CHAPTER THREE
“The Spirit in Search of Experience”
Hotblood, flying so lonely, over forests, over seas, does not see any reason, nor justice, no loyalty, nor honor, neither truth, nor inspiration. Over swamp, over desert, for life or death, he searched for that something else. Not content with safe complacency, to monitor the changing seasons and the passage of time, preferring the rushing blood and pounding heart 0f adventure as he reminisced on those days of long past when each heart had its quest, Hotblood forsook all familiar territory and approached that edge of the known limits to those of his kind. Never had anyone gone to where he dared to go. His dare was to go to the Land of dreams and nightmares, to that great void beyond from whence there would be no turning back. Thence he went.
He went running up that road. He went running up that hill. Everything seemed normal, but, all of a sudden, everything seemed strange. The road he was running up, the hill he was running up began to move under his running. The road, the hill began convoluting as a serpent would. The formerly benign and commonplace world as he knew it had taken on a surreal cast. The colors of his surroundings, always before drab and unremarkable, the colors of his world were now psychedelic and alive. He noted all these effects even as he fought the vomit in his throat and even as he was resisting the vertigo that had him on the verge of losing consciousness.
He lost consciousness. The vertigo was more than he could stand. He passed out. He was out of it for a long, long time. He had started out on his trip right after eating lunch. That was when everything turned weird and he blacked out. He did not get his senses back until way after dark. He had been out of it for hours and hours.
When he woke up he was face down in a bar ditch. It was lucky for him that the weeds and refuse kept his nose out of the muddy water or he would have been drowned during the ordeal.
There he was! He was in a bar ditch and he stank from vomit and he stank, (the shame of it!) from excrement. His own! It seems the adventure he thought he just had to have was turning out bad! His adventure came with disastrous and unanticipated results. He had his own bodily wastes all over himself! This was not what he wanted. No glory on this road! Just disgusts! Bummer! Things had to get better than this! Now he was thinking, “Forget the thrills! Just take me home!”
Climbing out of the ditch and shaking himself off, he looked around. Then, he paced to the middle of the road. The road was straight as a string and flat as a skillet. The road was wide and smooth. The road gave off a golden glow partly from its own radiance, partly as a reflection from the celestial orbs above. Above him shined a silvery crescent moon in conjunction with a golden Jupiter and a silvery and golden Venus. The three of these heavenly bodies glowed with a luminosity unlike the glow of familiarity back home. The glow from above and the glow from the gold road really were strange.
The flatness of the land, the straightness of the road, the golden radiance taken on by every natural object in view, the three heavenly bodies in conjunction, the heavens lit up like a neon panoply, and a glow of emerald and azure on the near horizon: strange days had found him.
He focused on the glow of emerald and blue on the horizon. He did not know the place but he would soon realize that he was looking at the Emerald City. The Emerald City was one of those mythological places that represented something that was hoped for and dreamed of but did not really exist.
Shangri-La, Cibolo, the land of Nod which lay east of Eden, the lost continents of Mu and of Atlantis, all these places were of fantasies! Dreams are for dreamers and lies are for gullible fools! Never Never Land, Camelot, the land of milk and honey, heaven and hell! Who thought all these fantastic and unsubstantiated stories up? Land of Oz? Bunk! Emerald City? Hogwash!
Yet, here he was and there was ‘it.’ ‘It’ beckoned him, calling to him, “Come this way, Hotblood. Meet your fate!”
He stood facing destiny. He was filthy, disjointed, hallucinating, and intrigued by it all!
Then, of a sudden, he heard a ruckus coming toward him out of the darkness into the golden glowing luminescence where he was standing. Then, after a moment, he could see a procession of men who were proceeding from darkness into the light. Then, gradually, he could see them clearly and he could decipher their actions. He could see what they did but he did not understand the purpose of what they were up to!
Toward him, wending its way along the golden road out of darkness into light, toward him then past him in the direction of the Emerald City which loomed on the horizon, the procession was in motion, even undulating and writhing as a reptile might. Past him went the leading ranks. Out of the darkness into the light went the followers. What he witnessed was a human chain in procession. Men, filthy and disjointed as he, men in shackles were being herded and prodded along by squads of sadists.
Police-thugs in sensual bliss were taking unnatural pleasure in the clubbing and spearing of the recalcitrant and any stragglers. Keeping in mind the formidability of the chained and shackled, ever dangerous, keeping ‘em whipped down, then, kicking them back on their feet again, through very unpleasant circumstances, everything was moving right along. And, in pretty good order!
