Duke Bluebeard’s Castle gave me the idea. I had all but forgotten the 1913 Bela Bartok short opera, and the impression it had made on me when I was in my early teens, until several years ago, (or 10?), I received it in the mail as a surprise free bonus selection from one of the music buying clubs I belonged to. Gee – now that I think about it, it was over 10 years ago; I was still living on Long Island. But the chronology doesn’t really matter: time is not linear, as I would very shortly discover.

 

It took me a while, as a boy of thirteen or so, to teach myself to appreciate Bartok’s famous (or infamous) minor seconds, which grated on my nerves as fingernails on chalkboard at first, or rubbing two pieces of Styrofoam together, or balloons, or live kittens, or… whatever, but I did at last unlock the door to their beauty. The work is not, technically-speaking, atonal but for its thematic repetition of the “blood chord,” so-called because it is sounded whenever Judith sees blood. Musically-speaking, when I unlocked the blood chord it changed me. I was then suddenly able to understand music. It isn’t about sound, or how it sounds, because that perspective limits the appreciation, or understanding, of it to the level of mere sentiment. It is a language; it is the universal language of an entire world which is many thousands of times more vast than the relatively puny universe we seem to believe in. Music is, quite precisely, the voice of God.

 

But anyhoo, in the opera, which is based on a folkloric tale probably native to Brittany which was amplified by Perrault in 16-something, Duke Bluebeard is a geezer with his own castle and lots of money who has an unfortunate habit of misplacing his wives – that is, he seems to become the most eligible bachelor in town a little too frequently for some people’s liking. But he manages to attract as his fourth wife (but who’s counting?) a young lady named Judith – a rather brave young lady, as it happens – who wishes to see, right off the bat, into all seven super special rooms in his castle, even including the secret seventh room which he begs her to never open. Obviously, Bluebeard’s castle represents Bluebeard’s psyche in this version of the tale – (he was previously no more than a mad wife killer in the traditional tellings) – and the work is highly Symbolist, evoking all sorts of daffy ideas which were at that time becoming popularized by the then nascent field of Psychoanalysis.

 

In other words, it’s a great story… when you’re 13.

 

Well, you may correctly say that, in many ways, that 13 year-old boy I once was, who first heard Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and fell in love with both its music and its story, still resides within this 47 year-old husk I wear. He is here with me, and we are One, and we are Many.

 

Movie dialogue from Donnie Darko:

 

“Why do you wear that stupid rabbit suit?”

 

“Why do you wear that stupid human suit?”

 

Music is, among other things, a type of flux. It is a substance not made of matter but made of the “stuff” of Spirit – whatever that may be. The “stuff” that appeared as flames at Pentecost, and as the fire which did not consume the burning bush, is the same substance music is made of. There is also a way to approach it mathematically, but I’m no good at Math. When people so often say that a particular piece of music is “transporting” they may mean it in a figurative sense, but they speak a truth more than they know. When a person unlocks the door to music he becomes unlocked himself from Time and Space.

 

Let’s look into a flame of fire with our minds’ eyes, shall we? Imagine, if you will, a single flame.

 

OK – are you imagining it? Good. Now imagine that you are a moth.

 

OK – are you a moth yet? I’ll wait until you have fully metamorphosed…

 

Now – you are a moth staring into a flame. Here is what you must do in order to live: fly directly into the flame. Have courage. Death has no dominion.

 

OK, you are in the flame. The language you are now hearing – and feeling, and seeing, and touching, and thinking; that which surrounds you – is music.

 

Oh – and just to finish our story, since I’d hate to leave you hanging: When Judith finally persuades Duke Bluebeard to open up the secret seventh door she finds within – of course – his previous wives. Each of them is glowing and radiant, wearing crowns upon their heads. Bluebeard prostrates himself before each of them, singing a song of homage. Then Judith becomes crowned and glorified herself, is drawn into the seventh chamber with the others; the door closes. Duke Bluebeard is alone.

 

I am still that 13 year-old boy who loved that story – to this very day. Every now and then I throw a wife away. That’s funny. Please laugh.

 

Music is like a pathway through Eternity. When you understand it so that you become able to see it, enter physically into what you see – just walk right into it. This is simple stuff: time travel 101. The resulting state of consciousness will awaken you to reality, and you will understand that you have been sleeping up until now.  

