The genie's out of the bottle, I do believe he's pissed.
The genie's out of the bottle, smoking mushrooms in his fist.
Look what's out of the bottle… let’s give him a little kiss.
And, heidi-heidi-ho.
Heidi-heidi-hey.
Where you gonna go,
come Judgement Day, come Judgement Day?
Heidi-heidi-ho.
Heidi-heidi-hey.
Where you gonna go…
come Judgement Day, come Judgement Day?
Oh, yeah!
At that point, an instrumental ensued. Giddeon took the lead as the chords changed from A, to C, to D and then back to A… all the while keeping the fast paced rhythm. Then, it went back into the strong, chopped melody.
New Mexico White Sands, turned into glass.
Hiroshima, Nagasaki… well, we had a blast.
The genie's out of the bottle, I do believe he's pissed.
The genie's out of the bottle, smoking mushrooms in his fist.
Look what's out of the bottle,
will Armageddon, be like this?
And, heidi-heidi-ho.
Heidi-heidi-hey.
Where you gonna go…
come Judgement Day, come Judgement Day?
Heidi-heidi-ho…
heidi-heidi-hey.
Where we all gonna go…
come Judgement Day, come Judgement Day,
come Judgement Day, oh yeah!
“Awesome, dude, awesome!” Giddeon said with gusto. He was quite excited about the collaboration.
“Who was Mr. Feynmann, again?” I asked. Gid had written that line.
“The youngest guy to work on the atomic bomb project in Los Alamos… PhD. in physics. He co-wrote a book called, ‘Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynmann’… sort of an autobiography.”
“I never read that book.”
“I read it for you.”
“I thought you only read what I’d read… that’s why you were complaining earlier about Batman, Superman and The Fantastic Four.”
He shrugged. “At first, yeah. Over time, I got the hang of accessing other material. ‘Collective consciousness’, remember? Everything’s in the same place… even thoughts.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well… it’s a good line for the song. Makes sense, now… kind of a play on words.” I thought for a moment, then asked, “How many books have you read?”
“Let’s just say my library card has a lot of ink on it. I probably need a new one.”
I thought back to when I was a kid and we had library cards on which the names of the books we checked out were written. I actually read quite a bit, back then. Mostly ‘Hardy Boys’ type novels and adventures by Jack London. A little bit of Jules Verne.
“You also liked Ray Bradbury, don’t forget.”
Giddeon had read my mind. Technically, I supposed it was his mind, too.
“You ever read anything about how to wake someone up from a coma?”
He chuckled. “Not a lot of best-sellers in that category.”
I felt some twitching in my muscles, again.
Giddeon stood up. “I’m headed over to The Del. Want me to let Boris in while you’re exercising?”
“Sure.”
Giddeon ‘crashed’ the door open, and made his exit.
Boris and I took a book down and read for a bit. Somehow, a copy of Richard Feynmann’s book had appeared on my shelf. Besides being burned alive, it was a good day, all in all.
__________
That night, I dreamed I was with Melody, again. We were on my sailboat out in the bay, anchored off the third tee by the Coronado Golf Course. She had on one of my long-sleeved, denim work shirts over a red bikini. The sleeves of the shirt were rolled up, and it was unbuttoned down the front. Her sun-kissed skin contrasted against the scarlet of the swimsuit and beige of the denim to create a decidedly most awesome effect. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she wore a white visor and sunglasses. She was painting the view of the clubhouse from the water on an easel-mounted canvas near the stern of my vessel.
I was behind her, watching her work. Every now and then, she would reach back and give me a squeeze on the knee or a stroke on the arm. The wind was cool and the sun was hot… a good combination. Samantha and Boris were loose on the boat, sniffing and investigating the floating platform; they seemed to be comfortable with each other and, also, with being surrounded by water.
The green of the golf course and the tan of the clubhouse were captured perfectly on her canvas. I love to watch her paint. This one was more in the Realist style, and I was amazed at how quickly the image came to life before my eyes. As the dream went on, the cats settled at our feet in the sun, and I settled next to Melody’s side on a small, portable chair. Our legs were touching as I scooted close to her in the small space afforded us… she leaned over and gave me a sweet, moist kiss. I returned the kiss, with my hand gently holding the corner of her jaw. She looked back to her canvas, put down her brush, and turned towards me, again.
I closed my eyes and once more felt her lips touching mine as I melted into her essence. The breeze grew still and the moment seemed to go on and on, forever.
Chapter 34
I opened my eyes to find myself on her bed. Our faces were together, and she was moving her beautiful mouth just the slightest bit… I could almost feel her soft, perfectly formed lips against mine. Startled to find myself awake in her condo, I pulled my head backwards to look around. Her cat meowed in a high-pitched voice, and Melody opened her eyes. She seemed as confused as I was, and called out to Samantha, who was at the foot of the bed.
