It happened incredibly fast. I heard the distant cries of civilisation, but they were so far behind me, I could barely remember where I had come from. The stars were blurred into a glittering line and I saw the sun, a boiling fireball, emanating impossible heat towards me. Now I passed through nebulae and dust clouds and all the dust sparkled as I was flung further and further into – the body of a giant chrysanthemum, which was the fixed point of All Time.
*
Everything stopped. I stuck my head out of the chrysanthemum, and looked around. I could see back to my own galaxy but it was extremely far away. I saw it as a sequence of small black dots, moving around the pinprick light of the sun. Beyond me I could see to galaxies unknown, great clusters of stars, dense clouds of gas. Blackness, redness, whiteness, and hot heat –
Ghost stars, lost stars, black holes then spun webs of nothing, dark matter, reams of nothingness and empty space and then the scattered luminescence of stars, so many billions of lights. So beautiful! So insane! I realised now the chrysanthemum was not moving but all space was instead moving around it, every star, every galaxy. It turned so fast that I felt dizzy. It was spinning round and round me as I sat in the heart of everything. Lights and shadows, spinning faster and faster, and each time reality turned it became just somehow less real, and more like a vast region of formlessness, everything elided –
I was trying to explain to the chrysanthemum that I really wanted to leave, but no meaningful sounds came out, just inchoate gibberish, and, anyway, who knew what language this flower spoke, and whether it spoke any language at all. For a while I was wondering quite seriously how best to communicate with a gargantuan flower and then with a jolt I realised this was completely insane and it was impossible to communicate with a flower at all, however large it was, and even if it was the focal point of the entire universe. Meanwhile all the galaxies, stars, nebulae, realities, were still moving around the chrysanthemum, and now they seemed even to be accelerating faster and faster, as if the whole of reality had gone into hyper-drive. In the midst, in the focal point, I was mumbling and laughing with nerves and incipient panic and just when I was about to throw up, the flower threw up instead and in fact threw me up – I was jettisoned with great force and, once repulsed, I began to fall, swiftly, all the way down – down – beyond – all the way below and down – and into the great pit of – the blackness of pure space. All was silent – my fall was very fast, and I thought about screaming for help but then it was impossible to imagine who could feasibly help me and besides I was falling so quickly I couldn’t even open my mouth. Then with a great sucking sound the earth received me again, dragged me back –
To this moment.
Here.
Now.
*
I was sitting on a bench, in the mural room, and Lord Priddy was offering me another drink.
‘No way,’ I mumbled. ‘No.’
‘This will help,’ he said. ‘I’m very sorry. They mistook you for someone else.’
The new drink was also tea but, I hoped, not the sort of tea that projected you across the universe into the heart of a giant chrysanthemum.
‘I saw the flower,’ I said. ‘I sat in it and looked around and then it spat me out, back here again.’
‘Then all is well. Some people get eaten. Metaphorically, as I tried to emphasise before. I was a little – startled.’
Lord Priddy was a tall, friendly man, with thick blond hair, broad shoulders and a handsome, slightly scrunched up face, as if he had once been smacked firmly between the eyes with a cricket bat. He might have been about fifty. His white suit was crumpled and, quite inevitably, he had a yellow chrysanthemum in his buttonhole.
‘Are you actually a lord?’ I said.
‘Not in the formal parliamentary sense. But in the sense of our own order, then yes I am the most high lord.’
‘You’re in charge?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you know Solete?’
‘Very well, yes.’
‘Did he drink the tea?’
‘Occasionally. He was more interested in assessing the effects of the tea on other people.’
‘So he watched?’
‘Yes.’
‘What are the effects of the tea?’
*
Lord Priddy explained that the effects, from worst to best, were:
*
Frenzy – in which the initiate became violently agitated and fell to the ground writhing and screaming
(The chrysanthemum had eaten them. They were therefore not ready for the next stage.)