All the men shackled and chained front and back, had to keep moving, to keep working at the various tasks. They were sweeping, picking up trash, whatever lay discarded along the road, in ditches, fields, and woodlands on either side. Labor was split up with teams, everyone in a team working together to a common end and purpose. Some of the guys were picking up trash. Some were sorting the stuff, pulling out old shoes, rusty hand tools, halters from animals, rope . . . They piled it up to move the piles forward getting in front of the vanguard with all the collected trash so it could be thrown down and scattered all around for the leading vanguard to sort through once again, collecting and loading as before. The procession undulated and writhed as one reptilian might under the silvery moon, in the glow of the silver and golden planets, toward the Emerald City.
Hotblood stood viewing all this chaotic behavior in disbelief. Trash swept up and carried along to be dumped again into the ditches, fields, woodlands, and creek beds in a useless expense of labor. It made no sense. And the stench rose all the way to heaven! And the majestic glow of the heavens was diminished by the stench! And the filthy wastewater and the refuse and excrement, everything to be imagined, disgusting and rotting and disease infested. These horrific abhorrent collections of human wastes left the gold road sullied and stained. The gold road reflected a murky brown and a sickly yellow.
Completely taken aback by the spectacle, brazen and foolish, Hotblood strode defiantly up to one of the police. He said to one of them, a thuggish cop with a shotgun, “Oh, Sire, this gold road beneath the starry heavens, a mysterious and silvery moon, a portentous conjunction of moon and Jupiter and Venus, the Emerald City off yonder there beyond, all this is good and righteous and beautiful! Why then must we detract from the ethereal and the sublime by persisting in this loathsome labor and in this pointless procession?”
Hardly had the words been uttered before Hotblood was surrounded by police who simultaneously cursed and beat him. They pinioned his arms. They kicked him repeatedly in the loins. They lashed at his face and gouged his eyes. He thought to himself, “Adventure like this! Who needs it?!” The police got him up and onto his feet. They got him chained, shackled and placed in line and in the procession. He had become a link in a human chain of misery to be pushed, pulled, and cajoled into working. Soon he was down in the ditch, on his hands and knees, in the middle of the sloppy mess, and being forced to work in tandem with his new found ‘friends.’
Gagging with nausea, recoiling in horror, scared almost to death, Hotblood worked with the others. He scooped trash with his bare hands from the ditch into containers. He was already soiled from his own vomit and excrement. The added filth from whatever unspeakable source made him feel even more corrupted and degraded.
Peering through blood filmed eyes from his vantage down in the bar ditch, Hotblood could see somewhere out
there on the near horizon, as the procession wended its way along the gold road, the eminence of the Emerald City. Coming ever closer, he could now distinguish the lofty towers and the uppermost rooftops of a great walled fortress, the Emerald City!
Along the gold road, under the mystery of the night sky, toward the walled citadel, through the gates onto a wide boulevard, and into a ceremonial courtyard wended the procession of human misery. The prisoners in chains continued being tormented by bullying police. Held captive with all the others, Hotblood knew he was helpless and at the disposal of those in authority.
He did not resist. He had a feeling any resistance would be harshly suppressed. He really was trying to go with the flow though he stumbled, lost balance, fell down, and got pushed and prodded and dragged along the boulevard. Finally, he and everyone else ended up assembled in the courtyard.
The procession was truly a spectacle of delight for thousands and thousands of spectators wildly cheering. This was a great celebration. The thousands cheered wildly, out of control, and at the point of mass hysteria. The crescendo of sound reverberated from the turrets and rooftops. Sound bounced off pavement and stonework and shot skyward.
Hotblood wondered at the spectacle of thousands and thousands yelling and screaming insanely in the midnight moonlight, within the belly of the mythical city. He asked himself, “For what reason and to what purpose?” He had the answer fast. Everything had to do with the suppression of personal liberty and the manipulation of information to inculcate a regime of mass mind control and suppression of freedom for the individual with unbridled police power to the state and the power elite.
He gave an involuntary shudder on realizing the motive force compelling the crowd’s frenzy. He knew that somehow, inexplicably, he was caught up in the madness. Terror and suffering had entrapped him. His only faux pas was in wanting a little adventure in his life. He just happened along at the wrong place, the wrong time.
By all appearances, regulations and restrictions on society had become codified and institutionalized to such a degree that now tradition and cultural mores compelled conformity and conventionality over self-reliance and independent thought. Social controls were so tight that no one behaved in any way deviant from normal. This was the situation. These were the conditions. What to do for solutions? There were none. Everyone was trapped.
