Coffee next morning was served in the kitchen. Taylor and Lilly Ann had slept in after a long night of getting Taylor’s sensational overload to subside and sorting out which of the confusing nerve signals in his legs related to actual sensations and which were a residue of the energy game-work they had practiced the day before.
Taylor was the first one to awake in the house. What a pleasant surprise that a rough tongue licking his toes was the first sensation of the new day. Mr. Big had taken a liking to his feet and was just about to start nibbling at them when Taylor opened his eyes. Sensing that the jig was up Mr. Big disappeared like a black and white flash.
Taylor pulled back the bed covers to make sure that in reality there were not millions of ants crawling all over his legs. He was relieved to find that his sensation was but the lingering effect of his newly rediscovered sensory stream coming from his lower body. Suddenly it occurred to him that if he could feel his legs, he should be able to move them too. And so he tried and it worked.
At first he was able to move his big toe, Mr. Big’s favorite. When he tried to stretch or bend his ankles there was movement but the feedback he got seemed too slow and unreliable at first. He lacked the control, for his movements to be of any value for him other than that of simple entertainment.
To his own surprise, Taylor spent over an hour playing with the jerky reaction of his legs without getting frustrated or even compelled to try harder. He just enjoyed the fact that his ability was slowly coming back to him, so lying on his back he painted odd shapes with his toes into the air.
“Watcha doing there?” Lilly Ann’s voice came from the door that had opened silently.
Taylor beamed at her with a mixture of pride over his newfound ability to move his legs and a bit of embarrassment over his display of obvious self-enjoyment.
“Can I play too?” Lilly Ann added and laid flat on her back on the floor and started to imitate Taylor’s movements.
“No,” Taylor joked, “this game is for fallen pilots only. You have to jump out of an airplane first before you get a license to play.”
“That’s no fair,” Lilly Ann complained, “How am I supposed to get an airplane right now to jump out of?” She got up from the floor ceremoniously.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you are a ham?” Taylor laughed.
“No, but speaking of ham, I am hungry let’s go get breakfast. Are you coming?” She walked out of the room fully expecting that Taylor would follow her.
“Not so fast,” Taylor shouted after her, “you could let me borrow a bathrobe or something and give me a hand. Then I’ll try to make it to the kitchen.”
And so they did. Lilly Ann pulled a beautiful aquamarine-and-cream-colored robe from a chest of drawers. It was sewn from a fabric woven in the intricate patterns that resembled a magnified view of geometric fractals called a Mandelbrot set.
“My mom made this for my dad when they just got married,” Lilly Ann explained, “She creates artwork from the magic of numbers. Maybe you understand it better than I do. Isn’t this neat?” She held out the robe for him.
Taylor took a closer look of the fabric.
“The detail is breathtaking,” he agreed, “It looks as if the threads were split up in the middle of the shapes to produce even greater detail. I can’t wait to meet your mother to talk math with her.”
“Well, right now we have to get you out of this bed first,” Lilly Ann sidestepped the topic, “put on the robe. I’ll close my eyes and promise not to peek.”
She held her hands in front of her eyes and turned her back to Taylor. He had to laugh because he did not forgotten that it was Lilly Ann and Edie May who had undressed him when he first arrived at her house, unconscious after the accident.
“It is safe to look now,” he teased her after he had put on the robe.
“Try to bend your knees and get your legs over the edge of the bed,” Lilly Ann advised, “once you feel the floor under your feet everything else is going to come back to you.”
She sat next to Taylor on the bed and watched his efforts to bend his knees.
“Try to remember what it feels like to move your legs. Don’t try to make it happen,” she coached, “There is no rush you’ll run soon enough after you start walking.”
She tried a different angle, “What’s it like to lift your leg to climb into an airplane?”
The result was immediate. Taylor’s right knee came up like a reflex.
“Whoa,“ he laughed, “slow down the horses.”
He stretched out the right knee and the left had the same reaction. He continued to stretch and bend his legs for a few minutes until his movements were more coordinated and smooth. He sat up and looked at Lilly Ann with one eyebrow raised. With one fluid deliberate movement he sat up and swung his legs out of the bed where his feet landed on the floor with a loud thump.
“Ouch, that hurt,” he said surprised, “but it’s good to feel the ground under my feet. You think you are strong enough to help me get up?”
“Well, Jack and Joe Jack went back out to the woods so you will have to settle for me for right now.” Lilly Ann grabbed his right arm and stood up, “Ready?”