Stupor – in which the initiate became essentially catatonic and sometimes fell to the floor with their limbs rigid
(In this state, the universe had not turned around them. The universe of the chrysanthemum had got stuck. The initiate was therefore not ready for the next stage.)
Indeterminate physical posture – in which the initiate displayed an expression of bewilderment
(They had travelled to the chrysanthemum but could not gain access to the heart of the flower. The initiate was therefore not ready for the next stage.)
Mild agitation – in which the initiate stared wildly, seemed not to understand whatever they perceived, and descended into unmitigated confusion
(They had travelled to the heart of the chrysanthemum and gained access to the interior of the flower but were then violently spat back to earth again. This was my condition. I was also not ready for the next stage.)
*
‘But it wasn’t bad,’ said Lord Priddy. ‘You might even get to the lower stages of enlightenment, next time.’
There will be no next time, I thought.
Priddy was telling me about the lower stages of enlightenment, their worth depending on the length of habitation in the chrysanthemum and so on and eventually the initiate arrived at the ideal state – beatific calm and splendour – in which they sallied forth to the heart of the chrysanthemum and experienced the totality of all existence, their own and that of humanity, and that of the universe – and were duly enlightened. Therefore, they gained access to the inner sanctum of the society of the Universal Chrysanthemum.
‘Solete’s observations, did he say they were for his great work?’ I asked.
‘In a sense.’
‘In the sense that?’
‘Everything was related to this work.’
‘Did he ever say where he was putting the work? Or what he was doing with it?’
‘No.’
*
Now Thys and Michael were hovering at the edge of the room, looking embarrassed. I tried to wave at them, to suggest that things were fine really, but found my limbs were shaking. I couldn’t align my intentions with my actions.
‘Do come back and see us again,’ said Lord Priddy. I tried to nod politely, but my head was shuddering even as I moved it, and, with a clumsy wave, I tried to walk away.
The journey through the garden took me hours, it seemed. It seemed the birds reeling around me and fluttering onto the trees were moving very slowly too, as if they might any moment fall from the skies.
Lord Priddy was saying, ‘You should try the quantum realm. It’s in the far south where the Cherwell flows into the Isis, and one river drinks the other. Solete often went there, too.’
‘The quantum realm?’
‘It looks like an aeroplane that went headfirst into the bank of the river.’
I nodded again, then half-stepped, half-fell. I think Lord Priddy waited as I staggered away, but by then my eyes were closing, the sky was mottled with dark clouds. I moved into the gathering darkness. There was a lull as the river ebbed and gurgled along beside me, and the red sun slid towards the horizon. I had missed a call from Anthony. He had finally broken his silence. In the message he sounded nervous and slightly plaintive. Which part of the river are you on? Let me know.
When I called him back, he was in a tutorial.
‘I’m afraid I can’t really talk. What’s happening?’ he said.
‘I’m sorry about whatever I should have said when we last met,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry about what I actually said.’
‘Are you alright?’
I wasn’t even sure about that. I looked out at pale tracts of water. The limits of the river seemed to be indeterminate. Trees overhanging, drenched roots. The distant sound of cars, whining along a major road. The chrysanthemum, and the monolith.
‘I have to go to the quantum realm, apparently. Not now. Tomorrow. Too late today. I only just got out of the chrysanthemum,’ I said. ‘Or, really, it spat me out.’
‘Is that a metaphor?’
‘Too confusing to explain on the phone.’
‘I’m going to the Parkland after work. Shall we meet there?’
‘Alright. Yes.’
*
I hung up because my head ached. Then my entire being ached, I thought how strange it was to be flung across the universe. I felt bruised, as if I had genuinely vaulted across light years and collided with a gargantuan flower, but there was no physical reason for my agony. My shoulders were in spasms. The trees hung limply in the water, sad willows, dipping their branches. My teeth were chattering. I thought about Solete, how I had known so little about him. I had been too mired in grief to realise that he was in mourning too – for his life, for his youth, for his beloved dead. I realised that his routine was fixed and purposeful, that he shunned the college and went to the café, perhaps because no one knew him there.
