Gone the Tides of Earth

I am led by the same lady across a long lawn, hidden by rows of olive trees apart from the forest, east of the taverna and old broken town, to a tiny house sheltered thereby.

The sun is up and hot as we sweep up the staircase unto an eclectic façade full of streamers, windchimes, and tacky ornaments. Inside the door is much of the same, an interior littered with bizarre paraphernalia of every culture, religion, and style.

‘He asks only that his patrons leave a part of themselves,’ she explains.

The being called Great Gheronda sits on the floor opposite, in a living room converted into a prayerful space. Behind him is a shrine rife with flaming candles, and images of the elder when he were younger, on various pilgrimages to temples of worship.

His appearance is like that of an incarcerated man, the sleeves of his dark orange jumpsuit ripped from the fabric. He is upright and crisscross-applesauce, a sublime smile on his face and doey eyes wide as the Buddha’s. A gallery of tattoos makeup a sleeve on his left arm, all done in black ink except for the largest; a dragon blue, gold, and scarlet.

Though thin he is wiry with sinew-like muscle and the body of a much younger male. His chosen daughter is rounder, somewhat plump, but with a robust temperament. She takes her place aside, on a foldup chair somewhat bereft of the stitched quilt upon which the holy man rests, and where I also am directed to sit down, across from him.

It is evident that he does not speak a lick of English, and that the female is a translator as well. Gheronda, perfectly postured and radiant gazes at me, I bent slightly forward in the childlike sitting position, and unable to meet his quality for too long.

The old sage wrings his hands together, grinning enduringly, and begins to speak with the translator with a sideways mouth, his eyes fixed on mine resolutely and gently.

‘He wishes to tell you about himself,’ she says, a South American accent palpable.

‘Of course, please.’

He speaks animatedly, gesticulating with sweeping body gestures, and I forget as I watch that he is decades older than myself, or elderly at all, and dissolve into the grace of his person, simply almost forgetting the mediated aspect of an interpersonal confrontation.

‘As a young man, I went all over the world. For years I travelled the north, as far as Arctic tundra, where the night sky is clouded drops of absinthe and milk of the poppy given flame on the auspices of Archangel Ezekiel and Saint Germaine. As gods tinkling their own cosmic windchimes. I found solace and joy in the mountainous regions of Asia, indulging a long placement at one of the renowned monasteries in Ancient Tibet, but longed for home.

‘So here I am. Teaching as is sought and counselling the best I can. And I see you.’

‘What does he see?’ I ask furtively.

He peers at me considerately, head sidelong, an earlobe touching a shoulder.

‘First he would have you tell us your story, kindly.’

‘I’m from Canada. My childhood was normal, playing hockey and spending time with friends. I was in my mid teens when the occupation began. At first they claimed it was a great collaborative effort, a harvest to save humanity’s world. The trees, the water and minerals, metals. I was on a replant project when the politics were reaching a fever pitch. Who knows what initially caused it. But we were forced to ration, and the common sentiment was that more provisions than was fair were given to the States which had become impotent, ravaged by the epidemic. People began to revolt, planned attacks skyrocketed. It was hard to know which side you were on, who was more justified.

‘Voltaire said something like, every man is guilty of the good things he did not do. I didn’t do anything, nothing, act or react. Some peers joined the uprising, others went south to have a hand in the innovations. The so-called good bombed the propagandized bad ones, this often leading to immense collateral damage. And so, the blooming legionnaires reigned in martial-order, abducting all those purported to be involved. I received after some time a letter of interment on behalf of my parents, that they were detained in Mississippi where they could continue covid clinical trials as the scientists they were, but not also execute planning and orchestrate the local insurgency. This all years after D.C. was levelled. A small group of us who had no interest set sail for Europe. I’m the last one standing. These last few years I’ve roamed Italy and Greece, since leaving Paris. I’ve seen the world, too.’

‘I see grief is the deepest in you. Alcibiades has a grief that bleeds and Jacqueline which breathes. Yours is solidified and become stuck like sediment lodged in a stream. There is a funeral inside of you. Your crow’s-feet point downwards. This is a sign of great trauma. Having suffered some energy so powerful is has altered anatomical configuration. Pain must be raw in order to be transformed. We must begin to feel what is suppressed.’

‘Does he understand it’s indecent to throw stones, to poke bears with sticks?’

Together they share laughter in this, which grants a reprieve from what seems to be hardline questioning. There are no lights, but one feels the heat of an interrogation room, caught underneath the proverbial microscope. His eyes remain sweet, her smile polite.

‘He will come out with it, then. It is not his duty nor aim to make you, or any who come here, uncomfortable. What there is to say, essentially, is this:

‘Would you not rather believe in yourself, than harbour views against oneself? That is what the body is, a bay filled with everything you’ve ever experienced - anything that is in the harbour already can be transmuted, though not forcibly removed. It is there, exactly as is, whether you like it or not. But you are awareness gleaning through. So, if we know that this form is a receptacle, a reservoir containing all it learns, teach it something new.’

I am unsure if it is he intends this to be said, or she saying it on her own volition.

‘My oh my, you are a special resident,’ I shoot back, not without intended irony, glaring. ‘So, when all is boiled down it’s matter-of-fact X’s and O’s, then?’

‘Anything to the body is suggestive. Such is its nature. Not taking self too seriously is the way to accept oneself as is. This cerebral-visceral one does not pass demands.’

