by Oliver Letz
Edie May was back later that morning to check on Taylor’s burns and bruises. She removed the bandages and reapplied a cooling gel with a strong herbal scent to his battered skin.
“You are healing quickly, John,” she commented satisfied, “It seems the company of our very own town reporter becomes you.”
“Town reporter?” Taylor had that feeling again that he was missing vital information, “I don’t understand.”
“Oh, Lilly Ann didn’t tell you?” Edie May acted surprised, “She writes and sketches our town newspaper, The Flugerton Chronicle, it usually is a weekly edition. Actually, there were some disappointed readers when she missed two weeks while she was playing with you and your friends at the farms. Everybody was so excited that she gave a detailed report the day you left.”
“I didn’t know you had a newspaper,” Taylor was genuinely impressed, “do you have a printing press to produce the copies?”
“Oh no,” Edie May laughed, “Lilly Ann makes two or three copies by hand and sometimes she has one of her apprentices help make a few more. These get handed down from house to house until everyone has seen them. I usually get to keep a copy of each issue in my archives. They are quite hilarious and very creative works of art, you should read the one about your visit.”
“I was hoping we would make the papers,” Taylor joked, “but this is not exactly what I had in mind. I can’t wait to read it.”
As if on cue Lilly Ann popped her head through the door.
“I had a feeling that you were talking about me,” she said innocently, “I hope it was something nice.”
“We were just talking about your day job, dear,” Edie May replied, “Why didn’t you tell John about the Chronicle?”
“I guess it never came up,” Lilly Ann shrugged, “There was always something exciting going on. I hardly thought about it myself in all that time. Would you want to see the latest issue?” she asked in Taylor’s direction, “You and your friends are in it, sort of. I’ll fetch it real quick.”
With that she ran out the door. Through the open window Taylor could hear her skipping down the street to see which house still had a copy of her work. Edie May was putting the bandages back on in a skillful pattern that did not put pressure on the sore skin when Lilly Ann was back at the door with a neatly folded stack of roughly cut paper in her hands.
She handed it to Taylor with the disclaimer, “There is a bit of artistic freedom and abstraction in the way I tell stories. Anyway, here it is.”
The first thing Taylor noticed was the unusual texture and color of the paper. It was obvious that it was handmade stock and that someone put much effort, time and skill into fabricating the sheets. He marveled at the touch of the paper and the solid yet smooth surface that almost seemed to caress his fingertips.
“This is astounding paper stock, where did you get this?” he admired the material.
“I make the paper myself with the help of a few youngsters who want to learn,” Lilly Ann replied not without pride, “We do one big batch every year and it always seems to last long enough for everybody. We make different textures and mix in various ingredients for effect so that every artist or writer can select their favorite. This one is from my personal secret recipe.”
She ran her hand tenderly over the pages brushing slightly against Taylor’s hand. The electric discharge at their touch could have lit up a room, it definitely lit up Taylor’s face. His eyes searched for Lilly Ann’s trying to sort out the unfamiliar emotions that welled up from his stomach. If butterflies were rhinos he would have been in big trouble.
Taylor somehow regained his composure and while their eyes were still locked he awarded her his biggest smile and gently removed her hand from the papers that she had not let go of.
“May I,” he broke the silence, “I am dying to see what your creative genius had to say about me and my travel mates.”
Suddenly Lilly Ann felt very self conscious about the way she had portrayed the events and characters of the past weeks and how it might look in the eyes of the man who in this moment meant something completely different to her than just seconds ago.
“I don’t know,” Lilly Ann said slowly while reluctantly relinquishing the issue of the Chronicle to Taylor.
Edie May was quietly standing by, enjoying the rush of emotions that played out in front of her. Never before had she seen Lilly Ann erupt in such a whirlwind of feeling sensations, leading her to search and find new ways to navigate these uncharted waters. The sweet delicious energy that filled the room tasted to her like a tropical fruit cocktail with just the right amount of rum, salt and spice. It was truly a moment when time stood still and life was created anew.
Of course like all moments since the beginning of time, this one too passed. Drowned out and shoved back to join eons of past by a chuckle at first, held back out of courtesy, but soon followed by a rapid succession of laughing out loud and violent coughs that shook Taylor’s body and switched over his face with delight and pain. He would not put down the paper to afford himself some rest, tears streaming down his cheeks from laughing that hurt in every muscle and made him cough which hurt even more.
