“Looks real, too,” I observed. “Have you been to other courses?”
“Heavens, yes. Oak Tree, The Black, St. Andrews… the Nicklaus course in Cabo… I highly recommend that one, by the way.” We began walking off the tee, and then down the perfectly manicured links.
“So even if I’ve never seen them or read about them…?”
“Oh, I see what you’re getting at. You think that this is like virtual reality, and I have to have had exposure, through you, to the layouts in order to ‘reconstruct’ the settings.” Again, as he was prone to do, he put quotation marks in the air with his fingers as we strolled down the fairway. Maybe there’s a gene that’s responsible for that quirk, because me and my brother have been known to use our digits in that way, also.
“Something along those lines…”
“At first, yeah. Years ago. As I became more and more aware of the nature of reality, though, the parameters changed. I was no longer constrained by your experiences. Have you ever heard the term ‘collective consciousness’?”
“On that late-night talk station, ‘Coast to Coast’.”
He spun his driver into the air, where it glinted in the sunlight high above our heads and vanished. “There seems to be something to that… although ‘collective sub-consciousness’ might be a better description.”
“So… every place anyone has experienced…?”
“Is at your disposal,” Giddeon finished for me. “Reality requires observers, and we have plenty of those.”
“Any place on Earth man has been?” I inquired.
“And, some I don’t think we have. I suspect maybe bugs and birds and even things as small as protozoa contribute to the collective.”
“Wow… I never really thought about that.” We were silent for the next 20 paces, or so. Then, something occurred to me, “The moon?”
“Been there, done that. No t-shirt, though.”
“Bet you can’t wait for a manned mission to Mars.”
“We’ve already sent rovers… good enough.”
“For real?”
“Oh, yes… beats the heck out of ‘Two and a Half Men’, by the way. Don’t forget about Voyager 1 and 2.”
“Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune…?”
“Not only have I seen what’s inside your head, I’ve seen Uranus.”
He let out a guffaw at that one. I even smiled.
Giddeon continued, “Not much to Pluto, though. Poor little guy… so far away from everything… basically a lump of dirt and ice. It does have a couple of rock satellites to keep it company, though.”
We had come to my ball in the rough. I set my bag down and chose a 7 iron.
“So, the way Jonathan Livingston got around later in the book is not so far-fetched, after all?” I asked.
“Pretty close. It really has nothing to do with speed, though.”
I lined up my shot and hit a nice high approach to the middle of the green. The thick grass in the low rough had taken the spin off of the Callaway, however, and it rolled onto the frog-hair off the back.
“Not bad… you can par from there.” We continued on towards his ball and he continued on with his tutoring, “There’s no such thing as distance… or time, for that matter.”
“Oh, yeah…” I made a note to myself about time, and decided I would save that one for later. “What about everything the Hubble has seen… that’s observation… does that count?”
“I haven’t fully checked it out, yet, but I’m thinking it does. As a matter of a fact, I’m thinking consciousness may be universal… just like they talk about in quantum mechanics. Particles of matter may actually be making choices and ‘sentient’ in their own fashion.”
He removed a nine-iron from an invisible bag. I watched the shaft appear and grow as he ‘pulled’ it out… showing off a bit, I suspected. After a couple of practice swings, he hit it a few feet past the hole; the back-spin, however, brought it back to within inches… just below the cup and to the right. “Aw, heck…misread the break off of the backstop.”
He smiled, and I knew he was just ‘keeping it real’. The nine-iron disappeared from his hands.
“So, you can go anywhere?
“Looking that way… couldn’t before you showed up. Like I said, I seem to have a lot more horsepower with you around.”
“5.7 percent kind of put you over the top, huh?”
“Not much difference between escape velocity and crash and burn, if you want a rocket analogy.”
“Humph,” I grunted, and then thought everything over. Finally, I conjectured, “Maybe there’s intelligent life out there.”
“I hope so, ‘cause there isn’t much here.” He tilted one corner of his mouth upwards and scratched at his Brad Pitt stubble. “But, you’re right… it could be that ‘collective consciousness’ isn’t Geo-Centric… little green men and all of that.”
We walked towards the putting surface. I marveled again at the scenery around us. The temperature, of course, was perfect. After a hundred and forty yards of silence, we approached the green.
“So, what’s the best place you’ve ever been?” I questioned.
He walked up to the pin and removed it with his left hand. He tapped his Pro-V-1 into the hole with the Scotty Cameron putter in his right hand.
“The table where you met Melody at Seaport Village.”
Our eyes met. A sad smile played with his lips. I turned my head and looked again at the views surrounding us. A formation of Brown Pelicans winged their way overhead, south, towards San Diego.
“Me, too.”
We finished our round in under four hours. I would have gladly traded that time for four seconds with Melody.
Chapter 27
What are the symptoms of love?
The fluttering you get in your core when you think about that special person? That flush of excitement you have when you see them, every time so much like the first? When they move about in three dimensions, and the grace and realness of it all makes you almost want to collapse… is that a sign? What about the forever imprinting of their sights and sounds on the celluloid of your mind, so that you can play it in an endless loop, over and over, again, like a favorite movie… should that be considered?
