 
The Hand

A millennial imagining

Francis X. Kroncke

Copyright 2015, Francis X. Kroncke

# Before Reading

Origen is a helpful guide as the Millennium approaches. He was a 3rd century, Christian Era, imaginist. During his time, Christians were an imagining group of dreamers. As Origen did, so did most: they peered and saw peculiar truths, notions, ideas and values all about. They lived in a section of what they considered The Empire where peoples from strange and alien cultures criss-crossed and shared and exchanged queer bits of food, both mental and physical. The traded spice in the Christian life, back then, was millennialism. The resurrected body of Jesus of Nazareth was present as Christ, but the exciting Good News was that He was Coming Back, soon — _today!_ So, the Christian life — as distinct from the apostate Jews and assorted addle-brained philosophers of the day — was one of expectation, but, more of looking at what others called "reality" and informing them what it really was and was not.

Simply put — but not so simply grasped — they believed it revealed to them that _What Is, Is Not_. Plagues, earthquakes, floods, whatever — signs of something else. Other non-Christians could tolerantly manage such metaphorical interpretations. But the Christians went further: _What Is Not, Is_. Not just the belief in the invisible God, no, they shared that with other spiritual and Biblical imaginists, but rather the unsettling fact that with a God who was also Man: Full God and Full Man, that life here on earth was worthless, meaningless, a vale of tears, in the clutch of the dark and foreboding evil power known as the presence of Satan. True life, full life would be, could only be had if one lived on earth as if he was not living here but rather living in heaven. This others found a bit harder to tolerantly imagine. Evil they saw, the fragility of life they observed, but the despising of life, valuing it as worthless: the flesh as only an instrument to be tortured — difficult. Yes, but in the deepest depths the Christians were ebulliently hopeful, for they imagined Salvation: Christ come back to Ransom, Rescue and Restore. Christ to do this both on the individual and the social level, meaning, that if you died before the Millennial Return, you could have — within your own intimacy of heart and belief — a millennial experience, namely, a full embrace while here on earth of the Just, Righteous and Loving Lord.

Origen becomes helpful for his working methodology. When approaching a text — oral or scripted — he would expound upon it in terms of a) its literal meaning — _What Is, Is_ , and b) it's symbolic or analogical meaning — _What Is, Is Not_ , and c) its mystical or anagogic meaning — _What Is Not, Is_. This latter being the pivotal approach to peering and being receptive to the millennial character of an event, a relationship or an encounter.

Consider Origen as a guide as you read.

# CHAPTER 1:120 DEGREES

The deck was a wrap-around. Three-hundred and sixty degrees. It orbited the house. Such a porch had a presence of its own. Some could see it as rising from the earth, itself more than hand-crafted wood, rather, the essence of itself as plant, a life-force, just there, with a being and a being-ness. This, however, was, at the most, a fleeting sense, for otherwise it would have been an object of mystery, perhaps of foreboding. It was proper that it was fleeting. Yet, within this moment's flight it took them with itself, into a land of vivid imagining and goose-bump playfulness: from either a leaning glance while tottering on its various banisters or from the upswing of the wave the children created with the canoe like swing — yes, they saw themselves as floating down a river, a river of air, and the pendulum of the swing was more the crest and plunge of a wave — never this they to articulate but they were enthralled by a shared image, deep inside, down there where the porch knew them: as travelers upon itself, within itself, as itself now but momentarily up from the depths, caught in a flicker of its emergence from the darkness, caught and frozen in the time of the humans, _their_ time ... but nothing, now, but to laugh for it knew that, for most, the image was of a safeguard, a protective shield, so the women felt, and so the men said, "Damn, like a running back's helmet," eyeing it from the east side, scanning up the slope, standing on tip-toe to catch as much of its line as possible, then, "That goddam porch is just _too_ much." So, it was satisfied. And so it allowed itself to be caught, for the moment.

Luke was sitting on the porch. It was an unusual moment. He never liked to sit there in the heat of the day. And it was August, the mid-part, such that even here in Hastings it was too freaking hot. "120 degrees." The phrase came at him, as it had so often in his life, from back that first summer when the family had trekked across the then de-populating line from Jersey to Minnesota, crossing the Mississippi on train and knowing that the cows now outnumbered the people, not even having a thought that there were larger cities westward, no, they were true Easterners, and so was he, though only a kid, one who had hardly ever left his home town itself, not even the full length of Bayonne, no, rather just blocks: that had been his city, maybe twelve by twelve, yeah, only ever once to New York City, aboard the _Bayonne Ferry_ to Manhattan: a trip his parents gave him just before he left for the minor seminary ; he remembers the concrete intricacy of shattered bottles against the walls and cigarette butts festering about and the layers of air, so he remembers right now those layers, knowing that in the summer the air settled out like his mother's chocolate and cream cheese layer cake; air, thicker at street side, almost gagging at curbside as he leans over and shows Sally McGrew how to write her name with a nail in the oozing asphalt, yeah, heat ... and Hastings had come at him that summer: they having driven down from the train depot in St. Paul in early July, a then not too terrible day of summer, only to be feasted upon by mosquitoes the first night, and then he wandering about: just two blocks, not blocks in real terms, for there were no streets, but blocks in his imagination, his city mind, measuring as he walked, knowing for years how long "four blocks to school" meant, good ole St. Vinnies, and so it was: pacing, the corn-stalks high, the sky eye-blistering blue, no clouds and he without sunglasses, just walking, looking for life and seeing no one, no one, yes, no one ... and he came to a point he now remembers, now what is a corner, one with houses on it and curbs and sewer drains, but, then, just the terminus of his travels, he having come, so he was thinking, two-thousand miles, "2,000 tracks," so the image and the clack and lurch of the train came, standing there, and the sweat begins, that sweat which trickles from a moist heat, here the moisture from the corn, he can see it come at him, like the mosquitoes, now almost a stream and down his nose and up and over his upper lip and he can't stop himself, he is licking himself, and so he for the first time ever realizes that he is self-cannibalizing, here, the flow is almost torrential and his heart is thumping, all at once like a thunderstorm so is his body bleeding fluids, salt, the stuff of himself and he is furiously licking himself, the curl of his lips, the backhand across the cheek and then sucking on his wrists as if all his life force was pouring out and evaporating away ... and he knew that he was about to die, here, as testament to the corn itself growing and giving of its milky self, so he was dying not in city death, not slug upon the head, no, but in farmer's death, yeah, being sucked in by the earth, it devouring himself as water, it wanting what the corn wanted from the earth, so he is the earth, and the sun now at one o'clock high and .... by what speed? what curse? what impulse? If any had seen: did anyone observe? no one had ever come forth ever to mention that day, so he believes it his own: how fast did he run, turn and shoot like a flame from a roman candle on the Fourth? ... yeah, with strides, full strides of thoroughbred legs, Luke was home; slamming the door, huffing and sucking in air conditioned air, no, not just with mouth, but with body parts all: ears like reverse wells, arms spread like a pelican landing, feet cracking the soles of his shoes to feel the cool of the kitchen linoleum and his heart atop his chest, outside his shirt, so he saw it, felt it, there pumping and pumping the molecules of cool air ... so, he remembers the heat, only so much because he ventured to the same corner in mid-January and it was 120 degrees cooler, not that words like "cool" really have any meaning when describing Minnesota, a land solely of melt and frozen, of shiver and chatter and suffocation and eye-blinding-glare — but it is at this moment, all this, just the briefest of remembrance, just a re-call not even verbalized as he rocks back and forth, waiting, knowing that he is waiting; having come out here because the mid-day brightness has something to show him that has no shadow.

"Morning." So the shimmer had said. Flicker of Judas light, that kiss of the beguiling heat. And quickly he adjusted, not looking at a watch, just knowing, "I mean Good Afternoon." He flicked out the large manila envelope — from where? Luke couldn't see, having watched him form, as if evaporation at lawn's end had given rise to his being, so the shimmer had appeared, all at once — why did it seem so appropriate? — and grew in line and then a dimension here, a hand out almost triangular, a gait that wobbled a bit as if under gyroscopic control, not so much a puppet but a body coming into composition, all its geometry and then its inner calculus and then the quantum bump into a voice which was brief, courteous, accompanied by eyes which were smiling, not his lips or face but his eyes, eyes which were happy to have found the object of their convergence; and so Luke takes the envelope and the man hesitates: a signature? a verification? what? but he does not ask nor request, possibly, it is Luke's acceptance that conveys the accuracy of the identification, but nothing more is said and the man, now full-grown, possibly late fifties, a tad balding, in good shape, a clipped mustache, and with one finger missing from the hand that connected through the contact point of envelope, now, once in full art, so he retreats westward into gait and mathematical mystery and the greater landscape of the view which the porch always sees, is always co-creator of, that of "The Jennings' Flame," so it is called by all about, a phrase pleasant to Luke and Laura, one grown into by their kids, one testified to by the setting and rising of the sun which appear as dots, as sparks, just one shimmering glimmer: orchoid shimmer with aureate glimmer: one that grows and as it grows is how it also extinguishes itself at night as if lighting up the house or drawing it to closure, from the east first alighting and from the west last descending upon the lip of the porch, not so much as lip as but edge of the world, that edge which is the starting point for a new venture and an ending point for an old; so is this man now consumed, inhaled or sipped: both seem appropriate, but he is gone and Luke rocks, holding the envelope, a common large-size manila, one that he has seen before, one that he has spoken to Laura about, often. ... He rises and walks around to the south end of the porch, just another place on its orbit, so it laughs as it knows it has no direction but that which Luke and others give to it — but Luke knowing its mobius cleverness: having one tired and numbed by ale night staggered a bit and in that staggering having twisted and found himself stumbled into another dimension, just for that slightest of instance, no more than a squeaky gasp and he saw the porch looking at him, knowing and feeling himself as seen, yes, but not knowing how to relate to porch, just walking — and so it is south end and the kitchen: and it allows him to flap open the summer screen door, flap it and depart within, taking no shadow off The Porch.

# CHAPTER 2: STONES

Luke knew she was about. Just the way things sat. Things placed as if in their proper places, like setting little kids around the table, "Charles, you sit here. Selene you there." Knowing that it would always eventually become chaos, but it was her way — orchestrating the moment before boom and clang and chaos and all that she loved to hear, as if only the preparation could make it truly so. This is what the hand-crafted salad bowls properly guarded by their silver-gripped wooden spoons murmured, "She's here!" As did the spices, those selected for dinner's special flavor and delights, all in a row — he refused to consider that they also were arranged by color according to the alphabet: when he had at first discovered her regimented and precise ways, he had trembled: instantly knowing never to try and figure out why it was so, that would be too much — and the glasses, at least the wine goblets: achingly clean and fastidious, these let him know that, indeed, they were alone, would be alone come night, and that her preparation was part of what was their special worship together here in mid-August, a festive occasion on many accounts.

Yes, he shakes his head to focus on her, on what the envelope was not to interfere with, and so he flaps it down on top of the refrigerator, there into a basket where she allows him to put his unruly things: vitamin jars, pocket-watch-and-chain, the too, _too_ many pens he always leaves behind by the phone, and any other items: "I'll need this later, get it from here, don't worry" — and so the envelope would be unobtrusive. He let it go, knowing that it would stay with him, stuck on his back like a postage stamp; him knowing that it was there, but his fingers let it loose to find its own resting comfort in the wicker basket.

"Where'd you put the stones?!"

Ah, the so many meanings she conveys. Indictment. Frustration. Perplexity. Anxiety.

"Not in the top drawer?" Somewhat more in hope than he cared to reveal.

The small sounds from the upstairs master bedroom: those creaks and scratchy sounds of wood on wood, sliding draws in and out, not slamming them, until, "No." Definitive. Challenging. Commanding. So, Luke goes down to his study. The basement of unnatural light, what he both loves as to its embrace and hates as to its blindness, but, again, this is Minnesota, not California, not his beloved AnoMar ... and within a sweep or two of the room he remembers, "China closet!"

As she appears resplendent, Luke is more than an admirer of Laura's strong beauty — for how else to phrase it? strength and beauty. Not just muscular, yet she was firm: such from a professional life of therapeutic massaging, rather the sense of her movement, the way her arms broke through the air with the stroke of a hawk as it bounds upward, and her face, how many times has he fallen down, struck by the agony of her beauty ?... ha, he has paused more than once while alone to search for another word, but what else but agony, the _agon_ , not just suffering and pain but the insatiable lust for life as it lives in beauty and dies in beauty; how often had he shaken his head at not finding another word in the many ardorous poems he carved out for her from his soul? ... and here she is again, this late edge of early twilight, resplendent in all her intangibleness ... yet, he knows that she is also eager to begin, that she gets antsy as she waits, for waiting forces her to ponder the ingredients for the recipe: she knows, in this moment, that the ingredients are them: she being for him the dough and he the yeast; for her: he the fire, the pit of coals ... ah, her nervousness arouses him, and he spreads out the stones.

Laura picks up a milky pod, one she found on the shores of Mille Lacs, and places it North. Luke scoops up two twin eyes of the night and lays them out South. She moves a fire-stone to the West; he, a tiger's eye to the East. The others are taken: metallic glints of granite slugs, aquamarine droplets, beggar plain yellowing remnants of sea's long past, and a few more of color and hue not of the moment: yet, each stone had been, at some moment past and so will be in the future, a cardinal point: there to be the anchor pillars for their cathedral.

Yes, they lay out an elliptic pattern, she with as much precision as possible, he with little care as to astronomical rightness, but, nevertheless, it is done and they take their honored places as the points of foci; now standing, she and he face to face, and then they turn back to back, and once again towards each other. With hands raised they fix the sky as dome; with hands turned down they grapple up and tether the floor as ground. She slowly turns full about and with a soft word calls the winds, "Come winds!" and he in like rotation calls the light, "Come light!"

A moment's pause: they take off their shoes and socks. She picks up a rug she had laid near the spot and together they unfurl it. This their carpet of connectedness; a shawl through time; a membrane connecting them to the animals which graze and the cotton which is the earth's soft clouds; so they sit upon the carpet, one of many they have obtained over the years, but this one being for the summer more cotton with woolen streaks, a pattern of late afternoon colors, those that come to comfort during rest after a day's full work in the sun-drenched fields ... then, he reaches outside the perimeter and brings in a candle: purity white, thick as her forearm, their Candle of Convergence; he places it slightly off-center, then lights it. Its glow is subdued in the flush of the brightly stilled embers of daylight which flare through every room in the upper two stories and most fully here in the living room on the southwest slope; but it is for their attention anyway not for its luminescence, no, the candle knows that it is symbolic, that connector to their inner flames, a smallish _imago_ of the greater flame of this house, this cathedral itself, and so it burns as it must, self-consuming ... Laura is ready now for the words but Luke is not; no, he is eager for his gift, this his surprise, what he was conscious this day was for — though from morning rise he also knew that this day was to be for him its own gift of "Other": and so it came, came today ... but he would not deal with it in this time, nor this place, so he left it in the basket; now was for his gifting.

The bowl was silver at base and a quarter up its side. There it met stone, not clay, but a stone of roseate hue which appeared to be alive with quivers of light, light which became animated and moved, actually shot like disappearing streaks of flame as the lights of candle and rising moon hit upon it; from one side: stone with minuscule rivers of blood; from the other: the lighted side, a pulsating life force, truly animal ... then, atop this, a slight rim, more a collar, of clay, one with symbols and forms but now not to her notice, now only to its color, to its dramatic cobalt blue, a blue so much in contrast to the rose that it was like sky caressing a flower, alien pools of hues at first recognition, a breath of distance, imperceptible, but there, not commingled but fascinated, yearning, yes, as she looks, so it becomes clearer: almost a definite break between them, as if the two parts could not, would never be together, they being of different substances not just colors, yet, there was something in the silver, something of groundedness which seemed to reach up and hold the two together, as if by a magnetic force. Laura was stunned, truly, as if startled and her breath got lost, trapped inside her chest: so she was captured by the bowl ... and she did not see Luke's grin, his deeply devilish prankster grin, but one this time linked to a greater satisfaction at knowing that before them lay true magic, something as magical as the stones which formed their cathedral, these discoveries of their time together, from walks and hikes up steep hills to splashing down on beach's edge; yes, the bowl: as when he first saw it, was it magical before him, and he sees it work its trickery, its illusionistic playfulness upon her, and so he knows upon himself, indeed, senses that he and Laura are being drawn and deposited into the bowl, that they are becoming the bowl ... but not yet, so Luke claps his hands to shatter the silence gathering between them.

_Why?_ registers on her forehead, not spoken; irritated — like a child told not to play with its newly unwrapped present .

"Listen." How often had he begun to speak to her with this word? She whose whole body listens through its every pore to the messages bodies send out from the spiral within and receive from the spiral without? But this is a time to stop her; pause her; get her to hear his words ... for it is he who has journeyed from the land where words work their magic; he who has bent his back and thrown himself prone before the _Logos_ : Word, as it was manifested in the Abbot; he who followed the Order of Strict Observance in its peculiar and singular mystical group meditation ("brooding") which effects a re-dreaming and attendant vitalization of the Sacred Words, those stories of Scripture: scripts spoken and unspoken ... and it was the unspoken which had lead him to her, and, so now, it is the unspoken he wants to gift her.

"Listen," pinched her ear; like a playful grasp of the earlobe — it drew attention.

"Most of the time this bowl will _not_ be us. It will just sit there on the shelf alongside all the other things we use. It will just be a bowl. A beautiful bowl, _but just_ a bowl. ... In many ways it is bowl because it waits. It is satisfied to be Other."

She shifts around; hating to lose the feeling she had just been sinking into when Luke began to speak. She works hard to hang-in with him.

"It is always sacred. That I'm sure of. But a sacredness we humans don't seem to have. But that's what I want to gift you with ... what this bowl means to me. ... I'm trying to be _Other_."

His hesitation is like a hand scratching his head; his shoulders shimmy and run to shiver as the words can't settle comfortably his soul's yearning.

_How long have we been married now? Twenty-years come August? And why do I know where he's going?!_ "The Goddess is not enough?"

He smiles: but the starving grin of the condemned.

"She's enough."

Laura knows Luke is lying. True lie. Because he can't tell the truth; can only speak about the truths both he and she have found; not about this yearning, this internal push and overflowing which tells him, "More!" Wakes him at night, so he tells her in the morning, and watches her breathe and so knows how the winds are created. "God, I love him!" is her ever response, quietly spoken to mystical witnesses every time he has such a night. But, it is a lie, just like her looking at him slumbering and knowing how much she has denied him, denied him of birth, denied him of birth because they had only learned how to visit each other's bodies ... and she knows that his lying, this yearning, this overflowing is his desire to give birth, and it is not lost on her that it means, equally, that she must be born, this time, from him: " _Ah, having babies, thank the Goddess, thank Our Parents, that it so distracts me!_ ... For what she sees in Luke, so she knows, is what they have found as Bodywanderers.

" _You're a Bodywanderer_." He had said it after one of her first massages. Sat up and looked at her — she had never seen depthlessness before, but that is what his eyes were: depthless channels: to an interior, not just his body, but something so deep that it came out the other side, somewhere. He had said it, then laughed: a hearty laugh of insight to one's own foolishness, and he had pushed himself off the massage table as if the exclamation point to the laugh, grabbed her, spun around — naked, she was aware he was, he apparently wasn't — spun around with her two, three times till he banged into the wall, not stopping even a moment, lost somewhere with her: spinning ... "Of course!" he whispers; not that he had to, not that there were others waiting, but she knew that wasn't what he was aware of; no, he was whispering so that the magic of the word would work: whispers, " _Bodywanderer!_ "

Whispered it repeatedly in lessening decibels until only his eyes whispered it to her ... and so, in that moment, they had shared the Lie: spoken the Sacred Word ... and she knew it, even if she had not, that day, shared his words, his way of knowing, not had his arsenal (and his burden!) of the Catholic Theological Tradition, nor especially that of the mystical Monastic Brotherhood with its secret and esoteric Disciplines of the Order of Strict Observance (O.S.O.); no, these were intellectual tools and emotional obstacles to come, nevertheless, that day, she had understood enough and opened herself to Brood within their own duet; for such an understanding was the first manifestation that they had, indeed, _Bodywandered_.

" _You're a Bodywanderer_." He voiced it because he had heard it; heard it _from_ her, from Laura, and as he instantly knew, from Her. It was spoken as Laura worked his body, every nerve and fiber of his six-foot-five field of hard-worked flesh: still basketball league firm and sleek: wandered up and down his bones and muscles and ligaments; labored at this task, delicious task, she, next to him, a mite: five-eight, nine but strong — Polish strong: thick in the shoulders for a girl, an Athena, but with a deft delicacy of fingers: sensitive, caressing, spy-fingers which traveled all his strange and alien lands, and through such wanderings she drew out, captured and composed the sounds of his body, the many tones of his skeletal connections, the growls and groans and giggles and twitches of himself and charmed them into a sound, not just a breathed sound, no, rather one of his spirit, that which holds all of him together; there at once it all rushed up to him and came as the word: _Bodywanderer_.

Word as image; as angelic trumpet ... and so he knew as demon: a word unleashed from the Darkness; that pit within, the one she touched as she massaged him; touched his butt, rolled her fists up and down his spine; set fleeing guardians of the Darkness within him ... and he wandered — what other word could he use? — there, back there, with his monastic brothers, wandered through their dreaming: they who dreamed communally — Brooders ...

:monks Brooding; as Yahweh brooded in _Genesis_ — " _When God began creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was a shapeless, chaotic mass, with the Spirit of God brooding over the dark vapors._ "— monks whose communal dreaming tethers the Dreams of God, their God, God of _Genesis:_ Yahweh, Angry and Wrathful God, God of Adam and Eve, no, _just_ of Adam, for Eve is from Adam ...

:Brood on this! — Eve has no Body; for she is not created from God but out of Adam; from his rib; need Freud enter and grasp the rib as penis?; Brooding on the Nothingness of the Female; no Goddess; no Birthing; just a Male Creating: Only Cock and a little cock; they: He and he as separate from Her and her; a spiritual hierarchy of Dominance: Subordination; unqualified power; in sum, in _Genesis_ , so the Brooding reveals, She is Obliterated; forever within the Dark Vapors; neither visible nor invisible; no body; No Body ...

:and Luke wandered into the Darkness, the Darkness the monastic Brooders did not want him to wander into: the Void, Dark Vapors; first of the Emptiness of the Sanctuary; so he left, no longer Friar Alfred, O.S.O.; to transform into earthly Warrior and so Plunderer of Souls and Murderer of Bodies and Rapist of All, even himself ... wandered through _Genesis_ ' Dark Vapors: the Darkness of God; as border, edge, defining Otherness — there, in AnoMar, at the edge of the Profane Dream: _California_ , to find Her, and so her: Laura: in her and through her and with her: so, Her ...

:for Bodywandering is a moment of communal dreaming, of Brooding ... and so he dreamed with her, and they dreamed, Brooding now for some twenty odd years; Brooding and finding Dreaming to not be their end but their Way, a method, a path; they still searching and losing, celebrating and mourning; Questing; but as they began they had known only this: this from their shared Christian Tradition: that where two or more are gathered, so is there Presence; and so they started: two — chopsticks, matches, strike and flint, anon, anon, but two.

Two: a couple; Sacral Coitus; at first just wandering bodies, gobbling flesh and spitting juice sexual and impassioned; then, what they feared, what they blindly sought became theirs: wandering into a Body: an expanded identity; fuller; they became Erotic Partners — every minute, every moment locked in desire, no matter where they were: eyes, hands, feet, tongues ... and they slurped each other — only to unleash a terrible hunger: one that rattled their bones and throttled their brains and soul: the hunger _for_ them — it came for them: as they grasped the godding force as Parents, and as it came for them to be parents.

Parents whose Brooding creates _The Holy Family_ : this their discovery of how the godding force is made present; through their loving; and how the world — or as Luke termed it, "flat time and space" — how time and space was created; through that togetherness they shared which wasn't just the flat world, not just physical time and location, but where their sacral, godding bonding sent them: into a location, a dimension that was fuller than themselves, their daily lives, more than what they brought to each other: "that whole which is greater than the sum of its parts" — yes, something like that.

The Holy Family: wholing and healing and as such Cauldron and Pit; itself conjured by Brooding the Dark Vapors; searching for Her; calling Her forth; and hearing the answer as oneself: as Laura, as Luke; as coupled.

Now, the bowl. First, the stones; now the bowl. The stones were of both worlds: always profane, always sacral. This they both knew. As they held them, they were empowered to speak words and to tell stories. Words which cut and hurt; words which healed and salved. But always a moving forward into each other; stones which they carried as they wandered; stones which they had found, sometimes alone, sometimes together, and which carried memories, but more, which effected Story and Dream.

The stones were always here; would always be here. They understood that they were the stones' Story. They, the humans, are how the stones speak to one another; how they Brood and Dream. For the flesh is the Sacred Word of the stones; for the body is how the stones wander, passing through profane and sacral time and place.

And it is the stones which had revealed to them about "Other." She had instantly understood this at that moment she became pregnant. And when she held their first child, so she knew she was handing Luke a stone: living stone, source of mystery, that transforming presence which wandered out of the Void into the Light, wandered from Past into Future as it creates Present ... and so, when they laid the stones each time for their ritual, so they were connecting, and opening themselves to be pulled, yanked, throttled and wracked: all the pains and pleasures of creativity as it coursed them ... so the stones were their wandering connectors: tethering flesh and spirit and time and space — allowing for the Dream to rise, for "Other" to be sensed, spied, grasped for; Brooded.