 

Time fills Space as water fills a sponge. So-called “outer” Space is only a lifeless vacuum if you are a lifeless, or still sleeping, person. It is, in reality, teeming with life which is traveling in Time. By traveling through Time the illusory phenomenon of distance disappears so that all places are one place, one time: the Present. We think we see distance. We think we see planets and stars. We think lots of ridiculous stuff. Music is the key that opens the door to no-thinking, to freedom. Or, it is one of them. It’s the one I use. Unfortunately, I don’t know how I taught myself to understand music, so I can’t teach it. But I can tell it.

 

Life is long. Life is short. Life is… shong, or maybe lort.

 

“You were in my Imax haircut experience,” I said to a fellow yesterday. It seemed obvious to me, but the look of perplexity he wore on his face made it plain that further explanation was necessary.

 

The barber shop is on the corner, raised somewhat off the street level. The two corner walls of the barber shop are all window, floor to ceiling. This provides a panoramic view of the entire village – pretty much – for whoever sits in the elevated barber’s chair, and it really is remarkable. As I sat in that chair I saw him pull up to the General Store and go inside, and eat his sandwich. It is good to have a real barber shop in town, by the way. Much as I enjoy paying women to run their fingers through my hair, they never seem to be able to conquer my cowlicks.

 

“Oh yes. I see now,” he said. “It’s quite the view.”

 

And speaking of views, the house closing went as planned. How is that a view? It isn’t; but when I reached into my box of segues, which I keep close to hand on the floor next to my computer, I found that it was empty. I am fresh out of segues. This reminds me – as I am certain many other things will – that I will have to stock a pantry now that I am living in the country again. There will be no more nipping round to the convenience store on the corner three times in the space of an hour to get yet another thing I forgot to get last time I was there, which is too bad, in a way, because I’ve got quite the torrid romance going with the girl at the sales counter.

 

What kind of romance can you have with a girl who works in the convenience store? A convenient one. Anyway, she can’t run too far.

 

The amount of work ahead of me is staggering, and of course Dad and I did almost nothing but talk yesterday. I suppose we had to get it out of our systems.

 

I found out my telephone works out there. Several people called. It was like receiving communications from another world – hearing those familiar voices in that place. This is the new world; they are echoes of the old one. I can now call the telephone company – whatever it might be called out there – and have them remove their unsightly wire and their little grey box which will clash with the color I would like to paint the house. I can pull off the ugly collection of satellite dishes which is gathered on the rail of the front deck, and while I’m at it I can also pull off the deck. I despise decks. In its place I will create a rock wall topped with an elevated patio. But that’s next year’s project.

 

Dad said, “I’m not afflicted with your aesthetic sensitivity,” but later on he told me the lack of one, generally-speaking, is indicative of a failure of spirit. In him it is manifest in his appreciation of what he calls Nature – sunsets and mountains, and all stuff like that there. I have that appreciation too, but I add Art and Architecture to my mixture, which to my way of thinking are also Nature. We are Nature; everything we create is Nature. Without us there would be no Nature.

 

In keeping with my newly cultivated practice of answering my phone like a total wise-ass I answered it at one point by saying (in an English accent), “Are you, by any chance, a little woolly lamb?”

 

…

 

“Pity. What sort of animal are you?”

 

…

 

“Oh well. You see, I was really hoping to speak with a little woolly lamb. Hm…”

 

…

 

“No, I’m afraid human animal is an oxymoron. Are you, by any chance, a moron?”

 

…

 

The caller was none other than little Jo who told me I was being “cheeky.”

 

OK, so I’m cheeky. So what?  

I’ll barter for a massive sectional sofa, I think. It’s in keeping with the contemporary “design” of the new house – if one can say it has one. The silly thing must have cost about three grand new, all silk. When I say massive I mean long but not tall. I could move it, piece by piece, in my Subaru, but it would take at least six trips. Along with it comes a Flintstones coffee table – made of plastic, of course, like a stage prop. What should I do then with all the other furniture items this set will replace? For indeed, if I were to take this sectional sofa and table I will need nothing else in the one particular room where it would obviously live.

 

I don’t like the term “living room.” I have always thought that if I were to designate a room as the “living room” I really ought to name another room the “dying room,” just to balance things out. Back home – in the house of my youth – we actually had a “dying room.” We called it the “playroom,” but at least two people died in it.

 

Anyhoo, since everything I own is rejected, found on roadsides, at garage sales, and so forth, the obvious solution is that I should give it away. I have three sofas, assorted end tables, an antique desk sans roll-top, a multitude of seldom used lamps, and – here I am counting on my fingers – six upholstered chairs, three of them Morris chairs, and several other smaller chairs.

