning to change. My mind seemed to be opening up to new ways of thinking. Ideas formed of themselves, images and symbols came to me from nowhere. Information was pouring into my mind in an unbelievable way. The universal mind was beginning to speak to me. My relationship with Jana continued for some months, until suddenly she and her family disappeared from my life as quickly as they had entered it, when one day I went to their apartment and they were gone. I never found out where they went or why they went away. I became interested in occult thinking. I read about Buddhism. Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. India. I became fascinated with India. I was mostly interested in the traditional ideas, the ancient wisdom that predated Christianity, because I reasoned, ancient knowledge was the source and I wanted to know the purpose of it all and my reason for being. Depressed teenagers need answers. I know I'm repeating myself, but well, I'm trying to make a point....

AND THEN IT BEGAN the first time. The energy came from somewhere, and took me over - body, mind and soul. It was there all of a sudden, showing itself at first as an insatiable appetite for music, and drawing pads and pencils, oil and canvass - sketches in abstract design, sketches of any limb or part of my anatomy that could be kept still and poised so it could feed my need to express this new part, this new element. I was tireless, without need of food. The flesh began to disappear from my body and my clothes began to hang on me. I talked fast and thought fast. I had fast ideas and places to go. I drove to the airport at three in the morning to watch the planes landing, wondering who was coming in on those wings and where they were coming from - so many people, so many people. My mind was making pictures. Someone or something was filling my mind with symbols and abstract ideas. Not words came, not language as I knew it, but a geometry and landscape of shape and form. My mind was a river of knowledge flowing through a channel of eternity. There was no time, only the ever-present now that expanded forever and ever. So much to do. I wrote a poem and a song and a story. I played the piano. I lost my appetite, my sense of time, my sleep. Day ran into day, the sun was up and down. It meant nothing but whether or not to put on a light. After three weeks without sleep, I was deep into it. My subconscious mind refused to be ignored. It was as if someone had taken a barrel filled with endless pieces of a giant puzzle and scattered them out all over the ground, and that someone said, "These are the parts of your life. Good luck putting it back together." And I could hear the universe. She was laughing at me. I REMEMBER STANDING IN my livingroom, it was early in the morning as the sun was coming up. I started to spin like a top. I didn't lose my balance or get dizzy. I just remember spinning. Later on that day Mother came to see me. She took one look at me and at my apartment, which was a terribly disorganized mess. Mother called my brother. They decided I needed help. Even though I had lost the connection between my inner and outer experience, even though I was lost in a world that was making no sense, I will never forget the date. It was October 6, 1973, the day of the Yom Kippur War, and the boundaries of time had been completely obliterated. My mind was afloat in a sea of information that was making no sense. And I had learned the answer to Genie's question: yes indeed - one really can get stuck down the rabbit hole. End of Chapter One Order Dancing with the Serpent by Patricia A. Bloise For further information on Dancing with the Serpent see the Main Page. Read Patricia Bloise's article on Bi-Polar Disorder and Kundalini in The Healing Arts Newsletter.

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