"This bowl is us. Not us as now. But us as being born. It came from wandering. From you. Part of it is you, is me, is the kids ... I dreamed it, it dreamed me, and I worked with a potter on it and then other crafts-folk: Jim the goldsmith, a ceramics guy up in Hibbing, many people, many months, but Laura it's not just a gift, it's being given _to_ us, both of us, by the stones; it _is_ a vitality of the stones, they created it; all this time, these years with us, wandering — and _they_ have gifted us with it."

She laughs when he finishes. It startles him a bit, but then he was too gripped by the moment to fully notice. For her it was a laugh of pure idiocy, for what else could this be? — they: pure idiots, listening to stones, being stones! ... Luke was crazy, truly a madman, and maybe that's why I love him? ... _God, let's fuck!_ — but he was still listening to the stones.

"They believe we're ready. _We._ " So said that she knew it was not his voice.

Laura reaches outside the stones and brings in the milk and water pitchers; small, made by the kids over the years, once just any container at hand, now, carried by the spirit hands of their children: Charles had made the milk pitcher while in second grade, his instinct for the craft was early evident; Selene had formed hers at camp during her seventh year, formed it as she sat before a waterfall, "Mommy, this is the waterfall." She had said it with youthful unawareness ... and so the children join them now as the water and milk are commingled; they placing their hands over the bowl and feeling themselves as bone and blood: solid milk and water of life; knowing themselves in the commingling — and they sip, hands always upon the bowl, and together they place it aside ... she then pours herself into his bowl; lifts her body and flies high to descend in a hover and settle upon his spout of water; geyser, pillar of desire, himself flowing outward and she settles upon his lap, cunny snug around his cock ... and they begin to wander.

It is such a night, such a moment, undoubtedly because of the bowl, that Laura and Luke, within heartbeat, tumble into and through each other. He is at suck the instant she removes her nightgown; she is flying all throughout him the moment she docks onto his cock ... it is but a few rocking motions and they merge, image themselves as waterfall and hungering cave, he thirsty and she bursting with the wine of desire and lust ... and they wander, are detached from their bodies, actually, attach their bodies so that one is not known as distinct from the other: a moment they had so many times shared — of merged identity: Dreaming together, truly communal, not obliterated, but of a union which shares a common boundary, here, one of Brooding ... and he is her and she is he ... all her flesh is like candy, and he is giddy with delight; he rolls his hands across her buttock as she presses his lips firmly against her nipples and there is pleasure, that of romping and chasing one another and splashing through a forested stream, and the stream slips over them and they are swimming: fishes darting here and there, soon chased by a dark shadow and this shadow overcomes them and they are swallowed and consumed and lost in a darkness, but soon become the sight of this dark shadow and cast about with it for light, at once spied at the surface and, so, as shadow they flash towards the surface, crash through it and explode into flight, now, two birds, dancing between clouds, and she sets on all fours and he mounts her, but it is nesting, two birds nesting and they break out into song, birdsong, silly stuff, chattering sounds: "I love you" in birdsong, and this twitter is like spark, for they burst out and flame: all around them is fire, and he is raging blaze, humping her and grasping large clumps of her, clumps which burn like hay, and he is frantic to find the source of this seething inferno — where is it that she is? — for he knows she is the source of this fire and he fears that he will burn up: combust! — and she cackles and laughs at him, like crows cawing, and he turns to see the snake's eyes, close to him, and he shivers with great heat of fear, and the eyes come closer, hypnotizing eyes: her hazels flashing brown into green and back again, and he witnesses them turn into balls, two testicles, and the snake strikes at him, once, twice, three times and he feels the venom flow, but this time out of him into the snake, and the snake is fed, grows fat and long and he knows that Laura is sucking him, licking his balls and getting him hard for another round, that she wants his milk, that she wants his water, that she wants him as bowl: into Ouroboric Embrace they issue: Snake Biting Its Tail. _Amen_.

Early midnight. Candles asleep. They get up, leaving the things here and there, trudge upstairs and plop into an unmade bed: tired, exhausted, sticky with each other; but they like it like this; balled together ... and aware that the blessing of the Void will be theirs: dreamless sleep ... that nodding off which is almost expiration, almost obliteration: when they have become things to the things they call things, like the stones. Humans now totally profane; scant vitality; no sacral connections ... the stones sigh, the bowl smiles, the candle laughs, the carpet hungers ... and all wait.

"Other." More than transformation. More than transubstantiation. True mystery. True magic. Power and Presence. They sleep. He snores. She grinds her teeth. Luke is stone. Laura is stone. The bowl is the gift from Other. But so is the envelope. Curious coincidence? Karma? Synchronicity?

May I laugh — raucously?

# CHAPTER 3: THE HAND

The attractiveness of Minnesota over California is not just a matter of mosquitoes versus spiders. Not of insects versus arachnids, though the matter could be plundered along those lines. Rather, it is the air. How one could breathe or as one comes to understand: how one is breathed. For by the Ocean, there is a battle. Humans want to steal the clean air and purify themselves from City living. This is true whether they actually live in that City, that only true California City: Los Angeles, or whether they come from one: Escaping New York, Abandoning Chicago, Fleeing Atlanta, whatever. They come to steal the air and to revive, and in this way they are the Children of Cotton Mather, they are forever Easterners: those who have traveled in search of the fabled East ... and who, having landed and found only California, still call it a New World: stealing the world from whomever they consider the Old, the Old Breathers: those who live in harmony with the Ocean.

Minnesota is Tree breathed. All that exists: the rivers, the plains, the snow, the bugs — all exist for the Trees and breathe with the Trees. Humans have merely taken their subordinated, though appropriate, place in this common breath.

People came and stayed in Minnesota to serve the Land and so the Trees. To grow, not merely revive. They are forsaken Easterners still ready to discover a West, and in that fashion they are California Dreamers, ever ready to slay the Native Spirit ... but the North Country is where the aboriginal natives still Dream, and where their Dream is still strong, and where, as is so clearly evident once there, their Dream dominates: for _all_ worship the Trees and tend the Land: Mother Earth.

For Luke it was more. He told Laura: the Mississippi is the clue; the image; what the Land is about: fertility. Cold, icy, frozen, sub-arctic winter chill and blazing hot, oven blasting, flesh melting summers. "Though summer is just a weekend in July, nevertheless, it is all there."

So, in the early summer of 1978, they left AnoMar and came to Hastings-on-the-Mississippi. He to teach at the University (now tenured ten years and chaired as a Professor of the History of Religions) and she to open a (now thriving) physical therapy/massage clinic in town. They came for fertility and to breathe: to conceive and raise children.

First, Charles. Then, Selene.

But more, they came to Bodywander.

Though they had met and broken-through to Bodywandering in AnoMar, it had been difficult to get beyond a sense of being distinct: communion was difficult to sustain. Intellectually, they grasped that they had found the Goddess and begun to worship her; and that Laura was Her incarnation. But emotionally, they faced a barrier. For try as they may they could not conceive. And they each knew this as something _willed_ ; something inside themselves which was still avoiding or incapable of becoming or of Accepting.

Ironically, this barrier was sweetened with unsated pleasure. Luke wore Laura like a cloak. Back then he worked in a Court Reporter firm doing document editing and summarization. In that most Court Reporters are female, Luke — how else could he say it but "swam"? — Luke swam in the flesh. Every woman he gazed upon became a temptation, but not in a negative way as to sin but in a positive way as an expression of Laura. His desire for their flesh: a slender thigh, a full buttock, the thrust of a yearning bosom ... all became his as his desire for Laura burned through him, seared him. For her it was likewise. She massaged men and found herself in a field of Luke's flesh. Surrounded by his muscles she giddily raced knowing of his houndish pursuit. She reveled in his dominance and then his subordination; his rank and unabashed worship of her: of her breasts which he praised as the Fount of Life, and her shying away cunny as the Flame of My Love ... oh, their passion was fierce and their embracing shattered the bed and broke through the ceiling and lasted in pain and bruise for days and days as did his aching cock and her battered dock: not just aching to explode but aching from being sucked and plundered and called upon to perform again and again, she scattering the fairies of sleep and calling him again to her: he weak and flaccid like a wet noodle, oh, she laughs seeing him, _Mighty Him!_ ; Him, the God, there, spent and She squeezing him for more; she stroking him and gathering the fireflies of his desires and drawing them into a circle of flame, wreathing him, and once more emptying him of his every conscious and sub-conscious desire ... oh, these were days of insane pleasures; of a contact and embrace which defied words ... yet, there was something that only Communion described which they knew eluded them ... no, not Communion, not that notion of just union in the now, but of union Now and Forever: which, back then, they first termed, _Family;_ not yet Holy — this is what they hungered for but was eluding them. Why?

_Why?_ ... Luke had only to reflect upon The Brooders. Those monks of the Order of the Strict Observance (O.S.O.) whom he had joined, become Friar Alfred, and then left. As they Dream the Scriptural Stories, so through this Dreaming: a Common Labor, they weave the mythic web which holds fast reality: this their Brooding.

As one of them, Luke's task as Alfred was to dream _Genesis_ — this assignment an indication of the high esteem in which he was held by the community, and also a sign of the fundamental and pivotal role they felt he would play as to the Order's survival. Survival because the latter part of the Twentieth Century was truly an End-Time: the time when the Biblical Dream was in dire jeopardy. Its peril was the fragility of _Genesis_ ' core Dream itself: the creation of Her, of Eve. For the Scriptural Myth pivots upon this Dream: that of the creation of the female from the male: not from God, but from the flesh of the male ... and so, from the spiritual view: the Obliteration of Her, of the Goddess. The Brooders needed someone with Friar Alfred's youthful vigor, physical strength, Lion-like leadership, iron stamina and, seemingly, insatiable hunger for Communion with God.

But he had left. " _He who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God_." Luke (as did Friar Alfred) knew the doomed Fate this threat conjured: Ejection from The Garden.

Once Ejected — "Cast out into _The World!_ " — Luke still quested for this Communion; for the greater Family; indeed, had come to believe, by the time of his Departure, that the Dream could only be fulfilled, joined when "outside" The Brooder's Dream. And so, Doomed and Fated, he entered the World: the Marines, and encountered Vietnam as a Spy, designated Assassin: having been selected for Black Ops ... and was, while in Vietnam and after, bounced hither and thither by events and happenings and people he could scarce understand or communicate with or love or commune with ... until — exiled, again, to Southern California by a mandate (delivered in yet a first manila envelope!) from deep within the Pentagon — he met Laura.

Laura who was dismayingly Other; not easily swayed by him; who pierced through to him the moment she touched his flesh, massaged his first muscle; she saw The Snake and a thousand snakes slithering up and down his body ... but he pursued and she accepted: for that is what it was: her searching for the Ouroboric, and he biting her: his tail.

And as youth often self-deceives, they thought that they had "found it." They betrayed their moments of Bliss with celebrations of Happiness and Love and Joy and Togetherness ... indeed, it took time for them to grasp that Pleasure was all that the communal dreaming in California would allow: there, where the Body is reduced to skin; greased specks on the sand; slathered and slobbered with gums and goos and unctions with which to offer themselves as sacrifice to the Sun — here a mocking play on The Son — for it was the Heat from the Sun which they sought: this to replace the heat from their souls: they surrendering their Fire to become effigies of themselves; to become stealers of the Sun's Fire as they impoverished their own souls through narcissistic pleasuring.

"Heavy," Laura teasingly smirked as Luke ended his ramble.

"Well, it _is_ narcissism, damn it! And _we're_ part of it. Can't get away from it. It's The Brooders again, can't you see? Jesus as the Sacrificial Substitute — _Let Jesus die for you!_ You don't have to live because He died ... aw, bullshit! ... we gotta get away from here!"

It was as clear to Laura. She had read this message in the bodies she massaged. All just flesh and bones ... until Luke hoisted his hulk upon her board, that day ...

And they needed Family. A union with not only themselves but with the Greater Body: that Body which was the Embrace of the God and the Goddess. Not just family in the flesh, for, now, all Grandparents had passed: hers, both to cancer within the year before they married; his dad, long gone, his mother shortly after they wed; no, they needed the greater spiritual Family: and for it to happen they knew that they had to Dream differently. And, somehow — an elusive somehow for Luke — Luke sensed that the California Dream was too heavily drugged with Brooder Dreaming; and, that there he could not Quest; not he, not Laura. So, to his familial Minnesota, but more to the ancestral Mississippi, they came.

Not ignorant that sacral space and time are not tied to a specific profane space and time: as if mechanical — Move to Minnesota and Break-through. No. But knowing that specifics of profane space and time are heavier with dream power in some places more than others. They followed their Dream.

But Hastings was not their Dream. Not even the coursing Mississippi, so powerful as it swept under the leaping bridge which latches Hastings at its sides. No, it was the house.

Like a stone, a cherished stone, they came upon it.

They stumbled upon it. Taking a wrong turn on the hand-drafted map of the realtor. Instead of there it was here: just there, ahead of them, as if appearing as they turned; as if not on any map; just there: an old rambling house — Teutonic in gesture, three towers thrust up: peaked in tarnished bronze — in great need of repair: three stories high plus a cavernous, damp and scary basement; bespectacled with bay windows, and a sweeping bedroom plank of glass which they replaced with a thermal double-paned panel, this just one of over a dozen eyes out into and over the mist, the haze, the glint of the sun and the moon at River's rise ... a house which was instantly known by both as home, more Home, for they rested upon the porch: sogged and decaying boards, unhappy signs of termite conquests — but nothing could hide, obscure, or imprison the spirit which was there ... for the house lived with the river, breathed with the trees: towering oaks, clusters of birch, Christmas pines and a host of bushes and brambles which cluttered and clustered but in their mind's eyes wreathed the house and was the headdress for the River.

"We'll take it."

"I haven't told you the price!"

"Good."

The porch so they knew was a perch for Family. Could sense that it yearned for them to sit so that it could dream them. Could hear the voices from down the cliff, ancient voices, gathering to rush up the banks and welcome them. For all around was the Dream. All around was Family.

"I'm scared to death!"

They hugged; only knowing that this was their place: to begin to Dream what Dream they did not know, but knew must start with Communion.

On their first night: Laura conceived. Luke could feel the pregnancy scurry along his desire of sperm.

Something — "No, someone has happened. ... Now, we're truly _we_."

From the first Brooding in Hastings, they Dreamed _The Hand_. This had not happened in AnoMar. It was how they saw themselves as they felt Communion, came closer to the presence of Family. This Hand was power. It was creativity. It molded them. The Hand of God. The touch of fingers between Adam and God, re: Michelangelo. There was no dearth of collateral images. But they didn't fit.

For Laura the hands and the feet were especially revelatory. She could tell so much when she massaged them; just held them; received their tapped messages from fingertips. How strong a man really was, not just in grip but in soul: she could hear the gentleness, smell the compassionate receptivity of his palm ... and so with the feet: those who stifled their reflexes; buried; did not let her in; kept her as a servant massaging and not as a priestess guiding.

For her, _The Hand_ was the first presence of the Goddess. How the child is received into the world. How her man is brought to her breasts. How His power is directed by Her stroking.

As such, The Hand was the image which lead them to the Holy of The Holy Family; knowing that what they were seeking as a couple, through Communion, through Erotic Embracing was something which makes whole, which heals — a sacral touch: The Hand.

And once this was manifested, they were shocked but delighted to discover ("How many times have I read these chapters, how many times have I brooded upon them and not realized?!" ) — to discover that there is no Hand in _Genesis_.

No, there is the Word. God speaks. Commands. Creates from Nothing ( _Creatio ex nihilo_.). It is the power of dominance. Control. Instilling submission. Not that of the potter, digging fingers into the Earth (for The Mother must be obliterated!). Not that of the Father receiving creations and children as they slide out from Mother. No. The Father does not touch the cheek of the Mother and so become co-creator ... Only with Eve is there a hint here, but it is a hint of utmost denial: for Eve is formed from a rib: male life — not from a heart, not even from the cock's fiery power, no, from a bone ... and it is such that she is subordinated, chained in submission, derivative and totally deprived of the presence of her Mother ... made from the male: male-factored; truly a male-feasance.

For Laura and Luke becoming Hand empowered them with greater touch. Wherever the one went, the other was there: in the palm, messaging at the fingertips, felt in the grip. And as the children came, so did this feeling of creative Hand guide them and inspire them. Inspired them _until_ Brooding the Dark Vapors.

But Brooding being what Brooding is: a wandering into depthless dimensions, they also sensed that The Hand was an unfulfilled image. That it was, itself, only part of a Dreaming which their Dreaming was but a infinitesimal part of.

Thus: The Hand brought Dread of the Unknown. Fear of What Calls.

Again, but this time with this dosage of Fear and Trembling, The Hand stood for a call for an even greater Communion, for an even fuller Embrace than that of even The Holy Family.

"A Presence which moves beyond The Brooders dreaming. Which takes us to a beyond _Genesis_."

"This is a troubling and terrible thing."

Profoundly perplexed, "Why?"

"Because it means that there's _more_ than the God and Goddess in Embrace."

" _What_?"

"What or _Who_?"

Yes, a greater Communion, a fuller Holy Family ... a breathing which they only sense they will breathe, can breathe: more, which has begun to breathe them!

... and so they practice Brooding; offering themselves as Hand; open Hand; caring, healing, yet submissive, vulnerable ... they Brood and wait for understanding.

Little did Luke know, little could he know, that the manila envelope held a vital clue.

# CHAPTER 4: THE ENVELOPE

Luke sits in a waiting room, like waiting rooms everywhere: a disguise for what is actually going on; at the dentist there are no pain-o-meters, rather _Readers Digest_ and its assorted quips and quotes, as if being there had something to do with humor, yeah, maybe black humor; and here, governmental agency — how many of these waiting rooms in the world, across America, even in the smallest town: all designed by Kafka, hiding what they really are: altered states of consciousness ... and he remembers those monastic: he waiting for the Abbot, to tell him that he wanted to leave, and remembering his waiting in a like room when he wanted to submit his candidacy for Investiture; yeah, there he had learned about waiting rooms — " _What is, is not!_ " ... How could he have ever guessed what laid behind those monastic walls, how different ....?

"Mr. Jennings." Not a question; not a request; just a call, as if for the sheep, the cows, for them to come in from the pasture; she was in fashionable attire, nothing to betray what was actually going on ... going on: here, Washington, D.C., in the suburbs: Washington Grove — a corner pocket; down an alleyway of some kind of power: he had read the name on the card and it was like yesterday: Friar Roch ... somehow his former name: _Ronald W. Cleaver_ ("And the W stands for Washington," he proclaimed that very first day — how many years now? — on the steps of the minor seminary; standing there like Washington on the prow of the boat crossing the Delaware ... Was it true or just a painting? ... and it hadn't been "Ron" but "Call me Ronald W.") — and so, how could he _not_ know: there had to be only one Ronald W. Cleaver ever in existence; but his name, now, would always come tagged with "Roch": for he had seen himself as "Rock" and wanted "Peter" but some yet to die monk thirty years his senior had that sacred name and so he was Roch, and during the Novitiate and for two years of Simple Vows and all around the world on jaunts between classes in Rome, so Roch had been Luke's (then Friar Alfred's) companion: "Not close. Yeah, we were physically close, but we never could, how can I say, cross the Divide"; I don't know; Roch was always announcing, " _Alfred, we got something to do together, don't forget that!_ " — said it at the close of each year before Luke went home or at any moment of departure which would take them away from each other— most heartfelt, with a whisper of a tear, at the bottom of the steps, those grand, incalculable steps of that climb which raised one up to the Brooders' threshold: the day he left, hand on the car door, decision made to leave before Ordination: Holy Orders: but Ronald W. there, not letting this be a final departure, no: "Alfred, we got something to do together, don't forget that!" ... not, again, that Luke, then Alfred, felt that he had anything to do with Roch or his future, but that's how Roch was, sort of twisted on Luke, had some queer bead on him ... and now, nothing on the business card inside the envelope but the name; no phone number, no address, not printed anyways, just scribbled, in someone's hand, quite legible, Luke averred the guess that it was this woman's, but, then, who cares? ... and he rises and moves towards the door, just a door, this just a house, on a residential side street, tucked away among the plebeians, but Luke had known the minute he saw it that it was governmental; it was the air, the air in the place was — _What?_ Back in that Quonset hut after The Island. That air. That quality.

Luke places his hand on the doorknob ever conscious that he will never walk through it again as he is now.

"You remember quite a bit, Ronald W."

RW — as he was called behind his back in typical governmentalese: shorthand and cryptic symbols for reality — RW rubbed his hands as if drying them with a towel; his pleasure in talking with Luke about "old times" was evident; he tried not a wink to hide the palpable pleasure of the moment.

" _Remember?_ " He stands up and positions himself behind his oaken, high-back chair; it rose nearly clear up his chest: collaring him: but his grasp at the sides showed that he was in charge; it was his shield, possibly his oracle screen: "I remember _everything_. Have you forgotten my photographic memory?" Feigned hurt; sarcasm but heavily spiced with undisguised pride, "Or were you too busy pounding on God's door to notice those of us called to lesser tasks?"

"Hmmm," Luke almost groans; squiggles in his chair; shifts leg right to leg left upon his knee; all of a sudden his belt feels tight and though not wearing a tie he feels a constriction drawing in around his throat; to himself: _What the fuck do you want Ronald W.?!_

"I'm not a mind reader, but I think that about now you've tired of our sentimental banter and want to know why you're here? Am I right?"

Luke smiles a cheek-pinching smile; revealing nothing more than a peek under the curtains; yeah, he wants to know.

RW flies his hands about indicating this and that in the room, "Why all of this? _This_ nothing? ... I won't insult your intelligence, I know you know this is nothing."

In answer, Luke flips the envelope onto RW's desk.

"Ah," RW intones, "the fish spits back the hook!" Smirks.

Luke unlaces his legs, leans forwards and says quite intently, "Don't fuck with me Ronald W. _Just don't_ fuck with me!"

"Tsk!" RW gasps; steps back from the chair, and, except for his quite clever wig (which is betrayed by its lack of silver streaks — but more by Luke's intimate knowledge of Friar Roch's genetically thin and shedding hair) — just about disappears from Luke's line of sight. "Such foul language, Friar. Wait till _Culpa_!"

Luke stands so that he can see the rascal: "Fuck _Culpa_! This isn't the monastery. We're not friars anymore. I don't _have_ to confess to the community, not to anyone ... and not _to you_." The latter shot like an arrow.

RW is frozen; Luke sees the arrow pierce and shatter the cube of ice within which RW is encased ... but all that comes forth is laughter: not nervous, actually that of surprise, more of glee, actual mirth.

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" RW dabs a non-existent tear as his body quivers with renegade humorous pleasure; uncontrollably vibrating like a string on his treasured acoustic guitar, a gift from the famed Segovia, himself.

Elusive; a note plucked and not retrievable; RW glides over to a side console: there to hit a button, powering an automatic slide which reveals a larder of bottled delights; these plus a thick, two-hands-required lift of a box of cigars and perfumed cigarettes are indicated and offered to Luke, " Indulge?" Toned with an edge of detective inquiry: _What drugs do you take, Mr. Jennings?_

But Luke deep-breathes away the paranoiac fugue ... "Yeah. Okay. I'll light up: Madura, if you got one ... and some Port, Ruby, if you've got some."

Without saying, "Cuban?" and so through indirection making fun of him; and without reciting the French on the label and so reminding Luke that he, Ronald W., is still in the Big Time: yes, through this restrained gesture of refined Upper Crust hospitality, Luke is served; indeed, with deft delight in the artfulness of his politeness RW demonstrates his Class, that he is still in the Big Time — for he had called the monastery, "The Big Time," meaning by it both that it was sacred time and that they were within the eternal Tradition: monks carrying on as monks had for centuries; but also meaning it as being the true Big Time, bigger than anyone else's Big — but this: no one except Luke knew he meant, for only Luke had come to know this sense of Big Time: one night in Tuscany, there with Ronald W. stoned out of his mind: he who made it a point not to get intoxicated ever in public, but this night with Luke, then Alfred, after a fatiguing day of hiking — weariness compounded by the summer sun and satiated with heavy pasta — somehow Ronald W. had come up with: "A joint. That's what they call it. I thought prison was _The Joint_?" ... and as stupid as the question was, so deep was their Innocence, at least Ronald W.'s, and he took several tokes — this was not Alfred's first experiment, and he had continued to prefer Port — always Ruby — over marijuana, not that he disliked dope but that he liked to smoke: the practiced art of playing a cigar for all its pleasures, pleasures of time and distinct moments, pleasures of smell and feel, yes, the mood, actually the relationship, this is what Luke cherishes; and grass just didn't do that much for him, not as much as a good Madura: smoke and sip ... so he did not wave a red flag at Ronald W., who, in a moment's startled flight of hallucination, was deep into a brooding bitterness, cursing people Alfred had never heard named, and then boasting that, "My people are _THE_ Big Time. Own casinos. All these little fuckers come and throw their money at us! Like we're some goddam Italian Saint or something. _Big Time_. That's what my old man always says, _We're the Big Time_ " ... and an oceanic wave of hatred gushes forth and over and around, and they drown, and as they drown, Alfred hears Ronald W., not the voice of Friar Roch, no, it was this other, but it was Roch's face: "This is the Big Time, Old Man. _This_ is the Big Time."

