by Rob Brezsny
“Which is?”
“Ahh. Yes. More about that later. If and when you decide to kidnap yourself. If and when you commit to cultivating the states the alchemists call putrefaction and nigredo: melting down the half-sick, half-beautiful containers your libido inhabits, and returning for a time to what we affectionately call primordial chaos.”
“I’m scared.”
“That’s a good sign. It means you’re actually entertaining my proposal.”
“But it’s all so sudden.”
“There’s no rush. You know what the occultists say: The magician proceeds as if she has all of eternity at her disposal.”
“I still wish there was a brochure you could give me to study. A prospectus. A holy tome.”
“Those types of artifacts exist, but they’re exactly what you don’t need right now. You’re overstuffed with intellectual knowledge and second-hand information. The most precious and instructive experience for you is what we in the consciousness industry call gnosis. Direct perception unmediated by other people’s theories.”
“So where can you steer me if I want to gather more data to help me make my decision? What should I do?”
“How about this? How’d you like to sample a class at our Dreamtime University? I can arrange for you, anytime you want, to get a fresh hot delivery, in your dreams, of infomania that’ll be quite helpful to you as you carry out the prerequisites for signing up with the Menstrual Temple. When would you like it? Tonight?”
I’m skeptical. What is she, the most powerful psychic in America, able to induce a specific dream in my psyche on command?
“In fact,” she continues, “I can absolutely guarantee that it’ll be the most real dream you’ve ever had. The most detailed. The most voluminous. Not only have you never had a dream as long and rich as this one—you’ve never come anywhere close to remembering so much of any dream as you will of this one. It’s as if the dream itself will give you a memory upgrade so you can remember it.
“And you should also know that there’s plenty more where this superdream comes from. Membership in the Menstrual Temple has thousands of perks, but the privilege of communing with superdreams at Dreamtime University has got to be one of the biggest luxuries.”
“Anything else?”
“Lots of treasures besides the ones I’ve told you about. I’ll just mention one other one.”
“Free tickets to the dark underbelly of Disneyland?”
“Nope. Better than that. An end to your low wages.”
“This janitor job I’m going to get must be pretty lucrative.”
“You’d be surprised.”
Rapunzel is beginning to put her crampons back on.
“So does your offer to arrange a superdream for me have any strings attached?” I ask. “If I formally beg you for it, am I committed to do your will forever? I mean, if I agree to accept your fresh hot delivery, do I automatically have to quit the band?”
“Of course not. Think of it as a free sample. An introductory offer. You know, the first one’s free, but the price goes up once you’re hooked.”
“OK. I accept. Now as to when I’d like it delivered. The band’s got another gig tonight, and—well—I get into a pretty wacky state. Always have my beers and coffees. Always dance myself into exhaustion and absorb the id-charged projections of hundreds of people. My dreams the night after are usually pretty fragmented. So anyway, tonight wouldn’t be a good time. How about tomorrow night?”
“You’re on. By the way, do you know what ‘rockstar’ backwards is?”
“Ratskcor?”
“Yup. Rat’s core. And now it’s time for me to go.”
“Can I get your phone number?”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for me to contact you. Too bad you’re not already signed up to the Menstrual Temple, because then you could bypass the more mundane forms of communication and reach me directly through the Drivetime.”
“And what exactly did you say the Drivetime is?”
“Next time, Rockstar. Gotta go.”
She grabs the bull skull origami on my altar, the one she’d given me a month ago during the party at the newspaper offices.
“Maybe you’re ready to receive the oracle I tried to handfeed you way back when. Why don’t you finally open this sucker up?”
She flings the origami at me, climbs out the window, and scoots back down the way she came in.
I drag myself out of bed and peer out at her. The woman is fast. She’s already ripping off her crampons. Soon she’s scurrying out of my yard, brushing by the eight-foot-tall bushes that line the front boundary.
I lower myself down on the sacred spot on the chair where she’d been sitting and examine the origami. For the first time I notice on the back, in very tiny letters, the words “open me.” Wonder how I missed seeing that until now.
Unfolding it, I find a text with print so small I can barely read it. I fetch the magnifying glass that came with my Oxford English Dictionary and discern the following:
The Televisionary Oracle
In the best-known version of the Greek myth, Persephone is dragged down into the underworld by Pluto and held hostage. But in earlier, pre-patriarchal tales, she descends there under her own power, actively seeking to graduate from her virginal naivete by exploring the intriguing land of shadows. Which of these approaches to higher (or should we say lower?) education do you prefer: imposed against your will or initiated under your own power? It really is up to you, and you should decide pretty soon. Maybe it’ll help you make your decision if we tell you that according to ancient lore, the dusky realm to which Persephone journeyed is a place of hidden wealth.
