The Untrammeled Hills of Whet

Waking suddenly from a deep sleep Jeremy lays still. Dream-residue creeps and continues and the image of a seven-foot tall jack-rabbit is before him. The rabbit says “a smile is a curve that sets a lot of things straight.” The rabbit’s ears are surprisingly soft and dangling. Jeremy pulls lightly on the brown edgings of the ears and does a reverse-roll somersaulting in happy ascension.

Lifting his head from the pillow he instantly smells oranges. As though dancing barefoot on cold white marble, he leaps out of bed with glissando and grace. Picking up an orange rind from his night table, he holds it up near the sun-filled window for improved inspection. There on the orange rind is the message “Take a Shower in The Fountain of the Barn Owl. You Shall See.” Emblematic of his visit with “Zelda the Prophetess of True North” these are his after-care instructions.

He steps into the shower. The water cascades like a fountain of carbonated glee pelting his sternum. The nozzle of the shower-head starts changing shapes. First, the water sprays like bouquets of varying flowers: gladiolas, orchids, lilies and roses. Then the water-shapes unify into a large, undulating Great Barn Owl.

The water falls with great vigor into the rounded and vaulted tub-basin and agitates the air. As the water careens down the drain it creates an acoustical phenomenon. Jeremy is surrounded in the euphonious splendor of a Barn Owl’s call: a gravelly hoot sounding like a muffled foghorn.

Invigorating Jeremy’s senses, the aroma of spearmint fills the space. Now, the shower curtain transmogrifies into a screen upon which all of his inner impulses manifest and are projected within reach of the bath soap. Overwhelmed with unbridled optimism and joy he now realizes that his meeting with Zelda, The Prophetess of True North, was no dream— it actually happened.

They come from miles and miles away to bask in her visionary talents. Jeremy, like all the others, journeyed through the Untrammeled Hills of Whet to meet The Prophetess. According to legend, she resides in her her mobile food truck, which is reputed to be a magical haven. An intuitive journey to find her, some simply walk a-foot and look upwardly at varying shapes the tree-lines make against the cloudless sky. Other journeyers, like Jeremy, turn their clothing into parachutes and enjoy the slow drift towards her being guided by Moonlight and glistening trails of shimmering fire–flies.

When it was Jeremy’s turn to meet the Prophetess, he was corralled with four other journeyers. Zelda the Prophetess of True North meets only with her visitors in groups, never singularly. The best news was that after meeting with her, your return home was promised to be most extraordinary.

As a group they were escorted into her food truck. The space was warm and comforting. There were benches made of cherry wood with amethyst crystal inlays. She gestured to them to sit down. The benches were positioned in a circle and inthe center there was large metal cauldron over a lit fire.

In one grand sweep she waved her sapphire and ruby long-handled wooden spoon and >thwap< the Prophetess began the act-of-stirring her legendary “Inversion Alphabet Soup.” Her Signature Stirring Motion, a divination, created vortex rings and multiple spin-orbits.

“Go ahead—— peer in and read your message.” she proclaimed as she danced around the space. Her hair rose and fell contrapuntally as she continued, “Notice, my little starlings, how meaning spins in and out of varying degrees of revelatory enfoldment!” The Prophetess’ bellowing laugh was thrilling and mystifying.

Jeremy and his fellow journeyers sat at different points of view. The lettering appeared upside down to each member in the group no matter where they were seated.

Jeremy wondered, “is that lowercase letter a “p” or a letter “d”? (scratching his head) and is that letter an “n” or a letter “u”?”

“Calibrating True North we see the past, present and future in the simultaneity of a 360 degree panoramic splendor!” Zelda then takes a whetstone from a leather pouch. It is an unusually dark granular stone and she sharpens a blade at great speed. In one swipe she takes a palm-sized wheel of foul smelling cheese, slices it in five pieces and hurls it into the cauldron.

The toroidal whirring was ever-expanding and reverberating. Zelda signaled them all to look upward. There was no longer a ceiling to the food truck.

The confirmation of the message for them all was in the shared apprehension of the blue, gaping space of sky. There they witnessed peregrinations of starlings undulating in a flock in flight. Some birds’ wings flapped in staccato (click-click, click-click) with their articulated non-raptor wingspan. And some birds’ wings flapped in legato — with their dihedral wing structure which appeared like an undulating like a balletic attitude; curving or waving like a ribbon under-water.

Zelda declared, “Some birds ‘fly in print’ and some birds ‘fly in script’ yet they continue to swarm, coast the air currents, follow and lead within the same flock. Co-existing. Making sense of the void with geo-magnetic global positioning. Peregrinations and Murmurations of Prehistory. Journeying and carving a directional pattern through space. This coexistence is essentially True North.” Zelda added, “They Fly as One —- Or do they? Even amid their differentness: each starling keeps track only of the five starlings around them. Therefore, each bird takes care of itself and its neighbors, and together the flock of hundreds stays cohesive and coordinated.”

Jeremy’s entire body was vibrating with goose-bumps. On a gut-level, Jeremy “understood.” Before he knew what was happening he, and the rest of the bunch, were bellowing laughter which catapulted the five of them up and out of her sanctuary.

“‘Inversion-Remedies’ cure downhearted dolefulness!” Zelda squealed, “because, when upside down, things are guaranteed to always look up.”