“Oh… come here, girl.”
Samantha trilled and walked through me to her owner. I realized that the dream was then over, but had no idea of how I had come to be transported to that location. After petting the cat for a minute or two, Melody threw back the covers and stood up. She walked over to the window in her panties and t-shirt and opened the blinds, letting in the morning sun. I looked down, and realized that I was in only my boxers… no shirt, pants, socks or shoes.
Samantha looked at me, came over and tried to nuzzle. Of course, there was nothing for her to rub against, so she flopped right through me and landed on the bed, purring all the while. She lay there on her side and gazed at me from out of my torso.
“You’re a strange one, girl. Strange as they get… aren’t you?” said Melody.
Her cat twisted back her head, and answered with a meow.
“Not as strange as my dreams, though. I keep dreaming about Greg. You remember me talking about him. Hmmmm? Do you remember?”
Melody was standing by the edge of the bed. Her underwear and t-shirt were nearly translucent in the morning light. I briefly entertained the idea, once again, that I had died and gone to heaven. After further consideration, I thought maybe I had expired and gone the other direction… allowed to be so close to the object of my desire, yet, unable to even touch her. Melody reached down and stroked the cat; her hand went right through me, naturally. Samantha meowed, again, and looked back at me as if to question why such things happen.
Melody went to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. While waiting for it to brew, she went back into the living room and picked out a blank canvas for her easel. She seated herself before it, and spread her legs apart so she could wrap her ankles around either side of the chair. The sight of her smooth, perfectly muscled thighs positioned like that took my breath away, so, I tried to keep my eyes on the canvas as she picked out a shade of blue and began. It didn’t take long for me to recognize my boat in the bay, anchored off the coast of the golf course.
I watched for a while. Then, I petted the cat, kissed my girlfriend, and went downstairs not knowing how I would get back home. I thought maybe I could take a bus downtown and the ferry across the bay. I didn’t have to, though, because Giddeon was waiting for me in the parking lot.
He opened the door to my Ford Focus, and I climbed inside.
__________
“S
o… am I gonna have to put a GPS on you?” said my good-natured metaphysical cohort as we pulled out onto Montezuma Avenue through the open gate.
“I have no idea what happened… I woke up out of a dream and I was here.”
“You were dreaming about Melody?”
“It was so real… we were on my boat in the bay, kissing,” I said. “I think she saw it, too… she’s in her condo painting a picture of my Catalina anchored right where we were.”
Then, it was Giddeon’s turn to grunt. “Humph… how about that?”
“How can that be? How could she and I have been having the same dream?”
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel for a moment as we rolled up Montezuma. At the first light, we made a U-turn to go back down towards the interstate. “That’s a good question… that’s a darned good question. I’m no expert, but I have read of this happening a few times, before. Congratulations on quantum leaping over here all by yourself, by the way.”
“I didn’t try to do it… it just happened. What have you read?”
He grunted, again, as he pondered. Finally, he said, “All I can tell you about sharing a dream is that it’s very rare… and, that there are a couple of theories about it.”
I adjusted the air vents away from me, cold in only my boxers.
Giddeon conjured me up some clothes… cargo shorts, Top-Sider shoes and a bowling shirt; I felt more comfortable even though I looked a little too much like a re-run of Charlie Sheen for my taste.
“I’m all ears.”
“One theory is that one of you is telepathic… not sure I buy that one. Lots of double blind studies have been done on telepathy, and it always pretty much falls within statistical probability… or, very close to it. Of course, none of those included subjects in a coma as a control.”
“Okay… and the other theory?
“The other one is that you two are joined in a way that most people aren’t… the closest similar example I can think of would be identical twins.”
“Please tell me we aren’t related.”
Giddeon grinned. “No, no, no… according to the other theory, you’re much closer than that.” He took an exit for the Interstate.
“Closer than identical twins? How is that possible?”
He reached down and turned on the radio. “Easy… you’re soul mates.”
“Humph.” I sat there in the passenger’s seat taking that in. ‘Such Great Heights’ by The Postal Service began to play… I listened to the first few lyrics about freckles being perfectly aligned in two people’s eyes when they kissed.
The music continued on. I reached over and turned it down a bit so we could talk.
“So… we’re like one soul in two bodies?”
Gid nodded. “That’s the way it’s commonly described. Maybe, since you just got half a soul that left plenty of room for me.” He grinned at his conjecture, and the song kept going on at its lower level.
“Funny,” I admitted without enthusiasm.
“Good an explanation as any.”
We motored onto I-15. After a mile or two, a thought occurred to me from out of the blue.
“Who do you think Melody has squatting in her empty room?”
