Wondering at the vipers, We unite again to search out why they say this. Many of Us have feelings of unease about the people at the Stone School, and some of Us have definite feelings of distrust towards them. We search Ourselves further. We feel the faint presence of Our human's consciousness joining Us in this effort. Having Our own human helps Us to tap into the thoughts of those other humans much more easily. Now We have it -- those people are considering coming to take Our human away by force! And they are even planning a raid on the forsythia to make moonshine. All of this is flagrantly against the forsythia. This very much against the Law. If they try this, We will set the vipers to plague their bathrooms.
About half of the birds have left, but there are still large numbers of them around. It is easier to understand them when in great numbers they abound.
I was exploring another part of this forest I am in. I came upon a fairy ring of blood red flowers. Aw, for a camera! If ever there were fairies this would be where they would reside. As I walked through the woods scavenging for food, I felt surges of warmth and friendliness whenever I approached the berries, truffles, bark, nuts, leafy plants, roots, or stalks I savored. It seemed the vegetation was extending its bounty to me. The chef salad I made of roast pelican and my gatherings was incredible.
There was an area where some ferns were overgrowing and choking themselves to death. Beside my module, the dampness of the soil and the sunniness of the spot seemed similar to the conditions of the terrain of the over-crowed ferns. I thought the ferns would look pretty next to my module, not to mention providing an at-hand supply of edible leafiness. So off I went to the ferns planning to transplant some of them.
Being in a cheery mood, I stood before the ferns and spoke to them: "Listen, you pretty little ferns, you are choking yourselves to death here, so I suggest that I take some of you to my module and you can live there. How does that sound?"
I imagined them saying: "Okay."
Taking a suitably sharp rock, I carefully dug up a few ferns and carried them to my module. It was a few seconds before I realized that a number of ferns were following me in single file! The skin of my back crawled, but I continued walking. When I arrived at my module, I planted the ferns I carried while the other ferns stood around me. Once I had planted the ferns I carried, the other ferns planted themselves!
Bizarre interactions with the plant life did not end here. The small natural orchard of very short, stubby fruit trees was a place I always skirted because somehow I felt to enter it was to trespass. This feeling I had was no mere flight of fancy; on the few occasions I made half-hearted attempts to enter the orchard a barrier of nettles formed. I began to visit the edge of this orchard and just watch it, standing quietly. I felt I was in the presence of some mystery, and leaving this little area of the woods as an unperturbed sanctuary could best show my awe and honor of this strange orchard. There were a few paths that ran through this orchard. What animal or animals made them? After about a week of this strange immobile fixation of mine, I had the sense that it would be all right to enter if I kept to the path, and made no sound.
I ventured in a little way, keeping very quiet. The next day again I ventured in quietly. Then for a few days the orchard seemed to want its privacy. I decided that rather than encroach on this private sanctuary, I would designate the area adjacent to it as mine. I turned my back on the forest's haven to contemplate my own. Wouldn't it be nice, I mused, to have white flowers growing at each of the cardinal points? I dragged three large rocks to where I wanted the center of my natural chapel to be. Then I went off for a cooling swim. How I loved the climate of this place.
Our human is actually making a chapel next to Ours. We never expected this. What wondrous insights will We learn from her? Many white flowers volunteer to grow where she wishes. We agree on a variety of them so that there will be white flowers there throughout all seasons. A few bushes yank their roots out of the ground, give their roots a good shake, and plant themselves where she indicated, so she will be surprised when she returns. Worms promise to prepare the ground for the seedlings that will come.
When I returned to my chapel a shiver went up my spine because there were white flowers where I had envisioned them! I sat on the largest rock I had placed and ruminated. Surely the plants understood me. But when I had planned the chapel I hadn't spoken aloud, I had only thought about where I wanted things to be. Maybe I had spoken aloud without realizing it. I decided to test it out. I would think about the garden's design and come back later to see if the flora had complied with my wishes. I shifted my position on the rock and began to design. My chapel-garden needed something to unify it. I thought of the red fairy ring of flowers I had seen before. Now that would be marvelous to connect the white flowers. And little pink flowers nestled among the rocks with different kinds of moss growing everywhere else would be exquisite. The pebble moss covering the ground in the middle of the fairy-ring; the delicate moss growing partially over the three rocks; and the Spanish moss hanging from the tree limbs--now that combination would make a lovely garden. Would the forest grow these things in place, too?
