We were assaulted by the breath of storms, tropical storms moving in from the Gulf. It rained for several days, a synthetic rain, and the earth rejected it and was sodden. There was flooding in the streets and when the waters receded one had to step carefully to avoid the bloated and bristled carcasses of rats. I felt unwell and drank hot tea spiced with whole cloves that floated on the surface like tiny branches. I was not really ill but inclined toward a heavy stupor, agitated and confused by the weather. The comforting division of the four seasons was no longer apparent. Gone were the reassuring changes that coincided with the bare arms of summer and the laying out of sweaters for spring, light coats for fall, and snow boots for winter.
Journey to the East was on my night table. Despite a lingering headache I could not resist reading just a few pages, which turned into a few pages more, which continued on as I read into the night. I had first read it in my early twenties and game for embarking I called out, as other fellow travelers, what I wished to seek. I read it again in my forties and my choice of goal much changed the second time around. Now in my seventies I no longer sought, I listened. I had the sense of being tested, but by whom? I noticed something scrawled in blue pencil on the back endpaper:
He covered himself in glory. He rolled about in fields of glory. Yet still the idea was but a ghost, a ghost of an idea that was not the concrete idea but in the end was yet an idea.
I read the words over a few times but could not wholly decipher them. It was not the Secretary’s handwriting, that much I knew. I tried to break down each phrase, a bit like attempting to break down Wittgenstein. Pacing about it occurred to me there was no necessary logic. It was just another hand of code, the poetry of tangled locks that suddenly smoothed and fell into place. The Leopard. It had not been a mere invitation to dine. There was something I was missing. But I was certain of this- it was time to pack my bag and set my affairs in order. I was being summoned.
There was much to be done but I decided to sleep. When I was younger, I considered sleep an interruption, but now I let myself be drawn into an unfamiliar shroud of contentedness. The mind glimpses a few wisps, last thoughts before surrender. The image of a ring, the phrase Be Content engraved on the inside, given to Thomas Jefferson by his daughter. I once saw this ring and I wondered was he ever. Was he ravening like an aging wolf, stalking about at night, prowling for something new, a missed volume on the shelf of his sumptuous library or a claret yet untasted? He was a complicated man I was thinking, as sleep’s curtain softly dropped.
I felt the ivy crawling on the side of the house beneath my window. I felt a crawling in my blood, the sweetness of sleep had departed. The mind was suddenly sharp, information stacking on virtual index cards. The parallel world has many layers, it seemed I had permeated one, only the beginning. Our world dead yet not.
Unable to go back to sleep I got up drank a glass of mineral water then reexamined the contents of the envelope. The plane ticket had the same appearance as the postcard, a slight holographic look. Stay here, an inner voice cautioned, you are home in the center of a pandemic and all roads are closed. All roads, chimed another voice, save two: one belongs to God and one to the imagination.
I remembered that I had received another package from S. but I was too late to open it, for as I reached for it I was whisked off, as if to Neverland, where all is possible. The shimmering dust enabling a boy to fly covered me and thus protected I passed through the last gate of the last corridor. No mother left behind cloaked in sorrow. I was free, indifferent to time. I was once again a swift runner and could go where I wished. I stopped at a stream and thought to rest but bending down to tie the lace of my boot I remembered that I was on a mission. I have not forgotten you I called out as the specter of a dog, a silvery blur that was not mine, faded into memory.
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