“I heard you had the goods on J.Edgar, knew who got Kennedy, Janice, Jimi, everything?”
“Look where it got me.” She says shaking her thick silver hair out over the shoulders of the kimono.
“Yes and for that the CIA killed me. I hope they think they got me. It was just over the Viet Nam border in Cambodia. I was there when Ho Chi Min was meeting Jane Fonda. Anyway I was wanted for the hacking business. Somehow I got separated from Jane’s group and found myself surrounded by white guys with blackened faces who had M-16’s on me; two had Ak47’s. They tied my hands with hessian rope and sent me with the two crazy eyed Ak47 GI’s in to the jungle; I thought I was done. But the absolute nutter of a reptilian commander steps into the clearing, tells me he’s a fan of Osley, but, ordered to finish me and make it look like the VC shot me. So he points a finger gun at me, says “poof” and tells me to change cloths with a stiff and disappear forever, No second chances. And I believed him… He put me in a boat going down river, didn’t get those ropes off for days. He shot pictures of the dead body and told them it was me.
I eventually landed here. Fated, but fate had nothing to do with it.
“I believe that. Life is weirder than fiction”. Jake stares into his beer bottle thinking her story is grander than anything he’s ever done but, she can never tell it.
CHAPTER 6
Sunset colors from the brewery apartment Sadi has rented. Jake pops his laptop open on the thinning orange carpet; he faces out the open door to the brewery and lake beyond. Sadi is hovering about constantly reading over Jakes shoulder…
So Craig I waved ‘hi’ to the Spirit Lady today on my way to the beer church after working in the brewery, free beer, she smiled and it was …warm? When I got back from the beer ashram I slept…
Weirdest dream…The mirrored domed Palace had a Vatican type window at the top. The reflection pond was only three inches deep yet the fish seemed huge, there were three reflections: mine, Celeste, who has a limp so pronounced it melts your heart because she doesn’t even notice it, and Sadi, my bumbling guide who constantly has chaos swirling around him like lazy flies.
In the dream she was sitting on a huge white pillow next to one of the mirrored walls. Her silver hair was plated and her deep blue eyes seemed to pull us onto three pre-arranged orange pillows. It’s like we had a conversation but I’m not sure we used words? It was like we asked “why”? And she let us know that it was “appropriate”.
So we’re sitting there and I start to feel like when I was a kid where I’d get light; mentally and physically; expanding and had to hold on to my chair.
In the dream all four of us looked washed out from the light streaming in through the ceiling, and we were getting elongated. The Spirit lady looked like a Modigliani painting. Then she rose like a waft of cigarette smoke, just slowly swirling and rising toward the stream of light from above. Which freaked me out so much I went to run for the door but couldn’t get up, like I was sleeping.
Looking up she’s communicating “it’s OK, its Ok” and it was her manner of motion, the rising of the smoke, that was the language... and it said “dance with me” so the three of us just pushed off our pillows and rose up twisting and pirouetting toward the ceiling. Celeste, toward the syncopated pulse of Sadi who’s hands kept flying in opposite directions before she went laterally to him giving his hands someone to wrap around.
I rose toward the spirit ladies blue eyes. My hands independent in flight yet connected to me by my style, my dance, and I remembered every wave I’d ridden that was just for me.
So Craig in the dream the Spirit Lady and I power danced; sensual not sexual, meaningful and mutual, and it was like she’d been waiting such a long time to have someone to dance with, does that make sense?
Anyway, like a Spanish dancer edited through a morphing program she became a roiling grey smoke black-horizon Wiamea wave and I wanted to ride. I scratched over the first monster meringue wave, fear stinging my skin. Breathless yet still dancing.
The smoke bounced off the mirrored walls creating like a rogue wave from a distant storm, like a stone dropped in the pond of life. And I wanted it. With my hawk like hands I paddled into that swell and the grey meringue smoke threw into a textured tube, my cheek against the wall, spiritual… or something. Is it our spirit that dares us to dance so close?