The chained and shackled men were led around the courtyard and positioned so all were assembled and then brought to a mighty oaken door. The door was very tall. The door soon opened into a passageway. The assemblage was led through door and passageway into an incredibly large, ornate stateroom. The human chain was ushered and gently configured into orderly files and structured groupings. When the shackled men were within the stateroom and all was in order, the dim lighting was adjusted and the interior of the stateroom lit up. All and everything was seen and to be seen.
Now visible were hundreds of shackled men standing in the center of the stateroom. The men were arranged as a serpent might coil preparing to strike. Forming an outside perimeter around the inner coil were hundreds of stately personages whose finery and aristocratic bearing contrasted with the tatters and rags and low rank of the shackled men.
The distinctions of social class did not matter as one by one, and then severally together, the stately personages peeled off from the outer group to go to the inner coil of shackled humanity being unchained and unshackled. The outer came to the inner to take a partner to dance.
An orchestra struck up to play ballroom music. The stateroom was a sea of dancers. High class paired with low class. All found partners. All danced to the music.
Hotblood danced. His partner was a masquerading mockingbird of undetermined gender. Hotblood spoke to the mockingbird dancing partner as the intimacies of the occasion suggested he might do: “Kind Sire, or dear Madame, whatever the case may be, Canst thou! Canst thou? Canst thou?!”
The words echoed to the high cathedral ceilings and to all sides and vestibules of the stateroom that had been converted into a ballroom. As the words spoken by Hotblood faded away, the room fell hushed. Only the echo of the words, “Canst thou! Thou! Canst thou!” Was audible. In silence, the assemblage moved into formation forming a cross.
The light, golden light, and penetrating all matter it seemed. The light blinded Hotblood. After a while, he could see a little bit through the glare. He could make out two yellow eyes just in front of him. Then, he could see more clearly the yellow eyes of an Owl. The sight of the yellow eyes gave him a prescient and pervading sense of gloom and of fear.
Finding his voice, Hotblood entreated the yellow eyes, “Wondrous Sire, what portend these happenings? What is the meaning? Moreover, have I recourse? Will I be heard? Am I able to plead for freedom?”
The yellow eyes spoke. “Thy fate has been decreed. Thou shalt be removed from here .within the hour. Thou shalt be cast into a deep and dark dungeon. Thou shalt be forever in darkness. The only comfort thou shalt ever know will be Death. Thy mistress wears the mask of Death.”
He was taken deep, deep into the bowels of earth. He passed through a door of iron and cedar. He was wrested into a chamber, dark, dark and miserable. It was like a coffin. In darkness he was alone.
He was alone. In deepest despair, he hoped to die. Yet, he was afraid of death. He had lost all hope that he would ever see the light of day.
How long had he been stuck away inside that hole? Days? A few weeks? Months? A year? Hotblood had no measure of time passing. He could not know. He knew only darkness and loneliness. He yearned to be free. He feared he would never be free. He suffered even in his dreams.
Then something happened.
High above earth, soaring on the wind, heavenward, earth is a golden-green and blue sphere. The sun is in glory and joy soaring on a wind-borne cloud . . .
Her bounteous lips, a drop of moisture enshrines her lip. It clings to her lower lip looking as a pearl would. Her sparkling eyes shine love and goodness. His head is cradled in her arms. His mouth nurses at her swelling breasts. Holy virgin’s milk flows from her breasts. Heavenly truths and heavenly righteousnesses rain down hard all over his body. Their arms embrace and hold tight one another. Thighs, hips, and bellies are pressed together and lips touch. They breathe in unison. They breathe as one.
Time stands still. Stillness is prelude to the explosion of the primordial universe, a universe of infinitesimal particles speeding in every dimension. A seed atom enters the womanly womb. His essence penetrates the void and nothing becomes pregnant with life.
Everything is blissful and pure. Even sound embellishes crystalline and pure. The air is fragrant with rose and jasmine, roses and cinnamon, sandalwood and myrtle, saffron and myrrh and hyssop and olive and galangal. A sublime glow affixes their chamber in glory. Glorious and golden and rosy light bathes to purity the world.
They are floating away to an eternal resting place reserved only for lovers. Seemingly eternal, a moment is but a moment. Nothing endures. Nothing lasts forever. The Spell of Blissful First Love is after all but the Trance of Sorrow. Cruel, cruel, so cruel is love . . .