 

How did I end up with so much bric-a-brac? I am a man! – dang it. (And here I produce a shaving razor to prove it – like Spongebob.)

 

I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface as far as packing up my books is concerned. I do have somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 of them.

 

Next topic. I’ve begun to insert these words wherever they might seem helpful because over the years I have received a few complaints about my confusing, atomistic style of writing. Some of you have decided to call it “stream of consciousness,” which is a very nice way of saying it’s an incomprehensible mess, and while I appreciate the euphemism, it’s really more like a “puddle of consciousness” in a Wal-Mart parking lot after it rains. Call it a “phase” I’m going through, if you’d like. I abhor using lines of asterisks and that sort of thing to divide my squalls of senselessness into separately digestible bits, but that’s basically what I’m doing.

 

Next topic. (Oy!)

 

Tomorrow I pass from this world into the next world. (Oh – doesn’t that sound lovely?) Maybe. I’m all done with trying to guess The Plan. There is one. It isn’t mine though. Only one thing seems to be certain: on September 1 this Internet connection will be severed – our ethereal tie to one another, our silver cord of consciousness. Whether or not I will be given much time to write between now and then is an open question which can be answered only by saying I rather doubt it. I’ll make the time, I suppose.

 

The Squabbler will, of course, be coming with me, and any place I inhabit is The White Lodge because The White Lodge isn’t a place; it’s every place he and I happen to be. If we lived in the woods the doors would appear in the trees, in the air, in the rocks.

 

Yesterday I drove my 2004 Subaru between marching rows of a Civil War regiment. The women and children straggled up behind them. This anachronistic interlude was made possible by an organization of grown-ups who take playing dress-up very seriously – that would be the Civil War Re-enactment group who were staging one of their events in the Supernatural Hamlet of Hickwick as I drove through it. I think it’s all about connection and dedication. I’ve never had a connection like that – until now, perhaps. I have been a floating man. But now I seem to be connected to, and dedicated to, communicating with you who have seen fit to read this. It will continue. At least that’s my plan.

Well I’ll be living in squalor for a while. (Squabbler – squalor – Hm… Skip it.) My landlord here has somebody lined up for September 1. That removes the option of keeping this palatial apartment while I make the new house habitable, which right now it most certainly isn’t.

 

What I fear the most has come to pass; what I dread befalleth me. Oh well.

 

If I could enlist the help of all my imaginary friends, of course, we might be able to pull it together in time. But unfortunately the house isn’t imaginary, nor is this palatial apartment. Uh-oh – here comes the real world – what a crashing bore! No – honestly, I’m a little bit concerned about it.

 

The darling Toms will do the roof and chimney. They’re real. A nice fellow named Justin may work on the disintegrating decks which surround the house. Kevin will give the property a thorough brush-hogging so we (Dad and I) may at least approach the mold encrusted door. But these are professional contractors; I have to pay them.

 

I’m cheap. Did you know that about me?

 

Next topic.

 

I wonder how to end my other adventure before I take my hiatus? This morning I was thinking that Clover might run off with her meditation master, but that’s not quite in character….

 

Still, she’s got to go. A few years ago I was thinking – which is something I do a little bit too much – that I might like to begin courting her. And I was beginning to do a little – ah – creative visualization(?) along those lines. And then, out of the blue, she called me up to tell me – very happily – that she was going to have a baby with a fellow she had only just met a month or two before. Needless to say, I was a little bit… chagrined.

 

I guess that was the last straw, if you know what I mean. I was thinking in those days of taking a particular road, and I was at the place in the mountains where two roads seemed to meet. And then, suddenly, one of them was blocked. Or, as an Indian might say, “Heap big rock block road.” So, what did I do? Big chief take other road. Duh.

 

The rest is… history. We’ve known each other on and off in the years that have followed. And now, suddenly, this year – this summer – I’ve been given the opportunity to revisit the matter. It all comes back to me now. You’ve been right here with me. You’ve seen my struggle. OK – sometimes it has seemed like I haven’t been putting up much of a fight, but… I have been. Either I’m on the road I chose to take or I’m off the road, lost somewhere in a wilderness, and in heap big trouble. And – as you all know, (or both of you) – the road I’ve chosen goes through some pretty rough country. It’s no place for girls. It’s much too rocky and narrow.

 

As you also know, it has been raining all summer. Now, all of a sudden, these past few days, it has become perfectly clear: She’s got to go.