Solete told me once that his father walked with one foot slightly twisted to the side, having been injured in the First World War. Solete was brought up in Oxfordshire, and, though he went to fight in another World War, he returned, in the end, to the cold white stone, the city of shadows.
Rather than taking his place in line with contemporary orthodoxies, Solete perhaps believed that the arrangement of finite parts, if managed most precisely, might yield some change in the vast and invisible portion of the universe.
Or, it might not.
*
Mist swirled across the dying sun. Thousands of birds, reeling above me, forging vast circles, round and round, so the mist was flecked with all these swirling spots of blackness, and the sky swirled. There were geese lining the banks of the river, and suddenly, in one great cluster, they ascended and flew directly towards me. I even thought they would collide with me, I ducked and heard their wings thudding directly above my head, their honking and bellowing! Shadowy forms surging towards the moon, and the circling flocks of smaller birds, everything swirling, black shapes against the whiteness, and melancholy cries. I watched slow-moving herds of cattle, meandering towards the river. A flurry, the sound of hooves, and wild horses cantered furiously across the meadow, faster and faster, tossing their manes, whinnying, coming ever closer to me, whinnying, in a line, faster and closer until they were upon me – for a moment I thought I should run but then I was fixed where I stood, too terrified to move. They passed either side of me, their eyes shining in the moonlight, their crazy ecstatic whinnying and then a last frenzy of commotion and the smell of sweat and straw as my heart pounded in my chest – and – then – one horse collided with me, so I fell. Dimly, I heard the meadow still echoing with the sound of hooves.
*
Blankness perhaps. For a while? And hard to tell . . .
Yet, the sky was still full of birds, moving in perfect synchronicity. Whirling clouds dimmed the stars, I was shaking with wonder and disoriented entirely. Everything faded into silence, as if there were nothing around me at all. I stood carefully, brushing myself down in a perfunctory way. I was coated in cold mud. The clouds devoured the moon and I walked in perfect blackness, my hands outstretched, shivering and trembling, talking to myself. Just to the edge of the blackness, I said. Only the edge, then the city lights begin. I began to think I was dead and that the horse had trampled me and now I was in the afterlife or underworld, and this was death, to walk in darkness across a grassy meadow, in pure unbridled blackness, nothingness all around . . .
*
In my confused state I became completely convinced that this was absolutely true and I was absolutely dead. I was terrified for a while and then I began to feel almost relieved, that there was an afterlife, that I was in it! That the business of mortal consciousness was over – though now I had to contend with a new variant of consciousness – whatever it was! My heart was beating, an illusion I thought. Why to be a body, in the afterlife? How to be? I wondered?
I peered into the blackness and it seemed that I could discern sub-categories of blackness, shapes that might be human. Or, I wondered if they might be memories, if I was in a liminal realm where thoughts became embodied, and drifted along beside you. But how would anything be embodied, in a non-corporeal realm? It was so strange, and I walked forwards, not knowing where forwards conveyed me, and these shadowy half-forms accompanied me. The ground beneath my feet was hard and firm, cold mud. This comforted me, and I tried to listen for the sound of horses, the cawing of birds, but – nothing!
Blankness!
*
For a long time, ages, I walked with my hands outstretched. Shadows surged, and dwindled. I roamed through emptiness until finally I blinked and hardly trusted what I saw –
The timorous glow –
The sulphur-stained city –
Shadowy old turrets and all the memories, traces, mirages –
*
So I was alive, after all!
At the Parkland, the gates were shut, so I crawled over the wall, fell roughly into the brambles, scrambled out again. I wandered onto the path, dazed and rubbing a bruised elbow. In the Bronze Age, tribes had worshipped here. Brittonic druids wandered the forests, intoning to their gods. Now it was silent and deserted, apart from Yorke, who was standing like a prisoner, his arms rigidly at his sides. His hair was tousled, as if, once more, he had forgotten to comb it. Blond and pale-skinned, he was almost as bleached as the landscape around him. A ghost man, in search of historical vapours. Once more, he was under-clad.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, as soon as I reached him. ‘Again.’