This is how spells are broken:
by changing your name
every day for a hundred days
by bragging about
what you can’t do and don’t have
by telling nothing but lies for 24 hours
by staring at yourself
in the mirror
for hours
by confessing profound secrets
to people who aren’t particularly interested
by forcing yourself to laugh nonstop for one hour
by acting with absolutely no ulterior motives
by dancing alone
all night
in slow motion
with your clothes on inside-out
by seeking out information
that renders your political beliefs irrelevant
by pretending to be dead
for three days
by burning down the dreamhouse
where your childhood keeps repeating itself
by communing with the Televisionary Oracle
Artemisia went to her acupuncturist, Dr. Lily Ming, in need of relief for her menstrual distress. Ming gave her more than the usual array of needles, lightly pounding the nail of Artemisia’s big toe with a small silver hammer for a few minutes.
“Why?” Artemisia asked.
“Good for the uterus,” the doctor replied.
Indeed, Artemisia’s cramps diminished as the doctor thumped, and she was not troubled by them for the duration of her period.
After the session, the usually taciturn Ming surprised Artemisia by disclosing a traumatic event from her own childhood. It seems that during the occupation of her native Manchuria, she was forced to witness Japanese soldiers torturing people she loved. Their favorite atrocity was using hammers to drive bamboo shoots through their victims’ big toes.
The moral of the story? Dr. Ming has accomplished the feat of reversing the meaning of her most traumatic imprint. Can you do the same?
Your secret identity and your magical nickname
are brought to you by
Dyke Punk Witch Talismans.
These handsome, handcrafted power objects
have been carved exclusively
from the wood of the pomegranate tree.
Each features a secret compartment
that contains t
he last breaths
of some of the most famous wild women in history,
including Georgia O’Keefe, Virginia Woolfe, Joan of Arc,
Billie Holliday, Emma Goldman, Josephine Baker, Lou Salomé,
Bessie Smith, Anaïs Nin, and H.D.
At age nine, I began devouring the fossilized thoughts of all the dead white guys who still run the world from beyond the grave. My seven mommies believed that by then I had been safely brainwashed by my thoroughly matriarchal education. They wanted me to become familiar with the lies of the enemy. As I read the evil books, I was shocked, appalled, furious, incredulous—and rather well-entertained. My best guilty pleasure came from reading about how men down through the centuries had sought to jump out of their skins.
In Joseph Campbell’s vision of myth, I found, the hero is typically a guy who braves dangerous ordeals all by his lonesome, though he may on rare occasions receive aid from a goddess. In medieval legends, a knight might obtain a talisman from his blessed lady before setting out on his Grail quest, but he sure as hell didn’t bring her along to assist him. The history of shamanism is dominated too with stories of male explorers storming the astral plane ablaze with the macho glamour of solitude.
There is not only a dearth of women in the recorded history of humans penetrating the mysterium, but also an almost total absence of collaborative efforts.
I was already aware of this discrepancy at the ripe old age of twelve. By then I had read enough mythology and anthropology to realize how heretical my own jaunts into the other side of the veil were: I had a collaborator, Rumbler. True, he was as non-human as the goddess Athena, who gave the prototypical Campbellian hero Perseus a burnished shield to use as a mirror in his showdown with Medusa. But he was my equal and co-creator. We slipped into the Televisionarium together, and we shared the adventures there.
When my life with Jumbler got underway, I took my apostasy one step further. Beginning on that first night in the Villa Inn in San Rafael, high on pranks and tears and erotic thrills, the two of us, a loving couple, found a way to pull off a feat which as far as I knew no two flesh-and-blood magicians had ever done before: fly away together on a shamanic journey.
As the light from Jumbler’s eyes caressed the light from mine, as our hot sweet breaths mingled in each other’s lungs, as our almost unbearable pleasure mutated our brain chemistry out of its habitual groove, we disappeared into a gossamer net of shimmering light whose warp was gold and woof was silver. It collapsed gently around us, turning into a soothing, slow-motion tornado that soared and fluttered and finally set us down, many sighs later, in a dreamy landscape that seemed perfectly real. I never once lost sight of Jumbler even though the whole world changed around us.
We found ourselves lying on a grassy hill on a bright day with a very big sun directly overhead. There was an exuberant blend of smells in the air: spearmint, baking cake, varnish, brewing coffee. We were wearing the same clothes we had on back in the tear-stained bed.
“Doesn’t this place look like a cemetery to you?” she asked with a matter-of-fact curiosity that made me laugh. How could she be so poised after a wild ride like we just had?
“It’s rather festive for a cemetery,” I said, trying to match her nonchalance. “Look at the prayer flags hanging from the trees. And the flower-bedecked floats over there. As if there’s been a parade. Plus I smell all sorts of delicious aromas.”
“Check out the women in their underwear dancing around the maypole,” Jumbler said. “That’s the wackiest lingerie I’ve ever seen. My favorite is the two floral shower caps attached to make a poofy bra.”
“Do you mind if I ask you a stupid question?” I said.
“They’re my favorite kind,” she replied.
“Where are we?”
“I believe we must be having a lucid dream together,” she said as she squeezed my hand.