It took Taylor three tries to lift his body from the bed and a few more to steady himself long enough on his feet to find his balance. Lilly Ann lightly held on to his arm never putting any real force onto it. He finally stood there panting from the concentrated effort.
“This is good,” he said in between small laughs, “ now what?”
“Now we walk,” Lilly Ann said confidently.
The expression ‘baby steps’ never had a more literal meaning. Small slow shuffles with slight hesitation put distance between him and the safety of the nearby bed. Whenever the thought of falling crept into his mind he stopped all movement, felt for the support that Lilly Ann’s hold gave him and steadied his focus. Every step he took, his muscles remembered more and more of the complex interplay that it takes for the simple pleasure of walking.
If time is a matter of perception so is distance it seemed. The longest walk of his life took John Taylor across the twenty-five paces from the room that was his world since his fall to the kitchen that promised freedom and breakfast. Eighteen minutes and thirty-five seconds later he was the happiest man in the world sitting at the kitchen table a bit out of breath, watching Lilly Ann go through the magic ritual of brewing fresh espresso coffee.
For the first time Taylor had the opportunity to have a look around the kitchen in this most unusual house which was so fitting to his gracious host. He more and more got the impression of sitting inside a gingerbread house right out of the fairy tales he had heard as a child. The huge wood fired stove gleamed with polished steel hardware and deep blue enamel lacquered panels and doors. The cupboards all around the walls were filled with an eclectic collection of mugs and pots and glasses of all imaginable forms and colors. There were little paintings and drawings of Abrahamster and his friends on every wall and on every counter. The windows were made of semi translucent glass that looked like it was sugar coated and they were draped with fabrics that were woven in the same intricate patterns as the robe Taylor was wearing.
Taylor’s gaze circled back to the fascinating coffee preparation exhibition on a counter near the stove.
“What are we going to do when we run out of coffee?” he asked.
“Hm, the thought never crossed my mind,” Lilly Ann answered surprised. She looked at him with that curious smile as if she was trying to figure out how his mind worked. “Why would you want to think about an empty coffee can when you have a full one right in front of you?” she asked him back.
There was no arguing with that kind of logic. Taylor had to accept once more, that feeling good right then and there was much more important to Lilly Ann than contemplating the solution to a problem that might or might not arise in the future. At least she was consistent about that.
The gentle rap at the door was unmistakably that of Ed
ie May. She balanced a large carton box on her arms and sampled the aroma in the kitchen when she entered.
“I see you are keeping up your coffee ritual,” she said not even flinching when she saw Taylor sitting at the kitchen table, “Yesterday I remembered that I saw a box with a similar label like your coffee can in my storage shed a long time ago. I went looking for it and there it was on the top shelf. There are twelve more cans of the same coffee in there that you like so much. You are more than welcome to it, if you want it.”
Lilly Ann turned to Taylor, “See?”
He would never try to bring up ‘running out of coffee’ again.
Lilly Ann accepted the precious cargo from Edie May, “Thank you so much, this is wonderful! Come, sit down, have breakfast with us.”
“So John,” Edie May acknowledged Taylor’s newfound mobility, “what are you doing up and about without adult supervision. I heard you woke up half the town last night.” Her humor was refreshing as ever.
“I suppose I did, sorry ‘bout that,” Taylor apologized, “Mr. Big licked my toe and suddenly I felt a thousand things in my legs at the same time. It was a little overwhelming.”
“I can imagine that,” Edie May nodded. “Sorry that I can’t stay for breakfast. I have an appointment with a number of very curious youngsters at the Lilly-Book, I wouldn’t want to keep them waiting.”
“Would you mind if I had a look at the book some time?” Taylor asked.
“Any time, John,” Edie May answered watching for Lilly Ann’s reaction, “I’ll be there all day today. I am sure Lilly Ann would love to drive you. You think you are strong enough for that?”
“I guess so,” they both answered at the same time and burst into laughter.
“Oh boy,” Edie May rolled her eyes and retreated out of the kitchen. She heard more infectious laughing on her way out of the house. This was going to be interesting, to say the least.
Later in the morning a very slow short walk from the house to the curb, a very swift short ride in Lilly Ann’s peace mobile and another short but just as slow walk from the curb onto a park-like property brought Taylor and Lilly Ann to the door of an imposing structure made entirely of pine logs.
In front of the building stood the tallest totemotional pole Taylor had seen so far. The carved and painted log reached at least two hundred feet high and was adorned with a collection of additional characters, which Taylor remembered from Lilly Ann’s Abrahamster book.