And then Ronald W., in the person of Friar Roch, vomits the several courses of his fine Tuscany repast and promptly passes out, face down splotto on the ground in his own puke.

Luke, then Friar Alfred, just sat there, pouring glass after glass, until the Moon was high in the sky and it was time to pray _Compline_.

"Satisfied?" A connoisseur's cross-examination.

"Yeah. Thanks."

Yeah, Ronald W., you're _still_ the Big Time.

A couple of glasses; RW sipping cognac: _Two in the afternoon?_ ; and the cigars at half mast; RW twice presses the same button: the console closes; he steps back to his desk: slides the envelope into his right hand and crosses the room to settle into the over-stuffed chair whose twin now occupies Luke directly in front of him.

He does not open the envelope: "You made a mistake." Monotone. Prairie wind.

Luke is not baited; offers him a quizzical look, wants to draw him out.

RW doesn't care how things go, just wants to reach his goal; so he's game.

"She _strayed_ because you _abandoned_ her."

The hook catches him on his lip; Luke smarts and rises on an eddy of anger, but holds, shakes his head and sets loose the hook, "It was _mutual_." Non-plussed.

"Hmmm," and RW gives the fatted arm of his chair a rush of taps with the edge of the envelope: all sound drowns mute into the bosomy fluffiness of the accepting chair.

Luke wants to know more: "Why _now_?"

He knows what he knows, but what does Ronald W. know?

"Do you think she's dead?"

Contact with aliens. _You want me to talk about her, spill the beans: tell you about her underground years, her criminal flight_ : "Do you?"

RW opens the envelope, taps out the eight by eleven photo and holds it up like icon for Luke to see; RW does not look at it himself:

"You didn't know we were watching, _did you_?"

" _We_?" Almost too eager to catch RW in a reckless revelation.

Like a dart, "Yes, _we_."

So, Luke knows. Knows now that "We" is not just the government — " _We_ have met the enemy and it is us!" — but that it is them: O.S.O. — The Brooders ... and that Ronald W. is indeed The Big Time: crossing over into worlds sacred and profane simultaneously ... here showing him Rian's picture — her and him, on the steps of the commune "Mother Earth," ( _When? '72 ... three?_ ) there saying good-bye; after having found each other, no, not found, discovered: surprise and novelty; astonishment; yes, astonished each other in soul as they had transmuted themselves through sexual embrace; ah, they had just celebrated themselves as TwinFlame, what a moment! ... was there no privacy? no place unseen? were They truly Omniscient? the many-eyed god: God in His jealousy peering into every pore and orifice of His creations? ... _Rian_ : accused of so many crimes: the most heinous being her felonious womanhood or femaleness or however it should be spoken — sheltering battered women and their kids in the darker days when such was to stand accused of kidnapping children; of interstate felony when transporting women to abortion clinics was _verboten_ ; of destruction of property through ritual desecrations of "Men Only" spots: Fortune 500 executive suites; Notre Dame's football locker room; computers at the New York Stock Exchange ... in fact, what "crime" against maleness has she not been accused of? ... and, today, what would she do ... or is she doing? ... and here, this foolishness: _As if my relationship with her had anything to do with who she became!_

: _But how else? I knew this would happen; had to happen. She is me. I am her. Laura I love, but Rian ...._

Something he could only hint at with Laura. Never fully disclose. It would be like peeling away his skin to show her his feelings — it just couldn't be done. But when he made love with Laura, there were those nights, yeah, _Rian's Nights_ : he could feel her there; as if she had come, yes, she was there: astrally ... and the room glows with chestnut filaments of light and Luke knows she is present and that Laura is but vehicle: Laura like the host and the cup: instruments; her body as instrument; for when he touches her hair: streaked, hiding early grays: sorrel strands slipped through his fingers: _Ah, Rian!_ ... and he can hear her voice when Laura speaks, and he kisses her words and finds himself asuck her breasts, there draining from her the pain of her isolation, of her self-exile, for where she is he does not know, but, yes, knows it as where he had been: The Island, the monastery, that moment atop Mount Subasio ... yes, Rian needed him to be filled with her loneliness, her anguish, her regrets, but, no, it was _not_ abandonment; she did not accuse him of abandonment, for what was this now but their joining — _Have I ever left you, my love?_ — and he strokes her breasts, and walks his hand across her belly, there to pierce her flesh and slip through her wound into her innards: settling in, being digested by her, for she was in need of his strength: the power of his arms she needs to consume to renew her strength; the fierceness of his desire she needs to blow upon her fire, keep it strong and steady; the bold stare of his eyes, oh, how she needs to pluck and swallow his steel-eyes so that she will not lose sight ... and he is inside her, her flesh, but not her child, no, her lover; no, no, more: _TwinFlame_ ... and he comes again to her, this time from the Sky, floats above and about her, then descends like a cloak, falls in full flesh, capeing her, and he is skin to skin at every pore and they begin to speak and chatter, yearn and groan, laugh and cry: pore to pore, feet to feet, lips to lips ... and he pierces her, his cock as sharp as his desire enters and rips her cunny, wounding her, there desirous of her blood, and he falls down at her feet, there placing his head under her feet, there pledging himself and then rising faithfully to drink of her blood; she now the Cup of Salvation; she now the Bleeding Wound In The Side; she now the River of Life; she now the Quencher of Thirsts ... and as he drinks so she is filled; filled with that of him which she is not; filled with his penis power; filled with his deathless courage to love her to the end of time; she being now at home with him; she being home; she being him; ... _Rian_.

"It's a good picture, don't you think?" Luke can play the game.

"Do you have a better one?" Clearly meaning, a more recent one.

"I do. ... _Yes_ , I do."

RW arches an eyebrow of expectation.

Luke can't restrain his amusement, "In my heart, you _asshole_ , in my heart."

It's five minutes of nothing but nothing: no posturing, no non-verbal sleuthing, just some drinking, some puffing away. Luke wants to leave but knows he can't; must find out what's going on.

" _She_ abandoned you?" A startlingly direct and honest question.

Luke was tiring: _Cut to the chase!_

"Look, Ronald W. — Friar Roch — whomever you are _today_ ," he shoots an idiotic grin which truly expresses his idiotic feelings, "that's all you guys can dream, isn't it? I mean, for Christ's sake, Don't _they_ get it? Don't _you_ get it? All you can Dream is Obliteration, Abandonment. Maybe you guys haven't been listening to my dreams. Maybe I'm more away from you guys then you think. Laura and I have gotten beyond the traditional story of Adam and Eve. We've worked through that. I'm sure Rian's past that. _Only_ you guys are stuck, I swear." Okay, now, deal!

("Friars, Absolute Silence during meals!")

" _We_ know."

_Jump on it!_ "Yeah, you know, but you can't _do_. You can't Dream how we Dream, isn't that it? Isn't that why the Order's dying?!"

For the first time RW shifts in a way which reveals a discomfort.

"Jesus, Ronald W., what were _you_ Dreaming? Weren't you doing David or something?"

Without guarded thought, RW answers: "Ham. They changed me to Ham." This he clearly regrets upon hearing himself; not that he gave it away with an "Oh, shit!" or anything, no, only Luke could have known; had seen it happen before; RW crosses his feet — that was his habit when he screws up; even when kneeling before the Abbot during _Culpa_ , Luke knew when Friar Roch had really screwed up because he would cross his feet.

" _Ham_." Luke said, drawing the blade; _Enjoy this, it may be all the blood let tonight!_

_Ham_. Each monk had a Scriptural Story, a Biblical dream, to Dream. And there was the discipline of their personal dreaming, working the image of those they dreamed about into daily life: here, Ham: the one marked, stained; son of Noah who had seen his father's nakedness ... and by implication (but how else?) his mother's nakedness: Which was the greater offense? — but a thought not but for now ... and then the Discipline of the communal dreaming: Brooding — this the special call of the monks of the Order of Strict Observance — to dream communally and through such a Dreaming to keep the mythic web intact.

For they were guardians of that arcane Tradition which understood the divine mechanics of _Genesis:_ which clearly showed that God The Father Almighty brooded; and that from His Brooding so did Life in all its individualities and specificnesses come to be: plants, animals, humans, rock, water ... Truly, the starting point for spiritual understanding, the guideline for developing the Discipline, the method for assuring contact with the Divine: each and all was succinctly summed up in that one simple sentence from _Genesis_ : "When God began creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was a shapeless, chaotic mass, with the Spirit of God brooding over the dark vapors."

Indeed, Luke had known (then Friar Alfred) about the connectedness of this Brooding task. Had seen through this Dreaming how profane time, all secular events, were allowed to be, came to be; indeed, how Sacred Story and profane history synergistically mimicked each other.

Allowed in that the profane was the limited version of the sacred; a sort of cosmic short-hand; here, Ham: the sacral myth which undergirded the secular vision of the American South's justification for slavery and America's unflagging racial battle: Ham the Black One; Negro; Alien; Marked.

Undergirded as flowers are rooted in nurturing ground: here, the thousands of Christian sermons preached, connecting with the incessantly re-worked secular storylines which flowed into print and then film and then seeped through the Tube, these linked with the laughter of jokes told time and again about Coons and "The Nigger in the Woodpile," and honey-yoked by words: Boy and Sonny and Shoeshine and Yessah! and Nigger This and Nigger That ... words and stories which were judged _not_ Sinful: not even Venial, never Mortal!

_How fitting that Ronald W. now seeks Rian!_ For she must have come into his Story. She so much in secular space and time the Marked One. She the enslaved woman seeking freedom. She must have slipped through RW's Brooding on Ham into their communal dream: _This is their bond!_

"There's nothing wrong with The Brooding," RW lies; so slickly that Luke had to remind himself where he was.

"We're stronger than ever," and he nods his head in trial close.

Luke sighs, "Don't go into _that_. ... Look, _don't_ fuck with me. _Just_ get to the point."

"The point, my dear brother — and you know you're my brother, _still_ ... not just still, _always_ have been," and RW pierces Luke with a blade of what he accepts as Truth, " _always have been_ ," he repeats: once, twice; "Haven't you ever even given it a thought that all you've been doing is still the Dreaming? Still _your_ Brooding _Genesis_?"

_That_ thought, _that thought_! ... Luke watches _Apocalypse Now_ at least once a year because he fears he is Kurtz; fears not his own madness but the madness of it all; _Of It All!_ — of God and Goddess and the World: just mad.

"I'm not biting": a dose of bravado; but RW can't figure.

"I left the Brooder's Dream, where? under Laura's hands? somewhere. You guys were just _not_ there. Or if there, I'll grant you that, maybe, well, you lost your power .... _I found_ the Goddess and that's what you've been Brooding against, isn't it!" His voice a tad more triumphant than he likes; but images of Cardinal Bao Duc are flashing through his mind — he who had dreamt Joshua, and he who had confessed to Luke that it was his Dreaming which kept the Vietnam War alive ... so why not take one moment of triumph: for the Cardinal, and for how many others who got ground up by the War: that Dreaming and Brooding _against_ the Goddess?!

"Foolish Friar Alfred. _Tsk_." Rakishly condescending. RW closes his eyes and gives his head a slight shake: right, left and then ports open again; sets his glare upon Luke and repeats, in cold sympathy, " _Foolish Friar Alfred_."

It all ended there. "You're just fucking with me Ronald W. So, _fuck you!_ " And with counter-pointed theatrical politeness, "Good Day."

RW sat in his chair for a long meditative minute, all the time tapping the edge of the photo against the muffling arm of this grand and ever-comforting, ever-succoring chair.

# CHAPTER 5: RIAN

Why Rian?

Luke knew; at least he thinks he does.

When he tells Laura, she is not so sure that he is right. His visit to RW sounded too spooky even if not true; even if there were no Brooders and no Black Ops or CIA or whomever-they-really-were governmental agency, she is definitely sure she's not sure.

However and whatever: Ronald W. — he's the key.

_Why Rian?_ necessitates answering, Why did Friar Alfred leave and become Luke Jennings, again?

Or, better: Did he ever leave?

Which implies: Has his Brooding ("Not just mine, but _ours_!") stopped — as Luke had always believed — stopped being part of the monks' Brooding?

All at once, so it appears, "they" appeared, popped up, were born, dropped from the Sky, however you want to understand it: but The Great Religions as any pop historian of paperback religiosity will contend, "The Great Religions: Buddha, Zoraster, Confucius, Lao-tse, Jewish prophets and the "7 Wise Men of Greece" — all emerged around 600 B.C." And, then, the explanation: to wit — _Great Evolutionary Consciousness_ (favored by the humorless Humanists); _Testimony to God's Plan_ (as told by the Survivors, re: Conquerors: the ongoing Judaeo-Christian-Islamic-Mormon-Assorted Fundamentalist Warriors); _Angelic Seeds from the Higher Planes_ (Theosophists and Gnostic Fringe now turned into the Fervor and Chant of the Theoretical Physicists), anon, anon.

And if your God was not originally there, forsooth, Genealogical Squares are used to verify the Celestial Connection.

But to understand Rian, this pithy statement about the Great Religions must be grasped, understood, and Brooded upon in all its subtleties: _All At Once The Cock And Only The Cock._

It's an amazing story. _Fascinans_.

The worship of the cock; it is historically located, more, it is the Root of History. (Elsewise, The Pen!?)

So, why Rian?

She is the Sixties.

Like 600 B. C.: "something happened." The Age of Aquarius? Yuck. Yuck. Luke sniggers at that: Pot Heads and Braless Babes and Free Sex ... All Washed Away In The Age of Aquarius! ... No. " _Something's happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear_."

The Brooders know.

To them it was clear: the She Devil, again.

How many times in how many ways had they beaten Her back? Whipped her? Burned her? And finally controlled Her through the Dogma that _Sex Is Only For Procreation_.

Sure, men could dream and women could dream: their small dreams, their broken shard dreams, their "take me to a therapist!" dreams ... but they could not Dream; not Communally. This knowledge; this power; this blessing had long been withdrawn.

And it was always by foolishness that She tricked Her way back. Foolish males who maintained Her shrines, even if only as side-altars. _Don't they know that fire burns!_ Fools. And more fools. 1954: The Marian Year: Foolish Pope! Yoga and Tantrik practices. Kali. The Psychological claim for "Feminine Instincts"! Again, Foolish Papa: 1988, Marian Year! ... What clever insights will She not use to trick foolish men? ... Take Freud: The Id. He should have left women to die of hysteria. But in the Name of Science and for Progress and The Truth Must Prevail and all that: what did the Sixties reveal?

A time of Revelation it was. Not a decade, not a chronology but a period of Recklessness, Foolishness ... How stupid were the Hippies? Even to Luke they were stupid — not knowing the true dangers of Peace; for what would humans do if they could not war? Luke had lived among them: ah, sweet _Sunflower_!: and he knew that they did not know how to handle the Sacred Questions: whose Answers devoured those who asked them: unless they were willing to be transformed. And the Hippies were not willing to be transformed; only Pleasured; Smoked; Altered — masturbatory self-ejaculations On High! ... so how then could they stop the primary transforming ritual of the Tradition, of God Our Almighty Father? — the ritual of war; Sacrifice?! ... ("Did they want to?")

The Brooders. They knew: and know: that each Story has a Beginning and an End. They had been Dreaming before the Stories were. And so, they knew what must be done. That The Act had to be acted again. That the _Genesis_ Act of Obliteration was the Ending Act as it was also the Beginning Act.

The Brooders marked by a sidereal clock; one bound to the greater rhythm of cosmic life; one linked to events astral and divine.

The Sixties, then, were a clock-striking as much for them as against them.

It was an awakening and an alarm.

They understand that _Genesis_ is a Story of Peril. Great Risks. The Father Almighty draws Creation from _within_ Himself! Without embracing Her. It is _His_ astounding exposure of His most intimate Self: either a truly awe-inspiring and worship-worthy Act of Self-Exposure, Self-Emptying, Self-Humbling — an Act which, if so kenotic, anticipates and is fulfilled in Jesus' birth and death ... or it is a truly cosmic and colossal Act of Narcissism, Skewed Self-Love, Jilted Ego ... and since the Brooders accepted the former as Revelation and the latter as a Heretical Tradition to be Obliterated, when Rian and Sixties Women like her sought Liberation, so the Brooders knew, as clearly announced in the 17th Chapter of _Revelations_ , that "Babylon The Great, The Mother of Harlots and Abominations Of The Earth" was returning. She of whom it was further revealed: "I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I stared at her in horror."

Of greater import to the Brooders was their didactic Tradition (most esoteric and secret) which determined that this blood which drunkened her was The Father Almighty's _Silver Blood_ : blood which he spewed (insemination and generation being matters of Blood in ancient wisdom); a holy blood whose Potency both Obliterated Her and inseminated the Earth, bringing forth Life and Adam and Light and every Fucking Thing: Man as his Imago; Image: Face, Hands, Cock ... and from the Silver Blood The Father Almighty created the Dark Vapor; into which He Obliterates Her: Mother Goddess ("Harlot!) and from which He draws forth his Creation: the Mother within Himself: She the Earth; She the Barren Glob in Space; this He dreams: Mother Earth ... and the Story unfolds.

And it was this _Genesis_ which Friar Alfred Brooded and Dreamed.

But for the End-Time, so The Brooders know, so it has been Revealed: She has to be enticed out, once again, from the Dark Vapors. By their plan, His Plan. Drawn out. Allowed to flourish. The Snake and The Apple. Set free in all Her Dreaming ... for the _Final Act of Obliteration_. For the inauguration of the Millennial End-Time.

And for it all to happen: the Silver Blood must flow, again!

Apocalyptic Act. Eschatological End-Time. For those who do not measure tick and tock with Liebniz's clock, the end of the millennium is just an amusement: movies which scare; novels which titillate; thundering sermons which evoke applause ... still others, believers of sorts, find it a smooth transition: Evolutionary Consciousness; Ascension of The Masters ... but the Truth Be Told (Brooder Truth), it is a matter of Blood: Silver Blood, Moon Blood ... a matter of Birthing: and if not this time the Father Almighty alone, then who The Mother Goddess?

Still: _Why Rian?_

Luke had found her before Liberation. Found her in Obliteration.

Found her and fucked her as was his wont.

Fucked her by fearing her and keeping her Chaste.

But she betrayed him: how else could the tale unfold?

And he left, but to return: and upon his return he found her, again; and he loved her, again; and he accepted her dream; told her so; her dream of The Sisters; her dream of The Goddess; her dream of Creation Without The Father ... and he dreamed her dream; and called himself her TwinFlame.

:When Luke had first met Rian, her lust charmed him as Snake. He did not know himself, then, as Snake, but she did. Knew on that level where her Rebellion was grounded. _The Rebellion of the Egg_. She and her sisterly cohorts: Innocent Maidens ... who took charge of their eggs in the Age of the Pill. They who performed a new daily Communion ritual: the placing of the pink pill in their palms and the lifting up with eyes towards Her and the swallowing unto bodily unity with Her and through this unity transubstantiating into Her Body, into Her Dreaming. They began to Bodywander themselves as Her; began to Brood.

But, from the core of the Forgetfulness of Time, She has been isolated; alone; on the other side of Obliteration.

And so they, "Liberated Women!", isolated themselves; coffined into aloneness: wrapped themselves in fashions of Obliteration.

As the Great Balance demands they plunged into Her otherness; the Dark Vapors; and without eyes behind their heads did not see who followed.

Luke followed. But Rian did not know; did not care; Luke himself did not know where he was. Until Laura.

But it is Rian whom The Brooders followed.

She who found The Round; created the ritual of The Round. That place and time of sacral intimacy of Her. A place of bodily transport. Where women became naked so that they could see their Obliteration; where they could Bodywander (the word Luke had shared with her upon his last departure and which she so shared with her Sisters).

For, for the first time ever, women touched Her; touched Her as they touched themselves and others.

They touched their vaginas.

They touched their vulvas.

They "discovered" their clitorises.

They shared the pill and turned to impregnate each other with their sperm of desire and hunger and lust for the common Body.

And Rian lead the way.

Fated, unaware, stumbling and groping, Luke followed Rian into the Dark Vapors but by a torturously different path. It was for him to enact the _Genesis_ ritual; not of Obliteration of Her, but the search for the Silver Blood: a path which wallowed in the blood of his brothers; he killed: slit throats, strangled and stabbed — a personal murderer; he lived with homicidal intent and intensity; and he rambled through the Dream of Cain and pushed Joseph into the Well and rushed into Noah's tent to see Him naked ... oh, they called him soldier and they called it Vietnam ... and he called them whores and prostitutes and bitches and cunts and pieces of ass — "Gooks, all!": he knifed them all, all with his cock; ripped them from cunny to lip and back again. He dipped his hands into their entrails and mixed them into a great stew; one stirred by Brooding Truths so foul and fearsome that Luke, at once, did not remember;

:until he met Rian, again.

She who had met him as college-age Catholic Woman and skipped through the Field of Mortal Temptation with him ... Can he think of her but of her soul? How he craved her? Just a strand of memory of her chestnut hair and he is off, Called, like a wolf: the Call of the Wild ... and when she comes to him he, again, is at her, trying to eat her, oh, yes, eating her: he swallowed her breasts; nice, round and firm, so he remembers, and what he remembers is how honey-dripping they were with the lusts of other men; men whom he had bested by having her; for having her was like eating the world; he nipped at her tensed darkened nipples and found his tongue snaking round the Apple of Eden, not just the Apple, but the Balls, the Balls of God, yeah, the Power of God, His Essence, what else were these teats: why else were they so desired? _Why do men kill just to touch them?_ Why can the mere sight of them, a sight even when buried under mounds of frosty clothes, lead a man to unzip his fly, stroke his cock, and come in unembarrassed delight under the brilliant light of a midday sun?

Her thighs were strong. She was of rural, farming stock. Firm from walking the Earth and firm from the hard cocks which flew to her and hugged her, becoming her thighs. Luke touched her and whimpered. Transmitted the cry of the upright townsmen whose only restraint was the Wrathful Hand of God and the Statutory Rape hard cuffs of the police; stay those, they would have grabbed her legs like the two handle-bars of an ancient plow and plowed her: furrowed, rutted and harrowed her with their raging heat and desperate seed ... when Rian walked the streets of the town, there was a shimmer in the air: it was the hot breaths following her ... and she delighted in them, though they were unknown to her in the conscious world; yes, from her first years she entered the Dreaming of her People as Her; the Goddess.

Young Catholic Luke had suffered from her body; Wandered but a bit and knew that he had to cut off his hands and his feet and his cock and pluck out his eyes and lop off his ears! — for as the Bible reveals, such should be the state of one who sins as Luke sins Rian.

But he did not touch her Body. And that is their Story. End of Chapter One.

As Catholic Woman and Catholic Man, they were raised to read only a tattered edge torn from the Erotic Map; an edge which lead to the only land noted on the map, that of Genitalia. Since it was all the map that they were told Is, Was or Ever-Existed, how could they even dream about New Lands, unclimbed Vistas, Valleys Sublime?

So, for Luke all he had to grasp was one tiny truth: that Rian had been petted by another. That her breasts had been exposed to another. That she had allowed another to press against her bosomy genitalia.

That's it!

_Only that_.

Humorous as it may seem to some from a later vantage point, back then, it was how their world seethed and transformed.

Seethed and revulsed around: A spot. A stain.

Even just the thought of her impurity stank with the leprous touch of Her Original Sin!

Luke was betrayed; humiliated; cuckolded; lied to ..... by the touch.

_Off, off her Body; away, away from her Body; run, run from her Body!_ ... and he went to Vietnam and he, in a thousand ways, pounded the ground for her flesh as he pounded flesh into the ground: men he slayed; women he fucked; days in drunken self-orgy ... from the Tradition's point of view: he descended into Hell ... and stayed!

When he found Rian again, he had just met Laura. Laura who had touched him and discovered the greater map of Eros on his body and who offered him the one on hers. But, by this time, Luke and Laura had found each other because they each had fallen off the edge; the world had indeed been flat and they had sailed West and slipped away, landing in the Dreamland called California. A Dreamland which is Off-The-Map: where the Mythic Dragons cavort and Astral Monsters lurk!

There they began to consciously practice Bodywandering.

He at first the rusher into the flesh, gorging himself on her, like a naughty boy running naked at beach's edge playing footsie with the Ocean so did he tease himself and her and then bolt and dive in and allow himself to be swallowed; and so swim and swim in her Waters that finally he drowned; She wept for her Sailor Love; but then he came alive as she came unto him.

She explored his greater map. Touched and held and kissed every part of him, sipping at his Eros and tempering his sexual drive so that they could drive together: moments, hours, almost a full day of sitting together, naked, seeing the candle flame dance and being that dance; whispering images of playfulness and affection; nipping and licking and walking in the warm pool together; she had told him that she was clay and it had absorbed him in their first months together, but what changed him was _his_ being clay, and he working his iron-muscled body into Acceptance; allowing her to hold him; hold him like child; and hold his cock like a new born; and hold his head as he drank from her, and as his tongue planted flowers and hid treasures within her delta; flowers which struck deep roots and grew to fill her and so she blossomed; and it was spirit children; they could see the children play; these their desires and dreams;

:and as they traveled this greater map of Eros so did their sexual moments burn deeper: she never hesitant to let him touch her, fondle her, slip his hand and stroke her cunny: watching TV, driving the car, catching her from behind as she vacuumed; and he ever ready for her, but not like the old times: his gun at trigger set, but, rather, letting her take him when she wants: beat him off during a football game, driving him nuts between desire and Desire!; blowing him as he drives, laughing at Death and comforting with her desire to transcend dying; raising his rod after a work out, him totally fatigued, "not in the mood" and turning him her way, riding him, fucking him, him the cunt! .... They loved it!