‘That’s alright,’ I said, trying to become as reasonable as possible. As quickly as possible. ‘I’m sorry I said you were a fantasist.’
‘It’s undoubtedly a just charge,’ he said. ‘In a sense, that’s my job.’
‘I’m sure it’s not.’
‘At least, in so far as what I do is a job.’
‘You sound like Solete.’
‘I have a lot of sympathy for Solete. I mean, beyond the obvious.’
*
We began to walk along a dusty path, into a further region of prevailing whiteness. As if to cement our moment of accord, he said, in a confiding tone: ‘I’ve always hated coats. You’re too hot, you take them off, you’re too cold; you put them on, you’re too hot. So, you may as well be one or the other. Perpetually. In winter, I am perpetually too cold.’
‘Even unto hypothermia?’
‘I’ve never been found rigid by the side of the road.’
*
I was still quite dislocated from the objects around me. Tea, clouding my senses. My dream visions seemed more real than the Parkland. I tried to listen as Anthony told me about the henge. ‘Pagan ground,’ he was saying. ‘These things get lost. This site was lost for a thousand years. Deliberate camouflage by the Christian Church, in part. They must have built the clerical colleges here on purpose, trying to sanctify the heathen site. Nightingale Hall with its massive chapel. You know, the early Church, it was always doing that sort of thing.’ He waved his arm, vaguely. I found I could barely respond.
‘Are you alright?’ he said, turning suddenly towards me.
‘I drank too much tea. Then, for a while, I thought I had died.’
‘From drinking tea?’ He looked at me as if this w
as a non sequitur. He simply needed the full picture. I was going to explain, as soon as I had ascertained just precisely what – the full picture – might be – but he started speaking again.
‘It’s a circular site, a great zero. The sacred eternal number. The mystery of nothing. That clue – no matter.’
‘Is nothing mysterious?’
He ignored me. ‘You’d expect a place like this to be haunted by uneasy spirits.’
‘I don’t believe in that kind of thing.’ At least, not usually, I thought. These things have to be suppressed!
‘Really it was genocide,’ Anthony was saying. ‘Danes. They were resident Danes, they’d lived their lives in England. Peacefully, you know. But suddenly, one day, in the early eleventh century, the English king said to his subjects, go out and massacre them all. He was tired of the raids along the coast, Vikings, you know, the rest. He issued an edict. They must have gone to Nightingale Hall, to seek sanctuary. It was just a chapel then, nothing more, we’re talking about the period before the university was established. No scholar-clerics. And they got hemmed in, trapped, those poor Danes, they were attacked, maimed, beaten – they ran for the chapel, begged for mercy. But the people had their edict from the king and so they burnt the chapel down, the Danes were trapped inside. All of them – men, women, children – burnt to death.’
‘That’s really awful,’ I said. ‘How appalling –’
Anthony shrugged.
*
As we walked, I became progressively more confused. That was unfortunate because I had been fairly confused when we began the walk. I had just returned from an unsolicited psychotropic experience. It was perhaps tactless of Anthony to start talking about uneasy ghosts and massacres. As we walked, branches scraped on other branches, squeaking and even at times wailing. But branches do not wail, of course. I was fully aware that my senses were out of synch with the world around me. The measurements of trees are stern and imperious but usually they are fixed. They do not shift as you approach, and become larger, more imposing, and surge their forms towards you, as if they are beckoning, onwards. Now everything was curled, every wizened bush, every blade of grass. Frilled ivy on the buildings. I shivered. Anthony stopped, again, and said, ‘Are you sure you’re alright? Do you want to sit down?’
A Field Guide to Reality Page 10