A story of one soul during two lives

Llewellyn’s job is to sort and search these files, divining interconnections between them and leading the mouse pointer to the likeliest prospects. It is an inexact science, to say the least-but, with history to corroborate recollections of notable avatars, it is actually less so than, say, psychology, in which my past-life regression therapist holds a distinguished Ph.d.

I sit crosslegged with my back to the couch and throw myself into a mild trance, savoring each inflation and reduction of my chest, slowing time, until I reach that place between breaths. Emptying my mind, balancing
precariously on the crack of the Yin-Yang, the pinnacle of not-doing where striving momentarily ceases, and the body and soul are free from the interminable struggle to either engage the rich nourishment of air, the most fundamental good, or to extirpate the poisonous waste, the anti-air that embodies our most basic conception of evil.

Both are fiction; good is that which benefits us and evil that which is to our detriment. Plants have the opposite perspective on gases, water creatures still a different one. And hardly any ever consider the symmetrical duality of this seminal interaction with nature: ingesting life, expelling death.

In,

-Eternity-

Out.

Somewhere an angel is softly chanting mantras. “ ‘…either on the Bus or off the Bus…’” Llewellyn, reading key phrases from her notes.

No good. If I can consciously hear her, I’m not deeply enough under. The suggestions are intended for the subconscious. I’m thinking too much, and the problem will only compound as my lysergic-charged internal
monologue obsessively echoes every tangent. Meditation on acid is a superior achievement. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. I open my eyes.

Llewellyn stops reading. “Here, let’s try something else. Lay down.” I hear the rustling of her clothes as she rises and walks to the stereo, replacing the quiet ocean sounds I’d been barely hearing with something
like ambient trance.

“Focus on the music,” she advises. “It’s special.”

I know what she means-it’s spiked with subliminals-but try not to be aware of them, lest my attention undermine the suggestions. Relax.

Innnnn

—

ooooout.

darkness. the world is soft, wet, and free of discomfort. Life enters and death departs though the connection at the Center.

Between breaths.

alone in the universe but I don’t mind. It has always been thus.

there is only One.

the firmament quakes, and I am thrust into a new dimension: cold, and glaring. Pain; something assaulting my backside. I wail. What nightmare is this?

Rough surfaces abrade my untouched flesh. This new world, along with its other evils, is a desert.

I spit and gibber the fluid from my mouth. A new ether flows in.

With that first hit I am hooked.

Then, a disruption at the Center of things. The happy stuff is no longer flowing in. Omigod, they cut the Cord!

They-the Others. The inhabitants of this mad realm, who as part of some sinister design have forced me from paradise into what I can already see is a pretty shitty place.

Slappers of asses, clippers of cords. What other tortures do these beasts have in store?

I take my first step on all the lands of the Earth.

I utter my first word in all the languages of man.

I am educated in the fashion of every culture.

I lose my virginity to the entire world.

My hand is quivering, my eyesight poor. A hazy page before me.

Destiny. Best goddamned sentence I’ve written my whole life. I squint, to lovingly stare again at my handiwork.

The inelocutable modality of the visible…

“Holy shit!” I exclaim. “That explains a lot.”