Crouching into her light refracting tube, scraping the wall I leaned against the smoke with its Van Gough-ish texture knowing the Spirit is head dip close, and all I can see is a splash of sunlight at the mirror far below. Going so fast that I couldn’t avoid splattering myself on the mirror... but I didn’t. Velocity.
I simply passed through and pulled out on my pillow in the cool dimension of the mirror, gasping for breath, and thinking I’m going to have a heart attack for sure as the Spirit lady morphed back onto her pillow.
So I’m sitting there out of breath thinking ‘heart attack’ and knowing for a damned certain that we are on the wrong side of the mirror. Well she reaches over and gives me a glass of beer! I don’t take my eyes off the mirror until I taste the beer; tasted good, reminded me of being sixteen in Mexico and confident; my genetic codes and memories stabilize behind the taste of the beer… It’s like that.
Well, then she leans over and touches my arm, clicks our beer bottles and tells me about a beautiful prostitute who was sensuously carried by the master monk across the river; hours further the younger apprentice monk bursts out with ethical unbelief at the masters motives. He simply says “I left her at the river” and walks on.
For that instant the spirit lady was like some platinum blond you meet at a party, the kind that unconsciously says something that changes your life.
… Then I woke up. What do you think Craig?
Very weird Jake, you better take another look at the beer recipe, do they use mushrooms?
CHAPTER 7
There had been such a long pause while Jake fell into that rabbit hole. Finally he says to Osley,
“Fate fills the gap when we forget free will.,, How did the computing, acid, San Francisco thing come together?” she’d forgotten where the conversation was….
“Right? So Stanford taught me programming. I was hanging around with Englebart and the interactive computing guys at Stanford Research Institute, those guys were ‘out-there’, the “collective IQ” concept of solving the earths’ problems with computers. Imagine visualizing the future of computers yet no one spoke the language. The wrong powers had the big computers, and hacking seemed the liberating thing to do. In those days San Francisco was the center of computing and there was Kesey and the LSD stuff… and music at the Phillimore after hours of computer crunching, no sleep… I think no sleep makes your hair go silver.” She says like some college co-ed.
“Right. And the speed.” Jake says enjoying the oxymoron that is Osley’s trim 58 year old body; silver hair but strong thin arms, and perky round breast.
“Gee I’m thirsty. Always get thirsty when I’m nervous… or threatened… ” He says, to shake her breasts out of his head.
“Do you get nervous a lot Jake?”
“Not really, but I feel threatened plenty.”
Jake suddenly realizes he‘s fully enjoying the company of a women his own age. Half speaking to himself, half into the bottle, he says, ‘Being with you is rather weird, and you got to be weird if you’ve evaded the FBI and CIA for thirty years… …but, I feel comfortable, like ‘time out’, like we are friends, maybe lovers.” He says with a smile that lets his face sag to the honesty of a 63 year old … She sees it and relaxes into empathy.
“Maybe. I think it is willpower and time that young people miss about love. Love is also the courage to just hang in there because you have faith in the time ahead… and love is also bitter sweet knowledge. Just having the spirits and bodies connect doesn’t make love solid, doesn’t add to your heart does it Jake?”
Jake scratches his head realizing her unfortunate platonic meaning…
She continues as Jake sucks his litre bottle dry,
“ and I think when you’re young you don’t even know what your ‘heart’ is, maybe you have an idea about your soul, your inner self, but most think their heart is just emotions…” wondering if he gets it.
“Yah, the heart is the center of the watermelon; the good part of your soul”
Right, sort of. I think it is the pure part of your soul mixed with the instinct of your spirit; and it grows with time. It expands as you learn to extract the good of even the bitterest of situations.”
Like getting a grip on where Blues music is coming from...”
“Like drowning in Edith Piaf’s world or the depth of Irish poetry.”