‘Why so blunt, though? Being so crudely straightforward is alienating.’

‘There’s no time, we will see you once. It is best to plant a seed which may yield results than to allow the soils become barren.’

‘You want to know about the dark side and secrets?’

‘He says, tell him about the lava that flows over and through water.’

‘Nothing is one-dimensional with this mystic. I can tell what you want to know. We revered Napoleon but reviled Bundy. Freud believed all of humanity was abused. At once the chemicals informed circuitry, then the wiring sustains chemistry. Does that work?’

His countenance softens as she repeats what I’ve said, and then the joyous expression fades temporarily, betraying empathy-compassion, which I hate more.

‘Does such melancholia never get exhausting - why not drop the weight?’

‘I suppose there are probably many such reasons.’

‘Let’s start over. We only wish to assist, friend.’

‘Would you prefer bare truths, falsehoods, or a pretext of one’s grey innocence?’

‘Only that which you say. There are aspects, consolidated or differentiated, not parts, to oneself. So why condemn any aspect?’

‘Surely just the part that killed a man.’

‘Why did you murder?’

‘Because he would have done it to me, and someone that I was trying to protect. I know what you say and believe, the enlightened ones. That life is a play, that it’s all fun and games. Maybe, until you do something like what I’ve done. Then the show ends. I know that the world walks a fine line of forgetfulness. I no longer have that privilege.’

‘You are a cognizant ecosystem of inner and outer environment - an ecology of aspects. We may use techniques to relieve stress of the burdens troubling our hearts and heads. Like the indigenous people original to your home, an old communal medicine is to convene during times of strife, to sweat and give voice to pain within. There are many practices one can cultivate alone, also, to carryout in solitude or kindred togetherness.’

‘Is all that is left for me to soothe suffering, to numb the ache?’

‘Counting the cost will make you corrupt your purpose. I believe we ought not judge survivalism. Unconditional love, acceptance and healing; that’s the eternal way.’

‘But how could it ever be right to transcend violence?’

‘Because it’s so easy to do wrong under wrong conditions.’

‘Alci is on the edge. For something he didn’t even do. Something considerably minor, in such times. How is that fair - how does it make any sense? He is lost now.’

‘The verge of collapse is also the precipice we pull ourselves up from. For him the choice is clear, to rise or fall. But those who suffer like you have climbed away from the edge and tucked themselves out of sight. You may be removed from the precipice, yet also from the platform on which we stand and stride toward the plateau beyond. Perhaps the cave of concealment eliminates the backward, though there is equally not forward.

‘There are those who are indentured to dark masters. It is they whom hardest hustle to make Earth their own. Be grateful you are not summoned and have only grazed against darkness. The greatest pain any carry day-to-day is to not love. Fear need not be counsel.

‘These changes you are experiencing show a refusal to stay sleepy any longer.’

‘How can one overcome the mind - make it stop?’

‘Of course you cannot. Know that in trauma there are normal reactions to abnormal circumstances. Just as there are normal reactions responding to settings of normalcy. How could we ever credit a decision made under traumatic pressure as aberrant or wrong?’

‘So, I’m still normal?’

‘You are still normal,’ she affirms. ‘Besides, it’s all just disparate perspectives.’

‘I can’t say I’m completely sold. But talking here helps.’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It is no problem,’ she answers, joining our senate in a fluid way. ‘He wants to ask if you have brought him a sort of souvenir.’

I peer around the pleasant quarters, shelves and floorspace fraught with trinkets, figurines, banners, and knickknacks. There’s the feeling of hoarded overflow, despite the assortment of goods being nicely displayed, neatly arranged. A sleeping dragon’s treasure.

‘I do have something for you,’ I say, reaching inside the inner pocket of a corduroy coat, borrowed from the cottage, to procure an aged parchment envelope with a bundle.

Truly-great Gheronda opens the seal, flipping through the contents, and frowning once realizing what they are. He then tries to pass it back to me, but I shake my hands.

‘I wish to part with them. I’ll feel better knowing they’re safe with you here.’

Back at the inn, Alci is absent, and Jaqueline straddles the bed, a leg crossed under the other and its toes tickling the hardwood below. She sits pensively and pays not much heed to my return. I leave the door open and sit on the edge, peeling off shoes, overclothes.

‘There is a second room available to us now,’ she says. ‘Alci has moved his stuff to it and gone to sleep, I think. Mohamed says we can use both until paying customers arrive.’

‘Awesome. I’ll head there as soon as I gather my things.’

‘Henry. What did you and the elder speak of?’

‘Myself, mostly. Fears. Doubts. And you?’

‘The same. He got an old memory out of me. Something I knew not was there.’

‘What happened in it?’

‘I was young. Three or four. I was staying at my uncle and aunt’s. My cousin was crying in the crib, an infant, so I left my room to check in on him. It was a cry of anguish. Raw and real. I opened the door and saw my aunt standing over the cradle. She did not see me there. She had a hand in the basket, a face of cold hard slate. I was terrified and bolted.’

‘What do you think it was?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe life turns us all to stone.’

‘It might have been nothing.’

‘C’est possible. Did you learn anything?’

‘That you need to sift skins to survive this world.’

‘Will you stay up to chat with me? We could go down for a drink.’

‘Sure. That sounds swell.’

‘Should we wake Alcibiades?’

‘No. We’ll let him sleep.’