But Rian was there, _always_.

When Luke had last been with Rian — after a call back to Minnesota to tend his ailing Mother — she spoke to him about becoming _Mother of All_.

And this is where he left her.

Returned to AnoMar. Pledged his life to Laura. Began Bodywandering.

Rian had Dreamed _Mother of All_ in The Round.

This the weekly, or whenever, meeting of Sisters. There to discover their bodies and Body. And so Rian became lover of all. All women. It all seemed just so true and right.

But there was more: Rian not just as lover, sexual partner, comforter, no, she was re-created by The Round as Mother; in time as fully — truly fulsome — Mother of All: for when the Sisters touched her they were infused with a birthing power: a courage to birth themselves, twist inside out and outside in.

Women becoming visible. She could make other women become visible through her Motherly loving, her Accepting touch; like magic, yes, like a witch! Invoking demons and spirits from the Dark Vapors. And it was a magical and delirious time. The Dead were Raised as she stirred the Cauldron.

Raised upon their clits and upon their own pleasuring.

Raised upon their own Dreaming.

Apples which were Apples. Snakes which were Snakes. Not metaphors. Not similes.

No, it was as real as Real can get.

In the room, a Sister's eyes: blind, burned out by rods of male-icious lust. These healed and restored as she is given sight of herself as Good, as Holy, as Wholesome, as Healing, as Moon. Yes, the Moon. It became their Eucharist in the Dark. All that Tradition did not want it to be.

All Sisters come and kiss her eyes; kneel and kiss her Closed Eye, her vagina, the Eye of the Goddess: the eye which sees the first light of Birth and the Last light of Dying. They touch her in her every orifice; they kiss her feet and share her blood: symbolic if not in menses, otherwise, they mark themselves with her blood; for it then becomes Her Blood; the Blood of the Moon.

Moon and Blood. Their blood. Shared blood. Not fearful of the blood. Not embarrassed by the blood. Empowered by the blood. Humbled by the blood. And because they had loved with Men so they knew that their Love now issued forth in Spirit Children. Astral Children of their hopes and dreams, desires and needs.

This was what The Round did; how it created; healed; came to be; for it was not a place but anyplace; and not at a time but any time. It was females discovering their brokenness and offering healing; healing through accepting: any story, any dream ... receiving and accepting.

That it was Erotic was but its Goal, its Purpose. That it involved Touching and Sexual Contact and the worship of Genitalia: lips divine and profane, so it was; so is how The Round Spoke. But not all that was Spoken was Heard.

Yet, The Round was a most difficult time.

Harrowing.

Travel without a Map in a Land without Light.

Bodies that were not used to Wandering often wearied and became what they had been raised to become: fuck-buckets.

Clits that became cocks. Sisters who became Fuckers. Women who obliterated themselves to become Men, again. Images of Male: _Imago Dei_ ; Shadow Goddesses.

Rian had drawn herself with large political stroke. She became in the early Seventies a major Mid-Western representative of the Lesbian Movement. She thrilled audiences with a feminine vitality few had ever experienced. Her moral tone outweighed her physical presence. When she spoke, the words and images thundered. Not from a deep and bombastic voice, but from the intensity. Her tongue was like a Flaming Sword. She took up the cause of battered women and was the impetus for protests and hunger-strikes against county and state agencies until such shelters were built. She championed the cause of Lesbian Rights before the legislatures and from any pulpit or podium which would have her. In the first on-rush of AIDS, she had written and spoken with a passion which brought distant listeners and viewers to tears.

But then, at decade's end, the church burnings.

And the accusations of Witchcraft.

Ah, The Brooders had found her!

Whether Rian had been directly responsible for the movement which took to burning churches, no one knows to this day, for it remained a clandestine and guerrilla movement. But as it happened, so did His Excellency, The Cardinal point his condemning scarlet finger at "The Fire of The Witch!" — Rian was his Witch.

Next, the burnings were labeled Bacchanalian — and stories in the tabloids ran off the page with lurid descriptions of sexual orgies and child sacrifices found charred in pits which symmetrically ("Diabolic Rituals!") necklaced the burned temples.

Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Islamic, Masonic meeting halls, temples of all sorts ... all burned in whole or in part. Two years of eye-witness-less burnings. Two years of no arrests. Two years of Witchcraft Frenzy.

The fact that no one was arrested or that no eye-witnesses came forward was used as justification for invoking the evil hand of The Witch.

Newspapers, journals, talk shows, all airways and print waves and communication ways were glutted with a call to Return to Order, A Call for Decency, A Condemnation of the Dark Faith ... anon, anon.

And as such a feeding frenzy needs some food to burn before the Idol, so was Rian pushed to front and center as The Mother Witch!

Lesbians were hounded from their homes and beaten, some to death, in the streets of metropolitan Minneapolis/St. Paul as well as left as burned husks in the cold winter fields of Stearns County.

Books were burned. Professors driven into exile or forced to write Confessions denouncing their errant dogmatic ways.

Fear stomped the ground and the water of the Mississippi churned with blood.

Sex was Free again. ("Hippie Chick Free Sex!") The Round was annihilated (at least those houses judged to be The Round). On street corners, men wolf whistled without blush. The sale of pornography skyrocketed; the burgeoning Cable TV market rushed out The Eros Channel and The Love Channel and The Pleasure Network; the emerging video-cassette industry boomed with record sales of Playmates breathlessly whispering "My Turn-Ons" and "My Turn-Offs" and letting Joe Neighbor snatch their Snatch as remote cocks surfed on foaming waves from sea to shining sea! Amen.

Though driven underground, Rian continued to lived in exhilaration as Mother of All.

Ecstasy and exhilaration, as she clandestinely journeyed around the world. For twenty-years now, a traveler to those places sacred to her Dreaming memories; out of the way places; places no longer on any map; meeting along the way with women: of every race and creed, hope and ambition, fear and trembling ... and with men ... males both who became her lovers, and who Bodywandered with her.

For her, Bodywandering brought her to the Male within the Female — and she did not blink. Not shrink in horror. Rather, welcomed this unknown part of herself.

As Mother of All, she found the connection between He and She.

As Mother of All, she found the Cock in Herself.

As Mother of All, she found the Cunt in Him.

As Mother of All, Rian became Ouroboric.

" _Mother of All_ " — the phrase drifts through the monks' Brooding: it links with Harlot and She Devil and Demon Goddess and stinks with the fetid odor of rank Moon blood.

This is what drew, and now draws, the attention of The Brooders. When Luke had left her, Rian was not an issue; scarcely a dreamer The Brooders had to fear or track. But track her, over the years, they did, insofar as she hovered around Luke's dreaming.

What they Dreamed in Luke was that he became Cunt: allowed Laura to Bodywander him. And they found this "Good!" For, as they wanted and anxiously anticipated, Luke was bait for Her, the Mother Goddess, she who would lay claim to being Mother of All.

At first they expected Laura; but Laura did not Dream _Genesis_ as Luke did; she was mother but not Mother; Goddess but not Mother. Certainly, so it appeared, not the Mother of All!

But who, then?

_Rian_.

Yet a question which carried a subtle and not so simple counterpoint: _If he was Her, then who was He?_

Somewhere, in some time, at this moment, forever, Rian rejoices in all of this. Knowing only that she has been wandering the desert and crossing the mountains these now some twenty-years, wandering to hear what she hears now: The Call from out the Dark Vapors ... (But _who_ is Calling?)

# CHAPTER 6: BROODING THE DARK VAPORS

"We should Brood the Dark Vapors."

It was the first time ever that Laura had seen Luke hesitate. Normally, he would jump up at any chance to Dream. And Brooding the Dark Vapors had fascinated him ever since they had stumbled upon it, or it had engulf them, no easy explanation: the Third Opening: just the experience: it was after Charles had been born, their first time back into a ritual where sexual embrace would be comfortable for her ...

:just be tender, I'm sore, though it's a soreness I want to share, this afterbirth more frightening to me than the pregnancy; I understand, me too, I can't stop thinking about how, now, you and are I are being born, I mean we're _parents:_ no longer just two people in love, reckless kids fucking round the moon and the stars; ha, is that where we've been? it's been more like thrown down a deep well and being sucked through, like a vacuum, Swoooo! in and out and around the mud and the rocks and subterranean streams, no light, but that strange light, the light which beckons, does not just illuminate, no, it called me and I went ... and here we are!; yeah; yeah; so how sore is sore?; look, it's like this, let's not have any stones, no candles, not even incense, squash the music, just don't do anything except _look_ at _me_ ; okay; and I mean _look_ : look at my flesh and keep looking till you're blind and when you're blind then you'll taste what I mean ...

:white flesh; peachy; moles, childhood scars, a thousand hairs; milky, a hard cloud; christ I can smell you!; smell me! I am odor; and where? let me look, your hand, a geography of feeling, touch, creation, cradling his head, my head, holding my cock, pleasuring your cunny, holding back the blood; closing your eyes, the touch of death ... but it is not your hand, it's mine, isn't it?; is it?; I can feel, feel _him:_ the quickening, there on my pulse, your wrist, there is no light here is there? just the flow, the slow fire; where are we going? ... palm and fingers and clutch and mold and hold and stroke and slap and write, yes, write, invisible letters; but darkly invisible, yes?; yeah, letters which are your soul, Charles' name, our name, no name ...

:the grasp for life; it was there, but _so_ unusual; _our son's unusual?_ ; (no response); can't you see? — the Goddess does _not_ grasp like the God, She is not He ... _okay_! there is a different dreaming; something, in the Void; not just blackness: nothingness; no, it is dark, land of the shade, the Dark Vapors, that is where ....

:yeah; maybe, yes; weariness and ache; sore, so sore; we've been dreamed, haven't we; yes, Brooding upon ....

:and they slept, blanketed by Dark Vapors.

But it wasn't sleep, not like in unconsciousness, rather in consciousness; and when they dredge images into awareness they come with taste; for Luke tasted Laura; that is what their child, Charles was: a taste; and for her it was likewise; there, dreaming, in that other sphere of awareness, that of the shade, things darkly vaporous, the darkshine; and Brooding a simple exchange: he becomes her, she he: simple, simplex, _simplicitas_ — simple but _mysterium tremendum_ : shuddering presence, not like when she came to know herself as, to be the Goddess, but when she simply _became_ him and Him: Luke and the God; a novel presence; an otherness, yet still her: transmutation but still simply herself as himself: tasting him, licking her lips as his lips ... and so does he knows that for her having the child, giving birth is like her being tasted by life, Life; something — and he is part of this something, more this someone — tastes her, and now he is her and being tasted; it all makes its own dark sense, sense in the shade where vaporous light is the shadow of the shade, quite uncommon; and this the child: their shade — from out the Dark Vapors ... here now shared by them as plain and common soreness; for it is upon the body and through the body that the Dreaming comes; and the shade, their child, wrenched them and wrung them together like the wringing out of a cloth; they the common cloth: one body, one soul, but then three; the magic of the shade, of Brooding the Dark Vapors: one plus one equals three.

They awoke knowing that this was where this new type of Brooding had taken them; named it, in its novelty, the Third Opening; deeply through their individuality; through their poreness; down through their atomic being; then through a transformation which is called birth but which is birthing, part of their own flowering, yet always the mystery of the parenting algorithm: the simple yet profound reality of one plus one equals three ... and they understood it all as tasting; eucharistic: tasting the darkly vapors.

Now, Luke's hesitant.

"What?" Soft inquiry; but a look that slices.

"Nothing." Weakly; limp.

Anger. Bristling. Pounding. Fierce. "You're afraid!"

He flinches; snatches a hammer of humor to ward her off: "I'm the Lion ... _Off to see the Wizard ...!_ "

" _Fucking_ afraid."

His head rolls onto the floor and bounces off the wall. Glassy eyed.

Laura _never_ says Fuck like Luke says Fuck; for her it is a sacral word.

Ten minutes of seething; they have never been here before.

Her every look has killing anger behind it: hatred, spite, ridicule, mockery ...

"I'm not up for this." He tries to sound conclusive. He gets off the bed.

She harpoons him: " _Rian_."

Soft, tender as it flies through the air; like a graceful swooping hawk; majesty ... and he never to be ready; never wanting this; never knowing she knew or must know something: for how can she know? — and it tears through his body, shattering his every internal organ; his brain leaks; his soul screams ... in blood he answers: " _Rian_."

Automatically, he lies back down next to her.

You said you began to know like I know; our shared tasting; that Brooding the Dark Vapors endowed you with that Dark Feminine which only birthing unleashes; that power to incant birth from death; to know the body as a Cauldron with all its bones being but utensils which stir the Pot ... and what do you think I got to know and be?

We hardly talked about that.

You never asked. Ha. You never _told_!

Stumped.

You love to wax poetic and tell _me_ about how much of me you've tasted and dreamed. And you know I'm not the poetic sort, so you probably think I'm just some dumb bitch goddess here ...

Wait! earnestly protested.

Don't! with hand raised to ward off his earnestness.

Why has it taken you years to grasp what Brooding the Dark Vapors does _for_ me?

Harsh brittle pause.

Luke gulps; dry throat. Senses the axe he cannot see but feels swooshing down.

I: stops, waits, knows it will sound stupid. I know something from me had to go into you, but what? Not the Dark Masculine?

Laura laughs. A catty laugh; it claws Luke's entrails.

Jesus! Luke exhales; weakness throttles him.

_She's in you what you don't find in me._ Calm exposition of facts.

Say that again? Like a student taking notes; he feels dumb; but he's scared.

Shit, Luke, you're hurting me. The slightest cut is the most tender.

Christ, babe ...

Her look stops him; she impales his heart on a pointy teat.

I didn't know her name; suspected; but didn't know. Till now.

How?

The last time. Tired. Weary. Almost wanting to just roll up her rug and move on.

The last time, you _were_ her. So, I became her. She's you, shrouded in the Dark Vapors.

I wasn't thinking about her: pleading — _Not Guilty!_

C'mon, Luke. Why are you resisting this? Do you think it's any easier on me, this, this Brooding the Dark Vapors? For the love of the Goddess, don't you understand any of this? ... Rian's thinking about you; _she_ 's Dreaming you, that's what _I_ got to know.

Luke is truly dumbfounded. And this is the reward of Bodywandering? he snickers to himself.

Honey, her voice drips with patience, understanding, long-suffering; she takes him to her breasts; she leaks with astral flow ... Honey, she is the child — no, not child; somberly, consternated; not the Goddess, that's what I know, _I'm_ the Goddess, she's, She's ... _some other_ Presence: this is what I do not know, but She is within you trying to be born or created or manifested .... A long pause: tender and hopeful but carrying the weariness of surrender: That's why I've been so afraid. For you ... but more for me, afraid for myself. I don't know this part of you, sweetheart — and I don't know it, not yet anyway, as part of me — so I can't give birth to it, only you can, or create it ... I'm floundering here.

Luke presses closer to Laura: like tiny magnets dragged by sidereal forces of shuddering immensity.

The rituals and the disciplines, these they evolved together; were their common creativities; creations of their common hand ... rituals and disciplines which took them into, inside and through each other; this their Bodywandering: every muscle and sinew, fiber and molecule of their beings, this they used to explore, re-shape, cast, dance, suffer, laugh, think ... that flowing into and through and within another, this they did while forging a common tongue, speech, language imagery ... they'd come to each other using things as symbols and then transmuting into those things: flames atop candles and then they flame atop each other and then they flame, one, just one, together, more than intertwined ... it was altered consciousness, being High, totally stoned, whatever you wanted to call it, label it, for them it was a next step, a twist, a turn of their love, their sexual energy, their greater Eros: they called it The Embrace ... and it was fun as it was work: they _worked_ upon each other; " _Ora et Labora_ " —- Worked and Brooded ... and it was time slipping and space sliding, for at times they talked through sex: _Honey, you're delicious!_ and he'd lick her stomach; stay there and follow his tongue in exploration as it moved like a stream across the prairie, there images popped into his head and at times he'd speak them, _You're wheat and I'm grinding you with my tongue, baking you with my breath, because you make me hot, every step you take makes me hot, I'm at work and I think about your belly and I want to pop my cock and stroke it there, stroke it for all to see, see you as fire spouting up towards the ceiling and I want them to see me burn for you, candle that I am, and you are consuming me, I am your bread, my muscles are for your feasting_ ... at times, they'd talk later, sometimes not at all, not needing to, just feeling what the other feels and moving with it; but they liked to work on the imagery, on words, what others might call "talking dirty" for she'd tell him how she'd be writing, jotting notes about a client's progress in physical therapy and her pen would turn to his penis and she'd see the words as his sperm and she'd stroke the pen making it jerk off with his thoughts and she'd feel him write on her as he had so often with his tongue ... and he'd be in his classroom and there would be boobs, all about him: young girls, old women, it didn't matter, and he'd see the immediate connection between his words and them sucking on boobs, like infants at the breast, her breasts, and she would be lit large across the room, he could smell her and the fire of his conscious mind was being stoked by her heat, her desire and his desire, and he could craft with her energy right there: see an image float which he instantly knew was their image and as he shared it with his students so he saw them eat it and grow ... or could see the ones who refused to eat ... and so they shared these happenings; their common consciousness and their common wandering in dream land; their greater Bodywandering.

However, with Brooding the Dark Vapors all was at risk. This was new territory. An adventure which came to them on its own time; its own pacing. It would just happen. They just didn't need other _things_. They, themselves, were to be symbol, and so become the reality. But it was terrible. ( _Tremendum_.) Terrible in the sense of frightening in the sense of awe-filled in the sense of butt-kicking and gut-wrenching and vomiting forth ... and having to eat one's own vomit!

It was not negative; not at its core; but it was destructive, crafty; the hot spot in the furnace; that core where it touched the other core: so hot it was cold; so cold it burned.

For Luke it was more than not the encounter with the Dark Feminine: that part of Laura which the culture attempted to Obliterate: where the female drew birth from death. For the Warrior: the Dark Male, killing was the substitute for this Dark Feminine. Through war and murder the Dark Male believed he could bring Life: Resurrection. But it never worked. Never had worked. (" _Lazarus, rise!_ ") Was but a mockery of the truly Dark Feminine power.

And through Bodywandering by becoming her and Her: Laura — spiritually, astrally, concretely: so Luke began to know and broaden.

But for Laura? The Dark Male was all the male she, and women in general, had ever known. No need to dream that. So, what was Rian?

Laura had sensed her there. And she had to admit a first bitterness. A taste of fear: hatred. Woman slaying Woman. But she didn't want that. As Goddess she knew that such jealousy was a weapon preventing her from truly becoming Luke in this aspect, this sphere of Dreaming.

The first few times, she actually thought it was Selene. The fear of usurpation: Mother/Daughter contesting: that She represented Luke's transformation into a Father who cherishes his Daughter: here, the Father loving Eve; not Obliterating her. So, Laura labored to accept her Presence, rejoicing in Luke's actual enfleshment of his primary Dreaming task with the monastic Brooders, that of dreaming _Genesis_ , but here Brooding a new _Genesis;_ exultation: here of the Creation wrought by the hands of God and Goddess.

But then it was like She tasted different. In Laura's mouth was a taste she had not tasted from feasting upon Luke; it was not the taste of birthing Selene, either.

The trembling: of awe, pleasure, fear, inspiration ... came when Laura accepted that She shrouded in the Dark Vapors was not Her, not The Goddess: no, Laura knew Her as self-identity — rather, She was, was — how else to state it? — she was Foreboding. With a sense of the Forbidden, and this is what unnerves Laura; this she knew, honestly; that here was a She — and as such must be from the Goddess, yes? — a She whose presence knocked Laura off her center; a presence which was not the Goddess, but not as in "not only"; She was more, _fuller_ ... only the words which conveyed engulfing: swallowing, gorging, consuming ... words which carried a rattle of Obliteration: but not that, Laura knew not that; but of so much change, difference, newness that she trembled, truly quaked and quivered from molecule to abstract thought; from heartbeat to her desire to be stone ... Enticing; Enchanting.

"You knew this?"

"Several months ago."

His face is scrunched with confoundedness.

"Maybe I didn't know. Not until you said her name."

"I've mentioned her before."

"True. But _She_ never said her name before."

"Sweet Jesus!"

Where does Ronald W. fit in?

Good question.

Do you think he Broods the Dark Vapors?

You tell me.

Could he dream Rian? Good God, could he _not_?!!!

You said The Brooders were weak and dying.

Yeah. Yeah ... But like he said, maybe I'm doing what _they_ want me to.

Really?

Anything's possible. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I did The Island. Look what happened to the Cardinal. _Anything's possible_.

Laura wakes as the Moon reaches it peak. She dresses in diaphanous robes. Twelve Sisters arrive: twelve rays of the Moon, and they carry him into The Grove.

Why is his blood necessary for the sustenance of the Tree? This is a question they do not ask. Was not asked of them. But, tonight, there is an answer: " _I am the Father of All reaching up towards the Mother of All_."

She wakes: eyelids pop open as if springs were sprung; and she shivers; warmly.

She turns and glances at Luke. The hairs on his head are a thousand branches with a thousand leaves.

She raises herself up to gaze upon his face: Rian peers through the sleepy veil back at her.

Laura feels the blood draining from her body, feeding Luke's roots: it is magical, majestic! A thousand branches bequeath each a thousand leaves which transform into a thousand eyes and a thousand lips and a thousand tongues and a thousand fleshes and a thousand hearts and ....

"We must find her."

" _Must_?"

"Don't you think Ronald W. is looking for her?"

"But where would _we_ begin?"

"Not we, dear. _Me_. This must begin with me."

"I'm not following ..."

" _She's in you that's not in me_. That's why. You couldn't find her because you don't Brood the Dark Vapors and Dream her. ... I do."

"This isn't something we can do _right now_. Chase after someone. We've got jobs and kids ..."

"Luke," like the moment she told him she was pregnant; a voice tinged with a power from the Future, "Luke, _this_ is our Work, _this_ is our Fire. We both've known that She calls to us from out the Dark Vapors."

(" _Time waits for no one ....!_ ")

"I'm afraid."

"I'm terrified."

Amen. A-men. Deo Gratias. Who's ending this prayer, anyways?

# CHAPTER 7: MACHINE

The second meeting was not by invitation.

No envelope. No signature card. No prepaid flight to National Airport.

"Professor Jennings?" with a slight interrogative but like being asked as the handcuffs are being pulled out; they knew their man.

Luke didn't have to question them. He knew. Ronald W. wanted to meet with him. More, he knew these two — _Like me?_ — were more than O.S.O.; could smell the _Semper Fi_ : those looks which said, "However you want us to do it, we'll do it." No exclamation. Just their procedure.

So, this time no good-bye to Laura or Selene permitted. All was haste: no courtesy voice-mail left for his Dean to find a replacement — Luke had not a clue to how long he would be gone or actually why. After the first meeting he had chalked it up to governmental and Brooder paranoia. Both were in deep trouble in respect to the cultural and spiritual rift widening. That there was a direct connection between both entities, was he surprised? No.

You don't have to be an intellectual, he lectured, to see how the Messiah myth slickly transforms into the Manifest Destiny myth. The Father chose His Son to die and so save all souls, and He chose America to continually wage war so that all on Earth are saved.

Over the years the translational links became more exposed. "Social control" mechanisms some scholars labeled them; "Class oppressive" mechanisms the Marxists lamented; but for Luke there was more to it: it was a matter of Spirit. Of transformation of the whole people; People.

Luke accepted the consciousness of Cotton Mather and his Puritan Covenanters. They had, indeed, made a Pact with God The Father, Almighty. And it had empowered them. Who could argue that they lived out their Dream? They conquered the Land; subdued the Enemy; banished Memory and so the demonic Nightmares ... but it was not sociology or politics that Luke wanted to comment upon, no, for in those realms there was no real conflict: America had no contesting Parties, no true bout with its Shadow and its Demons, not, at least, in the public space ... what he exposed as their Dream was the Machine.

"As simple as that Professor? The machine?"

_Simplicitas_ , again. Oft cited as only a monastic virtue, it conveyed a simple-mindedness, one doused with humility. For Luke, that was true power.

"Look at _Genesis_ , how does Creation proceed? Is it a matter of the flesh and the spirit groaning and bleeding and howling as life is born?" He'd wait; their minds churned ... or drifted off, drugged by The Brooders ever present.

"In _Genesis_ , Creation is mechanical. A word, a sound, a noise — the original text can mean many things! — issued and then animals and plants and people and the light were created." Was he getting too abstract?

"Look, reflect upon this Sacred Book, the God force is in the background. It has no personality; has no presence — for to have presence you have to be present to someone. And where is that Someone? The Goddess. Not there; the _nihilo_." Some always scribbled furious notes. Others check the clock.

"I've said this before. There is no Eros in _Genesis_. Not human eros. Not divine, either. Nothing but mechanical action. And," eyeing the clock, " to make the jump, and I want you to go into a Protestant church, any church, and look about: no images, no Eros, just crystallized light, just a machine ... go there and _feel_ how you are called to worship."

The bell rings. A small cluster of students do not get up. The rest leave.

"But, Professor, God doesn't have _feelings_."

Luke chuckles and smiles. "That's more profound than you think, young lady."

