They prayed to the 4 directions and to earth, moon, and sun. Laxmi read from a book written by a saint she wanted to visit in Bombay, about having your head “in the mouth of the tiger”—there was no escape if one continued to fight with the Self — true freedom meant not liberation from the ego but liberation for it. Chess made a bad joke about Siegfried and Roy, how the one who didn’t get mangled might have a different opinion, but she attributed his clowning to sheer nerves. Suddenly he remembered a book he loved as a boy (they weren’t coming on yet, though Laxmi said they were close to the stage where you wondered if you were, or should be, even though you still felt sorta normal), he began talking about it 10 minutes after Laxmi diced up “the little ones” (what the cognoscenti called cubensis, they’d swallowed them with banana to cut the bitterness), Chess saying that as a kid he hardly read but the book he loved more than any just happened to be called The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. Laxmi sexily guffawed. When the title came out of his mouth, neither of them could actually believe it. What an omen! she said. He told her that the most beautiful thing about it, the thing he could never forget, and thought of even to this day to calm himself when times were tough, was the rocketship that a tribe of children built in the middle of the night, they rose from their beds and went to the beach to blast off (Tim Leary’s Blue Blasters!)—“How amazing,” she said. “Isn’t that amazing?” he countered, their amazings somehow perfectly overlapping — maybe they were coming on — rocketship on blackvault oceanshore seemed to embody everything, all wonder of cosmos harmoniously attuned until adolescent cynicism snowed under, “the headlamps of childhood,” as some writer put it, headlamps onto motes of orgiastic Mystery then wattage dimmed and lamp cords frayed before one grew callous, hide-bound, and rueful over what he could no longer feel, taste, see, or remember, so far from the awesome messages once carried on beachwind of infinity-looped, dead-on summer nights now dead.
They lay quiet awhile — Laxmi said they should be quiet — and Chess thought maybe he hadn’t taken enough little ones — then had the thought he might be coming on — then definitely, even though Laxmi said with a vacant smile that she wasn’t. Which made sense; she took half. Or maybe she lied and swallowed a full dose and only said she’d taken less because she knew how spooked he was. (Maybe she’d be the one to lose it.)
(Doubtful) (The Nancy Nurse fantasy was bullshit anyway)
He was coming on now. Oh. No. Industrial-strength—“ego-leveling dosage”—another favored phrase of the shamanguides — queasy and afraid. Stomach hurting. Body/mind changes churning vertigo/hawhrfear: why did i do this i shouldn’t have done this what if i/we need a hospital what if it’s the same hospital they took Maurie. They hadn’t left their room at the perfectly named Miracle Manor, beautiful minimalist hotel with sweet utilitarian kitchen, clinical desert tile whites, he didn’t at all want to go outside. He lay on the floor.
feeling the presence of elephants.
He could sense the duststorms stirred by their powerful legs.
THE DISTANT MUSIC EMANATING FROM THEIR TRUNKS.
Trumpets.
Chess asked Laxmi if she minded if he spoke, that he was going to tell her “essential truths.”
She said she would like that: excited for him, giddy almost. And he said, like an anchor in Iraq
these are Her imperial troops. i am on the outskirts of the army’s gathering. these elephants are the imperial guards. because i have taken the little ones, the cubenses, they are allowing me here, but i can only be present at a great distance. getting too close would endanger. i feel like huckleberry. what is his last name. Finn, she said
these are Her imperial guards—
He sat flummoxed and shocky with the holiness of it and Laxmi grinned, quietly eager and respectful. He asked for reassurance that she’d help, that Laxmi would help with whatever came up because She—that’s how he referred to this energetic entity, misty mythopoeic colossus the elephants were guarding—She could easily crush him and all that is or ever was built or imagined. It would be nothing for Her! Laxmi made gentle oath. His girlfriend and journeywoman, splinter of She, was generous and bountiful, just like that whom the elephants guarded. But there was no danger in Laxmi, the human manifestation…
Chess began to cry and said
She is learning about me through you. She sees that i am afraid because i brought you, laxmi, to help. She sees i am a frightened, frail being, and because of that, She is going to treat me with tenderness. He convulsed in tears. Oh! (Laxmi cried with him, softly though, so as not to upstage) can you imagine? this being—(Laxmi told him it was Kali-Durga)—this being who could crush me — crush the world if She wished — has deigned to treat me with such compassion and tenderness i am so ashamed! i was so afraid, and among the infinite tasks She has before her, She has taken the time to make certain i am unharmed! for i am a fragile
Laxmi put her arms around him and said to let everything just wash over, and that she loved him.
How can there be shame? When
She never rests! he shouted, wild-eyed, filled with grace. because of her compassion she allows the elephants to guard Her, but only because She knows that is what they wish — She knows they are guarding nothing! (Laxmi was crying again) can anything be more beautiful than that? oh! so sad! it’s so sad! the plant! i feel the sadness of the plant—how can we bear up against the sadness of a plant? he asked rhetorically — quietly, Laxmi changed “plant” to “planet” but he didn’t hear—how can we bear the sadness of a plant, how can we take that, laxmi? She says that She knows we can’t. She knows we are too weak and that our backs would break under the weight of even a single tear of this mushroom, Her favorite pupil, Her most devoted student, can you see? She says the mushroom likes to observe the world through our eyes and that She lets us see things through Its eyes, though not for very long because it’s too much, we’re too frail, so She lets us be human, lets us forget, because it would destroy us if we walked around remembering