When just the slightest touch of their skin will send a jolt deep into hidden recesses… a jolt that makes internal organs contract and quiver while your soul sings out an inaudible song of gratitude… a song of thanks to the universe for providing such an opportunity to connect… does that contribute to the diagnosis?
I don’t know what the symptoms are, for sure, but I would bet that all of these things are leading indicators. Indicators that you’re in love.
Some say it’s all just hormones. Chemical pheromones in the air that help attract one person to another. I was in a coma, and miles away from her every time except for the first time, so I don’t think molecules really had much to do with it… although, I could smell her essence, over there, so I guess it can’t be totally ruled out. Whatever the reason, when I would go for a visit, I would get virtually all of the above feelings, and, if anything, they got stronger over time. The more I observed her and learned about her, the deeper I ‘fell’.
__________
I would sit for hours just watching her paint; sometimes, she sketched out detailed beauty using only charcoals. Landscapes, people and animals. Whether in shades of grey or rainbows of color, her renditions of the world were reflections of her inner vision, lovely and unadulterated… they covered my heart as completely as the canvasses.
I would look over her shoulder as she wrote in her journal… I know you’re not supposed to do that, but, how else could I get to know her? I was a ghost, for all practical purposes. Giddeon didn’t seem to have a problem with it, and since I figured there was a strong possibility he was an angel, or, at the very least, my conscience, I assumed he would have at least clucked his tongue if it was truly inappropriate.
The things she wrote on that bound paper were fundamentally exqui
site. I would sometimes go home with her words swirling in my head and floating in my heart. I would run my favorite lines over and over to myself like an actor preparing for a debut; her words were perfectly placed stepping stones in a stream of consciousness… they helped me cross over into her mind and love her all the more.
Maybe one day I can share them with you.
The first few weeks, she sometimes wrote about me. That’s how I know she felt a lot of what I was feeling. I don’t know why it happens, I’m just glad that it can… love, that is. I wanted so badly to be able to pick up the pen and write her a note… to tell her that I was there. I wanted to relay that I wished to hold her, and talk to her, and really get to know her the way a guy’s supposed to get to know a girl. I yearned to communicate across the divide and tell her that I wanted to be with her. That I would like so much to go to movies and to restaurants… to the beach and to the mountains… with her.
Simple things.
I wanted to stroke her arm and kiss her lips. I wanted to invite her and her cat over to the boat where they could both meet Boris. I longed to let her know that I would even learn to sail, so that we could go out into the bay and play the radio and lounge on the deck in the sun… lounge on the deck and sit there and talk about how wonderful the weather was, and, how often wonderful the world is, too.
I wanted to rub sunscreen on her shoulders while she held her blonde ponytail out of the way, and then have her smile and kiss me on the cheek for doing such a good job.
But, I couldn’t do any of that, because I was in a coma.
I remembered Giddeon picking up a penny and putting it in the empty milk saucer at The Boat House, so, I had him try to take a pen and write a message for her in her journal… it didn’t work. I saw the effort and the concentration on his face, but, it just couldn’t be done. He said there seemed to be rules… that the coin hadn’t really affected the ‘other side’ and perturbed the realities. It could be explained away.
A note from a guy in a coma was just too much.
There is apparently an inertia to the quantum states, and crashing headlong from one into another requires too much energy… too much force. We would have been changing too many realities and realities are ‘heavy’, for lack of a better word to describe them.
Just my luck.
Eventually, we gave up on the note. However, I couldn’t help but think of that scientist that once said ‘Give me a lever long enough and I’ll move the world.’”
I vowed to keep looking for that lever.
Chapter 28
After Pebble Beach, Giddeon ‘teleported’ us back to good old San Diego. Bronx Pizza, on Washington Street, to be exact. We were in the back room, the very back booth, sitting on red vinyl seats surrounded by photographs of old boxers and New York baseball greats. In front of me appeared my favorite two slices… Spinach Ricotta and an Eggplant Red Pepper. Giddeon had a Cheese and a Pepperoni. The restaurant was fairly deserted at that hour on a weekday, but I knew from experience that the supper crowd would be coming, soon.
“Sure quicker than flying back,” I said.
“No TSA pat downs, though… you might have enjoyed that, if she was cute.”
He was sounding less and less like an angel to me as time went on.
I rolled my eyes. “Her hands would have gone right through me. Plus, she wouldn’t have been able to see me.”
“Maybe they could have picked you up on their CAT Scanner.”
He was grinning from ear to ear, obviously referring to the fact that only cats could see us. I told him that it wasn’t a CAT Scanner… it was a Backscatter Radiation Detector. I’m sure he knew that, but it didn’t go with his joke.
“So… you don’t need oxygen on the moon?” I inquired, changing the subject.
“Apparently, not. I’m unsure if I bring it with me, or if I’m in a frame of reference where those things are unnecessary. It’s kind of weird, but it seems like I’m breathing when I’m there.” He took a bite of his cheese slice, chewed and swallowed. “Also, it’s really hot or cold depending on if you’re in the shadows, or not… I’m aware of it, but, it doesn’t really bother me. Sort of like that dream you told me about when you and Melody went up into space. You were still comfortable, and you could still smell… remember?”