This time it was, as he sensed from the beginning, more like the weirdness in the military; like _that_ day he was rousted by two MPs and escorted to an unmarked plane and dropped by parachute onto The Island. Today, two guys who looked more like FBI types: haircut, gait, sunglasses, etc., etc. lead him, not touching him, to a car. Non-descript. Probably some rental. And they drive for about an hour, south and east, and, oddly, end up at the Red Wing train station; board a train; just like in a James Bond movie — an empty caboose; all this without talking. Luke didn't need to ask. They probably didn't have much to say.

The train stopped at late twilight. Luke had been napping; after a decent meal, and him never giving a thought other than that Ronald W. was waiting.

They exit the train; another rental; and it doesn't take long for Luke to put it together: the fields are Iowa and the town must be Dubuque and he'd bet every nickel he had that they were heading for New Mellary, the Cistercian monastery: Trappists, "The Silent Ones" — kin of The Brooders. _Kin_ , Luke cynically snickered to no one, _But little do they know how different!_ For as quiet as the Trappists were: and in recent years they had reversed the liberal reforms of Vatican Council Two and returned to communicating solely through signs and gestures ... for as quiet as these monks were, so were The Brooders active, hyper-active, every night booming with spiritual voice: reciting, reliving, chanting and Brooding the Dreams and Stories.

"Nice digs," Luke dopes a smile at Ronald W.

Luke had expected Friar Roch, and, indeed, that who he's got.

"You know I've been _here_ before."

"Really?" condescendingly queried by the good Friar: aired by one too busy to truly take notice of a fact already known, of an item not on the agenda.

Luke catches the tone RW wants to set: magisterial authority. He sits down and waits like a spectator.

RW is Friar Roch: full monastic dress: hooded: smells like candles and High Mass incense.

The two escorts had left. It is a cavernous room; not just as to its size but as to its feel; the blocks are massive granite — Luke can see the monks laboring, cutting the stone, lifting the blocks, hauling them by donkey power, then using simple hoists (complex "modern" — meaning motor powered — machines were forbidden back then) and laying the blocks, one by one; sweating; ants hoarding up for the cold winter: hoarding spiritual food in the stones. To him, Luke, it was just another machine. The monastery as machine. Notre Dame de Paris as machine. Chartres as machine. The Dream mechanized. ... He shook his head to snatch himself away from this mental fugue.

No drinks are offered. No cigars. No urbanity. RW as Friar Roch slips up his darkening hood and is swallowed into facelessness. But Luke doesn't care. RW or Friar Roch or whomever, he just wants to know, _What the fuck's up!_

But before he can say anything, the monk speaks: monotone, paced like Gregorian chant: "Watch. Watch with me. Watch." Hypnotic; commanding; soothing.

From out of nowhere a light flashes; no sound; no cranking; just light on the wall to their side, and soon it is a film; good quality; not home made; pictures of the abbey, New Mellary, the landscape: it is summer-time, the fields are bounding with crops; monks picking up after tractors (tractors driven by laymen) ... and then a sweep to inside the Church: a Sanctuary resplendent; resplendent with candles dancing on virgin wax, Luke can smell the purity; flowers all about; the altar in whitened sheets and crowned with golden candelabras and cups and an aspergillum in a golden crock ... and it dazzles; lights bound and bounce off and Luke has to squint from the glare: poor control of the background lighting — but that thought quickly vanishes as the familiar creak of thickly hewed doors draws the attention of the camera and Luke's eyes to the back of the Church ... monks emerge from the shadows and process down the main aisle towards the altar.

Luke yawns and rubs his eyes; he doesn't have his watch: top drawer, left side: old lecturing habit — but the darkening stain-glass behind Friar Roch's desk indicates it's about eight-thirty, nine; been a long day; knew that Ronald W. was up to something, but ...!?

_WHAT?!_ — he had to stuff the exclamatory interrogative back down his throat. His eyes bugged from his head and he forgot that RW was there. Before him were ten monks; ten monks who processed up to the altar-rail; ten monks who knelt down in homage; then two monks stand, meet each other, walk up to the foot of the altar and ... _JESUS CHRIST ALMIGHTY MOTHER OF SACRILEGE AND ALL THAT'S HOLY!!!!!_ ... they undress: a flip of the robes and there stand two people: male, female, stark naked; and they begin as Laura and Luke have often began; palms to palms; turning around and saluting the Four Winds; then onto knees and the adventure into the body of the other ... if he had not known better, Luke would have sworn that Roch and his crew had taped one of his and Laura's Bodywanderings ... _GOOD GOD!_ ... his old inhibitions return; he has his Stones and his own Sacral Place and Time ... _But to violate the Patriarchal Sanctuary, well, geez, holy damn! They're violating their own taboos!!!_

Man to woman and the spreading fever of sexual lust; she is adored by him and worshipped through his every sense; the camera catches their eyes: ecstasy; they pet and stroke and she mouths him; the remaining eight wait, unstirred; in a moment Luke looks at Roch but he is fully digested by his robes ... _What's going on? What's this got to do with Rian?_ ... recurring questions as he watches the pair buck and fuck and explode and consummate and roll-over: like a hot porno flick, but here the two appear to like each other; are familiar with each other; they are tender and even when he spreads her and corks his way up her ass, they seem ... hmmm, quite athletic; practiced ... but Luke does have a hard-on; Roch? ... Luke laughs to himself; wonders what Roch thinks he's wondering! ... _God, Laura will faint when I tell her ..._

" _Watch. Watch with me. Watch_."

The second couple come; and they begin to move as did the first; they are older ... but there is something about the film; the colors, hues, the bodies of the lovers flash almost to negative while streams of color shoot through the film; bad film?; and as they couple the screen turns blue, all background blue; and the lovers become red, a light red, not pink, but quiet toned; it stays steady even though their energy is wild: these two are using props; dildoes, bananas, smearing honey ... crazier than anything Luke had watched touring Nam; but then nothing crazier than what he has done ... yet, this time there seems to be a weariness which is projected; even when the camera catches her eyes as she licks his come off his stomach, that roll of the wanton eyes which sends shivers of fear as well as enchantment up and down Luke's body: he has seen these eyes on Laura — consuming; ravenous; crazed ... but his cock was down, Luke's that is ... and the colors fade.

Three, four and five ran much the same. Without comment there were couples black and white and yellow, some physically trim and drop-dead attractive; others just plain bodies, like brown bags ... but all were now in colors: steady colors; some carrot juice orange; another, caramel brown; the last, the lightest of purple.

_Amazing_ , thought Luke, _what's this insanity all about? Ronald W. has really flipped his switch!_

The light killed; only searching moonlight through the stained-glass window: and now he sights the illuminating figure of St. George slaying the Dragon, the Maiden Innocent being preserved; now, Friar Roch turns towards him, just shadow patches on his face are visible and says, "Thank you for watching with me.": like the newspaper boy collecting on Saturday morn.

"Jesus _fucking_ Christ! Roch, are you outta your goddam _fucking_ mind or what!" slapped onto Roch's desk, hard palm open slap, and Luke almost falling out of his chair he hit the desktop so hard; almost laughing, almost crying, pained at some level at this sacrilege to the Old Ways; laughing at himself for being suckered into this crazy game.

Friar Roch does not move; answer or indicate any type of response.

Luke gets up and starts walking around the room; not far, things are still shadow submerged but he needs to stretch; and he does a few toe touches; all the time his mind is racing: _Where's this going?_

"What did you see?" Sonorous.

Luke chuckles; heaves a tired sigh; slumps back down into the chair.

He answers, "Sacrilege." An indictment.

"Come, come, Friar Alfred, since when is Sacred Coupling a sacrilege?"

"Don't fuck with me!" Luke yells; the echoes die quickly.

"We _shan't_ go in that direction, not this time." A directive.

"Well, then, play this hand straight. _What_ did I just see?"

Luke could hardly believe the next hour, or was it months, years, centuries of talk, images, references, citations? .... it was like dreaming in its most fantastic manner where you keep knowing that you're dreaming but things keep dreaming anyways; a dreaming where you tell yourself that you will wake up before ...

"So, you're telling me — the bottom-line here is that _this_ , this: what I've been trained to understand as Sacrilege is actually Tradition or better an esoteric part of the Tradition? That Sacred Coupling was practiced from Abrahamic times but put away till Jesus, himself, revived it and then Paul buried it again ... and The Brooders have known about this all along?"

Friar Roch slips off his hood. Luke is flash-struck by the Great Tonsure: just a circle of hair, not more than a two-inch band, which wreathes Roch's head and which Luke has seen only in ancient paintings. It strikes him but his mind is too fluxed with swirling streams and upheaving images to make mention of it; somewhere he records it as just part of the weirdness of the moment.

" _Why_ do you think we _let_ you leave?"

Luke wants to scream: _DON'T FUCK WITH ME!_ ... but, like water grinding away a rough stone, the idea began to seem less fantastic than once assumed.

Time passes. Not marked. Not measured. Trippy.

"Okay." A cork on the bottle; no more maddening wine; "Okay. Let's just, let me just accept what you're saying. Accept that what I would have thought was only metaphorical or anagogic, that, that" — he shakes his head, still trying to arrange the words correctly — "that you, that the Tradition, The Brooders interpret this literally. Okay. Give me a minute." ... It took a year, a cascade of synaptic clicks never before made ... "Okay. Okay." He turns a mad eye towards the Mad Hatter! — " _So what?!_ What has this got to do with me?"

Within a tick: "Come now, Alfred, you're being too modest." Friar Roch's face hosts the Cheshire Cat's smile.

Misdirection: "Do these Cistercians know?"

Dismissed by Roch's irritated smirk.

On point: "Where's Rian fit into this?"

Breathlessly, "Tell me."

It was a standoff. Luke refused to speak anymore. He had broached her name and Roch didn't want to play. _Why let him fuck with me? He's obviously slipped over the deep end. How do I know he's even still with The Brooders? He'd not be the first monk to go mad. Like some of those crusty academics who float around campus; they have tenure, elsewhile they'd be locked up. Total dysfunctionals. Guys who had theories as young bucks; ones not accepted; or not recognized; or just ignored ... they play crazy games with their students; mostly harmless; but Roch's not harmless; this stuff is weird. And I thought I had seen weird!_

Friar Roch was on the beat. He had waited for her name. Knew that once it was introduced, that it was the same as incantation: a Call ... She _would_ come.

He moved the matter. Stood and left the room. After his exit another monk enters: Roch's shadow, just there and gesturing to Luke to follow him. Luke follows.

Luke dreams. At least he's dreaming he's dreaming. Gets up. Restless. Yawns. Shakes his body: hopping foot to foot; flexing his biceps. Without a sound, she is there. Apparition of pale glow: her body — shiny, as if with moon dust; sparkles: tiny, glint at him; he winks; she steps towards him and kneels before him; did he have to look to see his cock salute?; she holds him in her cupped hands; his balls churn fire, spit desire and his rod grows large and hard and she is at him with two hands, stroking, and within the rhythm of her stroking his body throbs back and forward, like AC current, he is all fire and smoke, fire and smoke, and she dances around him with her tongue, she now whooping and hollering with silent words around his totem, Native dancing, drum beating, his heart is beating the basso thump of craving desire; and he sucks her in; widens his cock hole and slurps her; has her inside him, rattling around with his balls, and she is delirious, screamingly happy and kicking off the covers and rolling around, she now every image of every desire he has had of the Maiden and the Goddess and the Bitch and the Whore ... she, inside him, pulling at his every desire, desires he has forgotten: Vietnam desires, butt-fucking desires; desires to cleave in two and drink her blood; and she floats up into his belly and he licks her and rolls her about and digests her, but she does not diminish, no, the more he swallows her, consumes her, imbibes her, so the greater does she become; her breasts blossom and they become his breasts, her cunt flares open and birds of paradise fly free and she is his cunt; her hands become his and they tangle, now like two strands, wound within each other, and who is within whom? ... she now having sucked him in and swallowed him; every drop of sperm, every drop of wanton desire; and he swims about her body, into her eyes and down her throat, there to feel the pulsation of her carotid, that river of death, and he reaches up and rips the carotids, one in right, one in left hand, rips them and drinks from them, and he is gorged, belly bloated and his brain sogged with her blood ....

"LAURA!" screamed; night-ward scream; spider frightening scream ... hot, sweating, cold, frigid, Luke bolts up with the call; legs trapped by sheets, sheets entwined like ropes, he kicks and struggles to be free, rolls off the bed, screams again mutedly, rolls and rolls on the ground, cool ground, hard ground, pounding the ground: _Don't fuck with me! Goddam it. I told you: don't fuck with me!_ ... and never since the last time on The Island does Luke become The Snake: coiled, posed, at the ready, waiting for Roch; waiting for Number Three ...

" _Benedicamus Domine_!"

" _Deo Gratias_!" grunted before he could check himself. _Was it a joke?_

He dresses. Showers first. Cold water flat: what else? After last night, he wanted it. _Last night? A dream or a Dream?_ Christ, he wants to punch Roch's fucking face!

"Eggs, okay?" Like a waiter.

"Sure." Like a customer.

Who would ask the question? The table was set. Luke was once before here in this refectory on a Retreat. He could smell the other monks. But he knew that Roch was in control. Had to give it to Roch, he always had organizational ability.

"Your train is at noon." Like a ticket-master.

"Good." Like a traveler.

So, he's found what he wants? But what would that be?

They both eat in silence. As a courtesy, the local _Register_ had been placed at Luke's side. He pretends to read it. Even the comics could not grab him: not his daily does of _Doonesbury_ 's acerbic wit, nor _Dilbert_ 's buffoonery, nor the faux pauxs of _Razor's Edge_. No, he just wants to leave; needs to be with Laura.

"Before you go, one thing." Roch stood up and slipped his hands inside his robes: a gesture of disarmament ... or, of a finger on the hidden trigger?

"One thing. _Sure_." Sarcastic.

Roch does not react. A moment passes. He continues, "Watch. Watch with me. Watch." He leaves the room; his shadow enters, gestures to Luke.

Now, when Luke relates the following hour to Laura he works hard to tell her how natural it all seemed.

We sat down. In that same room. The same movie light splurts out. And there I am. Fucking this broad. Christ, what to call her? As I watch her I know she's a Goddess, but, Honey, you're my only Goddess. Can the guilt, Luke. Go on. Laura wished she could see the film. Well, I'm watching myself as if I'm with you. All over her. Like we're Bodywandering but I'm not saying anything ... then ... and he coughs, squinches his face, shakes his head, looks suppliantly at Laura, she nods; then, it's flip to this negative imaging; she and I, and it's a bright yellow, blaringly bright and she and I are silver, and once the first silver came on I heard Roch gasp, that motherfucker!, I mean asshole ... look, babe, what can I say, I was as ripped by this as anyone, there I see myself pulsating with this silver, well, silver blood, what to call it? — I have to tell you. The Brooders, well, there's this story, rather, it's a belief: arcane, weird — maybe I didn't take it as seriously as I should have ... or must ... but that Jesus was born from Silver Blood and that his potency, his healing powers came from the blood; more that it was the spilling of this Silver Blood which was Redemptive; I gotta think more about this ... well, anyways, the woman, Goddess, what should I call her? anyways, she's silver but just for an instance, and then she's flashes into black, then her body is absorbed by, yeah, _by_ — like it's some B-movie sci fi monster: the blood splotches out and sucks her in ... she disappears from the scene; she's there, and I'm doing these things, he clears his throat, but she — with each bucking thrust, Christ! — she's becoming less visible with each frame, until Roch claps his hands and the light shuts down and it's just him and me ... and I know he's unhappy; he doesn't speak for some time; what should I say?; then, it happened.

This was the part he didn't like hearing, himself. Roch addresses Luke; proper word, for it was with authority; that pontifical rhetoric Friar Alfred had been so used to: especially after his summers at the Vatican ... "Friar Alfred, _We_ have been called and blessed by Our brethren and burdened with the office of Abbot." _So, that's it! Roch's in charge of the Dreaming! He's The Master, now!_

What did he expect his announcement to do? Bring Luke to his knees. Possibly, it was Luke's lack of response which triggered the next line of attack.

"As _your_ Abbot, it is my duty to clarify your obligations."

Pause. Luke waits.

" _We_ have benefited by sharing your Dreaming. We have rejoiced when the Goddess revealed Herself to you in the person of your wife. But now you must know what you must do next."

Pause. Luke just wonders how crocked Ronald W. has become!

"The Mother Goddess has emerged from the Dark Vapors." No pause; Luke is stunned as he hears what he believes is his and Laura's private language; personal images. "She _will_ find comfort in Her role within The Holy Family. _We_ accept this image; We have _allowed_ it into the Dreaming. But ..."

And there was enough hesitation for Luke to know that this was what the whole stupid, crazy, fucked-up day has been about.

"But ... We have not been able to replicate _your_ Dreaming the Silver Blood."

Replicate? How the fuck? I'm not a machine ...

Then it struck. _My own words!_ His own teaching: how the secular is but a way of the sacral. Something yet within the Aquinian tradition, but they've departed from rationality into empiricism: locked themselves into believing that everything: act, thought, emotion: everything could be reduced to one of its parts. _Yes!_ His own image: what he had rejected — _At least I believe I rejected it. But if I'm Friar Alfred?_ ..... Christ, I must've been tapping into _their_ Dreaming! And they have been Dreaming The Machine. Not just God as some Deistic Clock all wound up and set upon a shelf. No. The greater Dream, the fuller Dream of the empirical method: turning ritual into recipe — _Agh!_ ... Humans not just cyborgs, but becoming robots: blood coursing through as fluid not as life force ... _Yeah_ , Luke looks hard and fast at Abbot Roch, _never having felt the passion of Her, sure, he believes it all just fucking! — Goddam, who would believe this?_

"They think it's mechanical?"

"Christ, babe, they think "making babies" is just the old In and Out!"

Laura is clearly worried. Luke reads her.

"Yeah, it's worse than you think when your weirdest thoughts are someone else's logic and rationality."

Laura shakes her head; a heaviness slumps her shoulders.

How to tell her the ending?

"He said. No, Roch _ordered_. God, he does believe I'm still Alfred! Fuck him! ... But the bastard orders me, "You _must_ bring the Great Harlot, that Mother Goddess here." That's all he needed to say. I knew what he wanted. Like rats in a laboratory. He fucking thinks he can experiment _with us!_ Tap and bottle our energy: _bottle us!_. ... Somehow — So, it _is_ true! How could I have known, truly known — until now? _Until you!_ ... Perverse, it gets worse: he wants this Silver Blood so that he can obliterate women!

Offer it, raise the Chalice in his End-Time Ritual. _Christ_!

Maybe you've had a hard time believing me, before — maybe. But, check this out — it's almost impossible for me to tell you this: he says, "The people" — and you know Ronald W. means the pathetic Groveling Hordes! — he says, "The people can have their Goddess and Goddesses back." And I'm just trying to figure out if he's truly nuts or on the level when he clobbers me, I mean, he says, "But they cannot form The Hand." Christ! It didn't strike me at first. But my mental tape spun into automatic reverse, and there it was — I heard it in capitals: _THE HAND_.

What the fuck? I said to myself. What the fuck does he mean? "They cannot form The Hand?"

Like, now, I was truly spooked. _He couldn't_ — I said to myself — _just couldn't have really filmed us; imaged what we've been imaging; got into Brooding the Dark Vapors_ ... and before I could gather my wits I find myself coiled about him, I'm The Snake, there on The Island, and he's Number Three, the only one left, all the others are dead, and he's running back into the jungle, but this time I flash through the underbrush like fire up a haystack and I fly upward and snag his neck with my mouth, crunch my jaws, set my fangs and whip my body around, coiling around, squeezing and biting and spiting all my venom in him ... and it took two other Brothers, two fucking Big Bruise-Brothers! — where did they come from? — banging away at my head ... see, that's why I have these stitches ... and I'm zonked, just barely conscious, on my back, eyes fluttering and the room jolting back and forth ... and I hear him gasping, the motherfucker! asshole, so I know he's alive; but they take him away."

He didn't tell her. Not this time. Maybe later. On the train: they had slipped him a pocket recorder. There was one message. From Roch. "This is Abbot Roch. Friar Alfred, if it is not Rian, then it might be your wife. And if it is not your wife, than it might be your daughter. Bring the Harlot Mother Goddess to us! ... _Benedicamus Domine_." It was threatening, yet a command; a Call and a Blessing; "Jesus!"

Luke cracked and shattered and tore up and dismantled and flung all the pieces of plastic and gears and tape and messages and craziness ... all out into the daylight as the _Minnehaha Express_ rolled on its rigid path, mimicking muddy Ole Miss who was rolling right along side, just going the opposite direction.

# CHAPTER 8: THE BROODERS

Jerusalem was their customary meeting place. It was there that they drew from their Source. The land and the people energized them. Not just the Light of the Tradition, but its Shadow. The buildings, the streets, the planted trees, the languages, the conversations and all that was: the milieu, it was filled with Love and Hate; more, Hate chasing Love, in flight from some greater force: " _GOD, THE ALMIGHTY FATHER"_ ... they all sang in unisonance as they sat down and prepared to listen to the concluding report.

"I have read the reports," Abbot Roch states, "and the signs are strong. Stronger than ever." Controlled.

Around the table heads nodded. Seventy-two members: true disciples, drawn from the scattered winds of the world. In every dress and every coiffure. Shaven heads of monks from all major religions and minor sects. Shaven heads clashing with full-bearded prophets. All with eyes which had seen or have quested to see what the world has yet to see. These offset by an equal amount of prosperous and fashionably dressed men. All males. All O.S.O. Each successful in some aspect, permutation or variant of Dreaming: ambassadors, generals, CEOs ... all bases, sacred and profane, were covered.

Abbot Roch continued, "The One Earth will have its One Religion," and his voice becomes stern and commanding, "as long as we remain faithful to the Dreaming."

Into this disciplined setting a voice rashly pops out exuding Optimism and Enthusiasm: "Rock 'n Roll, my brothers, it's there in the Rock 'n Roll, and as they say on the streets, The Beat Goes On! ... We are the World, brothers, We are the World!"

A difficult smile cracks Abbot Roch's face as he gestures towards the voice, there catching a young face, a monk just five years into his mission — _Friar Francis!_ — he who dreams David and so plays his harp to the world, now, immersed as a CEO of an international music house; a monk who has had breath-taking success in disseminating the Dream throughout the world, carried by the universal language of Rock 'n Roll; but one who could use a Retreat — the Abbot is convinced of this — to refamiliarize himself with the finer points of the Discipline, especially in Dreaming, for of late: two years? — this young David has raised the audio level — the Abbot is not pleased at this memory: watching the blood pressure level of the Brooders flux astronomical — he has agitated by introducing this pagan music: with its heart-attack rhythm, oh, the communal yearning for the sonorous hypnotic sway of Gregorian chant! ... _No_ — and he had to accept this change for, indeed, it was this David's dream to dream ("Am I his Saul?" chilled the Abbot) — _No_ , it was beat and thump and too many fellow monks being disturbed by automatic cock raisings and other uncomfortablenesses of such dangerous music: not music, not just carnal but animalistic, hot, heated: truly lewd! — but as _The_ Rock he had to accept ... "Yes, brother, and we salute your effort." He taps a thick report, "Your success is admirable. God The Father Be Praised."

"Amen." Relief and suppressed amusement surfs the room. "Amen!" " _AMEN_."

In turn each monk reported upon and discussed the details, the intimate and intricate details of His Plan; meticulously placing each grain of sand so that the brick was perfect and so that the pathway would be true: yes, each monk, however disguised and impersonating, reviewed the how of his task: orchestrating TV seasons so that the Biblical dramas were enacted out, time and again, with their full violence and affirmation of human depravity; guiding young songwriters to themes which captured women, sent males hunting them, luring them, and driving them to cage Her; yes, even the details of Management books — ensuring that scholars and popularizers worked the subtleties and nuances of the Stories so that women remained enslaved as they found "Liberation": trapped and strapped with two jobs, two careers; and pushing alienation: the craft of smoking campaigns, beer commercials, and the distribution of dope; dope which kept the poor and the losers from committing worse sins! "Space them out!" was acceptable morality ... and it was this latter theme which assured them, comforted them: for all were children of Ham, at least tainted with his blood: moral blood ... and if the monks did not structure and define "reality" then who would? Answer: The Devil and the She Devil and The Harlot ... so they reported and so they prepared for the coming of the End-Time.

The meeting wore out three hours and concluded the five day _Kingdom Round-Table_ ; this held every three months, and planned for monthly to eventual weekly meetings as the Millennium approached.

After a farewell lunch, all but the Twelve departed. This select group was unknown as to name to the other seventy-two as well as unknown to each other, being blind-folded as they were ushered and seated. The Abbott routinely convened them in a curious room, deep in the cellar of a sacred cathedral: a place each individual inevitably concluded was part of the old catacomb system, but, more than that, it had a design which only the Abbot knew about and which was denied to each other Apostle. For the Abbot — now, it was clear why he had been Invested as " _Friar Roch_ ": monastic humor and expectation, he now _The Rock of Ages_ — sat as the thirteenth: above and outside the circle of twelve: a wheel designed with twelve spokes, each spoke was a room from which one of the Apostles spoke, but which only The Rock of Ages could see and hear.

The Rock of Ages heard all and could speak to all. Each Apostle only heard The Rock of Ages.

The Rock of Ages had always been, through the ages, the Voice of Jesus. Not the Voice of God, no, but the Voice of Jesus. For Jesus had touched the first Rock of Ages and said, "Thou art Cephas and upon this Rock I will build my Church."