“See,” Lilly Ann pointed at the hamsters on the pole counting from bottom to top, “this is Despo, Blamie, Frusty, Mabes, Abrahamster standing on his hands, Gabe, Abby and Gabby. They are doing a very good job showing their best vibe faces from yucky to hamster euphoria, don’t you think?”
Taylor could sense that this place was in some way the cultural center of Flugerton, maybe of the whole area. They climbed the few stairs to a tall double door, which was inlaid in dark red hardwood with the words “Ask, and it is given.” The simple yet powerful vibration that resonated with these words was not lost on Taylor. His anticipation was high when Lilly Ann pushed the door open and they found themselves engulfed in a stream of children and young adolescents going back and forth between the various rooms of the large building. They obviously had entered a world of learning and teaching.
“Is this a school?” Taylor asked.
“This is Sudbury,” Lilly Ann clarified, “most of our youngsters come here to exchange questions and find answers. It’s mostly about the questions though.”
A group of children, maybe four or five years of age had spotted Taylor. One of them started yelling, “It’s Geronimo! It’s Geronimo!”
Within seconds they were surrounded by a wild cluster of little arms and hands dancing and hollering around them. They chanted Taylor’s new nickname over and over, giving testimony to his fame amongst the young population of Flugerton.
Lilly Ann pulled Taylor along to a milky glass door across the hall leaving his young admirers behind. The activity level in this room was much more subdued with only an occasional opening of the door for someone walking in or out.
“The book-room is over there,” Lilly Ann pointed at another glass door that led into a small study hall with tall etched glass windows. A few study desks with wooden chairs were lined up in the middle of the room while a number of easels and tables with drawing and painting utensils lined the walls around the perimeter.
Edie May looked up from her desk at the far end of the room when she heard them enter. She waved for them to come to a monumental looking oak desk close to where she was sitting. Dim light was radiating from an out of place looking device in the middle of the desktop.
“I am so glad you could make it, both of you,” Edie May greeted them, “Welcome to Sudbury and to the Lilly-Book.”
Her arm made a big sweeping gesture around her. Taylor got curious about the scientifically looking device on the desk. It looked to him like an ancient data pad with external input devices and a small color screen.
“It’s a computer,” he exclaimed.
“Nothing gets by you, John,” Edie May teased him, “in its time it was called a notebook computer, hence the name Lilly-Book.”
“It still works, right?” Taylor could not believe to stand in front of this ancient technology in working condition.
“Yes, it does,” Edie May confirmed, “it was retrofitted with solar power panels before it got here. We never turn it off and we never try to change any of the data on it. We only use the programs that came with it to retrieve and study the wisdom it contains. See for yourself.”
She laid her hand on a small external device that was connected to the book with a short wire. Whenever she moved her hand a data pointer on the screen moved accordingly. Edie May gently pushed one of the buttons on the pointing device, which prompted some text and images to be displayed on the screen.
Taylor was not too surprised to see the now familiar figure of Abrahamster in a drawing that resembled one of Lilly Ann’s.
“See, that’s where my drawings come from,” she explained the obvious.
“So, what’s the story behind this computer and why is it so important to you?” Taylor saw more questions than answers arise from being confronted with this historic artifact.
“Yes, please, Edie May,” Lilly Ann begged like a little girl, “please tell us the story of how Abrahamster got here and became a big star.”
“All right,” Edie May complied, “let’s sit down over there on the study couch and I will tell you the story.”
They made themselves comfortable and Edie May began her tale.
“It all began at the end of the last millennium. The late nineteen hundreds saw a flurry of teachers and preachers who attracted large audiences, thirsty for knowledge about inner truths and the workings of their world beneath its visible surface. Many of them furthered that knowledge with their asking and listening for answers to a level never before attained by human kind. The more people asked, the more answers came forth until one day a man by the name of Jerry Hicks, who had studied the teachings of his fellow man for all his life, was so filled with questions of how it all fits together and so deeply rooted in his believe that he would receive answers, that he called forth an infinitely wise and loving and patient teacher from another plane of existence who spoke through Jerry’s mate, the beautiful Esther. The ultimate student had found his ultimate teacher. His name was Abraham.”
“At the same time, a young woman, Lilly Fluger, was traveling the planet to find her own path and rhythm in life. She did some asking on her own. She read books, talked with the dead and loved life. When Abraham’s teachings were made public she found answers to many of her questions within them. While most people would have been satisfied with the answers they got to life’s most perplexing riddles this young woman brought forth her very own language to express the truth as she saw it. One day while she was reading in a book written by Abraham a little cartoon character crept onto the margins of a
page and began telling the Abraham teachings his own joy-fun-silly hamster way. Abrahamster was born.”