 

This morning I awoke thinking about her, and as I stumbled out into the waking world I almost walked straight into The Squabbler. He was standing by a door that wasn’t there yesterday. When I peaked within I could see it opened into a land of pink mist. (This was before I had even had my coffee, mind you.) I said to him, “Does it have to be today?” He nodded.

 

The Squabbler stands there still – hours later – patiently waiting for Clover to appear. He hasn’t moved. He scares me when he’s like this. And I have been struggling to find the way. She won’t come until I call her. And then – just like all the others:; just like Sister Midnight, just like The Lady, and just like The White Tornado – Clover will walk into that room, into the land of the pink mist behind that door, and leave us.

 

So, I was considering that she might have come with me to Confession yesterday, and then she will come to Mass with me today. (I’ve got to pick her up at 9 – don’t let me forget.) And yes, it was all very sudden, but Clover, (who seems to positively enjoy doing things completely out of the blue), has developed a very keen interest in returning to Church.

 

Wouldn’t that be a nice way to end the story? I like happy endings.

 

I know it’s a little unfair of me to introduce this plot twist so suddenly, but you can’t really blame me for neglecting to mention she’s Catholic. Every now and then I am reminded that she is – by birth, by Baptism. We call such people “cradle” Catholics. You can’t really be a purely nominative Catholic because Baptism happens in Reality, and life – the things we choose to think and do – is just a dream. But, don’t worry about that right now. It’s a tough teaching to grasp.

 

Truth really is stranger than fiction.

 

Anyhoo, her husband is a saint. He’s in some sort of Pentecostal church, and his patience with her “any-culture-but-my-own” relativism is inspiring. Since I’ve known her – which is a year or three longer than he has – I have seen her embrace shamanism, Hinduism, witchcraft, and now Buddhism. Last year I was trying to introduce her to Zoroaster, because if one wishes to be a dabbler he is definitely well worth dabbling in. You may recall I had written a few posts on the subject.

 

Oh, I’m getting off on one of my tangents. How can I say what I want to say? I’ll try this:

 

When I was in High School, the “cool” kids – the jocks, the normals, or what-have-you – loved to listen to the song “Freebird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. It brought a tear to their eyes. It’s a nice song, sure. But in my crowd the song we all liked was by a fellow named Brian Eno.

 

“People come and go, and forget to close the door,

And leave their stains and cigarette butts trampled on the floor,

And when they do –

Remember me – Remember me.

 

Some of them are old, some of them are new,

Some of them will turn up when you least expect them to,

And when they do –

Remember me – Remember me…”

 

Oh my goodness, we would all get together with a big old bong between us and listen to Brian Eno. There’s a beautiful steel guitar part of the song. I wish I could describe it to you. That’s Heaven, by the way. Everybody who has passed through the infinite doors is there. No one ever leaves again. No one ever disappears. Things don’t change. A single moment – that moment perhaps, when we are all beautifully stoned and listening to Eno – is the Forever Moment of Eternal Happiness. It’s the Reality we dream about. In that Reality everybody is in perfect Communion.

 

And – speaking of which – it’s time to get the day going.

 

Clover just called to confirm that I’m taking her to Church with me this morning, and I have assured her that I am. It’s almost like she can’t believe it’s really happening. But it is. It’s really happening. She will return to the Church, and while we are sitting there in the pew together she will begin to float just a little bit. I know better than to look at her directly when that begins to happen. It just hastens the disappearance, makes it immediate. I must watch it happen out of the corner of my eye. And when I turn to face her at the Kiss of Peace, I will discover that she has by then entirely disappeared. And we will hear no more from her forever. The Squabbler will close the door.

 

Goodbye, Clover.

 

You daffy broad…

 

One day – maybe soon – everybody else will also leave us. My caterer friend, and little Jo, and the others. New people will come along, sure. But, inevitably, new people become old, and inevitably, they pass away too. Soon – maybe very soon – I will find myself completely alone. There will be no one here but me. Well… Squabbler and me.

 

Next topic.

OK, enough mischief out of me.

 

Almost everybody I encounter lately is in transition. Well, Clover is always in transition, even when she sits still. Having so many residences requires her to adopt the gypsy life. My Dad – leaving his RV in the Great Southwest – has flown hither and yon, picked up a car from the land of our people, and will ultimately end up here. Also, my caterer friend is closing Chateau Creekside. It’s the end of an era. Yesterday I helped a nice fellow move several couches he bought from there to his new house – a trial separation being – ah – tried. The young woman who works for my caterer friend is going into the Peace Corps, but first moving to another state for a year. I don’t know if she has family down there, a boyfriend – or whatever. The point is, as I am in transition I notice that others are too. It may be the case that, if I were to look back, the only thing which is really changing is my own situation; other people have always blown about like tumbleweeds around me.