As from the first, the Rock of Ages was not selected for individual talents and skills, but, rather, for that individual's Dreaming, and it was Dreaming as it catalyzed, summed up, re-focused, re-formed, and synthesized the communal Dream.

For that is what Jesus' Church is: Communal Dreaming.

All the bricks and stones and theological tomes; the benedictions, sacraments, exorcisms and chants: all but vehicles for the Communal Dreaming.

The Daily Mass, Protestant Preaching of The Word, One Nation Under God: a continuum secular and sacral.

The Rock of Ages' spiritual function was to effect "the whole which is greater than the sum of its parts" or, in theological terms, to effect the sacramental act: to make present Jesus to his Church.

And Jesus' Presence is what all were about; reports submitted about the preparation for His Return; Dated: 2000; the zero year was divine!; The Millennium.

With fervor and steely conviction: The Rock of Ages: "The Lord will return. He will come again and inaugurate the End-Time. All will be conquered. All will be set straight. Justice will rule."

Apostle: "All is ready in the East."

Another: "All is ready in the North."  
Another: "All is ready in the South."

The Rock of Ages knows what is not heard, for it is his to report, and he cannot say, "All is ready in the West." But when it is, _then_ , the Final Act! Then, the Celestial Mass of the Silver Blood!

All in all, Abbot Roch is strengthened by their accomplishments. And he is strengthened by his own belief that his own quest will yield fruition. And so he sends them away with praise but yet with the traditional nightly call of _Compline_ to vigilance: " _Brothers, be sober, be watchful! For your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goes about seeking someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith._ "

As is Tradition, now two-thousand years full, they pray _Compline_ to bolster themselves before sleeping, so that they are spiritually armed to fight the devilish demons of the night; of Her; seduction and infestation; astral incubi and succubi ... oh, pray, pray my Brothers, for She is about; She whom we must Dream against!

"The West," Ronald W. mulls the phrase over. The Jerusalem night does not distract him tonight as it so often does. He loves this City. It exudes the tumultuous energy of the struggle. "Only in Jerusalem can you feel, actually taste, what it means to be Chosen." This oft recalled statement, first heard from a former Abbot and spoken to Roch his very first night in Jerusalem, now, twenty-five years ago; Yes, he thinks to himself, to be set apart; the lambs fenced from the wolves; Jesus raised on The Cross for all to see, see Him as not one of them but as different, as Other, not of this world, truly, not of this world, _in this world but not of it_ ... and his tiring mind flips to images of spaceships landing and astral Jesus exiting; landings all over the world, all at the same time, and exiting are other Jesuses: Buddha, Zarathustra, The White Buffalo and faces with names forgotten to history but all called Avatars ... but, then, he shakes his head and falls to his knees; he needs to sleep, but he needs more to have his Dreaming purified and blessed .... he broods ...

:I am Ham. Marked. And I have offended. And I witness to my offense! I strike out against the Lie! It is I who have dreamed and in so dreaming dreamt _YOU_ ... come with me my brothers, come with me as I dream, for we are all marked, we are all Ham ... I walk into my Father's tent and what do I see? ... I see Her! She-devil. Not our Mother, not the Earth, but Her: Goddess. She assuming Power. She who for eternity has been barren. Look at this dirt I scoop up! It is all She was _before_ The Father came! And it was The Father who made her fertile. Whose Silver Blood laden sperm traveled as seed of majestic dimensions, of rainbow bursts of energy and life, yes, _Father_ we praise You and we Hail You and we know the Dream She was dreaming when I found You. Her Harlot's dream of stealing Life Eternal from You!

:Oh, brothers, Noah was naked. Stripped of his powers. She had sucked him dry to bones and leathery skin. Bloated she was. Sated and bloated with his blood: his Silver Blood — the sperm of Our Father! Chewing cock! ... Ah, what a ghastly sight: Silver Blood dripping down her bombastic breasts, slithering down to her rattling cunny; yes, she called to me from her cunny, called me, her son, to lie with Her!; GREAT HARLOT MOTHER! ... oh, how evil is She! How perverted! How ungrateful!

And so we have left; and so we are marked. We the Chosen.

We of the Tradition before the Stories.

We who must dream the End Time.

Brood the Millennial Doom!

Brood the Millennial Triumph!

For She has been too long allowed her naked existence. For who can resist her nakedness? Look, look around the world: to the East, to the South, to the North and to the West. There She is; celebrated in her nakedness. Sought after. Chased. Held up as prize.

How terrible is She, the Mother Goddess.

More terrible is her deception. Her misdirection. Poor foolish Noah! Dream with me, my Brothers! ... For even now — damned Fool! — he looks upon me and casts me out! He chooses Her. He, so much the slave of Lust, of Her Filthy Passion; he so blinded that he believes _She is_ the power of Life. That She is his salvation from Death and Dying!

Oh, poor Noah!

But, lament not, my Brothers — Dream with me! Brood.

We shall set Her apart, once again.

Set Her apart and leave this world, this earth; this blasphemous Rock; leave it to her as Death, Eternal Death, which is all She was before the Father gave Her life! Drew her from the Dark Vapors.

Dream with me the re-capture of the Eros, of the Silver Blood with which Our Father first inseminated.

Dream with me the withdrawal of that Erotic Fire from all of Her creatures.

Dream with me what the West Dream can dream: the creation of the technology to render her back to her impotent and infertile state!

Dream with me all the vast and wondrous inventions and concoctions which can be created to sterilize Her: every plant, every animal, every molecule of every living thing: sterilized! ... and so prepare Her for the End-Time. Our Time. The Return of The Father.

Dream our leaving: Ascension with the angels, escaping this Hell which is Earth!

At day-break, Ronald W. woke with one tremendous headache. He liked to imbibe; yes, only The Best; but never had he had a kicker like this rushing around in his head.

How had he come to bed?

How had he gotten undressed? His shorts were still on, as were his socks?

Does it matter? he asks himself.

It doesn't, he answers.

So, he is up. Showers. Dresses in his civvies. Slips on a hairpiece: courtesy of the CIA ... "and Hollywood", some voice chides, "Don't forget Hollywood!" — _David?_ — And in a half-hour he is packed, has rung up the Bell Captain, placed his airplane tickets inside his briefcase, and, all in all, is ready and prepared for his global trot as political consultant: indeed, "highly respected," "invaluable," "insightful" ... the adjectival lists goes on, and he likes it — "indispensable" is the one he likes the best: the secular world affords his ego some delights his greater task does not.

Two hours later, up somewhere over the Ocean, he begins to think about Luke. About the Silver Blood — he never was fully satisfied that it was there, no matter what the researchers said, all those _Duke_ para-normals with their Kirilian measurements and assorted astral instruments; he hated their smug reductionism, here, reducing everything to quanta of ethereal forces, auras, vibrations — they know not angels and demons; but no matter, they have now been justified; " _Justification by Faith Alone!_ ": that old Lutheran shibboleth amuses him; but _they_ wouldn't get the joke; they were — What shall he say? — all a bit too Preppy, hmmm, _Weird_ , better word, yeah, weird, but now it seems, weird and correct.

Why is Alfred so hard to call-in? Is it something I've overlooked? Or a real problem?

So, he exhales: a deflating exhalation, one stirred by tiredness — oh, true, he had pushed himself extra hard these last months, but how else now that the Bell Lap has begun?: and so Anxiety in all its capital lettering of ANGST besets him; worms into his body as it cannot capture rest, not steal a second of comfort, not now, maybe never again; He has been Predestined, true, "Truth!" — but such is not mechanical, cannot be spied by reading the daily press or from images bounced off satellites ("Which angels move as Aquinas so rightly spoke about the planets of yore, these our artificial planets, but, more, ourselves orbiting our own Self.") ... FAILURE!!!! ... Roch shakes, reaches for his tumbler of straight Scotch, gulps it down: how this word flags, flaps in the breeze of despair, of his Basic Unworthiness; " _Fail_. And She shall be loosed again another thousands years!" ... _failure_ ; he dozes; he wants to flee, evade the sound, the image, the smell ... perfume of Her minions scratch at his eyeballs! — he cannot sleep, he must flee this plane, this entombment! ... kick open the door and parachute on angel wings ... _NO NO NONONO: Sweet Jesus protect me! Die for me! Rise for me! .... Alfred. Alfred! ALFRED! ... surely Predestined together; how else?_ ... and Roch's courage is in knowing that his Brother has descended into Hell, embraced The World, suffered Her Body: all his women, all his children, they: The Holy Family ... so it must be so; SO IT _MUST_ BE SO! ... "Now and Forever. Amen."

:Anxious Thoughts which Ronald W. does not dare entertain; but ones which Abbot Roch has spied on the fringes of Alfred's dreaming; and the one which The Rock knows cannot be tolerated: Is Alfred not ready to Sacrifice? Offer the Holy Mass of the End-Time? Not ready to re-enact _Genesis?_ Not ready to Obliterate Her, again, but Once and Forever? ... Has he become too attached to Her? To Laura? To Selene?

A quite longer snooze; two hours groggily pass; he emerges into awake; eyes unlatch like mechanized garage doors lifting, slowly, slowly, but inevitably revealing their mystery; a vision sets upon him: like Abraham's hand upon Isaac; hand with dagger; hand with penis ... Ronald W. gasps: He knows _how_ the Holy Mass of the End-Time Act must be ritualized!

Several thousand miles away, Laura sits, towel enwrapped, in front of her dressing mirror. For a fleeting instant she feels the presence — and for a quicker than eye can grasp micro-second she records the image — of The Hand; Hand with Dagger; Hand slashing down upon a Sacrificial Altar; she gasps, she sees the victim's face ...!

# CHAPTER 9: THE HOLY FAMILY

_What was Ronald W. looking for?_ Luke answered this question a hundred times, already — and the flight home (from the annual banal and idiotic _History of Religions Association_ meeting) has just hit the clouds — but no answer was satisfactory. Luke doesn't know what Ronald W. and The Brooders actually knew. And he had been vigilant and as tight-lipped as could be about his and Laura's Dreaming and Brooding: about their rituals and their words, images and new Stories.

_Could The Brooders tap into his and Laura's Dreaming?_ Luke wouldn't place it beyond their capabilities. They certainly were a strange lot; and, possibly — " _Humility, Friar Alfred, humility is the practical key to the Kingdom!_ " — possibly, he had left too early; not plumbed their Brooding as deeply as he had once thought?; a question as answer to yet another question: _Why Rian?_

But this a question Luke had often asked himself when challenging his own growth: for he had yet to integrate Rian into his and Laura's Brooding; and on many nights he had asked, "Why? ... but he and Laura had groped and shoved, kicked and swam, pushed and pulled their way, these many years, through many questions and many answers. Where it had delivered them was to a new Story: their story of Creation — that of _The Holy Family_.

_The Holy Family_ : strange how idiotic and self-centered _Genesis_ appears — a solitary Male God masturbating over a Void ... how else to describe it? Drawing created things, forces and Life, not from His Body or any Body, but from out of Nothing: an emptiness, a pure vacuum, non-being ... what Luke and Laura have come to understand is Loneliness: pure and sheer and sad and pitiful _Loneliness_ ;

:and so, for them, they have realized through Bodywandering the new Creation Story: that of The Holy Family.

_Does Ronald W. really know anything about this? Other than the phrase, itself?_ Luke doubts it. But it is a nagging doubt.

_The Holy Family_ ... and Luke Dreams; the plane is its own Dream realized; and it carries Luke as he reclines and searches for Laura ...

Four hours within the stones — for those who need to measure; a time which is measured in the flesh; fleshpots burning; from toenail to tip of hair; she was unfurling, he sailing; from touch of her toes he began, sensing her as tether to him here like a balloon, a balloon high up in the sky, very high, and he on earth, just a pea or an ant or a twig to which she is tied, tied by molecular forces which bind them both, she in her Greatness, he in his Simpleness: simple-mindedness, a mindedness just of her and so of himself as he was a speck riding her Great Cloud of Wonderfulness; he rubs her toes, toes which have spied for him before; come and told him of the contacts with foreign lands which she had made: other men, other lovers, touching toes — the whole Confession was writ by the toes; and he listened; saw them tap out as she had tap-danced as a child her love of life, digging into the sand to feel the heat of the beach and connect to the thrashing core of the earth; just a child, maybe eight, sitting on a beach and connected, just as he is connected now; into her; and he moves down the soles of her feet, kissing, nibbling and rushing his tongue in comic circles knowing that he is making her laugh, unleashing reflexive giggles and tickles and her working hard, sending down commands from on high: " _Steady! Steady!_ ; for she wants the communication, wants to correctly read the smuggled messages, those betrayed by his tongue, that tongue which has served her so faithfully before, for as it seeks to know her so it betrays itself — _Can it do otherwise?_ — and so she hears that he is on the hunt and so she sees from the blind tongue the breasts of the one he so desires; how he has licked himself across a pantheon of women as he dreamed of licking every drum of ice cream in _Baskin Robbins_ ; yes, the tongue sings of the sweet stealth of Jaime Henderson's small breasts: only thirteen and he has pressed himself against her blouse, pressed his nose instead of his hands, and dreamed with his tongue that he was lapping her milk; drawing from her her sweetness; ah, sweet babble!; too soon followed by the darker tales, and these she wards off, not wanting them, rejecting them, but one sits too strong, too tight: an Oriental gal kneeling before him and he is fondling her swooping boobs, very large, floundering off his hands, rubbing and rolling and delighting in them — the tongue has no shame in memory! — as she sucks him off; Laura shakes her leg, it throws Luke off his pace; he senses a coolness, a distancing; so he moves with hands to rub her feet, warm them, connect with them, and moves up her and works her calves and thighs, here able to see her, watch her face, her moods; and she has him here, this she knows, here in her muscled softness, here where he first laid for hours resting himself, resting upon her thighs and between her calves, she harboring him, like a criminal, like an immigrant just off the boat, holding him with her lower arms and cradling him as he first talked to her, whispered sweet invocations to her, coaxed her out of her cave ... and, again, he is loosing himself in her; they have talked about here as forest, like walking in the forest, the muscles move like passing trees, so he works his fingers and senses the strength which holds her down, not the strength which holds her up, no, the power which comes from her mind and soul and which keeps her feet on the ground, grounds her; and how many males have missed the forest for the trees? come here and rushed in; used her legs simply as guiding arrows; locked onto them like an airplane landing system and plunged, desperately, into her hanger?! ... he works her and he laughs; for it is here that the God had worked his blinding magic over his male worshippers; here where he re-named her body parts and forever banished into the forbidden zone any mention of her second mouth and her lower arms and seeing her from the other side; yeah, Luke smiles and yet he is bitter, for the bitter hatreds of generations seep from her thighs into his bloodstream through his fingers; he who has zealously fucked as God so directed him; so he feels, here, on her thighs and calves, the rejectedness of the Ages; how chased she has been; hunted; and how she has had to run and run and run and how these legs, all women's legs, have been hers in this flight; oh, the agonal energy whacks him, slaps away his hands, he fights the rising pressure from these lower arms, for they want to ward him off; yes, they have grown accustomed to how things are and they do not want his adventure, which he hears from her called _Invasion! Rape! Fucking Me!_ ... yes, he wants to do those things; for here she is vulnerable, here he has been with other women; and he knows how to feint; how now to lay close by her and fondle her breasts as he steals into her cave; distract her defending lower arms by misdirecting her focus, confusing her about his intent; ah, so clever! ... and he takes one hand and begins to stroke a breast; tenderly, softly and begins to hum, a low murmur of desire: that subterranean growl which titters a woman, fascinates her with fear, but just enough — like baiting a hook; doing this as he laughs at all the men who have been here before and failed!; yes, Luke imbibes the power drenching the air; it intoxicates him; he is about to plunder and to rape and to escape unharmed!; yeah, he senses it ... yet, he stalls; she does not immediately notice; but then he breathes upon her neck; blows a chilling breath; and she knows — _The Rascal!_

:Great Goddess how she loves to be fucked by this guy! Just because he is too juiced; oh, how she savors his juices; and now that he has retreated, pulled back into his Discipline: scattering images he no longer, they no longer want ... but oh, the fire; she is burning; she, too, has the Memory, as she has the acceptance, an Acceptance of the Old Way; Yahweh's Way; the way where she is just cunt and he just cock; and, ah, how they have been cunt and cock and how she wants them to be right now! — she quickly grasps his head and pushes him towards her breasts: like a match catching fire on the smoldering gases of a just snuffed candle: this is her hope — _Fuck me!_

And he does; and she does; and her breasts are just too loaded; like blackjacks their softness knocks him dizzy; he staggers; the flame in his hand on her thigh re-ignites and shoots up his arm and down his back and around his belly and crackles through his cock; and his first kiss on her breast is the gobbling of his tongue and his mouth and his face by her; her breasts are eating him; holding still as she spreads her legs and sings sweet enticements to his third leg, that hobbling leg, which is now without hope, for he is lifted by a wave of lust and guided by her hand into her cave; there to be sliced off, cut up, thrown on the fire and eaten: munched and crunched and marrow sucked, being dinner and dessert and then thrown out with the trash; just mashed up and heaved out; so, he slithers out of her and rolls to her side;

"This is how you create family." Once spoken, way back when.

"How do we create The Holy Family?" Often spoken, then and now.

Questions at each other's side: _Is this all? Just getting laid and having babies? Done in thirty-seconds to ten minutes? Is it all just such a quick joke?_

:they breathe; guide themselves by the breathing; a shared talent which comes with time; and she is ready but he is lagging; just like a guy, wants to fall asleep!; old joke, but it amuses her; and she calls to him; focuses on her southern mouth and its message of invitation; touches his head and he is the ready worshipper; coming back to her to the embrace of her lower arms; they holding him, and his head resting upon her pubis; there kissing from side to side and whispering short gratitudes; for he is grateful, for this her Second Opening, having known that this is the cave of Dreaming power; that he had never loosed the grip of the Old Way because no woman had been so vulnerable, so inviting; ha, if she had, would he have even had known? why kid myself? I knew no better; but these thoughts, he chases away; for with Laura the Second Opening, the Second Invocation, her _Benedicamus Domine!_ and his _Deo Gratias!_ , these had come just naturally; for in her house back in AnoMar he had known, at the deepest of soul levels, known the moment he had seen her painting of the Ouroboros, known then, that she was Inviting; yes, Inviting not just him, but it was he who had answered, how, he does not know, is just grateful;

: _Ouroboros_ : the completion of the Erotic Embrace; symbolized by the snake biting its tail; imitated by the sexual act of sixty-nine; but, so much more, and her fingertips touch the top of his head and their astral strength carries him to her Cup: there for him to drink of her wonders; there to play with her poles, the deep, depthless pole of her womb, this calling to him for his seed; praying him to spit his seed onto its ground; seed of love and desire, seeds of lust, and seeds for child flesh; this and her clit: the pole of her maleness, there to connect to his own internal womb; his mouth now his cunt and he licks around the clit and it rises, salutes him, and begins to vibrate with a pleasure that he knows, a pleasure he lets ride up and upon his tongue and deep down his throat and course through his cock and tickle his toes but to arc and connect with his Third Eye, there to stimulate his pineal gland and to activate the energy flow which is Ouroboric;

:he with his arms raised up and touching her face; she sucking on his fingers; he fondling her breasts; she pinching her nipples; there is a vibration, a flow which engulfs them, swallows them up, and he pivots and she beats the drum in her second cave, welcoming his cock, and they dance, a slow, methodical dance on the physical surface; they moving back and forth ever so slightly but most sensitively aware of the pleasure of the other; part of him working frantically to be sure that a knee doesn't crush her cheek, and she with messages about not chomping off his dick; ah, the sheer wonder of the Design of Mating, of Embracing, of Coupling; celestial mechanics!

:they now having entered the Second Opening, having responded to the Second Invitation; their bodies bordering on physical exhaustion; their clit and cock clamoring for second exhalations; and once back when it came, they stopped; but now it doesn't matter if it comes; comes all over her innards; splashing clit juices drowning him; who cares? ... for they have Dreamed and worked the Discipline of the Dream; found words and images; talked afterwards about everything: how they felt, what they saw, how they imaged; and it was this task which was their marrying task: to take their bodies and wander, and the wandering was a venturing into and inside of; into was easy; just another level of sexual, mainly genitally focused pleasure; but their images, their hopes, their desires drove them further; they ceased to fear that the other would kill them; Luke had murdered too many, in body and soul, to believe, anymore, that murdering was redemptive; Laura had to accept that her fear of being invaded, raped and consumed also carried her desire to invade, rape and consume Luke; and they did this: all the symbolic raping and murdering and invading and consuming: acted it out in words and scenes:

dressed up and acted out their deepest desires: no matter how black or white;

used masks to protect themselves against their most inarticulable fears and dreams;

played sports together to gain greater sense of the other: athletic feats and free-form dancing; Disciplining themselves to hear the non-verbal part of the other;

then, meditated: spent time in Silence together; awkward and embarrassing and self-conscious, at first, but then the moments came;

:this the Third Opening and the Third Invitation; where they are with each other, now, just fingertip contact inside a dark theater as other collective fantasies unfold on screen; they can drop into a moment; but their deepest moment is after the Second Opening is passed through; there, their orgasm gives rise to the Third Opening;

an Invitation to exchange; to be the other; to unhook the moorings to their separating names; there to seek The Holy Family;

The Holy Family: an image from their meditation; an image seared into their flesh the first time they passed through the Third Opening;

a majestic and totally life-threatening moment; for they lost account of their breathing, of their heartbeat, of their communal consciousness;

lost sense of themselves as specks of flesh and sparks of soul and were floating and swimming and lost, but not with a sense of total lost, rather disoriented in an unknown land and time and space and feeling; they could walk through each other: laughed and giggled as they saw themselves like small dolls but passing through one another and then he was He and she was She; and their body was Body; ever-extending and ever-present and every-breeding; continually issuing forth in a spiraling of bodies and souls with countless faces and voices and hands and feet and just feeling the Throb, no other word, a Throb, a pulsating movement, like a wave, of Embracing Love; like a zillion tender kisses; and they knew that they were kisses from the dead, and the Dark Vapors was part of it all; part of them; part of this Holy Family;

Embracing: image, word, feeling, act — their common word; she said it; he knew that he had uttered it simultaneously;

and how to explain it as explain it they must and tried in so many ways with others; others on the First Opening; some on the Second; hoping to find others who had passed through the Third; how to explain it? As pleasure; not even a capital P would suffice; but they did talk about it: a pleasure past pleasure; but, indeed, a pleasure; so pleasuring that Laura and Luke could not stop the pleasuring on the First Opening;

the First Opening they could open almost at will; just a thought, and _Goddam!_ they could connect; most days, most times; they began to ritualize it to control it; didn't want to be spaced out on the every day level; so it was a morning, noon and night ritual; usually keyed to eating; an event which was a good trigger; each would sit, wherever they were, and pray: bless the food with their love for the other; bless the food in acceptance that it was the other; bless the food in celebration of their union; and as they ate, so they pleasured; an orgasmic communion;

for them, this control through ritual required a great Discipline; here, Luke fell back upon his monkish training; but as with ritual, nothing is mechanical; or if mechanical, then it dies; and so their personal struggle to be married; to stay linked was intensified and complexified and terrified by this wondrous, mystic, astral, whatever!, experience of the Third Invitation;

as were the children both a fulfillment and a distraction; a fulfillment in that Luke and Laura became parents and so could work from the flesh to their souls the image of the godding Parents; the children were distraction in that they were not needed for the ecstasy of The Holy Family; whose Call was to Parent All; to be Parent of All Spirits; yet, the children were for the fulfilling of Laura and Luke's Body; two others with whom to wander;

and as they raised their children, so, through other rituals, did they inoculate them with the words, ideas, images and acts of Embracing and The Holy Family;

Luke and Laura struggling, as every parent does, with how to teach their children without stifling them; fearful was Luke of his own dogmatic Catholic past; Laura not wanting to be stuck with a limited set of Sacred Stories as had been delivered through her Protestant idolatry of the Bible;

and so, through the years, they have labored to craft a home, design it as ritual, make it a place both secular and sacred; a place where they can drop in and out of the Openings and Invitations;

and so much began to happen when they moved to Minnesota; so much instantly once they slept their first night in the house; for they had slept but shared a Third Invitation, both dreaming their children; and within the first month, Laura conceiving Charles;

but — and it is a But, capital B — Luke and Laura were like two anchorites in the desert; they had found and been found by The Holy Family; yet, they could scarce talk about it, live it, pursue it outside of their Embrace and their home;

the traditional churches Dreamed Brooder Dreams — and so were more danger than delight; most of the alternative or established theosophical or burgeoning New Age groups were a hodgepodge collections of beliefs or fantasies; none touched upon the Dreaming and none, seemingly, tapped into The Holy Family;

but there were some; a few here and there through either Luke's academic books and speeches or Laura's holistic medicine connections who became friends and fellow travelers;

but there was a block; again, a capital B Block;

The Holy Family on the Third Opening made them One with All; infused them with a feeling of shared identity; of communal love ... and this was the Block;

how to — starting with the First Opening — share with others? The notions of Group Sex simply degenerated into Orgies; it was most difficult to control themselves, how could Laura and Luke expect others to practice the Discipline?

They have talked with those close to them about this, but all see it as a problem; few feel confident that they could Communally Dream or Brood as The Brooders do.

"We lack Stories."

"We have no Tradition."

"There is just too much Trust required and too much Temptation."

