OUT ON a LIMB

by Shirley Maclaine

“Free shopping?” I asked.

  “Looting,” he said.

  “My God,” I said, “was anybody hurt or killed or anything?”

  He read on. “No,” he said, “the system just broke down. Like it does everywhere. Now there’ll be a big clamor for more law and order and racism will be a big thing again, I guess, because most of the people who went on the shopping spree weren’t white.”

  My mind flashed to my friend Bella Abzug. She would be gearing up her campaign for mayor right about now. I wondered if she’d win or whether she should have stayed in the House of Representatives. She lost the Senate race by half a percentage point and most people believed she was the front runner for mayor.

  I told David what I was thinking and how I loved Bella and how I hoped she’d be effective if she won.

  “I like her too,” he said. “You always know where you stand with Bella. I guess I could say the people who don’t like Bella are the people I don’t like.”

  I nodded, thinking of her strong personality and of how I might help her in her campaign if I were in New York.

  “God, I wonder if Bella will really win,” I said. “I wonder if the Liberal wing of the Democratic party in New York will fragment itself again, or whether they’ll really let her win this time.”

  David chewed on his daisy. “Want to ask someone?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, there’s a woman up here who’s a famous psychic. She’s been uncanny with me. Let’s go ask her about Bella.”

  “What the hell,” I said. “I might as well know what I’m getting into when I go back to New York.”

  David drove to a house on the edge of town nestled into the side of the mountains. It was modest and white stucco. There were wild flowers growing against the walls.

  A young girl answered the door and welcomed David as though she knew him. He explained that we’d like to see her mother. She nodded and said her mother had been working on her Sanskrit texts all morning.

  “Sanskrit?” I asked. “What is a Peruvian woman in the Andes doing with Sanskrit?”

  “She doesn’t understand either,” said David. “She’s never had any education in Sanskrit, doesn’t consciously know how to read it or write it, but she goes into a trance and the automatic writing starts to flow through her fingers. Something like the way Mohammed wrote the Koran, except that he was illiterate.”

  “You mean,” I asked, “that some kind of inner voice inspires her to write down stuff she doesn’t know anything about?”

  “Yes,” said David. “She says she has no control over it. It commands her at all sorts of odd hours. So she finds herself, even in the dark, writing long passages of spiritual teachings in a language that she doesn’t recognize.”

  “Have these passages been verified?” I asked.

  “Oh sure,” he said, “she’s known to be one of the world’s renowned experts on Sanskrit, but nobody understands how. Historians and language scholars on Sanskrit from all over the world have verified that what she is writing is real. She says she doesn’t want to understand it as long as it helps people.”

  We waited in a clean and Spartan hallway for Maria.

  When she appeared, I was struck by how plain and middle-class Peruvian she looked. A print dress clung to her broad hips and she waddled as she walked in scuffed shoes with thick heels run down on the outside. Her face was open and friendly and her hair bore the remnants of an old permanent.

  She greeted David with an embrace and, holding my arm, ushered us into her well-kept living room with a glass-topped coffee table and furniture from Sears and Roebuck, Lima branch.

  She spoke only Spanish which David translated.

  “How can I be of help?” she asked.

  David looked at me. “Do you want to ask her about Bella?”

  “Sure.”

  I ran through the background on Bella once more and he translated to Maria.

  She reached out her hand and said, “Could I please hold something that you wear all the time?”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because,” she said, “I need to touch your energy vibrations.”

  I reached up and took off my diamond heart necklace that I wore during the filming of The Turning Point and had worn ever since.

  Maria fondled the necklace in her right hand and closed her eyes and seemed to “feel” its vibrations.

  “You are a good friend of the woman in question,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “And she is in a competition to win a position of leadership in your New York City.” She was making statements rather than asking me.

  I nodded again.

  Maria’s eyes opened.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t see her winning this competition. I see instead a man with a bald head and long fingers.”

  I looked over at David in confusion. I didn’t know who she could be talking about. She clearly knew nothing about New York politics and was operating on some other kind of imagery.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “There must be some mistake. I don’t know who you are describing, and I know the people who have declared their candidacy. So, something doesn’t fit.”

  “This person has not declared himself yet,” she responded.

  I felt a drop of perspiration trickle down my midriff and changed the subject.

  I asked her about the movies I might make. She answered by saying I had already made a good one which would win awards and was beautiful because it revolved around the world of the ballet (The Turning Point had not yet been released).

  I sat quietly for a moment.

  “I also see a man standing by a window,” she said. “He gazes into white snow and understands that it is impossible for you to be together.”

  I blinked and coughed softly to myself.

  “He has thought a great deal about it, but cannot see his way clear to be with you. I hope you understand what I refer to.”

  I didn’t want to talk anymore about myself.

  “What about Bella?” I asked.

  Maria looked over at me with sad, round eyes.

  “Your woman will not win,” she said. “She won’t even be in the running. A bald man with long fingers whom no one has yet considered will be victorious.”

  I stood up with Maria. She obviously had other things to do. I thanked her. She was warm and sad. She hooked my necklace around my neck for me and said she would be happy to see me again if I wanted. She embraced us and we left.