A few days later I returned to the garden chapel. I could not believe my eyes-
Our human imagines a lovely garden and We are pleased to arrange Ourselves in the fashion she suggests. We choose to make a few changes, though. Zollocco replaces her life-less gray rocks with vibrant marble; and fine, solid, black, stones they are, too. Also, We think a little blue is needed, so the curtain moss of the blue-dot-flower drape themselves among the trees. We wonder why Our human calls curtain moss "Spanish" moss. We shall have to ask her ghost what "Spanish" is.
---for here was the chapel I had envisioned, only lovelier. Marble stones so intensely black they seemed alive had replaced the gray rocks I had placed. I could almost hear them call me. I seated myself on the largest of the three and gazed up at the little dots of blue flowering from the moss, which hung like curtains between the trees. I smiled at my chapel, and at the Forest's chapel. My feeling of myself seemed to grow greater. Each living thing, each rock, even the insect nourishing itself with the blood of my arm--all this, my awareness encompassed as myself. I was one at the same time completely detached and completely attached, separate, and absorbed, a part of the whole, and whole of a part. I was transcending living reality because I was part of all living, all breathing, and all being. My gaze rested on one of the trees. Visible among its thick leaf cover was a single fruit. I could not stay in this spot and feel this way forever no matter how much I wanted to. I must either return to the other world, the everyday world, or I must abandon the every day world and step out, out into this delicious realm-but how do I take my body with me? For that matter, how could I take this marvelous truth into every day life?
I saw a viper with a tuft of hair on its head slithering up and down the branch where the fruit hung. I smiled to myself. Was this the meaning of the story of the Garden of Eden? The fruit was consciousness. Women had tasted it first and then offered it to men. And the snake? The snake had suggested we become conscious. We had done this and in so doing had made the mistake of thinking ourselves apart, even alienated, from the unity I was now experiencing. Goddess, God, and Snake were separated in our minds from ourselves. We had warred with them all ever since. Now I sat in a Garden of Eden I had devised, but which had grown itself. The snake was coiling around the fruit. The every-day world was full of problems and even sorrows, and yet if I returned there I could bring this sense of unity with me. I might lose the feeling of it at times, but since I had had this, it was now a part of me. This union, this communion I could bring into the every-day world. I would fill my hungry belly with the fruit of that tree, but I must send the viper from it first.
"Snake, hear me," I said.
"I hear you."
"I know you; let us be one."
"Shall I send you back to your Maker?"
"No, I wish to live. Let us let go of this quarrel." "Why do you choose me as a symbol of Hate?" "Because yo
u represented what I had been and what I had lost, and I feared you?"
"Yes?"
"Because without arms or legs you out-run me. Because cold-blooded you feel more than I do. Because venomous you never provoke me. Because mother's milk is sweet to you though you break loose from a shell. Because you seek water and hidden places; because you surprise me; because you remind me of what I wish to forget in myself."
"Cut off my head and return me to the Divine. Bury my skull here so this place will not become over-run with snakes. Eat my flesh for it is divine. Eat the fruit, for it is a token between Us and all of extended consciousness. Be at peace for at last we will be aligned."
The snake slithered toward me, and I lopped off his head.
Eating the fruit and the snake meat sated me so well that I slept for hours. When I awoke, I was no longer in the garden chapel. Had the forest rearranged itself again? I stood, stretched, and listened. The forest had done some rearranging, but I was in a different part of the woods. I yawned, groggy and disoriented from waking up in a different place from where I had fallen asleep. But a growing clamor in the woods brought me instantly from a dazed state to an alert one. I heard human voices screeching, and the peculiar rushing sounds of rampaging forsythia.
