CHAPTER 17
When they woke, the girls were not surprised to see the boys. Zav and Mark rubbed their eyes, then slightly shook their heads side-to-side, a wake-up routine in tandem. The girls were amused. The boys glance at each other: What?!
Four beds. Tastefully decorated room. The Early-Temple-Revival movement in decorating was apparent. Each liked it. But after a quick scan, all were eager to talk - not necessarily listen; talk.
"Bad! Bad! Bad!" - the flourish of robes, the suddenness of appearance - yet, not "Deacon!" as in the previous Deacon but as in her voice; ("Auntie?!")
It was then that the boys truly awoke. "Attention!" All the females giggled, sillily and delightedly.
"Is this what Coupling is about?"
"About?!" in that egging-on About what? tone: Deacon.
She checks-off each face. Hesitancy.
There is only one way - but it will have to wait. For now, clarification.
We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression. What does that mean to you now?
Not even one iota thinking that the girls had not been the girls, Zav kicks-off: "It doesn’t. Didn’t mean anything to Xer, so ...?"
Lil: "Why do you think you were Xer?"
(Consternation.)
"Okay. Keep it simple. Let’s just assume the algebraic transference: x is x and y is y." Deacon.
"But," and she stops, bites her lower lip, asks, but is not looking at Deacon, not directly responding to the last statement, "But, it was what made the Ascension happen. Wasn’t it?" and she plows on, talking a stream: Cilla: "Like we’re here, right here, because something didn’t happen back then. Isn’t that it?" Keeps rowing: "They were real. We are real. They are real. That’s it!"
Deacon wanted to applaud, but holds back.
"So, women won’t be punished for Adam’s transgression?"
Mark: "Women didn’t sin!"
Can’t be.
Has to be.
Should it be?
Want it to be?
Deacon let them go. Not that they were on a schedule, just that it was fitting. Words had failed as they so often do before the experience is fully measured. Off they go! to herself; envying them; envy laced with fear: For all of us!
Their Coupling ceremonies followed shortly thereafter. They were "Back from Africa!" before anyone of their classmates truly accepted that they had left school. None even considering that they had been drafted: certainly not among the girls. Timewise it was two months: "Just on break," is how it was explained. And so it seemed: even to them.
Coupling ceremonies were very private events. They were public in knowledge, so there were many gifts. But they were restricted in liturgy: only family members present - and even this was limited to no more distance than first cousins.
It was private because Coupling was a private time. Family time. Spousal time. You and me time. Lovers’ time. The timefulness of all Time.
Of the many customs and rites, "Naming" was the most weighty. For as long as it took - sometimes a full week! - they spent time in a small but quite comfortable apartment. Each time they saw each other they addressed the other with their name: she calling him Lilith; he calling her Zav; Mark and Cilla/Cilla and Mark.
It was a naming in the minutest of details. "Mark, please pass the salt." "Mark, please pick up the soap!" And so on.
Some imaged it as a watering rite. Where the other became known as one knows a waterfall he or she stands under. Drop by drop but really the full plunge felt. So it was with the name. Syllable by syllable but yet the whole story. Seeing the other. Looking at him or her and them being you as you name them and in the naming so transferring your own perception of who you are as if you were actually the other so named!
It became tedious.
It became humorous.
It became mindless.
It is magical.
More, there is always more to the magical. As they prepare for sleep so they look, stare, jettison their eyes as they do their names: Zav/Lil/Mark/Cilla ... and transfer their dreams. Dreams which are, customarily, not by necessity brought to light. No need to chat in the waking time, more, the openness to transfer, and the transference effected by the Naming.
But, here, with these who had been to Africa!
"March." She looks at him. The word fraught with misery.
"Prissy." He cannot say more.
"Xer." There are tears in her eyes.
"Lily." Exhausted. Spent.
Deacon to Deacon: More than ever we must pay Attention to these four. We must Intend as we have never Intended before! ... Have what they’ve dreamed already enabled us to do that? .... How else but to try? ... How else, indeed?
("Ascension results from Attention and Intention, but not necessarily." A First Truth addressing the interpretation of a New Truth, which is now an Old Truth.)
Their Naming, then, was unlike any Naming, ever. It rocked and pummeled The Embrace as no Deacon could remember: not forgetting individually, collectively nor communally. Though such had been foretold within their own dreaming: a dreaming which was for them - those who Ascended from the Communio to blossom as The Embrace - a dreaming which was for them tumescent: fullness beyond borders: of time, space, dimension: yet, limited in a way, a way which tantalized them, tempted them, but did not appear to them - for which reason these four are named beyond Naming.
:beyond – as dreamers beyond; beyond being just one or two, even four; beyond into that dreaming which is The Embrace: nothing now of themselves which isn’t beyond.
Lilith pleasured in being called "Zav." It brought to her the full gasp of his maleness. For each time he named her, so she knew his name - and so knew him. Not only as Zav in his peculiarity as poet, but him as every other male he had become and let become him. When he touches her, her skin becomes water. They seep into each other. She gives him "Lilith," and he becomes every woman she has ever let herself be. This the reward of Courting. Of the Cauldron. Of Tag Teams. One name, but a thousand, a million, beyond star-numbered identities: each with a panting breath; each with a pleasure riddled with hope, fear, ecstasy beyond what she or he had ever known.
Yet, what these four must Name is also March and Priscilla and Lillian and Xer. Of dreams incomplete. Of Ascensions not Ascended. Of identities unidentified. Of such is why The Embrace fluxes in full panic: ecstatic panic.
They are Coupled. Each plunging into a life of singular Attention and Intention. Each so Named that they are now One Name. One Name as Ascended: seeking to fully realize their Ascension as they now become Family: nucleoid.
As Couples, they join their neighborhood. Drive up. Move furniture. Cut the grass. Shovel the snow. Gather for block parties. A neighborhood as neighborhoods have been for millennia.
But, it is them as neighbors - these four: which is their true neighborhood, one which only they could define and compose. "Africans" - if the word had any common play, which it didn’t. So, they did not speak about it: they simply - Simply?! - set out dreaming.
"What do you bring that we do not already know?"
"That it is not finished."
For the first time ever, ever in anyone’s knowing, there was a dumbfoundness as bond within The Embrace.
It happened as only it has been happening: they Embraced. Linked not just in body, the ties of flesh: rope of tongues, strings of fingers, wrappings of thighs, bows of cock and pussy, all this, but in spirit: opening their astral selves for permeation; setting all in inter-coupledness and meditating: drawing their souls close to one another - risking.
Not finished. Grasping in the "not" that something else was finished. That there was still in them fear. That inexplicable something which is preventing the Final Ascension.
"We knew it would not be automatic."
"That merely re-forming the time and the dimension was not the answer."
"Did we?" A harshness which evokes this vibrant fear.
"How do we know - now?- that we are truly Embrace? Not
still Communio. Not even still - ah, it is fear, I truly fear - not even still just the Council of Twelve?"
"Are we no further than our primordial ancestors? No Ascensions? No New Truths?"
Fear.
Having done all they had ever done, knew ever to do: emptied themselves into and through the other: kenosis: offering even this fear so as to move beyond - hoping for a beyond.
"Lily is Priscilla is Lily."
"March is Xer is March."
"They do not know this."
"It’s not in their knowing."
"It’s our knowing."
"What have we done?"
"Descended so as to Ascend."
"Or, was the Descension an Ascension?"
"Yet, not the Final Ascension?"
"Still."
Intimates: A Journey Towards Sacred Sexuality Page 25