He turned page after page and drank in the upside-down view of his world that unfolded before him. He could not get enough of the intricate insights into his very own reality spun by a mind so all together different from his. Small things became valuable and important and big things, like he himself, became tiny to give perspective and newness to a familiar world.
When he was finished with the last page he turned the paper over and read out loud the words on the cover page that accompanied a drawing which was painted over in bright watercolors.
“Hi, I’m Tshonnie Taiwor Fwyboy. I wanna look how your moo-cowsies and oink-piggies are put together, okey?” Another laughing fit shook his body.
The picture showed four toddlers lined up next to each other looking up a tree to a little girl hanging upside down from a branch above them. The little boy with the speak bubble had an uncanny resemblance with Taylor down to the squadron patches on his leather flight jacket which were replaced by smiley faces and peace signs. There was a little toddler in a black jump suit with a buzz cut that would have made Cody Hunt proud and he could have sworn this was tiny Farmer and Spade holding hands and blowing kisses at each other.
“Okey,” he added with a baby voice, quoting the reply of the girl in the tree.
The next page showed the same lovable characters standing in front of Indian tipis exclaiming synonymously, “Wee arr hungwy!”
“This is so funny!”
“Look at this!”
“How do you come up with this?” Taylor exclaimed in between quoting more passages of cartoons with them chasing incredulously looking calves, sheep and piglets, little Johnny intensely focused on reattaching a wheel to a tricycle. There they were riding on the back of what looked much more like a shiny duck than an airplane.
The last page showed the little girl clenching a stuffed animal with her tiny hand, looking after four little figures disappearing in the distance saying, “Bye, Bye, Taiwor. Be bwave an come back voon.”
It took all of Taylor’s self control to hide the tears that were flooding his eyes when he saw that last picture.
“I love it,” he finally said looking up from his reading, “Your observations and the way you reflect them in the drawings are at the same time hilarious and insightful. What a great pleasure and honor to see and read this. Thank you so much for sharing it with me.”
“I am so glad you like my quirky sense of humor, I really am,” Lilly Ann said relieved.
Taylor’s gaze wandered between Lilly Ann and Edie May as he seemed to search for a way to formulate a question.
“May I ask you something?“ he started not sure where this would lead him, “There are many things that I have seen or heard someone say since I got here that did not make much sense to me. At first I thought it was just a different way you use language t
hat has developed over time but now I begin to believe that this is only part of the whole story. There is something common in the way each of you relate to reality and I get the feeling that it is quite different from what I am used to.”
He tried to read in their faces if what he had said had any impact on them at all. Lilly Ann’s eyes hung on his lips in eager anticipation of what he would say next while Edie May was a picture of serenity. Her inward smile and the time and space transcending depth of her peaceful eyes gave him the courage to go on.
“For example here, in the copy between the pictures you write, ‘It was a rare adventure to experience fully action oriented people who have no awareness of their vibrational nature or have ever heard of Abraham or the Law of Attraction. I admire their determination with which they accomplish mighty tasks despite their doubts and fears. How would they react upon the discovery that sixty-eight seconds of deliberate focus can replace hours, days or years of diligent labor and struggle?’”, he paused to let the words sink in, “I am not illiterate, but I have no clue what I just read,” he added with some frustration in his voice.
Lilly Ann jumped up from her chair not able to sit still any longer.
“I knew that he would ask,” she squealed in delight, “I told you Edie May. That was definitely him asking, right John? Can we tell him now, pleeeease?”
She was impatiently hopping up and down the small room.
“Can anyone explain to me what’s going on?” Taylor inquired getting a bit uneasy, “What does a broken man have to do around here to get some answers?” he added jokingly.
“Well, John Taylor,” Edie May turned to him with a promising smile, “You have questions and we will do our best to find answers with you. Just a word of caution, once you understand what we are about to reveal you might want to be a little more careful calling yourself a broken man, but first things first.”
Lilly Ann pulled the chair closer. She sat on the edge of her seat fidgeting at the building suspense. Taylor looked at her not quite sure what to make of the situation.
Edie May leaned forward just a little bit to add weight to what she was about to say, “The reason Lilly Ann is so excited is that we usually refrain from offering any information about our philosophies or about our understanding of how our world works to anyone without them specifically asking for it. In fact, we do not ever push any information or teachings onto anyone, not even our young ones, if they don’t express a clear desire to learn about a specific subject. We have a place called Sudbury that is modeled after an ancient schooling experiment where our children go to learn.”