I ran.
I leaped.
I climbed up a tree. I gasped for breath and viewed a frenzied and beautiful sight below me. Little yellow flowers, like confetti, were streaking the air. People were attacking the forsythia. A herd of forsythia was being rounded up, and the bushes were fighting for their lives. Why was I siding with the bushes? My ankle was scratched from where one of the bushes had lashed at me when I had leaped into the limbs of the tree. Already I could feel the narcotic influence of the shrub coursing my blood. The people were protectively garbed and gloved against the clawing, lashing, yellow flowered flora.
The forest floor was becoming richly carpeted in bright gold blossoms from the human-plant fray. The people were hacking the forsythia to bits and stuffing the debris into bags. The forsythia boughs reached to rip the masks and goggles from the people. The plants succeeded with one man and viciously jabbed at his face to fill his mouth with stems and pluck out his eyes. The man dove to the ground and buried his face in the mud. Bushes surrounded him lashing at his back with their whip like branches, and twined their branches around his right arm and leg to turn him over. The man rocked as the bushes pulled him, and he wrestled to keep face down in the mud. The bushes stopped lashing his back and twined more branches around his left arm and leg and around his neck. The bushes strained to pull him apart! But the other people hacked the bushes to pieces.
Then, somehow, the forsythia caught sight of me hanging precariously from the limb I clung to. They isolated one of the people from the others, allowing one bush (I shudder when I remember it) to rip and tear at the person as it climbed on top of him to lash at me. The bush, standing on the person's head, managed to scratch the length of my arms. I snapped myself away so hard I nearly fell out of the tree. I could see the person drop his sword in his pain so as to use both his arms to pull the yellow monstrosity from his head. I felt myself becoming dangerously high. I took off my pants and tied myself with them to the limb of the tree just before the drug rendered me unconscious.
What a horrible crime. Those things have stolen Our human and butchered Our herd of forsythia.
CHAPTER THREE:
Zitam
I awoke in a white room. The walls, ceiling, and floor were white. The bed was white. The door was white, with a small barred window set in it at eye level. I got up and looked out of this window. The hallway beyond was painted red--floor, walls, and ceiling. A very skinny iddle-aged woman sat in a red chair. She wore a white lab coat, thick make-up on her dour face, and a black wig. Noticing my movement, she looked up at me.
“I hate you," said the ugly look in her eyes. One of her eyes was slightly misplaced on its plane, giving her a sinister look. She stood, opened the door to the room I was in and entered it. She asked me questions; none of which I answered because I didn't know the language. I had no way of telling her that I didn't speak any of the languages of her world, assuming of course her world had more than one language. If she was asking me where in the world I had come from, that was something I couldn't answer and couldn't explain. Was I from another world, or was that a hallucination? Had I suffered a nervous breakdown, imagined I was treated like a beast in a cage, and then somehow wandered into a forest? Had the space module I had inhabited actually flown? Or was I delusional and in a mental institution? Memories of flying in the space module seemed so real.
I had gone to bed in my own world one night frightened and worried because the newscasts had reported y world's ozone layer was so severely damaged that it might be beyond repair. Much of the Midwest had turned into a dust bowl, much of the Eastern coast had disappeared under the swollen sea, and entire landmasses such as Florida and Bangladesh simply didn't exist anymore. If the World Bank didn't provide the money for reforesting the Americas soon, I would not have a world to grow old in. I had lain in bed willing with all of my might that I could get out of such a crazy, desolate world. I had awakened in an indoor vegetable garden. Confused and frightened I had walked up and down the isles of plants growing in glass containers of water. A woman in a gray uniform had suddenly come around the corner of the isle I was in. We both froze and stared at each other. She slowly backed up, and then turned and ran away. The next thing I knew, two husky men in similar uniforms were grabbing my arms and pulling me, while a skinny, uniformed, older woman was sticking a needle into my arm. I came to in a filthy, large cage. When I stood up I saw the skinny woman had been watching over me. She picked up a hose and sprayed both me and the cage. The water was freezing. She then held up a towel and one of the gray uniforms. She pointed at them. I nodded and reached my hand through the cage bars to take the towel and uniform. She struck my wrist with the some short, stubby and very hard black object. I was lucky she did not break my wrist. She wadded up the uniform and the towel and stuck them in a net that was affixed to a pole. She barely gave me enough time to get the things out of the net before she jerked it out of my reach. She had stared at me while I had stripped, dried myself and dressed. It was unbearably humiliating. She called out and the two husky guys appeared. She unlocked the cage. The guys grabbed me like they did before and the skinny woman held up the needle threateningly. I didn't put up a fight--I was too scared
-so she didn't inject me again.