“It is unknown to us how famous Abrahamster became eventually, but we know that he had many friends and admirers throughout the world in his days. Lilly Fluger spent many years developing her little friends and the message that they so joyfully whispered into the world’s ears. All of her work including the wonderful watercolor paintings and sketches and stories would eventually end up as digital reproductions in her computer for distribution on the global data networks and for safekeeping.”
“Lilly Fluger was an artist for all her life, a relentless student of light on many levels, but most of all she was a remarkable human being. She loved animals and for long periods of her life she chose her place of residence next to the zoo. Her whole life was a celebration of lightness and enjoyment. She made up her own language with spellings that would make any language professor crawl up the walls but made everybody else laugh and feel playful and silly. Being silly was a very big thing for Lilly Fluger. She brought Abraham’s teachings to an entire different audience than the original texts. Her drawings and word creations opened the path of energy work to a whole new generation of seekers. In honor of her untiring efforts to make the idea of a vibrational universe and the vibrational nature of the human existence more accessible to so many, including us, to this day we refer to her as the vibrational tuning fork of our society.”
“Lilly Fluger must have been a famous celebrity in her day,” Taylor concluded.
Edie May chuckled amused, “From what we have gathered in Lilly Fluger’s correspondence with close friends she would have been freaked out and not able to speak clearly for a week if she knew how we think and talk about her nowadays.”
“That’s fascinating,” Taylor said, “but how did her work end up here, and just here?”
“John, you probably know better than I do the history this country and the whole world lived through at the end of the twenty-first century. It seems that people were too busy finding someone else to blame for their perceived misery and difficulties that most of the spiritual teachings were put aside or were forgotten altogether. The most significant historic fact for us was the sudden evacuation of many rural and remote areas for political and security reasons at that time. There were quite a number of women and men in this country who did not want to participate in the madness that had befallen the masses, so some of these people followed an impulse, climbed into their cars, trucks or vans and headed in a central direction from all corners of the country. Not knowing why and how, they would rendezvous within a short period of time in the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas.”
“Many put up camp and stayed to see where all of this was heading. More and more seekers joined them and the asking for rhyme or reason of this gathering grew daily. All kinds of ideas where pondered and given up again because none of them had any desire to rejoin the nightmare they just had escaped from. Their numbers grew daily and so did the tension and anticipation.”
“One late summer day, an even then ancient vehicle, slowly made its way over the mountain passes and stopped right in the middle of the main camp site. A beautiful woman of young age jumped out of the van threw her arms up into the air and screamed for everyone to hear, ‘What is the most important thing?’”
Edie May looked at Lilly Ann with a smile and then at Taylor.
“I bet you know the answer to that question even though you might not believe it yet, right John?”
“The most important thing is that I feel good,” Taylor recited like an A student, “I still don’t really know what it means but it feels good just to say it.”
“That is a good start, John. Anyway, where was I? After meeting many perplexed faces and hearing a few half hearted attempts to answer she indeed enlightened them with John’s answer, ‘The most important thing is that I feel good.’ None of them had ever heard of Abraham or of his teachings but all of them were students and teachers at the same time, ready and eager to explore a new vantage point to life. The girl opened the cargo doors of her van and amidst a frightening chaos of her belongings a computer rested on a camping table. She propped up the solar panel on the roof of her van and the notebook came to life. The first thing that appeared on the screen was a drawing of a curious little cartoon hamster announcing, ‘Hi, I’m Abrahamster’ and below it there were two more drawings stating, ‘Good feels good’ and, ‘Bad feels bad.’ The last one showed the little fellow sitting in pure delight, sharing with the onlookers, ‘I am delight feelings of fun-loving-appreciating-happy-play-grooviness. I’m choosing my own vibes!’”
“Though none of the people there understood right away what they were looking at, they felt in their hearts that this must have been the reason for them to migrate into the mountains. The computer, of course, was the old laptop of Lilly Fluger that was refurbished and updated many times by owners who cherished the precious content within it. The woman with the van had traveled all the way from southern California to Arkansas. Her name was Edie, she was the first keeper of the Lilly-Book in Flugerton.”
“Does your name, Edie May, have any relation to this woman?” Taylor asked.