Taylor listened intently looking back and forth between Lilly Ann and Edie May who continued, “You are correct in your observation that we perceive the world from a different standpoint than probably most people do outside of this valley. It is our most basic believe, and our daily experiences confirm it, that we create our world and our life by what we think, rather than by what we do. And we do not mean this in the sense of a logical, practical succession of deed-follows-thought but in a direct molding of the substance that everything is created of by our thoughts.”
“The passage that you quoted from the Chronicle mentions two of the pillars of our philosophy, the Law of Attraction and its most profound teacher, Abraham.”
“Are you talking about the biblical Abraham?” Taylor asked, “I am familiar with the story but always thought of it as a historical fable of ancient Middle Eastern peoples.”
“Not exactly,” Edie May continued cautiously, “the Abraham we are referring to was a teacher who appeared at the eve of the twentieth century in North America, who left an extensive volume of scripture and supporting documents for us. As we understand it today, Abraham was not a single person but a collective of teachers that spoke at gatherings throughout the country through the voice of a woman by the name of Esther.”
Edie May got the impression that she was losing Taylor quickly to the esoteric direction this talk was veering off to.
“But that is not the really important stuff, is it?” Lilly Ann came to the rescue, “Remember the first thing that you heard me say when we met on the old highway?”
“How could I ever forget?” Taylor laughed with restored interest, “You screamed, ‘What is the most important thing?’ Me and the others almost peed our pants the way you scared us.”
“And what was the right answer?” she guided him like mother duck.
“The most important thing is that I feel good, I remember,” Taylor mocked her, “You never cared to explain what that meant, come to think of it.”
“I think you will have to be a little patient with us, John,” Edie May interjected, “for us this is how we have lived for generations. Every little kid knows all about Abraham and Law of Attraction and everything that comes along with it. It is not quite obvious to us where to start explaining it to a novice in the matter.”
“All right,” Taylor had overcome his first spell of doubt and disbelieve, “as things stand I will have a lot of free time on my hands and if you are patient with me, so will I. Maybe we start with the basics. You mentioned Law of Attraction. That seems to be something an engineer like myself can wrap his brain around.”
“That is a great idea,” Edie May agreed, “why not start with science and go on to the more practical stuff from there.”
“This is boring,” Lilly Ann complained to the amusement of the two grownups in the room, “That which is likened, onto itself is drawn,” she recited the Law, “There you have it. Can we move on to something more fun now?”
“Oh dear,” Edie May said laughing, “have we used up our allotment of adult time with you already? I think we might have to give John just a teeny bit more information to chew on so he can understand what you say at least some of the time.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lilly Ann would not have any of it, “I’ll be in the kitchen preparing something to eat. That’ll give you some time to be all serious.” With that she skipped out of the room and started to noisily rummage around all over the house.
“Well, Lilly Ann is correct, ‘That which is likened, onto itself is drawn.’ Do you have an idea what that could mean?” Edie May was curious about Taylor’s understanding so far.
“This sounds a lot like magnetism or gravity, I just don’t know how it could be a universal law that pertains to all things in life,” Taylor concluded.
Edie May nodded her head, “I think there is one idea you are not aware of that will make it fit together. You see, our bodies, as all physical matter, are a highly focused form of energy. The properties of this focused energy are defined by its vibration or frequency. In fact, it is always the interplay of a number of vibrational frequencies that provide the information for matter to be formed. Energy always flows and its properties or frequencies are always changing.”
“I’ve read about similar ideas from the time when scientists gave up on quantum physics in the late twenty-first century,” Taylor tried to understand the concepts.
“I would not know about that,” said Edie May, “But the key factor for practical use of that information is, that there is a simple method to manipulate the frequency content of your experience in a very direct way.”
“Really? I’m sure that secret would be worth a fortune where I come from,” Taylor interrupted full of excitement.
Edie May smiled in anticipation of the surprise she had on hand for her student.
“The tool we use to manipulate and mold the energy that creates worlds, directly and deliberately, is found between our ears.” She could not help herself but tease Taylor a little bit and get his thoughts swirling.
She continued before Taylor had time to express his confusion.