I was marched into a room where a bunch of uniformed people were seated at a long conference table. I was paraded around them while they nodded, commented, and looked slyly pleased. I was taken back to the cage by a different way. We stopped for a moment in a hallway. The skinny woman pressed a button on the wall and a doorway slid open. Through it I could see what looked to me like small spaceships. The skinny woman spoke to a man who was climbing out of one of the small space modules. She nodded in my direction, and he looked at me amazed. She then resumed leading me and the burly guys, who had a hold of me, back to the cage. The cage was still damp. I had to sleep on the damp floor.
When I woke again, one of the husky guys was emptying something from a small can into a dish. He shoved this stuff between the bars of the cage. It was gray. He motioned that I should eat it. I tried. It made me instantly ill. I think I spent about three or four days like that, getting sprayed down, getting fed different grades of gray glop.
Then the woman who had seen me in the garden came. I was huddled on the floor feeling sick as a dog when she came. She must have been sorry she had reported me, but of course what else could she have done? But then she did a wonderful thing. I could tell she was terrified, but she unlocked the cage. I wouldn't come out at first, I thought it was a trick, but she looked so frightened and desperate that I finally came out. She led me to the room where the space modules were. She opened up one of the modules, and she motioned for me to get in. I was scared, so I did. She sat down beside me and sta
rted pressing buttons and flicking switches. Then she turned to me, smiled, stood up and went to the door. She reached in her pocket, pulled out some knives, and threw them on the floor. She jumped out the door as though I might grab the knives and kill her. She slammed the door shut. I jumped up and tried to get the door open. I couldn't get it open. The module started rumbling like a car whose ignition has been turned on, and the module was moving. I was half out of my mind with fear. I grabbed the knives, stuck them in a net pocket on the wall. I climbed back into the chair and fastened the belts around me. The module traveled for hours. Finally, I could tell by the way my ears felt they might explode with pressure that I was descending. The descent lasted about an hour, and then it bumped to a halt and the door opened of its own.
I crawled out of the module. I was in the forest. There was a little basin of bubbly water in the ground nearby. I crawled over to it and threw up in it. This is all to say that other than "hello", "eat this", and "stand up so I can spray you, ",I hadn't learned any of the language--and the phrases other than “hello” were questionable. I was in captivity again, and the days dragged on interminably. At least the conditions of my imprisonment were not inhumanly cruel like they had been on the spaceship. This was not to say that I didn't feel penned in and mistreated. I was angry almost all of the time, and I did not observe the best of manners. It was assumed that I was a wild animal since I couldn't understand my captors' words. They insisted on feeding me on the floor. I lost a lot of weight because I kept throwing my food and water at my harridan captor. I learned to alternate throwing my food at one meal, and my water at the next. This way I had somethingto eat at least half the time. They tried to put me on a leash, and my reaction proved to them that I was a wild animal. I was so infuriated with them for being so obtuse in thinking I was some wild beast, and I was so frustrated I couldn't speak to them that I decided if they wanted me to be an animal they would get an animal. I trained them to respect me when I growled and barred my teeth at them.
Zollocco: A Novel of Another Universe Page 4