“Right.” Jake grabs another bottle form the wall
“It’s even embracing melancholy which seeps into and expands your heart... Mix this with all the joys of life and over time you have a grand heart that can love big.”
“Sorrow expands your heart but it takes time to look back and recognize it?”
Like sadly/joyfully remembering a long dead friend.” There is no smile on his face
“Don’t get weird Jake”
She continues,
“We could make love now and it would be complete like a circle on a piece of paper; perfect yet still two dimensional.”
“Have you got a plan?”
“No plan and No time. So, let’s just assume we did it and enjoy the best part... when you could share a bottle of beer without glasses or pretence.
I never even think about sex, and you are too old aren’t you?”
“No! I do think about it, but maybe the blind impetus is fading.” and Jake suddenly feels vulnerable, she knows that his adventure heroics have really been running away from responsibility and keeping his options so open that now there is no closing… “Right.” He says to change the dialogue in his head about what life would be like to live with this women, to be close friends… and he’s thinking he really is over women that could be his daughter.
He takes the bottle from her and his smile turns business like. “Do you think those guys with the machetes will come in here after me?”
“No. They won’t enter my courtyard... but they will keep guard outside for as long as it takes.”
“Takes to do what?”
“They are eye for eye types around here and you did insult their time warn rituals, devalue fate, and ruin a month worth of beer.”…
Handing her the bottle, “Do I have to fight these guys?”
“Flight seems wiser”
“How?”
“There is a natural staircase up the lava crevasse behind this place. It goes to a flat plateau on the crater rim. There is a considerable up draft.” She hands over the bottle and waits for Jake to fill in the conclusion.
“... 19 meter rammed air kite, 10,000 feet to the tropics below... What are the odds?”
“All things considered, maybe as good as 50/50.”
“Don’t you think we should make love before I do this?”
“No… you don’t have the time to do it justice.” As she takes the bottle back.
“True.” He’s thinking ‘not true’.
CHAPTER 8
So Craig, while everyone is locking doors and washing up I’ll tell ya what happened…
... Let’s see, a kite can be very fast off the wind and off the wind was heading straight to the Spirit Ladies mini brick palace in the forest. Celeste steered her outrigger, I threw the sixteen meter kite up and drove it for all it was worth, and Sadi once again prayed to every wrong god I’d ever heard of. It is amazing how an animistic gentle people can lust for your blood on they’re machete. One little mistake really.
Can you believe a guy like the brew master, who lives on the edge of a lake mind you, can’t swim? I mean not even enough to get out of a vat of beer! Amazing really but no one noticed because we were laughing so hard. I mean here he was posturing about like Ichabod Crane, trying to get me to do some ridiculous ceremonial gig so he could demonstrate his dominance over me, the lowly brewery worker. All this because the young girl Celeste was there with her first year philosophy/beer drinking class. So when I refused to go along with his antics he went into some sort of Kung Fu, arms waving, feet raising gyration. I mean I knew I had to drop him. Simply faked a foot sweep, hooked him up, winked at Celeste and drilled him into the vat with a Russian headlock. As I was taking bows he drowned. This became a problem for the villagers on two fronts. One, reliance on the fate and generational linage thing regarding the Brew Master and Celeste sort of drowned, and two, I had ruined this months’ beer.
There is no such thing as nice guys with knives. So now I’m sitting in the Spirit Lady’s beer cellar realizing the knife guys will not go away. More later,
Jake
CHAPTER 9
There is a howling updraft at the crest, Sadi puts weight on the leach of the 19 meter foil kite. Celeste says, “Jake, this is insane that kite is for kite SURFING not jumping off mountains!”
“No Worries darling, back in ’72 on Maui we were jumping off Haleakala with Dick Eiper on his puny rigs, believe me this’ll be a cake walk.”