  I was upset with what she had said—mostly because she had seemed so sure.

  “How could she be so definite?” I asked David as we headed toward the car, a slight drizzle of rain falling, slowly making the mountain town a mass of mud.

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “Just wait and see. Maybe she’s wrong. But I have to admit that’s rare.” He shivered a little and gestured toward the car. I walked with him, unable to think of much to say. He started the car and we headed for Llocllapampa. David was silent and I respected my reluctance to break into his thoughts, but I wondered again about the string of “coincidence” which had marked the growth of the very special and dear relationship we shared. Every word he spoke now took on hidden meaning. Why had he come along in the first place? He had absolutely nothing to gain from knowing me—in fact, ten years ago he had come and gone as a stranger, leaving the Masai stones with me to remind us both, it seems, that that was not a simple accident.

  I thought of all I had learned because of him … the adventurous wonder of his Mayan, whoever she was … the world of the spirit she and he had introduced me to … their reminders that the big mysteries of life were there to solve if we would only look … of the books David had suggested I read … of the dozens of people here to whom UFOs were commonplace. I tried to piece it all together: the sessions with Ambres, with McPherson and John, worlds apart but saying the same thing … the continual connections of God and spirit and love and karma and other worlds and Cosmic Justice and
basic kindness and spiritual enlightenment and Jesus and flying machines and the Golden Rule and advanced civilizations and “gods” who came in chariots of fire and people throughout human history who had performed unexplained miracles.

  Was it all beginning to make sense? Perhaps humans were a part of an overall cosmic plan that had been in effect for thousands and thousands of years? Could it even be that people who claimed to have had trips in spacecraft were telling the truth—even though their stories ended up in the National Enquirer? No, that would really be too much … But what was I going to do about all this? Would anybody believe me if I were to write about it? Was that why David had come into my life? He had said I would be able to risk humiliation if I really believed what I had learned. But then he said my credibility wouldn’t be damaged if people believed I was sincere. Well, I was. But I had this horrible jellylike feeling about what it was I was sincere about …

  On toward Llocllapampa we drove. I thought about packing my suitcase quickly so we could enjoy the sunset before leaving for Lima. But when we got there, a Peruvian man dressed in a uniform was waiting outside our hotel. David turned to me and said, “A friend of mine will drive you down the mountain. He doesn’t speak English, but he’s reliable. You’ll make your plane for New York. I’m going to stay here for a while.”

  My stomach fell to my feet. I wanted to cry. “Wait a minute,” I said, “just like that? I’m leaving and you’re staying here? I want to talk some more. Why are you staying?”

  He looked at me. “I don’t have to get back. You do. That’s all. Just think about everything that’s happened over the last few weeks. Absorb it slowly. It’s just the beginning for you. You need time alone now. I would think you’d better get back to your real life just to ground yourself. You have your notes and your tapes and a million books to read and investigations to investigate. Do it. You’ve thought a lot and learned a lot. Now it’s better for you to be on your own.”

  The tears welled in my eyes. I didn’t know what to say. He reached over and took my hand. “Look at that sky,” he said. “Is that freedom or is that freedom? Now go on and pack.”

  I eased myself into my cold dark room for the last time. As I stuffed my clothes and tapes and notes into my suitcase, I longed for another mineral bath. I wouldn’t hear the pigs snorting in the mountain silence that night. I wouldn’t brush my teeth in the orange river in the morning. I wouldn’t walk in the mountain afternoon again. I wouldn’t be with David anymore. I hadn’t really speculated about the future at all, and suddenly it was in my lap.

  When I finished packing, I walked out into the setting sun. The lady with no teeth was waiting at the Plymouth with my ring watch. I looked at David: he shrugged and smiled. I took the watch, put it in the palm of her hand and closed her fingers over it. I nodded and smiled over her voluble delight and turned back to David.

  Very gently he pinched my chin and kind of waggled it a bit. I grabbed his hand in both of mine and held on hard. “Am I supposed to go now? Just like that? Just leave?”

  “Yes.” Holding my hand he walked me to my side of the Plymouth. I looked around at the purple-hued mountains. With one arm he hugged my shoulders as he opened the car door. “We’ll see each other again. I promise. Trust me. Remember we’ve been together through many lives, right?”

  I scratched the back of my neck and tried not to cry. I climbed in as his friend put my suitcase in the back seat. David slammed the door and leaned in to me.

  “I love you,” he said. “And remember nothing is more important than love.”

  I felt an unbearable ache in my throat. I could hardly speak for fear of losing complete control. “Yes,” I choked. “I don’t understand but I love you too.”

  “Good,” he said. “Now go get ’em. That’s all … it’s simple. Be yourself, don’t be afraid, and love the world.”

  His friend turned on the ignition and stepped on the gas. We pulled away from the town that wasn’t a town. I didn’t look back, but I could feel David waving, his left shoulder slumped as he stood watching us go.

  “… what marvellous deepening of emotional power may be gained with the recognition of the idea of pre-existence … we learn that we have been living in a hemisphere only, that we have been thinking half-thoughts, that we need a new faith to join past with future over the great parallel of the present, and so to round out our emotional world to a perfect sphere.”