Temptation to slip back into Warrior Dreaming; Obliteration of the Female;

this inability to work with others; to Work and Pray as Luke had known life with The Brooders; this was the greatest perplexment, confusion, disappointment ... but they continued to work with a small group: which vacillated between eight and twelve couples, worked with them, did things, prayed, paid attention to their needs, shared positive contacts during the day: calls, messages, the new e-mail stuff; worked on this, but, in truth, Luke, especially, saw it as chipping away; and not as making strides:

so all that The Holy Family was to them as great blessing and Grace, so also was it experienced as great Block and Sin — sin here as barrier; a realization of their distance and separateness from others;

and how to transmit this to their children?

This: The Holy Family, then, what they have found and what they seek.

_Is this what Ronald W. wants — really and truly — from me?_ Jerks through him as the plane bounces and swerves, brakes and taxies to the jetway. _To become The Holy Family so as to Obliterate The Holy Family?_

He waits: near the back, having stretched himself out across several empty seats, now waiting, watching them all: will an envelope be slipped to him by someone as they exit? leave him where he was while on the Porch: waiting for Rian? _Why Rian?_

Off the plane and questioning the nameless faces which float by: _Am I Friar Alfred? ... Am I Luke Jennings?_

Blind-eyes, mute tongues.

# MILLENNIAL INTERSTITIUM

# THE HOLY FAMILY?

What is this _The Holy Family_? Luke and Laura strive for it. Friar Roch and The Brooders want it; somehow to use it during their End-Time ritual? But what is it?

Neither knows. All first act from within a mythos which can only appreciate the concept of The Holy Family in its presence as Void. It is what exists in the Dark Vapors. As such, it is unknown; almost unexperienceable. For there is no Ground for it; no Tillichean Ground of Being; not even Bergson's Elan Vital — for it is a vitality not vital within the Biblical mythos which tethers their being and their every day profanity.

The Holy Family. It appears to be a simple linkage of terms: the + holy + family. But what is _The_ but an indicator of singularity; here, of something not common to other linkages such as "the holy family." And _Holy:_ for recorded history or for at least Biblical Story, what is it? If nothing else, it is the absence of Her. That Holiness can only be if She is not. And then _Family._ In the Patriarchy, what is it but Property and Seed and Name. Yes, that which is Holy has been named and it is _Pater -_ Our Father.

But not just Father as if it needed Mother, but Father as it needs no one but Himself; Self-Generating.

So, _The Holy Family_ is incomprehensible; more than an oxymoron, it is gibberish.

_Gibberish_. Grasp that?!

Then, how can any of their words make sense? _Any_ words?

Something's gotta happen, here — even if it ain't exactly clear.

Amen!

_Gibberish_ : verily, even Self-Generating stumbles: must poke the cunt; and so the lowly, despised, purified and sanctified cunt of the most miserable specimen of the obliterated image is but a rib ... well, it is cunt which is she and she which is Her and Her which is Cunt. Amen!

That's how this is coming to be. The Sixties flaunted Free Sex as a weapon of The War which also played itself out in Vietnam. Both were dances of The Warrior. Nothing more akin to Nam than fucking some Hippie bitch in Golden Gate Park. (" _Sunflower_!")

_Eh!_ That Park — did they think it The Grove? Druidic. Or even pagan? _Ha_. The Self-Generating One does not have such a humorous vein.

If anything, the Sixties and Free Sex was the purest ritualization of The Warrior mythos. Guns truly turned into penises. Penises which hunted down women under the delirium of Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg and the seductive non-violences of the Quakers and Fathers Berrigan and Women Strike for Peace. Amen.

But here's the crack in the egg: the cunt ain't no dumb broad. No sirreee. _Ha._

Tradition says — so Friar Roch and Friar Alfred knew — that there was a Lilith before Eve. Adam's first wife. Someone who gave Adam the shake? Who didn't need Adam's type of masculinity, his Cocked Eros. But who really cares? Whomever she was, she's been Forgotten. ... But it ain't that easy! Nope, not for the priests, not for the Dreamers, no, there's always the fright of Her in someone like Rian. And who cares about Rian: maybe Laura; but what can she do? She's not Dreaming that stuff! Sure, she's with Alfred-as-Luke and she's touched by his Dreaming, but she ain't a transubstantiating Catholic — but it does remind the nervous Self-Generator that the Dark Vapors are still there, and that only Friar Alfred has ever gone and returned: " _Something's happening here...."_ Hmmmm.

This is what hooks Luke; keeps him bifurcated; paranoid — he's in and out of the Dark Vapors; sent there by The Brooders to Dream: he kills, he slays, he fucks, he Obliterates, and, then, like all his worthy predecessors he dies: body gone wacko, and the Brooders can't find him ... and Lo and Behold! he pops back up in Minnesota: _Who's this Laura?_ they ask themselves ... ah, Luke couldn't help but be confused!

Actually, beginning to _be_ two people: not the former Friar Alfred, but Friar Alfred simultaneously with Luke Jennings — thus is his paranoia: grounded in the reality of himself talking to himself ... maybe he's neither?!

So, what did Luke really, _really_ know? _Nothing_. Stone cold nothing. Thinks he knows a lot, all this Holy Family and Cauldron and Silver Blood stuff, but he only thinks that's important because he's still Friar Alfred!

He thinks he knows about women! Look at his ping-ponging between Rian and Laura, and Rian he hasn't seen, hasn't smelled, hasn't licked in, what?: twenty some odd years! The boy's really rattling a few loose ones. Amen.

Then, he's trying to keep all this together: two things that just don't mix — the ole water and oil example — The Brooders and The Holy Family. Somewhere, someday, he's gonna have to make a choice, don'tj'ca think?

Well, he's still here and we're still in all of this Dreaming and Brooding and Silver Blood stuff because the shithead asshole motherfucker (catch the imagery?) hasn't died, and, consequently, Laura is necessary. I mean, Luke's told you about The Island, and laid hints about Nam and the Cardinal ... and, this Brooding stuff: it has killed many, many stronger and smarter and bolder and crazier than Friar Alfred, let me tell you! But what about Laura? Any Will or Intent or Great Quest there? Or was she just flotsam carried on the tumultuous waves of Free Sex? _Hmmmm_.

What is a woman who taps into her female power? Creative power. Not just in response to male power. Interesting situation, no?

Let's talk a bit about woman power. See, Janis is the Seer. One who looked both back into and out from the Dark Vapors. A pitiful creature she was; but she was Seer. Ball and Chain. Me and Bobby McGee. Mercedes Benz. Southern Comfort. Goddess, could she Peer!

See, you feel Janis. She ain't been loved. Seems not forever. But she's howling. Letting you know that Obliteration is _your_ problem; your male problem; problem of The Male within men _and_ within women. Not hers. She's there howling the Dark Vapors.

That's what Laura heard. The presence of the Dark Vapors. The Story from the Dark Vapors. Obliteration: Ball and Chain; imprisonment; cast out into darkness.

And it's all sexual. Not just genital. If nothing else, Janis wasn't pornographic. She didn't just jerk ya off. She wanted more. She wanted it all. You heard her and your nuts rumbled; your teats went hunting; your dick became your whole body; your cunt became the river of life ... Whew!

Sexual. Erotic. Old words shaking out even older meanings. Some women wanted it so much that they sucked it out of other women. Some ate their men. Others bewitched and drew out the worship which was rightly theirs. Still others sensed that there was a way to worship the male — if only it stopped trying to Self-Generate.

This is where Laura and Luke came in. They were both cast off. Thrown out. Puked. Crapped. Luke through Nam. Laura through massage: wandering bones and flesh. Both lost their bodies as they died and found each other as Body.

It's not like they _knew_ what they were doing. That they had a Business Plan. Something with graphs in it: "Goals For The Next Year." Stuff like that. _No._ Rather, they had given up. Hit Bottom. Fell flat on their asses. Didn't know Death from Life or peaches from cream.

Hey, be straight. They were shit out!

That's where it began. She was pressing and rushing and crunching and stroking bodies to find some energy. He was so fucking broken and torn and ass jacked that all he heaved onto her massage table was a sack of fragged bones and a still beating heart. But that was enough.

It's like they stumbled into each other's zone. Not even aware that they were trespassing. Not even the slightest bit aware of their criminality. Not a sparrow's piss worth of insight that they were in the Dark Vapors.

So, what comes of this?

A feeling. Some knowledge. Yearning. A hankering. A jumble of things like in a recipe. Blind, they see. Numb, they feel. Cock becomes Cunt. Cunt becomes Cock. They draw up some rituals. Rituals like dry twigs: burst into flames. Flames which are not hearth-fire and only singe and scar. But they are enticed.

It is all truly madness. Outside their embrace no measure of medicine or science would call them healthy or sound of mind or balanced. They maintained their masks. Worked jobs. Prepared meals. Got pregnant. Became parents. _Zoooom!_

It's that they no longer exist alone. Separate, yeah. They unlock; spit each other out; zip back up. But they are _not_ alone. This is what you have to grasp. What RW struggles with; what Friar Roch senses but can't get his arms around.

_Not alone._ For in The Warrior mythos all we have is aloneness. In _Genesis_ you meet Yahweh and He is alone. He has been alone (so He lies) from Eternity. And when He creates, all He can create is aloneness ... for what is Adam but alone?

This is the clue: Adam alone. _Imago Dei_.

But what does it mean or what is it when there is no aloneness?

The Cunt is never without Cock. The Cock is never without Cunt.

Every molecule of being is a gateway for their sharing; their embracing; their creating. Together. Union. Communion. Two as One which is the Third: the Created. And so, not alone is parenting. Parenting. Which is the Presence within the Dark Vapors.

This is the Presence which Friar Roch knows must be ritualized — exorcistically! — in the End-Time. What must be iron-bounded by doctrine and dogma and theology and liturgy ... yes, Roch fully understands that, "The crisis of the break-down of the family which is occurring in the latter part of the 20th century" is no crisis but yet a fulfillment; but, yes, it is a crisis in terms of _Kairos:_ a critical moment; it is the Fulfillment of _Genesis_ ; for there is to be _no_ Parenting; _no_ Family, _nothing but_ Self-Creators in the Millennium ... so, what is the essence of Roch's End-Time ritual?

Laura and Luke know, as only parents know, that they are _not_ the End-Time in that they have spawned the Future ... and this _is_ the Story, here.

:to venture into the Family; not always Holy; but sometimes Holy: that of Father, Mother, Daughter and son. Here, not interested in Chronos; a plain theme; an analyzable series of facts and events ... no, in the _Kairos_ , that moment of Crack: where one is not alone.

.....................................................

_Wait_! Ha. That's them. But what about Roch and The Brooders. What about any other possibilities? I mean, it's the Millennium, and even if The Brooders want to keep it all to themselves, well, they can't, just _can not!_

There are the Christian Keepers for one. Just one of the festooning movements within American Protestant Millennialism. But they're serious. Guns without Butter; just Guns. To satisfy God's Wrath — or, at least, how they perceive His Wrath.

These Keepers, true Protestants: bridge to the wholly secular; scions of ahistorical exegesis, so allowing for instant forgetfulness, thus not distinguishing the Hand of God in Holy War from their hands in war: against whomever they find as Enemy lurking between the letters of the Bible: these known to them through their singular, individualistic Inspiration: named, on most lists, as those who disrupt the social and political order: which is, they hold, a Divine Order: which is, they hold, made manifest in the New World: America: Democracy; which they hold is rooted in authority: paternal: fatherly: Founding Fathers of God The Almighty Father.

So, they wouldn't take to this Holy Family thing, not even the way The Brooders would — how Alfred and Roch grew up: "The Holy Family is Blessed Joseph, Holy Mary and the Infant Child, Son of God, Jesus." Amen.

Sure, the celibate monks foist a pale image of The Holy Family — but why? In the best of cases: to inspire families, those who took Paul's advice and chose to marry rather than burn! _What a choice!_ ... Talk about Free Will: _Ahem_.

So, celibates who ground their story in the Lone Male God whose only male Son makes amends for the first male fuck-up: belly-buttonless Adam: leads to a crasser interpretation: just a way to control those males who can't keep it in their pants! Just an image, like a choke leash on a mastiff. Keep the raping and violence against women down to a whistle. Crass, but it's an option.

For Roch, then, The Holy Family is the cow to milk for the Silver Blood. That of God the Father in males which — still! that's the torturous, bleeding ulcer rub! ... _Still_! — needs Her to flow. Isn't that what The Brooders found through Friar Alfred-as-Luke? Through his Bodywandering and Dreaming with Laura?

The Brooder End-Time task, then, is how to bottle it, so to speak. For like the blood from the wound in the side of the Crucified, so this is the relic blood still remnant from _Genesis_ when Adam was laid down and his cock cut so that She would lie with him; lie and mingle their blood (for the ancients believed that the life force was in the blood, here, her blood and his white spermy blood!).

Now, Roch believing — with Millennial fervor: a fervor which taps the Fiery Dreams of all Brooders, all celibates of priestly caste, who ever lived, taps into their Creative Eros long pent-up and repressed, now, funneling into the Fire and Flames of the End-Time conflagration: one Roch plans to unleash and release through an End-Time Holy Mass.

But ...

But, something's happening here .... Hmmm.

Are Luke and Roch the only ones seeking the Creative Fire, and the only ones planning an End-time ritual?

This thought has not parted Abbot Roch's hair — even though RW uses a comb on his Hollywood wig! — but it has been an outlaw thought dropped in by Rian's presence.

I wonder. Hmmm.

What we know, what Roch knows, what it appears anyone knows is what Laura and Luke know.

It's a start.

# THE HOLY FAMILY: MOTHER

Touching herself; her breasts, her belly, down her thighs, soaping and playing with the suds and bubbles, Laura loves bathing, baths, any crevice which can hold her and water, and for her this was one reason she accepted the house's invitation: for it invited her, and her alone because Luke — too massive for what fit her, almost snugly — had built his own "water-hole" in the basement: a combination spa, whirlpool, sauna, bath and soaker, (Laura sighed, "The boy can leave California, but then, he really _never_ can!"); indeed, he had looked at the tub, sequestered in an alcove on the third floor, looked at it and realized that by its design that it was a special private space, for someone a gift: yes, it had a high window drawing the setting sun and admitting the play of moonlight: always moonlight, whether by the Moon, itself, or through her array of candles, especially the one Luke had bequeathed her with when she had baptized this fount — a mountainous, sky-reaching upsurge of alabaster beauty: akin to those High Mass candles of his sacerdotal youth, such he had given her and such sheds its moonlight, no matter the time of day: moonlight and this tub, which to all except for one of Luke's breadth and height and watery volume of displacement, to all, this was a goodly-sized bath-tub: truly Minnesotan: Lady Viking, like a ship with an upswung prow and a thickness to itself which made her believe that it was forever; that it was, truly, a single rock hewn, but she knew it was molded, either way there was a hand, true, a hand which came down and made it so; thinking about it she is moved by the presence of two hands, working together, somehow this is a receptacle formed by two hands ... and with her own two hands she rubs her body, pauses here and there to press a spot, a spot which causes her mind to wander, wander into the spirit realm; she had never as a child believed in the astral plane; being a solid Protestant maiden, growing to be an enthusiastic if not dynamic member of the choir; no, " _the blood of Jesus_ " was the only phrase which had ever even the most slightly made her wonder about another plane of existence, for even her young mind wondered: _Does the Resurrected Jesus have blood_? ... more, and most unnerving as her own blood began to flow in her first touch by the Moon: _How can we be saved by the blood?_ By drinking it? And _how_ can we drink it? — somewhere deep within her she imaged herself as the cup which held the blood, the cup which was shared and passed around, but it was an image of such blasphemous intent that all the other parts of her well trained conscious and unconscious spiritual self squashed the image, placed a huge rock of planet size and weight on top it, and drove it down, down to where it belonged: the nether regions of Hell ... _But Hell: where is it?_ ... and her young mind wobbled and buckled but held firm, until ... until Luke: he's like this tub: he's that planet size rock and weight, but one that _I_ rolled away! ... and she resumes her bathing, her eye caught upon her feet, thick, too wide for Cinderella feet, not ugly, but then always something which reminded her of how she has been chained, chained by Beauty's Dream which said: small, delicate, daintily arching feet; and she like so many women suffered — more like Cinderella's sisters, they who tried to cram their feet (" _Cut off my toes_!!") into the Glass Slippers, all so that the Handsome Young Prince would take them away! .... _Away_!! .... she sing-songs _A-WAY_!!! ... _A-W-A-Y_!!!! ... and splashes at the puddles of bubbly foam floating about like lost icebergs ... but then her feet: there where Luke first touched her: truly first: astonishment, amazement, perplexity and joy — in all humor, grasped her big toes, one with each hand, and prostrated himself before her: they had not been married long and there were things about his Catholic past, especially his monastic practices, which she thought kinky, and this appeared to be kinky, but she was game — Luke laid prostrate before her holding her big toes and said: spoke loudly for his face was resting on the rug, almost at bellow: _You are the Goddess! I am your Earth, walk upon me!_ ... at first she was embarrassed; felt awkward; his intensities she loved, but this was worship! ... he repeated his plea, and then it seemed natural; she laid down and placed her feet upon his head: she knowing that they were no longer in the plane of horizontal and vertical; no, she was walking, or more true to her Sunday School background, she was Walking: " _Walk with Jesus!_ ": and she knew that as she walked so she was strolling around his body, and more: his Body ... and she came, for the first time, to experience herself and Luke as Body: as a He and a She; as a God and a Goddess; she could have called him Jesus or Buddha or Great Buffalo or even The Sky, all these images wrapped themselves around them, for as she walked so he was present: walking with her, now, on a common Body, a Greater Being, on a different plane ... and, how long did it last? — qualify a moment, a millennium; _HA!_ ... and from that day onward, she knew her Erotic power: not over him but with him and through him, not as solely Genital, no, as Creative, but more importantly within herself and through herself: as truly and equally Co-Creator ... as Mother within a Holy Family

:what am I as body now? This arm which was given to me to defend myself against him. How else was I raised? My body was booty, treasure, I knew it as precious, but dangerously so; that men would kill for me ... and that men would kill me, plunder me, drag me through their hottest fires and, then, when I am no longer _precious_ , they will rape my daughters! I knew this. _Still do_.

( _What part of me isn't filthy to them?)_

They touch me and feel bad because they know they do not want me: I do not exist, they want what's inside me ... or what they _think_ is inside me. So, they come at me with sword. Not with magical word, "Open sesame!" Not with Golden Key. Not with trumpets like Joshua ... no, always with the sword: always they just penis.

_Penis_. It stands over against me. It is Other. And it can never be but Other.

If I touch it, they swear they will die. But it is I who die. For they want me to seed and green; erupt and dry; splatter and wither like dried husk: tear and throw my body all about, make me fat and make me ugly; come to me only in the dark; to lie to me, not with me; to whisper my name but mean another: they want to rape my foetal daughter; but I will not give them her name!

Like this I still live. My work: messages come to me that this is still how most live. _Ha! Is it living?_

:then Luke. I feared him. For he was spent. A cock shot with its barrel broken. Yet, I feared most his healing. Sensed his strength. Knew when I first touched him, no, actually saw flesh move from my body onto his, there to nurture him. Oh, how I labored during that hour, that Eternity!; I had to hate him to keep him at bay. _Hate._ Terrible Hate. I choked on my hatred.

So, how? Why? What?

It was The Snake.

At first just hundreds of snakes; he was so mutilated.

I read his deeds of murder and rape.

I knew that he could kill me. My soul. I knew that.

But it was Her. Just a smell of her. Cunt smell.

I massaged him and my hands smelled as when I pleasure myself.

I was even more terrified. _Who is this man?_

And when he pursued, I ran. But I knew that I was running from myself. That of myself inside of him.

I kissed him. And he kissed me back.

Not just the taking; the ripping out of my heart; no, he, feeble as he was back then, gave me back ... it was his dying, now, I know that; back then, I was not sure; but it was powerful.

We could _just_ kiss.

( _Just kiss_.)

Hold each other and kiss.

Always I could feel his dying — and I do to this day — his giving up of his flesh and blood, soul and spirit for me.

It was my first Ouroboric experience.

I knew that men had sworn that they would give me Life. A good home. Money. Babies. Jewelry. The Best Restaurants. But it was a weak disguise of Murder. Yes, they are a murdering horde. No doubts there.

But when I gave him my breasts, I knew.

He talked through me.

Not at me. Not to me.

Shared images. Words. Words with abysmal emotions attached.

When he laughed and called me Milk Maiden, I blushed. Not because I had never had the thought but because I could see myself as feeding so many; thousands of hungry mouths; all my suckle; and it was a filling, not a lessening.

How to speak of Glory?

What part of me did he not glorify? And I then him?

I had always feared the cock. My mother told me that it was a robber. That it was a gun. And it would steal my Youth and Beauty and Treasure ... that the cock would transform me into trash: "dirty girl!"

Terrible image. It stays with me till this day.

But he _let_ me like his cock. _Let_ me.

This is the cunt smell.

He worked hard at this; it was his greatest struggle.

But he knew that it was a totem for communicating down the ages. He knew that it only truly communicated as it was part of my cunny.

I knew that. Didn't have the words; but knew it.

We could spend hours just holding each other. I his cock. His hand on my cunny. His finger dancing my clit.

_Hours_.

And we brought all of our Past into this Present so that we could create Future.

We talked, in words, about love and lovers and dreams.

We were young! Oh, were we young! And, often, we'd just brush against each other; just a fly-by touch of his cock as he rolled on the bed against my thigh and ...! We'd be off into the heat and the hunt and the throwing sand at the ocean and the wrestling and ... hours, _always hours_! Only the Goddess knows how many hours! Truly.

My legs; his legs. Stroking and kissing and licking. Images of the firm earth; of rocks; of myself as the Pillar of the Universe; me, holding up all that is ... and all fallen down in worship. Yes, worship. _How good worship is!_

For there is not a part of me nor of him which we cannot bring to enliven the earth and all people. For we have come to live the Greater Body. Understand that our every thought and image creates the thoughts and images of others.

Our loving is the loving of all others.

Our hands are everyone's hands. Our butts, everyone's butt. Our eyes, see with everyone's sight. And our embracing is an embrace of everyone.

What we have found together is The Forbidden Land. The Garden of Eden. We went there and we lived it, enfleshed it, spoke and acted it out.

From this we found the stones. For when we were Expelled, the stones greeted us. Called us and told us how we are their Dream.

Funny, isn't it? _Who can believe this_?

But there is not a part of me which is not cosmic. And it is cosmic because Luke has received me and I have received him.

Shall I speak of the Flash and Boom and Shuddering Fire?!

Ha!

_My ass._ Always a piece of ass. I like my ass; always knew it was magical. When Luke first mounted me: I had _never_ allowed this for I knew — against my instinct — that men thought it dirty; pleasurable some say; but dirty: Luke celebrated me as The Mound. That Mound which all Great Souls have climbed on their Ascent.

My ass The Mound. It is the Earth. All things celestial. And it carries the function of returning all things to the Beginning. I laughed when he first said that. I asked, Where'd you get a crazy thought like that? He said, The Transfiguration. I didn't know what to say!

But it was true. When he came into me, there was this change. For I saw him as shit; as being excreted by me; and at the same time I felt his desire; dark desire to be within me _no matter what_. That was it: _no matter what_.

And then I could feel that I was part of him; that his penis was a link; not to inseminate me, not even to fuck me, though as fucking it was astounding that night!, no, as a touching at the plainest level of being; just being: linked ... it was humbling; a humility; we were blessed by a shared humility.

We laid quietly together for many hours after that.

It's been all _imagination_. Maybe, I should just say that and sum it up that way: _imagination and imagining_.

There is no End. That's what we've found. All these years and we're still finding. For every part of us is for imagining. I'll get crazed for his cock because I want to imagine. Having him in my mouth, I know that I have all of Luke's body to Wander. That as I take him so he gives himself to me and he Wanders. We have no moments of inhibition; no forbidden times of days or spots, no forbidden words or thoughts, no forbidden gestures or sillinesses; our whole bodies are an inventory of sexual delights ... but more, they are kicking off points for the Brooding.

When we Brood is when our bodies become One and we become the Greater Body. When we Brood, we are free in the sense of graceful and gracefilled.

Brooding can be talking. We've talked as we Brood; normally, when this happens, we go through cycles of turn-on and rutting ... till another topic comes up!

The best Brooding — Luke agrees — is when we sit together; his totem stirring my pot; we the Cauldron; and we slip into each other; lose the profane tick and tock and just melt and flow and breathe ... it's a type of meditation.

Afterwards, we talk or dance, mostly both, sometimes draw something, he likes to write: poems mostly ... and then we eat.

Eating is the symbolic conclusion to Brooding.

Luke says the monks eat Jesus. _So Catholic!_ Ha.

Luke says he prefers to eat me. Me, too. I like him eating me.

Even if the kids are there, we know. The food is ourselves. Through things as silly as mashing potatoes and spreading butter, hmm, we can both share orgasm.

The wine is my blood which becomes his blood.

Bread, well, he hands me a slice and we are Priest and Priestess.

That's how it goes.

I'm no longer a woman. Not in the sense that that term distinguishes itself from being a man. No, I _am_ Goddess. And a Goddess is as a God is. We now exist only and always in Embrace. He is my cunt; I am his cock.