“I must go!” “Day is dawning!”
The words spoken in urgency caused Hotblood to start as if from a sweet dream to a rude awakening. As the Spell of Blissful First Love fast began to fade away to nothing more than a dimming memory, all that remained was a tragic sense of urgency.
“Is this really happening to me? I have suffered, pain and fear. I found joy and purpose and the meaning to life! Now she is leaving me! I will be lost! Why? Oh, why?” He began to cry. Tears stream from the eyes of the hero, our hero, of rushing blood and pounding heart!
“Tell me why you must leave me. I have only just known cosmic bliss in your arms, in your kiss.”
“Mother bids me come.”
The cell’s door opened. He looked toward the sound. When he looked again to his lover, seeking her beauty, she was gone.
He could not even begin to wonder what happened. Immediately police wer
e on him. They seized him and dragged him from the prison cell. They dragged him down the corridor. They took him through the mighty iron and wooden door. They hustled him out of the courtyard. He was taken along the wide boulevard leading to the gates. He was forced to leave the Emerald City. The police cast him out beyond the city walls.
He was placed near to the gold road that had brought him to this place. Now the same gold road was to take him away!
Hotblood felt very weak. His step was unsteady. He was beset by fear and grief. The strangeness of all that had happened since the fateful day he so recklessly stepped out into the foreboding world had him completely befuddled. Everything had happened so fast! It was like being caught up in a whirlpool. Try, try as you might, you cannot get away and as you go steadily spinning and spiraling down, down, down, all sense of time and one’s sense of orientation are skewed contrariwise. Throw into the mix a romantic involvement and who is to know, or even care, which end is up!
All he could think about was her loveliness and how much he missed her. Her fragrance was on him. The taste of her mouth was ever in his. He thought of her breasts and how the maternal secretions made him thrill! He was completely blown away in love.
And then he thought of lament and loss . . .
He cursed destiny. He cursed God. He cursed the sojourn to the Emerald City. He cursed his ill-fated foray into other realms. He cursed himself that he had ever been born to woman. Yet, with all his blasphemy and with all his negativity, he could not bring himself to blame the lady. Nor could he curse their coming together. He vowed to know her again!
He traveled the gold road. He traveled away from the Emerald City. He passed bountiful fields of agriculture. He passed too many herds of livestock and poultry farms to keep count.
He entered many dark and scary forests. He entered alone and lonely. He came out the other side alone and lonely. All the wealth and prosperity of the world of humankind meant nothing to him. The abundance of nature and the grace of God were trifles and it bothered him to think about such things. He scornfully rejected the desirability of having anything. He would not consider something might be good and worth having. He was devoid of sentiment, all feeling save longing for that which he did not have. He did not have the girl. He did not even know her name.
The longing for someone he could not have become his obsession. He never thought about other things, things of a personal nature. He would not give thought to who he was and how he had come to this place of loneliness and hardship. He never thought of the early days. He had repressed and almost blotted the memory of those days of his youth when he had been stirred to action by deep and unsettling longings not altogether different from the obsessive longing of the present times. Repressed were the memories of urges and inclinations that had stirred him to look for something different in life and had spurred the adventures bringing him to the Emerald City. The longings and the urges of the past he associated exclusively with an eternal desire to find her and to get her back. His exclusive, eternal desire was for the lady who came to him in the deep, dark recesses of a deep, dark chamber within the entrails of earth. His fixation had become his conviction. He was convinced that only through her could life be worth living. She would heal him. He would search the world over until he found her. She would heal him!
Many weeks and many months Hotblood tramped the countryside. He foraged for his sustenance. He slept as he could. He was always wet and cold and hungry. He was always weary. Never did he have ease in living. Most days verged on the edge of despair. Yet, on rare occasions, sometimes in the early morning waking up, or, at midday enjoying, despite himself, a particularly satisfying respite, or, in the still and dark of midnight, laying down in a secure and comforting hideaway; on these occasions he would feel a surge of emotion and feel way down deep inside that all is well. These moments gave him courage and the resolve to keep on living.
He would have prescient visions. He would see himself and he would see his love. She would be poised before him as if beckoning, that he follow where she was leading him, up a steep path or through a dark passageway assuring him of her devotion to care for him as his inspiration, as his guide through the unknown to glory which lay beyond.
Then he would know that all was well with the world. All was as it was meant to be. He would think, “All will come someday!” He was determined to keep himself together that they might be together again.
