Abide Abode (6 page)

I can’t speak. Maria’s doe eyes bring something out of me,
her certainty is alarming.

‘
You were born, you are born, trace back to your birth and
into your mother and father before you, like Russian dolls. Trace
the blood back to the cells and the cells to the atoms, to the
center of the spark that started this all. The big boom,
pre-‐geometry.

‘
Pre-‐geometry? I say. ‘Preometry?’

‘
Close your eyes.’ Maria says. I decide to put trust in my
good friend and close my eyes. ‘Breathe in, sense all this world
around you and expand it, breathe in. Deep. Deeper

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than you think you can, feel your lungs open and with your
body open up to all the lives of the one ancestor. If we are the
answer, what is the question? All lives, all lifetimes, all organic
form comes before awareness. Trace your cells back to the spark and
beyond, the cells remember they are alive and not confined to the
day today, trace this forward not just on your blood line but
everyone's, you are one with everything Anna, this is all one. We
have know each other before you and I.’

She lets go of my hands. It’s as if the café has disappeared
and a soft piano and violin as begun to play.

‘
Do you hear that?’ I ask.

‘
Yes, it’s like the first time you hear Greensleeves, it’s
like you always knew it, the cells remember. Music transcends
speech. Remember Anna, before all of this. I met you before Anna,
before those 15 years, remember…’

I can’t close my eyes, Maria looks different to me some how
and the name Selina is on the tip of mytongue.

‘
S..e..lina?’

Maria smiles opens the book and reads.‘The ingredients that
make up this our interpercieved reality will someday establish that
all objects are of one basic substance on the universe and its
ingredients viewed as evolved properties of that one substance.
It’s yours’ She passes me the book. ‘The best of our species must
survive, evolve beyond prehensile paws.’

I look down at the book, holding it in mypuppeted hands, the
veins in the backs of them run like branching rivers,

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blood streams flowing like the veiny roots of a tree, and
still the music plays in the air, a violin, softly plucked playing
sadly. I stroke the book, holding it close, nurtured as if a
child.

‘
Good journey sister’ Maria says, she leans forward kissing my
head. I close my eyes and not really sure what’s happening to me
feel the backdrop of the world fallthrough.

When I open my eyes, I see the book and open it onto a folded
page to see the words underlined ‘Sacrifice breeds new life.’ The
glass of orange on the table bares a crackhalf way down around its
circumference, I lift the glass and pull the top half clean off; in
a thunderous slow motion rush the liquid pours down towards the
table.

MARIA

My work here is done. I have had my timehere and in another
world I shall go on but right now it is more important that those
who need to survive do. The world is an over crowded place and
Simon Arthur of ten years old must take precedent, he must survive.
In three minutes he will be hit by Jameson Pierson’s car as he
speaks on the phone distracted from the road. Killing a child will
break up his marriage and stop a child from being born; it will not
should a 39 year old woman step out in front of him. I
walk

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out of the coffee shop, Cohinda Coffee, I worked here in one
life and smile. I stand by the curb. There is time. I close my eyes
and breath; I breathe every breath I’ve ever taken. A car passes,
another car passes. I hold.

A man drives engaged on a calldown the road. I step
out.

Jameson Pierson tries to brake.

As if I step into darkness but with full sight Iknow where I
am going, all is seen behind my eyes. I go to dance within a
blanket of stars. A dramatic ballet of music, the cacophony of
brakes, gasps, and crunches, mesmerizing and beautiful. I feel my
legs be lifted, I spin up to the heavens in a whirl of wonder.
Sparks fly amongst the stars.

ANNA

Rain smatters down, veins of water streaking the car windows.
I’m hypnotized by the light flooding through the water, hypnotized
by the reflections in the wing mirror, rain reflecting rain,
reflecting in the tears in my eyes, Maria is dead.

∆

I pull into a small dirt track that follows down to the sea.
Bawkers Cliff. Evan and I would come here during the
first

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years of o
ur relationship, a place
just outside Peacehaven. The body of water in front of me crashes
against its cliff replacing the noise of the engine. The world
singing alullaby of a thousand voices, a thousand screams, I open
my heart, emptying out my lungs; I scream with them.

∆

I sat on this very spot over looking the sea as young love,
Evan and me on the edge.

‘
Beautiful isn’t it.’

‘
Are you looking at me again?’ Evan replies taking my hand.
‘You’re the most beautiful thing here.’

Turns out the cheesiest thing you can hear is still the
loveliest when it’s heartfelt and meant, even if it’s only meant in
that very moment it’s still enough to make that moment come alive
and give you away to the world.

‘
Imagine how many shipwrecks are under there’ nodding to the
sea ‘how many stories are beneath the surface?’ I say.

‘
I used to imagine if there was a plug I’d pull it out. I’d
pull it out for you and show you all its secrets.’ He
says.

‘
So’ I respond. ‘If you had to have a mundane superpower, not
something useful like invisibility or flying, just something odd
like being able to boil an egg perfectly, what would it be? Mine
would be to see through the sea, to see the lay of the land
underneath, and see all the things that lay there, all the things
she hides, all her secrets exposed.’