  —LAFCADIO HEARN

  Kokoro

  The man driving said something in Spanish and I nodded and smiled and was relieved I couldn’t talk to him.

  I tried to ease the ache in my throat by drinking in the familiar countryside. Down the Andes we wound, past the mining towns, past the herds of llamas, past the women dressed in wide-brimmed white starched hats, past the UFO signpost at the railway crossing. The air became dustier, less rarefied, thicker, easier to breathe but not as heady. The sun fell behind the mountains behind us. Chugging up the other side of the steep winding roads we passed empty trucks that would be full of coal and iron ore and rock when they descended again a day later.

  My mind tumbled with images: bubbling sulphur water, hot languid mountain grass, the orange river, the peasant mountain people chewing coke leaves for energy, confusing talks with David in the sunlight. I dozed.

  I woke with a jolt at a break in the road. Night had fallen completely now and the Peruvian stars glistened like chunks of low-flying crystal. My Peruvian driver drove stolidly on.

  Driving into Lima was like entering a backward world. I tried not to look. Squatters’ huts lined the roadside. People walked aimlessly. Factories spewed dirty smoke into the already filthy night air. Clouds hung over the city, wet and thick and putrid, obscuring the glistening beauty of the other world above.

  I felt a chill and put on my Ralph Lauren butter-leather coat to prepare for New York. The man stopped in front of Varig Airlines and helped me with my suitcase. I thanked him and thought better than to give him money. We shook hands and he smiled and drove off in the old jalopy that had been like a home in the mountains.

  I checked in and went right to the plane. Two hours out of Lima, at an altitude of 35,000 feet, I saw an electrical storm on the horizon that looked as though the Kingdom of Heaven was clashing against itself. The lightning splashed the sky pure white like blazing daylight for as far as I could see. The colossal power of the electricity made me cower in my seat feeling as insignificant as a flea. Nothing seemed to be as powerful as nature. Except, according to David, and Mayan, and John, and Ambres, and McPherson, and Cat, and Cayce, and—I now realized—many, many others, nothing was as powerful as the collective human mind, that infinitely elastic web of strength called human consciousness, and represented by the communal energy people referred to as their souls. It seemed to me that there were endless worlds for me to explore. And I wanted to, I really wanted to know.

  Maybe one could never physically prove whether the soul existed or not. I wasn’t sure that that even mattered. Perhaps reality was only what one believed it to be anyway. That would make all perceived realities real. Maybe that was the lesson I was learning—learning to think with unlimitedness … to believe that anything is possible … to believe that one can do anything, soar anywhere, become everything. Maybe one human soul was everything. And such a reality was up to each of us to relearn.

  Maybe the tragedy of the human race was that we had forgotten we were each Divine. And if we re-realized that, we could dispel fear from our lives. In dispelling fear, we could dispel hate. And much more. With the fear we would rid ourselves of greed and war and killing. Fear was the root and circle around which our lives revolved—fear of failure, fear of pain, fear of humiliation, fear of loneliness, of being unloved, of ourselves, fear of death, ultimately fear of fear. Fear itself was insidious, infectious, seeping in from one point of unreality to permeate all our lives. Perhaps our belief in death was the gravest unreality of all. If we could truly know that we never really died, that we always got anot
her chance, that no pain, no humiliation, no loss, was ever final, total and forever, maybe we could understand that there was nothing to fear. It could be that human beings were using their talent for complexity as an excuse to avoid the responsibility for being what we really understood we were from the beginning—basically part of what we called “God,” and without limitation, masters of our own divine potential.

  I sat quietly tense, held in place by the seat-belt—man’s answer to the electrical storm exploding around us. The airplane shook and bobbed violently in the stupefying display of dazzling, raw, natural power visible from every window. What was night outside had become a thunderously electrified daylight, flash after blazing flash revealing clouds and colors and an astral terrain of currents and rains whirling and raging around our small craft. No one spoke. No one screamed. As far as I could tell, no one cried. We had no choice. It was moments like this, I thought, that forced one to think and stretch one’s awareness beyond what we had been taught. It was moments like this, maybe too few and far between, that acted as a catalyst for our understanding a little better the internal control of which we were really capable. No one in the airplane could fight the storm. No one could overcome it. No one could really even understand it. It just was. And this elemental crisis had brought us all together, sharing without a word having been spoken.

  I determined to relax, beginning with my feet. Then I worked my way up, through ankles, legs, arms, hands, solar plexus, and chest. It worked. I began to feel I was part of the bobbing, creaking plane. My breathing came more evenly. My heart stopped beating so fast. The perspiration on my midriff and forehead cooled. Then I stopped and realized I had controlled my fear by using the mind to control the body … a positive mind insisting on not being afraid. And what was controlling my mind? I can only say it was my soul. My soul knew it was going to be all right, no matter what happened to the body. My soul—my own, subconscious, individualized piece of the universal energy—believed it was a part of everything, even of the crashing, tumultuous storm outside. My soul knew it would survive, that it was eternal, that it was ongoing and unlimited in its understanding that this, too, was part of the adventure we call life.