“Thoughts are vibration. Thoughts have a frequency. The frequency of your thoughts directly draws to you the matching frequency content in your life experience.”
There was a moment of silence before Taylor found words again.
“Okay, this is a lot to
take in, but for the argument’s sake let’s assume that your statements are correct. How do I get my thoughts to mold energy? How can I learn this? Is there a method or do I just have to concentrate? This all sounds a bit like voodoo to me, to be honest.”
“Good questions, John,” Edie May acknowledged, “First, you don’t have to do or know anything special to do this. As a matter of fact, you cannot not do this. This is how the universe works. If you know it or not, whatever you give your attention to will cause an equivalent vibration to show up in your experience.”
“What do you mean by ‘equivalent vibration’?” Taylor asked.
“The thoughts that you entertain in your mind draw from you an emotional response. The manifestation that you attract with your thoughts will call forth the exact same emotional reaction from you, every single time. This is what Lilly Ann meant when she said, ‘The most important thing is that I feel good.’ If you can maintain a positive emotional mood or vibration you will live the equivalent positive life experience.”
“Well, everybody wants to feel good, but that’s not always going to be possible, depending on our life circumstances. There is this thing called reality that often gets in the way of feeling good, you know?” He added the last sentence with a side-glance at his motionless legs.
“You are on the right track, John. So the question is how can we choose our emotional state independent of our observed reality?” Edie May felt elated to see him catch on to their way of thinking, “The answer lies in the fact that not reality itself triggers the emotions within you but only what you think or do not think about reality is what prompts the emotional response. Have you ever noticed, that two people in the exact same situation can think and feel about it in a completely opposite way?”
“I have seen that,” Taylor agreed.
“Our thoughts are not cast upon us by an ever present reality but are chosen by us in every moment of time. This is what it means when people say, ‘The power is in the now.’ It is not in what you can do now, but in what you will think now, and that is your choice.”
Edie May’s voice had changed with those last words from her usual gentle dark timbre to a very distinct almost forceful expression. There was no doubt left in her listener that the words she spoke were drawn from a place of great wisdom and clarity. Her eyes had briefly rolled back and reappeared with a strangely different focus as if they could see right through Taylor.
“I am certain that right now I can’t comprehend half of what you are saying,” Taylor worded his response carefully, “But I can feel the truth in it. Part of me wants to go back to not knowing what I just heard and another part of me wants to jump and scream and race forward and pry from you everything you can tell me about this. I think it will take some time for all of this to sink in and to get an idea of where to go from here.”
He leaned back into his pillows and shook his head as if to get an unwanted image out of his mind while he looked Edie May deep into her eyes.
“Am I going insane or is there really something more than just Edie May sitting in front of me?”
“There is always more in front of you than meets the eye. Once you learn to see with your heart as much as you see with your eyes you will know what I mean,” Edie May side stepped a direct answer to Taylor’s question, “Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘When the student is ready the teacher will appear.’? This always goes both ways.”
They both sat quietly for what seemed a long time but really only was the span of a few deep breaths. Edie May’s facial expression softened to her natural etheric beauty while she steadied her breathing into a relaxed rhythm. Taylor’s mind was racing in untold different directions at the same time until he suddenly asked in a moment of clarity, “What about the sixty-eight seconds? What about my plane crash? Most of all, what about my legs?” He looked at Edie May with a mixture of challenging her and hoping for answers.
“Always the tough questions first, right?” Edie May smiled at him, “I see you are a fighter so let’s grab the bull by the horns.” They both had to laugh at that image.
“Sixty-eight seconds goes back to Abraham’s original teachings,” Edie May hoped the mentioning of that name would this time not disrupt their productive proceedings.
“Oh, him again,” Taylor joked, “I’m not sure how to feel about this part of your story yet,” he admitted.
“Well, I am not sure if I should tell you this,” Edie May thought the time was right to push the issue a little further, “but I believe you just had a brief conversation with them.”
“I did?” Taylor asked, “What do you mean by ‘with them’?”
“You see, John,” Edie May was ecstatic that Taylor did not pull away from her like he did the last time, “Abraham is not a person per se, but a family of non physical beings. Teachers connected to the infinite wisdom of the universe. They are inspiration, joy and most of all love. They are what we are in our innermost core. They are called forth through our asking, ready and willing and eager to shine the light of clarity onto a sometimes confusing life experience. They have answered your questions many times before in your life in the most inventive ways imaginable. Just that now you know their name.”