Mango and lemons invaded my memory. “That was a dream.”
“Maybe everything’s a dream.”
“Humph.” I grunted. “Then, I’d like to wake up, now.”
“And not finish your pizza?”
“Oh, yeah.” I took a bite of the Spinach Ricotta. It was hot and crisp, and I realized how much I really liked white stone pizza without the tomato sauce.
“Dreaming’s not so bad, is it?” my better half remarked.
“As long as it’s not a nightmare… I had my share of those when I was a kid.”
Giddeon got a sheepish look on his face. “That was probably my fault… I have a vivid imagination. Probably spilled over onto you, sometimes.”
After a sip of Coke, I said, “You know, I dreamed a snake bit me, once. I woke up screaming. Scared the heck out of my brother in the next room. Funny thing… later on that same day, I was almost in the same position down by the lake…”
I demonstrated the position using my arms.
“…I had my left hand on a cypress tree and was reaching down to the water for something shiny, just like in my dream.” After another bite of pizza, I repositioned my arms, and dipped one hand towards the floor, mimicking my childhood movements. “I stopped, because it was déjà vu to the max. I backed up and looked around the tree, and there, behind it, was the biggest water moccasin I’d ever seen! We scared him off throwing rocks at him. I got the shiny thing from the edge of the lake, by the way. It was a ball bearing… I kept it so I would always remember.”
“Glad to be of service,” said Giddeon with his palms out towards me in a magnanimous gesture.
“You showed me the future in a dream?”
“Yep. It doesn’t always work, though… and, I was showing you a possible future. There’re so many that it’s hard predicting which ones will actually come to pass.”
He took in some of his Pepperoni slice.
“So, you are a guardian angel.”
Giddeon smiled, swallowed and shook his head. “I don’t think so… it was more an act of self-preservation.”
I mulled that over for a moment. Then, “Where were you when that golf ball was flying my way?”
“Like I said… it doesn’t always work. Plus, I was asleep.”
“Great. My guardian angel has narcolepsy.”
“Hey, I tried, but you were so preoccupied with Melody that there was no way I was getting through. Anyway, I think some things are meant to happen.”
“This was meant to happen? I meet the perfect girl, and the next day I’m in a coma?!”
It came out a little more sharply than I had intended.
“Hey… you get to play Pebble Beach. Free pizza and smoothies anytime you want… it could be worse.”
“Sorry… didn’t mean to raise my voice. But, what could be worse than that empty feeling I get when I think about her being over there, and me, being over here?”
Gid replied, “Oh, lots of things…lots of things.” He had a faraway look in his eyes. “As a matter of fact, I’ll show you, tomorrow. Tonight, the Presidential Suite at The Del has got my name on it. I’m a little tired.”
We finished the rest of our pizza. When our Cokes were refilled, Giddeon said, “You ready to go?”
“Yeah.” I felt a little bad about kind of snapping at him, earlier, so I said, “Hey Gid… it was fun, today. Thanks.”
“Yeah, it was. Glad you came along. See you, tomorrow.”
There was a flash, and then I was on my bed next to Boris… the cup of cola still in my hand.
Chapter 29
I had a good night’s sleep. The cat was gone when I woke up, but he made his appearance about 30 minutes into my morning. Bor
is jumped onto the table and began licking his paws and cleaning his face… most likely, he had been to The Boat House for breakfast and a real scratching from the waitress.
I took a shower, brushed, flossed and put on blue jeans along with a jersey type shirt and tennis shoes. I knew none of the hygiene ritual was necessary, but old habits die hard. I picked up my guitar and strummed a few chords; Giddeon and I had recently been working on a song called ‘Breathe’. I chopped an A chord for a few measures, and began:
Every time you walk into the room…
I feel a little zoom.
And, when you turn my way…
I know everything, is all okay.
And, every time I look into your eyes…
I see the summer skies,
And, when I hold your hand…
I understand,
Who I am… who you are…
and, just what life is for.
At that point, Giddeon appeared on the couch beside me. He joined in the chorus, singing harmony while playing his Martin Guitar.
It’s for living, loving, laughing, too.
Simply breathing, next to you.
Losing all track of time.
Drink it down like red, red wine.
Watching the sun go down.
And, waiting for it, to come back around.
Just another day with you…
and, all I want to do…
is just breathe, just breathe, right there next to you.
Breathe. Breathe. Just breathe.
I want to breathe… right there next to you.
And, every time you walk into the room…
I feel a little zoom.
Do you feel it, too?
And, all I want to do…
Is just breathe. Just breathe. Right there next to you!*
*(song available at https://www.thefivesecondphilosopher.com) Songs may also be heard at https://quantumclassic.wix.com/brulteas they become available.
We finished with a sustained chord. Boris meowed his approval. Giddeon grinned… pleased, also, with our work.
“3 minutes and 6 seconds. Perfect! Short and sweet. I like the way you tied it all up,” he said while pointing his index finger at me.