Celeste and Osley stand beside the two men. The sun is rising brilliant orange from the chilling crystal clear 10,000 foot precipice. The clouds below are like meringues and the horizon beyond reveals the subtle curve of the earth. The four stand like tourists. Jake gives launching instructions to Sadi who suddenly interrupts.
“Jake mon. I must tell you that the CIA contracted me to bring back Osley. They want her bad.” Sheepishly he looks toward Osley. Celeste slaps him in the back of the head. Saying,
“This is not fated! The spirit lady is meant to mentor me!”
A strange sincerity comes over Jake when he says, “Don’t be a dumb shit Sadi! This is a chance to make a stand! Sometimes you only get one in a lifetime. Don’t blow it. Stay here, learn to brew beer, raise children… and keep your mouth shut. Osley died 30 years ago, and that’s that!”
Osley looks at Jake then gives him a real kiss,
“I think I’m tired Jake. Maybe it is fate but one thing for sure the guys with knives are coming up the trail. Are you ready?”
Future flashes are faster than lightning… and Jake takes less than a second to walk through the vision that just ripped through his head.
He and Osley quietly drinking beer with ice at an open air tropical bar. And the glue between them is peace and friendship.
“Cake walk darling’. Hey girls,” he grabs them both by the waste and half lifts them off the ground, “fate is a weak shadow left in substitute when we neglect free will. Dig!”
“Jake, I’ll miss you a lot.” She grabs his hand
“No you won’t.”
And in one motion he drops them, launches his kite, grabs Osley with a figure four leg lock and together they fly off the rim of the crater into the grey meringue clouds below.
The End
Thank you for reading this bit of fiction. I’m glad to have finished it as sometimes the consuming adventure of life gets in the way, so when you can, …..Walk on Water.
Thanks Again,
John Geyer
“Jungle Eyes”
A poem C1972 -
Perhaps it was only a moment ago that we dropped into that last wave…
Paddling full intensity, furious to enter, Jungle man about to be electrified
Forcing down eight foot glass, ahead three hundred yards of hissing liquid threatening to fold all the way
At the bottom of the beginning,
Lean ape body on the a fiberglass bar of soap, arms extended, playful
Like the first ape touched by God, favored, all emotions fused into one emotion; serpentless.
Each wave the first wave and always the first man inside. Fused spirit mind and soul peer down this wall of arching emerald green liquid. Ride.
The body is fluid stardust and a jungle man flows into a turn that carves new lines upon
a glistening surface…
We began this journey, the first turn, I was given strength by you, who I don’t really know, have been forever, who whispers what I feel, that jungle eyes are a window and jungle men can see constantly through either side…
It is like that as we squeeze upward toward that lisping slippery lip releasing control that we never had. Squatting in the orangutan pose
It pours overhead as we press cheek against the wall. Jungle eyes upon the oblong, skipping on the wind chops, clawing on the stress lines, see it in the free mind, guts against the wall…
They were your guts, you put them in my stomach; they are guts, organs, emotional train stations.
I would have thought of you but you beat me to it. We rode there wishing to be born…
Slicing rigidly to the top to be kissed about the waist, by a lisping slippery smile from a frothy time in space, free, the bird mind spoke its wisdom as we glared with jungle eyes glazed and amber at the skies, glazed and amber.
It was an instant of reflection as we carried your cross to that last section… that of course will never end…
The last match
Of an Old Athlete
When knowledge about your opponent becomes a thought process, where you can intellectualize what should be instinctual, you are an old athlete. This is not an enviable position.
During the course of battle, when your mind can visit five to seven attack options like they were old friends, yet your body isn’t inclined to deliver any, you are passing from warrior to philosopher. During the battle this is not an enviable position.
There is a spirit that wanders around inside a man called youth. In Jakes case it should never have been given control of the pen that signed him up for the wrestling championship. Smart old men lay down until the feeling goes away.
Bearded balding and committed Jake slipped into his sweat stained $300 pair of Nike’s once again.