Taylor didn’t know if this was too much or too little information but he was burning to get some answers either way.
“So, about those sixty-eight seconds?” he pulled them back to his question.
“Right,” Edie May complied, “your thoughts attract other thoughts with a similar vibration. When you think of something and you hold that thought for just seventeen seconds, Law of Attraction will bring other thoughts into your reach that have a similar vibration. If you focus on the same thought for sixty-eight seconds without introducing any opposing ideas you will have shifted your point of attraction significantly enough to set a correlating manifestation into motion. If you did this for anything you wanted and you never thought about it again, it must manifest in your experience. It is Law. The crux in the matter is that when you want something that you don’t have or you experience something that you don’t want it is ever so much easier to focus on the lack of the desired circumstance than on the desire itself. Which of course follows the same principle and brings the manifestation of the undesired reality over and over again.”
“That is an intriguing theory,” Taylor tried to keep his options open, “So what if I am against something and I focus on removing it from my experience or eradicating it altogether?”
“There is no such thing as exclusion in an attraction based universe,” Edie May stated, “If you have set your mind on fighting against something, this very thing is part of your vibration and will be attracted into your reality by the Law of Attraction.”
“Wow,” Taylor was quite impressed by the simplicity of her reasoning, “how do I know what I can change and what is someone else’s reality that I just stumbled into?”
“You create your own reality, all of it,” Edie May was as blunt as the truth can be, “Whatever circumstance you live came into existence by the power of your own thoughts. No one else can create in your reality. What you think and therefore feel and what manifests is always a vibrational match, no exception.”
There it was, plain and simple, the most provocative idea ever cast upon a human mind. No one else to blame anymore, now that didn’t sound right at all.
“Are you saying that I myself created the lightning strike that crashed my plane and sent me back here?” Taylor wasn’t too amused at that suggestion.
“Not exactly, John,” Edie May didn’t back off the subject but tried to diffuse the building tension, “But think about it, you came here with a mission to find a better food source for the people of your region, right?” Taylor nodded with clenched teeth.
“Your mission was completed the moment you set foot into Flugerton, right?” Taylor looked at her with a quizzical expression.
“Well, the others in your team were more than capable to finish what you had started. From then
on you were just their chauffeur.”
“I don’t like the sound of it but you could see it that way,” Taylor conceded.
“You felt obligated to bring them back home, being the only pilot in the party, but a big part of you didn’t really want to leave from here, right?” The point she was driving at suddenly became very obvious.
“Are you telling me I crashed my plane, almost killing four people and loosing the DNA data just to hang around here longer? That’s a bit too much to swallow, you know?” Taylor did not like where this was headed.
“All I am saying is, you sent your friends on their way, none of them got harmed, the DNA data is safe to be utilized according to your intentions and you are back getting answers to questions that have haunted you for all your life. Not too bad creating for someone who didn’t know what you know now. Wouldn’t you agree?” Edie May smiled at Taylor and gave him time to fight out the struggle that raged within him.
“But what about my legs?” he almost whispered.
Edie May and Taylor were zapped out of their contemplation by a giggly cheery voice from the door.
“You did that so you wouldn’t try to run away again and we have some time to torture you a little more,” Lilly Ann’s timing was impeccable as ever. “Are you done with your scientific merry-go-round-thinklings that dump you off at the same place where you got on anyway?”
Edie May and Taylor both erupted in relieved laughter. Their conversation really began to weigh heavy on their mood and Taylor needed some time to assimilate the information flood that had almost drowned him more than once.
“I have something for you to look at, John,” Lilly Ann said with a glance at Edie May.
She pulled a huge folder from a shelf at the back of the room. The thick brown leather cover was intricately carved all over with mementos of childhood and play. It was well worn from the touch of countless loving hands and the stitching on the borders had been mended many times with threads of various bright colors. A single word adorned the center on the front, applied with gold leaf in the broad strokes of a child’s handwriting.
Lilly Ann cradled the book in her arms and brought it to Taylor’s bed. She stroked the cover tenderly a few times before she gently laid it on his legs. She opened it to the first page and said with as much love as any human voice can muster,
“This is my best friend. Say hi to Abrahamster.”
Chapter 9: Abrahamster