Evan ponders ‘ That’s not mundane, you could save
lives,

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find treasure. You’d be the best pirate in all theinvisible
sea.

∆

Bawkers fucking cliff! I’m here alone. My manhusband is a
brilliant and beautiful cold narcissist. I’ve replaced my friends
with his friends and I shiver at how I’ve isolated myself. It dawns
on me that somehow Maria was the closest person to me, how did this
come to be and then I realize how close am I to myself. ‘You’re an
actor, now act’ echoes in my head. How long have I been acting
here? Maria how could you throw yourself under a car? Breathe Anna,
Breathe. Focus on the sea Anna; listen to it’s in and out, in and
out. I battle my mind in this vehicle. In the head mirror ‘The
Triangle Walk’ sits illuminated on the back seat. I stare at it
like an enemy, and then turn from its reflection to look at the
real thing. It’s seems to be a cat purring on the back seat wanting
to be petted. I’ll be having you. I’m not acting any more; I know
jujitsu, I’m fuckin’ having this book. I scramble into the back
seat ready for a showdown.

A brown leather cover. You dick! ‘The Triangle Walk’ What the
fuck is a Triangle Walk?! Cock! I turn to the front
page.

The time of the wolf has come to its end.

The book reads.

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ABIDE ABODE

‘
Fuck you.’ I think. Somewhere I’ve heard
these words before. I’m angry. I will ruin this book.I continue my
journey through th
e words and the
worlds they conjure, wanting to destroy the spaces in-‐between
them.

The underlying frame work and substance that holds up the
physical universe is the rational universe - you can say that the
physical universe is created through the mind as its course, it is
arranged that way according only to what is first
perceived.

Rational, there is nothing below the physical world. Then I
think about the feeling of loss I had before finding out my father
died. How he said goodbye to me. Who is to say what is underneath?
I do perceive things but what is there if you don’t trust in your
surroundings; there are just things I don’t know? Just because Evan
is working late and comes home disheveled and drunk sometimes,
doesn’t mean he is, dare I say having an affair?! But then just
because I say I am happy it does not mean I am. It doesn’t mean I’m
lying either, because I am telling myself I am happy because I want
to be. Why do I tell myself I am when I see the contrary to be
true? I am not happy because I’m still an actress, playing a role
not for fun but because I’ve relinquished control of my own life. I
could ask myself myself, what do I really know? Butmay be the most
important question is, what do I not know?!

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We say we are physical because it is first what we see; it is
only after we comprehend the nature of awareness relative to our
physical interpretation that we break down the boundaries of what
we see and start to explore what we cannot.

I have spent a great deal of time trying to understand the
things I am told, but do I trust my own thoughts and eyes enough to
believe it as evidence or no? My heart beats but I do not ask it,
my body heals yet it needs no reminder. Such things I trust. The
body of the world. This body of mine. Trust. Trust that Maria did
what was best by her!

It is to achieve a state with one’s silent self that hears
nothing but everything, that feels nothing but senses
everything.

Seven years ago I sat on this rock as Evan told me he would
never forget how special I was nor become complacent, now I have
given up my job and moved around after him. Now he can ask me to
walk away when he likes but when he rages and I do without being
told he asks me why. His contradictions add up only to one thing,
inconsistency. The World is consistent, I’ve been in a relationship
with you for my entire life, the moon, the sun everyday with your
routines, a mother and a father, dancing around me, always there. I
used to

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speak with you, to the stars, and trust in you knowing so
little. Now I know more and I’m adult grown, I’ve become human. I
still look at you and where I still hold my wonder I see you as
separate rather than of me. I am the textbook rather than the idea
itself. Inside. I. Am. Made. Of. Space.

I am made of the space to move into.

One who learns first to be still will know then the
consequence of movement. The silent self will stir into action not
to reach the goal but clear for it.

I’m drawn away from the book, realizing that time seems to
have stopped. I could have been reading for hours,maybe minutes I’m
unsure, it doesn’t matter.The rain has stopped outside, the wind
blows, tiny sounds come in, a chorus of crickets, tiny drops of
water sliding down grass playing like harps.

Everything is still through the window and in the darkness a
pair of wolves’ eyes stare back. As I move forward the wolf moves
back closer into the dark disappearing from sight, the sea appears
to view but there is no sea, just the exposed cliffs, sand and
empty seabed, the lay of the land; the sea bearing her secrets and
broken timber ships.

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I step out of the vehicle my fear has gone, the world is
alive with noise, no, I am alive with noise. We are alive, I
breathe. My white dress flows with the wind, as part of the
wind.

‘
I always wanted to be born’ I howl.

NOAH

‘
Hello?’ I call out.

Silence comes back to me. ‘Is anyone there?’

I hear a crunch of gravel, a few scrapes of dirt, it takes a
long time to glimpse a flicker of white material flap out of the
dark. Scraping her feet against the ground an uninhibited woman in
a white dress clutching leather bound book comes my way. It’s Anna,
this is the first time we meet, disheveled doesn’t even cut it but
she is beautiful.

‘
ARE YOU OKAY? My name’s Noah.’ I say. ‘Tell me.’ Anna says,
as slowly as she is precise.