“You mean I’m dreaming of you in my lucid dream and you’re dreaming of me in your lucid dream?”
“No. We’re dreaming the same lucid dream at the same time.”
“But this can’t be a lucid dream. Can it? I mean, my awareness is like it is in a lucid dream—I’m in full possession of my logical faculties—but the landscape itself is too solid. It’s not fuzzy at the edges. It doesn’t keep mutating.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “You’re right. But don’t you also feel that sweet, creamy meltingness of the astral plane? That floaty timelessness?”
“Yes.”
“And don’t you see things here that you’d only find on the other side of the veil? Like there’s a herd of pink octopuses swimming in the air. Like the creature riding the centaur over there is half-woman, half-bird. Like all the gravestones have television screens in them.”
I wanted to test a theory. Rising to a squat, I launched myself upwards with the intention to fly. In a moment I was high above the octopuses, swooping effortlessly. I sailed over to the top of a nearby pomegranate tree and picked two fruits, then whooshed back down to my old spot next to Jumbler.
“So if this isn’t exactly a lucid dream,” I said, breathing hard, “and it certainly isn’t waking reality, what is it?”
“Maybe this is the Drivetime,” Jumbler replied. “Maybe we’re having a joint shamanic quest into the good old Drivetime.”
“Is that possible?”
“I’ve heard of tantrically trained shamanic lovers being able to accompany each other into the Dreamtime,” she said. “My teachers told me it was possible with a lot of practice. But they never said anything about two people getting into the Drivetime together.”
“What if we’re pioneers?” I bragged.
“We’d better start taking mental notes, just in case we are.”
“Look at those huge women in bikinis over there,” I marveled. “Dancing on the back of that Cadillac convertible. Must be three hundred pounds each. I like the hood ornament, too. I think it’s a real vulture.”
“I don’t know if those are bikinis exactly,” she said. “They look like they’re round slabs of lunch meat sewn together. Wonder who their tailor is?”
“Do you smell—what is that exactly?—seaweed? And car tires?
And banana bread? It’s weird how the whole palette of aromas keeps shifting.”
“Yeah. I smell all that. There’s also something like lipstick.”
“Check out that long line of men wearing wedding gowns and pushing the shopping carts,” I said.
“Wonder where they’re going? Can’t see the front of the line behind that hill.”
“I’ll go check.”
I launched myself into the sky again and flew to reconnoiter. On the way I saw that all the shopping carts were packed full of brightly wrapped gifts. As I reached the other side of the hill, the procession’s destination came into view. It was a tall, round, skinny tower whose surface was an intricate mosaic of red, black, and white tile. There was but a single window in the top floor, and no visible door. My heart leaped when I first spied it. It was virtually a duplicate of the tower pictured in a book I loved in childhood—the book that retold the Grimms’ fairy tale of Rapunzel.
My next emotion was disappointment. Maybe this tower was evidence that the whole scene was nothing more than a projection of my unconscious psyche. I didn’t want that to be true. I wanted this adventure to be an objective event, independent of my subjective fantasies.
I landed on the top of the tower and surveyed the scene. For as far as I could see, there was a single file of men in long white wedding gowns. The man at the front of the line stared up at me and began to shout, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.” Was he talking to me? I floated down to the window and perched on the ledge to look inside. No one was there.
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair,” came the cry again. I climbed down into the room. To my relief, it looked like no place I had ever seen: evidence that tended to prove I wasn’t merely making all of this up.
The bed was huge, round, and appointed with a red
satin comforter and many black satin pillows. Lutes and hand-drums and flutes lay against a wall on a thick magenta carpet, along with a bowl of dark red cherries and figs. A richly woven tapestry hanging on the wall depicted a blue-skinned goddess with eight arms and long auburn hair. She was dancing atop a giant TV that had a scene of her dancing atop a TV. Among the objects in her many hands was a baseball bat and a baseball glove containing a pomegranate.
Next to the tapestry was a white marble altar. The intoxicating smoke of burning frankincense emerged from an aladdin’s lamp. There was a bird’s nest containing a single red egg which was noticeably rocking back and forth under its own power.
On the wall behind the altar was a round mirror. I peered into it. The reflection was not me, though in some ways it resembled me. The features of the face were the same. The hair was my auburn color but longer and thicker. However, the skin was blue like the creature on the tapestry, and there were patches of flames burning here and there on the skin—including that spot in the middle of my forehead. I switched my gaze away from the mirror and looked down at myself. Nope, my skin was still flesh-tone, and I was not on fire.
I stared again into the mirror. The blue girl there winked at me and blew a flaming bubble off her tongue. I laughed.
Outside, more voices had joined the lead man’s. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair,” chanted the throng. What should I do? Leaning out the window, I saw Jumbler flying towards me. In a few moments she floated in through the window.
“I thought you were coming right back, sweetie,” she said brightly. “What’s been keeping you?”
“I’m trying to figure out what to do about all those guys down there. They seem to want something from me.”