One late afternoon of fiery sun tempered by cooling zephyrs at dusk, Hotblood came to a little lake hidden away in a valley. He was on the ridge above taking in the panorama of lake and secluded valley. To his utter amazement he saw his dream girl below. She was swimming and splashing around having a good time. In his joy and surprise, he called out to her. She did not heed the call. Another’s more resonant voice blunted out the sound of his voice. The resonant voice was a masculine voice. The manner of the one who spoke and what he said to her implied familiarity. These are the words: “Look here, my dear, darling girl! The joust is to begin once more as I am ready to mount you again and again and again and again. Once again I will mount you. Are you ready to have me on top and inside of you? Ah! Belle! Your graces are sublime!”
As Hotblood stood looking on from above, frozen in time, he witnessed the love of his life rising from the water, unclad, going to her lover. She was offering herself to this other man! She offered herself in supplication as a woman will only do if she is in love.
Hotblood had seen enough. He turned from the lovers casting his eyes downward. He painfully walked away.
After that day he knew only remorse. He had stood there and watched what was tantamount to the desecration of his Ideal. At a loss as what to do, he heaped recriminations upon himself. He cursed his features, that she could love someone other than him. He cursed his body, that she could fondle someone other than him. Mostly, he cursed woman. After a spell of the most bitter and rancorous cursing directed toward woman in general and her in particular, he relented for a little while before launching into another cycle of diatribes against himself and womanhood. He became an inveterate misogynist.
All the ranting and raving did not solve anything nor did it change anything. He loved her still. Deeply pained by her inconstancy, feeling betrayed after seeing her in love with another man, he loved her still.
Many years passed. Hotblood continued his wandering in exile from society. With the fleeting years faded the bloom of youth. His face had once been childlike and pure. His face now showed the signs of aging. Innocence had hardened. His skin was weathered and leathery. His image was unsettling, even to his own reckoning. Pausing to look at the reflection in a clear pool, he was saddened at his changed appearance. It had been a hard, an impossible life! He had only wanted a harmless life of adventure! Instead, he had to suffer through a life of pain and disappointment! Bitter experiences had left him wizened and full of bitter self-loathing. This old man was ready to die and to be free from life’s travail.
Wandering to the very end, Hotblood came to a glade. He penetrated into the glade. Within the trees, he entered a clearing. The clearing and surrounding trees formed a natural circle, an alcove. There he lay down on the cold and hard ground. He lay near the base of an ancient oak. He rested his head on a moss covered stone. He drew his dying breaths.
A vision came to him as he lay dying. In these moments he saw himself as a youth. He was the young man he had been at the time of his adventure seeking. With him was the girl of his dreams. She stood before him, as she had done many times before in his dreams, as his instructress and guide into the great mystery of womanhood. She is the one who will lead him to his destiny and completion.
Standing beside his aged and dying body, within the alcove sheltered by the trees, listening to the rustling of the leaves, he listens to the sighing of the universe. Looking heavenward, he gazes into the vast reaches of time and space. Finally, after so much pain and want and disappointment, he felt like this was where he was meant to be and that all that had happened t
o him had been preordained.
He had searched for that something else in life and he had found his destiny. He had found Reason, Justice, Loyalty, Honor, Truth, and Inspiration.
A balm of peace enveloped him and he knew everything is as it must be because that is the way it is. As he breathed his last breath, consciousness rose from the corpse.
Walking close to the place where Hotblood lay on the ground to die, along a brook skirting the glade, a boy, a young and fragile child, sat down on a rock and listened to the sound of the water gurgling and splashing by. In the evening stillness, the boy felt an impending gloom settling over him. Looking through overhanging limbs skyward, it frightened him when the limbs started to shake violently. The shaking, as of a raging storm, went on for just a moment. Then calm set in as the rage subsided and seemed to give way to resignation. As stillness quieted the shuddering limbs, a lonely whippoorwill lifted its song heavenward. The whippoorwill sang a hymn of hope and ultimate peace. The hymn resounded throughout the hills and valleys its message of hope and peace. Hills and valleys echoed a song of sadness, loss, and death.
The frightened child got to his feet. He was ready to get out of that spooky place. Before leaving he turned to the sound of the melancholy song lilting heavenward. He listened questioningly.
Feeling a chill, the little man-child thought with longing of the comfort, warmth, and security of home. Turning homeward, he hurried away from the place. Hurrying home, chilled and strangely afraid, he had a sense of déjà vu. He felt as he had seen it all before. He felt as he would see it all again.