 

So it goes.

 

Incredibly, I have been quite stable for the past eight-or-so years. Let me count very quickly on my fingers – one, two…seven. My caterer friend, for instance, has moved seven times since I have known her, and we first met – oh – eight-or-so years ago. That must mean she has moved several times within the space of a single year, since she has held Chateau Creekside for three of them, and (as I explained to Clover last night), to my way of thinking – or, according to the way I perceive things – a year is like a day. As I sit still, and as I walk slowly, the people around me seem to blur and buzz about with incredible speed. Little Jo recently made the observation while looking at buzzing flies that so many people live the same way the flies buzz. Just so.

 

My caterer friend’s new store is full of grey people, by the way, probably owing to the nature of the lighting and the different textures on the walls, the position of the merchandise, and so on. Last week – or last month, or whenever – I observed that the store was full of myphets. She asked me “What’s a myphet?” I explained: A myphet is a creature who lives in my kitchen and enjoys stale muffins. The only way to see a myphet is out of the corner of your eye.

 

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “You mean the grey people! I didn’t know they liked muffins.”

 

“Well, now you know.”

 

Apparently, my caterer friend’s grey people – or so it was once explained to her – are really glimpses into another dimension. Certain places particularly are favorable to the appearance of grey people because certain places are closer to inter-dimensional “windows” than certain others. Should I buy that theory? My best friend is a seven foot tall Nafarian prince who is 3,337 years old and has what appears to be a vintage gas mask where his face ought to be, and travels through eternity by way of infinite different dimensions as easily as we go to Wal-mart, so yes, I can buy that, or at least amuse myself by entertaining the possibility. (The Squabbler chuckles now as he reads over my shoulder – a tad disturbing at this early hour.)

 

But anyhoo, so-called “real” people – (citation needed) – have often appeared to me like grey people themselves, what with all the buzzing about they seem to do. I can only glimpse them out of the corner of my eye. I converse with them in dreams, in memory, because the actual conversations happen on a different frequency, a fast frequency.

 

Now, of course there is a difference between grey people and myphets, (as we all know), and I think what my caterer friend is really seeing are myphets. In my memory I can see them fully. They look nothing like people in any dimension. It may just be that I have a better memory than she does. So what?

 

Next topic.

 

Oh it finally happened – my goodness. I was driving Miss Clover back from an event in the grubby little city to the south last night, and the course of conversation eventually inspired her to ask, good-naturedly, “Why didn’t I marry you?”

 

“You didn’t want to,” I quickly answered.

 

“No – you didn’t ask me.”

 

“I didn’t get the chance!” I shouted – surprising myself.

 

(Silence, or an approximation: Iggy Pop on car stereo; road noise; August crickets, for three full beats. One…two…three…)

 

“Well, when I’m hot I’m hot,” she said, “You gotta be quick if you want to ride my train.”

 

“It took me a year to figure out I might have wanted to. A year to me is like a day – it’s nothing – no time at all!”

 

“Well, a year to me is like… a year.”

 

“Whatever…”

 

“Whatever…”

 

Of course, when this conversation happened it was on the fast frequency of buzzing flies because “real” people are really grey people. In order to remember it I have to modulate it so it comes out slowly enough for me to hear. I do this instantly. We all do. In the present moment we see nothing, hear nothing, because the present moment is fleeting, by definition, by nature. Everything we experience – hear, see, touch, smell – happens in memory, and only in memory. Right “now” I tap my computer screen with my finger. Eternity has passed between the nerves on my fingertip touching the screen and the reception of that touching in my brain. (Time is not a line; it is all of Space.) Nothing happens in the present moment. We must always remember everything that happens – even things that seem to happen instantly – as a past event.

 

In Heaven nothing ever happens because Heaven is outside of Time and Space. Everything is; there is no was. There is no need to dream. There is no need for memory. “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” Do you see? It’s profoundly simple. It is perfect Compassion. What does that mean?

 

The other word I sometimes use for Heaven is Reality. Every time I speak of Reality I am really speaking of Heaven. Nothing else is Real; everything else is a dream, a memory. Truth.

 

It’s really quite hilarious. Remember Dorothy: “People come and go so fast here!” I think of her often, in the Land of Oz.

 

Next topic.