“Ever since the days when Edie started to teach her fellow campers about the secrets of Abrahamster, the ones who wanted to dedicate their lives to the study and exploration of the Lilly-Book would take on Edie as prefix to their name,” Edie May explained, “it isn’t a formal title but more of a reverence to the great gift Edie had brought to us such a long time ago.”
“Thankle you so much Edie May,” Lilly Ann clapped her hands, “I cannot hear that story often enough. Edie May lets me sit in at the classes when she tells young students for the first time about the Lilly-Book.”
“This is fascinating,” Taylor agreed, “although, I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the idea that grown-up educated women and men would throw all their believes and acquired philosophies over board at the sight of a few cartoon drawings. Don’t get me wrong, seeing you and the way you live right in front of my eyes, Abrahamster and the teachings make a lot of sense. To jump right in without that living proof seems like a big leap of faith to me. There had to be something more to convince those first settlers.”
Edie May looked at Lilly Ann’s face to see if Taylor’s statement of doubt did in any way effect how she felt about him. All she could read in her eyes was happy love, adoration and infinite patience. It seemed that no cloud could ever cast a shadow on her sunny face.
“You guessed right, John,” Edie May confirmed, “come over here, I’ll show you what else we found in the Lilly-Book.”
Taylor got up from the couch with much groaning and a gratefully accepted helping hand from Lilly Ann. He carefully shuffled the few feet until they all stood in front of the computer desk.
“Amidst a great wealth of writings and drawings about Abrahamster and his friends we found sound and video recordings of public sessions where Abraham appeared with the help of Esther Hicks and directly addressed questions and problems that participants confronted them with. It was hearing and seeing these powerful demonstrations of infinite intelligence, love, patience and appreciation that convinced most of the first campers to delve deeper into the philosophy of deliberate creation and Law of Attraction. I have a short passage cued up for you, John. Watch and listen, and you too will understand,” Edie May promised.
At a push of a button on the input device the computer screen went dark just to come back to life a moment later, showing a small frame containing a fuzzy video sequence of a small room filled with people of all ages, races and genders. The camera panned across the clapping and cheering audience and then cut to the stage where a middle-aged woman stood with bare feet and smiled into the room.
“Hi,” Esther Hicks said and giggled, “bye.”
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply a few times, her head gently bobbing back and forth as if she was nodding agreement with what was about to happen. When she opened her eyes, she
smiled and looked around the room and the stage. Her voice came back with a more focused and deliberate timbre. The words she spoke were carefully chosen. There was not a hint of hesitation or uncertainty in the delivery of the message. There was no doubt Abraham spoke. The scene was obviously recorded after the meeting had come back from a break.
“And are you refreshed?” Abraham started and the audience agreed, “Imagine standing at the edge of a river, a quickly flowing powerful river. You have a boat with ores attached to the sides and you place the boat into the river and you start paddling upstream. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? Still, our dear friends, this is exactly what most humans, if not all of them, do. You put your boat into the river of life and you start paddling upstream. You get a better boat, and more skills paddling, and more muscles and most of all more determination, and the harder you paddle, the faster the river flows. When we ask you, ‘Why don’t you let go of the ores and go with the flow?’ you answer every time, ‘It never entered my mind.’, and you go on to explain to us that all the rewards and fortunes and statues and glory are reserved for those who paddle the hardest and you will work tirelessly and diligently to get some of these for yourself. And, some of you emphasize, that you have heard that after you die there are more rewards for those who struggled the most.”
The audience was quite amused by the picture that Abraham was painting. After a short pause for effect they continued.
“If there is one thing that we want you to take home with you today, one thing that we want with all that we are, for you to understand, it is this. Are you ready? Nothing that you want is upstream.”
They looked around the room searching for any sign of comprehension.
“Nothing that you want is upstream,” they repeated before the computer screen went dark.
The three of them stood in silence staring at the blank screen. The Lilly-Book returned to its initial screen configuration after a few seconds, breaking the spell that had befallen Taylor.
“This does go against everything I have ever heard before, but it is exactly what my life was like. It is as if they were speaking specifically about me. How can that be?” Taylor looked at Edie May for answers.
“Don’t worry about it,” Lilly Ann chimed in, “nobody understands Abraham fully when they hear them for the first time. Enough of that heavy brainiac intellectual stuff for now. Let me show you my favorite spot at Sudbury. Maybe then you will understand.”
Edie May was elated at the spirit Lilly Ann was showing and at her inspired ways to help Taylor along the path of his discovery of their world. She stood, quietly basking in the loving energy that radiated through the study hall as she watched the two cautiously make their way out the door.
Chapter 11: The River