Gid reached out and turned off the radio. I could always tell when I had surprised him. With a quizzical look on his profile, he nodded his head, again.
“That’s a good question. That’s a darned good question.”
We drove on in silence. Shortly, we found ourselves on the Coronado Bridge. At the apex of the structure, the island’s green hues were spread below the brilliant sun. As we curved downward, I got the feeling, as I always did, that I was inside an airplane on final approach and coming in for a landing. The Hotel Del shimmered in the distance and the number 2 and 3 fairways of the golf course were below us and to the left. The bay glistened in a beautiful, blue-grey arc around The Marriott and Il Fornaio’s, and I could almost imagine Tattoo from that old television show pointing up at us and saying, ‘Boss! The plane! The plane!’
We made a smooth landing on ‘Fantasy Island’.
Two MangoMooManias appeared in our cup holders.
Chapter 35
I think the dreams of Melody were so real to me because I could actually touch her and feel her warm, soft skin. In Comaville, there is no human contact… unless you count the times when Giddeon had helped me up after getting struck by a golf ball, clapped me on the shoulder because I had made a good chip shot, or picked me up off the sand after experiencing nuclear war or something else equally as horrible. Over there, I went right through people and animals… anything that was surrounded by a conscious, living field. I suppose Giddeon had been like that all of his life. No contact with anyone. No contact at all.
I wonder what that was like for a baby? Or, a child?
Touch is so much a part of who we are. There are millions of receptors embedded in our skin. Structures that relay information from the outside world to our inner domains. Structures that tell us the shapes and textures of objects… their temperatures and motions… their angles, protrusions and invaginations. These small neural endings assist us in decoding the material world around us; they protect us from harm and help us to survive.
Mostly, though, I think they’re there to feel for the ones we love.
The ones that mean something special to us. The people that we want to hold onto so very tightly before time can tear them from our grasp. I’m almost certain that the receptors exist so that we can know where the ones we love are located… and, so they, too, can know where it is we abide in this vast expanse of reality.
I think the receptors are in our skin so that when we touch, we are, also, touched.
When fingers intertwine, I believe, so can nervous systems. So can hopes and dreams. So can the never-ending multitude of pasts, presents and futures from every frame of reference within the countless infinities all around each and every one of us.
You see, when the proper digits hold on to each other, I think it’s possible for two people to become one organism, linked forever in a small embrace that transcends mortality.
And, even though I couldn’t touch her, I felt lucky… because out of all of the billions of inhabitants on this world, I knew just exactly who and where my soul mate was. I knew whose hand fit perfectly into mine.
All I had to do was get back to her.
Chapter 36
Giddeon took me out sailing that morning. We motored from our berth, leaving Boris looking very perplexed on the dock. He loudly meowed his concerns to us, and kept looking back and forth between the actual boat in front of him, and our ghost ship making its way into the bay. I yelled to him that we’d be back, soon. He licked his paw, took a few steps in our direction, and stood there watching us with those big, yellow eyes… looking for all the world as if he wanted to go, too.
When we were the appropriate distance from the marina, Giddeon shut the engine down and began explaining the process of how to catch the wind and harness its power. He freed up the lines and showed me how to hoist the mainsail by pulling down on the halyard. Before that, he had pointed us into the wind and there was a minor amount of ‘luffing’ (a nautical word for the flapping around of a sail in the breeze) as the canvas went into place. Gid explained to me that too much luffing reduces the life of a sail, and care should be taken to minimize it… not that it really mattered in our frame of reference. The word ‘luff’ means the leading edge of the sail, by the way.
Then, we raised the jib, otherwise known as the head sail. When we were underway, Gid had me turn to port (left) until we were 90 degrees off the wind… he called that a ‘beam reach’… whereupon, we trimmed the jib. The wind was blowing about 5 knots, and I could feel the fabric begin to take in the air and redirect it into useful energy, which pushed us along. It was interesting to see how the Catalina cut easily through the water just as it was designed to do, and I could have sworn that our ghost ship was happy to be out there on the bay instead of sitting idle a
t the dock.
Over the next hour and a half, I learned quite a bit. How to ‘come about’. How to run with the wind versus ‘reaching’. How to pull the jib across the boat to go ‘wing on wing’… which looked really cool, from my perspective, but blocked almost all of our forward view. There weren’t any other boats nearby; we probably would have just sailed right through them, anyway, so I suppose lack of vision wasn’t really a concern. I learned to keep an eye on the wind direction indicator atop of the mast, and to watch the water and even the birds for changes in the atmosphere so that we could take advantage of shifts in the breeze. It was a glorious morning, and it occurred to me that I seemed to be learning things more quickly than I did in my old life.
Coronado Dreaming (The Silver Strand Series) Page 13