... and she touches her forehead with her two index fingers: gently rubs, counterclockwise; then clockwise; awakens her Third Eye and calls upon Luke: calls him as she Broods the Dark Vapors, calls, for she must begin to locate Rian: and this is how she must begin; knows is the only way to begin: to Brood and Wander as the Goddess, for from the little she knows about Rian, she is much like Luke, and whatever her path these last twenty-odd years, she must also have found herself as Goddess ... _Why else would Ronald W. pursue her?_

She sees her face, often now in her dreams, and she wakes feeling her presence. Luke has no pictures, but Laura knows it is Rian: even to the streaks of gray in her abundant roan tresses. Yes, Rian in her dreams and communicating to her through bodies; bodies which Laura massages; mostly women, sometimes men; as she works them an occasional astral message will arise; these would be general communiqués: _It is with great pleasure that all Goddesses greet you!_ or, _I long to meet with you!_ or, _Your eyes are Goddess eyes, see Her love in everyone!_ or, _Everyone is Her child!_ ... these were astral insights, and while massaging, Laura would work on this astral level: simply touch a woman and hear her astrally speak about her relationship with her man; this is how she met the other Goddesses: those who, like herself and Luke, had as couples begun to be a new Story, had begun to become, in their mutual flesh, a new Creation; a true Communion; not that anyone jumped up from the massage table and started talking, no, none of this has yet entered the everyday conversation of her work, but it was there: Laura could re-experience the worship as she touched a thigh, a thigh which had not just been plundered for its silky pleasure and as a guiding pathway to a fuck-bucket cunt; no, but as a resting place, a stopping-over place, where a lover had paused to dance before his beloved; tongue dance and finger-tip dance and dream dance and so invoke the Presence which lived within the Delta Cave: call upon it and invite it to come forth, invite it for Embracing; and, so, when Laura touched such a thigh, thrills would rivet her own body, her mind's eye would observe the tender embrace, the stirring of volcanic lust, the whirling dance of craven desire ... and so feel the blood mix with the water, feel the sperm mingle with the earth, feel the wind blow over the moonlight eyes of death: feel the coupling Darkness and Light, feel it upon her skin, her soul, smell it ... and so Laura knew: _This is a Goddess_ ... but how to speak to her or him?

Tap them with the signal that the session was over and then share with them in this world of machined minutes what had just happened? ... _Ah!_

This was a great Sorrow. Both she and Luke talked about it often: how they wished they could easily touch, speak, dream with others ... but it just wasn't happening on a larger scale; not even in small groups.

But messages: Laura was confident that she could send and receive. That these Goddess bodies and the bodies of the Gods who embraced them, through these bodies she could communicate with Rian ... but, truly, self-doubt: even shared with Luke — "We have broken-through. But can we be more than our dyadic Embrace? Is there more? More that the Greater Body wants, that it can deliver? If so, _how_ can we know?"

There was no answer; and their Bodywandering might have been confined to their own marriage, their own Embrace, the creation of just their own Holy Family ... but then Ronald W.!

Laura _still_ struggles with the — well, _Admit it!_ , she says to herself: With the Reality of The Brooders. Look, Luke, you went maleness one step further than most, maybe one step too far! Who knows? Look, the other Religious Orders: just churning over the same old sermons from St. Augustine on; just running the same theatrical Gregorian chant and frankincense celebration of High Mass from centuries past; no Biggie; no Great Revolution in the Spirit; even the Reformation: just tinkering with male power; the same with Vatican Two ... no break-through; sure, I understand your Teilhard de Chardin and his Noosphere and its Christosphere, but what has that wrought? All these computer people and this newfangled Net: they believe they're building the nerve center for this Noosphere ... but that's crap and you and I know it. _Machines_. You've said it. And you went inside the Machine. You became the Machine! ... Look, my love, when I first touched your body, all those snakes, remember? — well, they were being crushed by the machine, your body was a machine, a killing machine: you hadn't told me the story of The Island nor about your time in Vietnam with Cardinal Bao Duc; you didn't have to, because your body told it all to me ... so, how can I believe in this Brooder stuff? I can believe in you. You had some traumatic experiences, no doubt. _But_ ...?

It really hadn't matter, this stuff about The Brooders. The reality was that Luke believed it; and it was a way for him to frame and manage his Past. Laura doped it out as some kind of delayed stress syndrome. Vietnam had sent a lot of guys on weirder dreams and into stranger realities.

But then the coincidence; _Coincidence?_ ; of Brooding the Dark Vapors and Ronald W. She had never met Ronald W. and Luke could be experiencing a psychotic fugue: Who knows? But the hand, now _The Hand_. And Rian. _Something_ 's up.

Rian. The Hand. These were realities for Laura. Unless I see myself as a blank slate, that old _tabula rasa_ stuff, upon which Luke scrawls his bizarre fantasies! Shit, smash that patriarchal bullshit! _I did_ , _I am_ experiencing her and Her and The Hand! ...

And the kids. What happens to the world, to time, space, history when the children of God and Goddess are born? They come as new beings. Maybe they don't come with that self-consciousness, but Laura was sure that they came with different dreams. Just look at Selene. If she wasn't a Goddess, who was? Meaning walking comfortably on Earth, not feeling chased, not worried about the size of her feet, not afraid of contesting with men: either physically or intellectually ... if only Laura could get inside her dreams! But then I'm Parent, and I have to accept that: watch them; they are not me, not Luke.

And Charles. If anything _he_ was the dreamer. Laura knows that Luke would never agree with that; feels that Charles _is_ different, but — and maybe this is what Luke will have to face — Charles is a different kind of male: a God or a throw-back, sure, the judgment is up for grabs ... but the kids: they're already thinking differently ... and it must rise from the dreams: she's sure of that ... _SUDDENLY_ , the room is ice and Laura is frozen in the tub's glacial grip; can't breathe; and then it is hot, boiling and her skin begins to peel and her bones begin to ooze their marrow: from out of the misting cloud descends The Hand, coming at her as if to suffocate her: fall upon her face, but it turns into a grip, a choke hold, a throttle; Laura hears her bones rattle against the side of the tub: then, it is over, stops in a click, she finds herself staring at the bar of soap in her hand: what was this? — _Who asks?_ — I know, gently holding the bar of soap, I know: maternal instinct; defensive; knowing that, in some ways, she and Luke are irrelevant; that they are quickly becoming the Past, with each day they the point of departure; but the kids, they're the Present and the Future: why else Ronald W.?

Should she call Charles home? Lock Selene in the basement? ... Fears which fade into chuckles. Christ, these are the old dreams! But she understands them: sees the house as impenetrable fortress; as guardian of the Dream; of the Brooding .... of the Third Opening.

Her main candle flickers and dies; surrenders its service; it must be about ten thirty; where's Luke?; but, no matter, Selene is in bed; Charles is God knows where: last week in Iceland; this week? Luke, well, he can take care of himself ... and she rises, having pulled the plug, snuffs out the bordering candles; wonders where she can find a replacement for her favorite candle: this thick, magically moon-lit thump and flare of pure beeswax which Luke had bought — how many years? three now? — on a trip back to Jersey; some Italian saint's festival: it unnerves her a bit below self-confession that the candle's expiration is more than simply symbolic! ... and as she towels herself off, she submits to her awareness of how good soaking here makes her feel; of how safe she feels inside this house; when in the tub ... and she wonders, just stops everything and is confronted by this wonder, Why am _I_ really looking for Rian?

# THE HOLY FAMILY: SON

When he had met Laura, Luke felt that he was ready to die. Die and surrender everything he knew about "this side," earthy paradise, sin, sex ... his was an ecstasy of embrace; immediately, instantly. She had been more reserved, hesitant; had lived in the Obliteration and wanted to shed the deathly ways of Males, but then she didn't, and when she first touched Luke, massaged him, she saw The Snake ... and knew. He had only to bite his tail ... Ouroboros ... and she was his. _Only_.

This was their common quest; to become ouroboric; a transforming point for each other, more, transubstantiation: these were the terms, their early words of early embraces. She knew the first easy steps: children. He only sensed the pathway: parenting. For how to be complete unless one is, daily, in touch with Past and Future to create the Present? Laura did not fear this treading, could not stop from going there, for she knew that she was but bowl, cradle, saddle, cave and rocking hips: all which was receptor, and for the completion she needed to be stirred, mounted, rolled, seeded ... she the mouth; he the tail ... and then they would transmute, become other: spirits in flesh, children.

Charles had been born from the fury and clash of their first years of coupling. The hungers each brought could hardly be satisfied by sexual organs which needed to rest. Laura and Luke understood as concept the fact that they should rest; find each other in mildness, snuggle and whisper. But rarely was there such a moment. Once they set upon Bodywandering it was as if from Time Eternal forces came to wander with them and through them, and so they tore each other's flesh and soul, ripped out and gobbled tendernesses and slicing hatreds, took after each other on the run, heated in the hunt, captured and tortured and abused and adored and worshipped and licked and lapped and ... they had to leave California, no doubt about it; AnoMar was but for the leaving.

As they have weathered, thoughts have been shared about California and especially about AnoMar and the effect on their Brooding. For Bodywandering floats off into communal Brooding; starting first with the collective mind and soul as it seeps in through the consciously and not so consciously manipulated messages of local society. And California in the early Eighties had come to be all that its Puritan forbearers had wanted America to be: a bodiless land with a narcotized soul.

President Reagan may have not been other than its symbol, the man hardly possessing the power, but he was sufficient. Denial of the Dream; more, of Dreaming. Or, maybe — a thought as they crossed the border into Arizona on Highway 8, entering Yuma — maybe, it simply was the Parousia on its own terms. "Look out for Number One! ... And everything else will turn out Okay." Okay. Okay. _Okay!_ ... Cotton Mather still dreamed: California is the New World, the Chosen Land, where all The Elect are gathered in Praise inside a Crystal Cathedral.

Yeah, Luke had to go; Laura wanted to get pregnant and she knew that something was preventing this dream, so she went ... to Minnesota; Hastings; on the Mississippi.  
She loved to walk down off the porch, pause to look at the sky and smell the air rising up the riverine bank: winter snarly but pure or spring thick and perfumed, and then take inventory and observations on the trees and bushes and flowers that were seasonal as she ambled the just one-hundred yards to where she could peer down the fifty-odd feet of plunge to the Mighty One and watch it roll; "Her roll" is how she felt; Mississippi, the cunt line of the Nation; she felt Her power.

During their first long winter — of which there is no short version in Minnesota — she conceived; and he, born August 26th, was named for Luke's father: Charles. Not just birthed on his grandsire's day of passing but with Luke kneeling, holding the spirit of his newborn in his hand, kneeling before the headstone, that slab which summed up so much of his father's life and all life as Luke had known it as Alfred: " _Thy Will Be Done!_ " — so genuflected and with soulfully groveling obeisance he hears: Charles. No exclamation. No theatrical lights. No clash and boom. Not even the wind stirring. Just the simple nomination: without a doubt, "Charles."

As fierce as they had wandered: wrestled and yanked at each other in maddening embrace — so equally calm was Charles' birth.

He came into the world of average length and average weight. However, of greater — not frailty, no, that's not the proper world — of greater delicacy; yes, delicate, but of such a line and form that there was no doubt that the Sculptor was renown of hand and art. A different sort whose infantile actions revealed more than Luke had been prepared to augur, to wit, Charles laid upon his mother's breasts and did not sleep and did not suck except on his own schedule: once every two days. Ever the Warrior, Luke nervously feared for his scion's survival. His especial presence was felt by his mother in a way which moved her deeply into musings upon the symbolism of their intimacy: for Laura was pained by milk bursting and aching breasts, and she pumped away gallons for the preemie ward, yet, she knew he was strong; no, not strong, but that he was a survivor. A survivor who also shared; here, sharing precious resources of Her with those truly weak.

"He's _calm_. That's all." Laura worked hard to speak softly and calmly, herself. As and when she touched the baby's face with the tips of her fingers all worry quickly dissipated.

"Maybe's there's something that's not showing up?" Luke's anxiety was like a brick.

"Sometimes, kids start out slowly. That's what my Aunt Rita said when she called this morning. She told me about a neighbor ..."

"Don't!" Luke cut her off; he would not be comforted.

His son looked at him: eyes of a cast of blue such that Luke began to rack his brain to uncover its source: _Celtic_?

Luke reached down and picked up his son's hand. No grip. No holding on. He just laid his fingers on top his Dad's and let them slide away with gravity.

Luke, the towering hulk whose two-hundred sixty-five pounds had been carried like a threat during his youth, now hauling another hundredth of a short ton, but nevertheless an athletic gray-beard, he here with his son; pondering; holding his tiny hand — "Not dainty," he said to himself, but at once heard in response, clearly: "A wee one, this'un. Be he of the Wee Folk, for sure and begora!" — and as he held babe Charles' hand, he moved a thick finger across these fingers like fine China and the palm like a dot of soft soap, moved about and was in that instant Brooding, Brooding a flashing neon sign: "Submit your will to the Will of God!" _Again_. And, AGAIN! ... all he could do, knew all it was for him to do, was hope ... and Accept.

Charles was _not_ Luke; Luke could clearly see that _not_ ; but then he was — "Or did he jump a genetic generation or two?" It drove him to implore the Goddess for Acceptance, and to Hope in the greater understanding of The Parents.

During Charles' first year, Luke was staggered by dreams of horrible guilt. At night he would be walking through a concentration camp; he a guard; he looking into their eyes: all Celtic blue! — he selecting this one to be killed, that one to remain alive. ... Terrible dreams! Dreams he did not share with Laura.

They were dreams which brought him back to the feeling he had had on The Island. That place (" _Heaven or Hell_?") where he had first become Snake ... and first Sacrificed another (" _Murder! Murderer! Does War justify murder?!_ ") — Sacrifice of the Son: he had been Son; had he slain his own father/Father on The Island? Now, _my_ son? ... but this was a time in the past; yet, the feeling was _here_. When he woke Luke knew that the naming of his son after his father was more of a touch from beyond the grave then he'd like to admit ... so, he buried it; deep, back behind his heel, somewhere where only She could touch him: Laura; and he feigned, for years, a touchiness which warded off her probing in that area.

Charles grew in the most average of ways; and this was a constant "thorn in the side" for Luke. Laura knew that something was strained between her husband and her son, but, as happens in marriages — even ones (maybe especially ones) of ferocious intensity — somethings just are born, created, happen and then stay that way, seemingly, forever.

Yet, Luke fathered in a fashion which lead friends and outsiders to infer that he and Charles were inseparable. Luke taught his son every sport which the local rec league and school system offered. And, in each sport, Charles proved mediocre. He could catch, but not make the Big Play. He could shoot, but would rim the foul shot in the last seconds. He could run, but quickly fatigue and end up in the middle of the pack. Even wrestling — though there he showed a scrappy quickness and elusiveness — there he'd lose points: like shedding water, during the third period.

But they did sports, and everyone saw them as "buddies." In like manner, they read together and played _Scrabble_ and _Monopoly_ and watched sitcoms and cartoons .... and it appeared that Charles was happy — and that was the rub for Luke: Charles _was_ happy.

"He's a happy boy."

"I know, Hon, but ..."

She looks at him waiting — eternally vigilant at the Gate — for him to find that word, but, here, twenty years later and Luke has not found the word; not a word, at least, not one Laura has heard.

For Laura, Charles was a "once born" soul. Her husband was William James' "twice born" to the tee. Maybe that's why Luke couldn't connect with Charles: Luke's whole life struggle _is_ for conversion, clash and boom and the smashing of self, thoughts, feelings, flesh and bone against some wall — trying to break-through.

Charles was such an "other" soul — "Maybe," she uttered in self-doubt. For she could look back on his eighteen years and say, "We never did anything _together_." Strange as it might seem, she had to be honest about that. She and Charles were together: lived, ate ... he slipped out after napping inside her! ... but it was more of a presence: being present to one another, not of active time together nor specific acts, not like with his father. No, she terribly loved Charles, and she felt that he loved her just the same ... but he was Presence, true, not Word, not something to question and ponder and listen to, no, rather just to be with. And his happiness made her happy; and she felt this was part of why her son was happy.

"What do you think he's doing?"

"How would _I_ know?" Irritation.

She pauses before rubbing Luke's neck; her impulse is to strangle him!

"Ouch!"

No "Sorry," just a backing off of pressure.

Several minutes of tracking and elusiveness of feelings.

"Where's _he_ hiding?"

Mumbled, pillow stifled growl-grunt.

Mocking, "Oh, _there_!"

She slides quickly and without his conscious grasp to his feet and starts working on his ankle. Luke's body jolts and bucks as if hot wires were being pressed into his sole.

"Christ!" he yells and kicks her away. He does not turn over and face her; his kick has hurt her, this he knows. His body is iron.

Laura half-knew, half-expected, mostly wanted this reaction; has waited years for it; and so she swallows the pain, tongue-biting pain, a big bruise on her right thigh — but she has him; knows it; and she won't let pain be his victory.

A minute. Aeonic time churning.

She grasps his right foot, but it weighs four thousand pounds; leaden feet.

"He's gone," matter-of-fact; "Gone. So now it's time."

Luke offers himself to the Bed, _Swallow me!_ he pleads, but both he and it are mute.

A minute. Again.

"Do you think I didn't know that this," touching his heel, "was taboo?"

_Swallow me! Swallow me! Swallow me!_ : a plea for annihilation.

"C'mon, Luke, just give me an image. _Something_. I'm his mother, for God's sake."

How could he take her back, _there_? He had taken her there, once; told her the story of The Island. Of the re-enactment of Cain and Abel. Of the ritual slaying which undergirded the Vietnam War. He an assassin. He, former monk, Alfred, O.S.O. — the Dreamers; Strict Ones: The Brooders ... no! no! no! _he_ doesn't want to go back _there_.

"Esau."

Did she hear correctly?

Yes, she hears the distancing echoes: _Esau. Esau. Esau_.

For his part, Charles was off on his adventure around the world. It was not adventure in the sense of traipsing through jungles ever fearful of tigers and lions and gigantic spiders, rather, it was on a cruise ship with an international educational exchange. Before entering college he wanted _his_ year, one that he had negotiated with his parents: "A year alone. But then not alone. Mom, Dad, I want to see and feel the world. Isn't that the best preparation for college?" ("Even if only a community college!" his father did not chorus; disappointedly.) ... And so Charles was off. Pledged to faithfully send a postcard once a week. This Charles' version of being on his own. And off he went: happily.

# THE HOLY FAMILY: DAUGHTER

Selene had come quickly upon the heels of Charles. So fast was his birth, the second pregnancy and Selene's arrival that Laura joked about them being twins. "Like I was pregnant _forever!_ " Only her tone of humor hid the prolonged pain; long-suffering; which she could never forget but kept caged, though it came back in ever so many variations on each Moon hence; as if a tether, a thin line of ache, more: a wave, pulsating; whatever; it kept her attuned to these two who, as she knew, were born at the same time, in the same place: sacred time and space; mythic time and space. But it was a knowledge which was simply a knowing, not a doing; for she raised the children without awakening the consciousness of this connection, keeping it as it seemed it wanted to be: secreted.

Selene possessed the body and soul which Luke sought in his son. From the crib she was Diana, a body strong and on the prowl. She took the world like Athena; attacked it and loved the joust, wrestle and battle. That she was blessed by Venus, this he expected; this he gloated in, silently; for she became in time Hera — this so more than her mother; here, a combination of attributes which are true power: magisterial, an authority ... she was only six years old when she first demonstrated this: a major accident at her school, just in the first grade, but she directed her classmates to tasks which their years should have denied them; she drew power _from_ them and she instilled power _into_ them ... more than heroine, she was Queenly; this Luke knew: enthroned ... though to the world she appeared "As one plucky, smart gal, there, Mr. Jennings. You should be proud!"

In a curious way which her mother understood, but knew it futile to discuss with her spouse, Selene _allowed_ Luke into her life. She didn't need him as much as he needed her. For Selene her father was truly paternal and she was obedient and loving, but, in the main, he was someone she tested herself against. Matched her wits and abilities against him. As mediocre as her brother was in most things, so was Selene a superior performer. In coed play and competition, she tumbled the best, won every long distance track meet she ever entered — and was being actively courted by top Division One colleges. ("Did you know _Berkeley_ has a rowing team?!") She won so many school, region, and state Spelling and Geography bees that, by the end of the ninth grade, she stopped competing, finding it not competition at all.

Yet, she and her mother were very close. Sisters in the way that Laura wanted: did so many things together; things which were theirs alone: quilting, gardening, tending the ever dying goldfish aquarium ("Floating cemetery," Selene laughed with a label that stuck through the years.); and truly drawing the family into harmony as they sang and danced: Laura being melody and rhythm to Selene's fine soprano.

"These stones represent you two and me and Mom."

Charles was bewitched by the odor of lasagna.

"Dad, if the candles represent the fire within us, what represents the darkness?"

Laura smiles at her precocious daughter, knowing how much Luke revels in her active imagination and intriguing insights.

With Charles globe-trotting, Luke looked forward with special interest to Selene's senior year. Not just that he would have more time to give her but that he would have more of her time. Spending time with his son had been a task, a labor: _Labora_ — back in the monastery washing the floors in Obedience to the Master — one that he knew was his responsibility, and one that he enjoyed. But such time always took time away from receiving Selene — her presence; her energy. Besides, she was the one ready for the pathway — to take her first steps onto the spiritual path, to learn about the symbols: the stones, the water, the candles ... and to discover for herself, and for them all, new symbols: for the Darkness, for the Forgetfulness, for all she had asked about and for which he had no answers; for which neither he nor Laura had answers, only the statement tinged with hope: "In time, you'll discover that, Selene, dear."

Eros was what Luke and Laura had come to name the Divine Energy; more, the Sacral Embrace; the Sacred Breathing ... it was all that was the Cauldron from which their Holy Family arose. Like steam, so was this their image: Holy Family.

They having learned — as soon as they began to form their married tongue — that they were always "the whole which is greater than the sum of its parts." They the Present and Future of their parents; and so they such for their children: Past and Present.

For them God and Goddess were not nouns but verbs; never-ending activity; so was Luke and Laura's embracing. They found themselves as flesh and as flesh they were the flow of time, the memory of their own lovings, tongues for the communal soul: that of The Holy Family.

But what it meant was terribly healing.

"It's a terrible healing." The first time she heard herself say this her hands flew to her mouth in an attempt to stuff the words back in.

Luke looks at her. He understands. He begins to cry. The instantaneous cry of one baby when another starts to cry. And it had been Laura's Cry.

"Terrible." He moans and shakes and sobs.

Laura is petrified; Pillar of Salt.

So, 1996: both the children have come of age ... but who is ready? How to unleash their awareness of Eros without letting it be consumed by the trivia of genital sexuality? Yes, both Luke and Laura had worked from the earliest days to guide their children into a healthy sexuality, but they were just too, too aware of the potency of the environment — "Like a toxic soup!" — in which their children were growing up. From Kindergarten on Mothers had painted Selene's playmates with lipstick. "Fag!" had been an epithet Charles had heard in first grade; not thrown at him, just thrown about ... and both events had opened the discussion about genitals and sexuality.

Sexuality had not been a top item on Charles' curiosity agenda. When Luke had broached the topic at ten, Charles smiled wanly and said, "Don't you think I'm a bit young for _that_ , Dad?" And the topic never again came up; not from Charles' side. So Luke decided to wait.

Parenting meant many things and dealing with the varied faces and powers of Eros was part of the deal. (" _Patientia_ , young Friar. There is much to be revealed in the Silence.")

Selene. "She always has the answers before I ask the questions," Laura reported at ages eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve and thirteen. "But, there's something that's not quite complete, Luke, I don't know; talk with her."

And talk with her was what he knew he had to do. Do because he knew that Hera power was not Selene's limit. Knew that he had used the word, the allusion because he had no word yet for whom she really was. More, knew that only Selene could find this word. More than power, she was rebellion; not in kick over the chairs and table, but in depth — "Why else her familiarity with the Darkness?" said only to himself; but this was it; not Darkness as dread and void and emptiness, but from her earliest years the knowledge of something other, beyond, inside, however it would be phrased.

Luke feared this conversation because he feared it meant rejection; that Selene had to move beyond him. Unlike her Mother, she was not married to him, she was from him, but in that curious way of insight Luke knew that he was also from her ... and he had never met another like her: neither male nor female.

"Men?"  
Almost a giggle, "Daddy, I _only_ love you."

"Quit teasing." Flushed. "Get serious for a moment, will ya?" ( _Yes! YES!_ )

Pause.

"Do I _have_ to marry?" Earnest question; tinge of being an inverted statement.

Luke's face flashes that this is not his topic of the moment. But it is hers.

"I guess not, Sweetheart." Lie. Pure lie. He wants to be grandfather more than anything else!

She turns her face half-away from him and says, as if condemning a prisoner to life, "Liar!"

Luke chokes and then stumbles a laugh: short, nervous finger of laugh.

"You love me, Daddy, don't you?" And she doesn't wait for an answer. "Forever, I mean. Me, you love me _forever_ , Daddy?"

Twisted; like a worm on a hook; also fish solidly hooked on the worm. "Of course, Sweetheart. Of course," a bit more devotedly than he'd like.

Selene turns away from Luke; he loves the fall of her hair; the glistening strands of amber.

"Men love me."

The sentence is visible in the air. Sky-writing: daimonic script.

He reads it and smiles. "She _is_ a cutie," he thinks proudly.

Then the sentence bursts into flames.

"Men Love Me."

And he does not hear, "Daddy." No address. Not for intimate discussion. No, for public display. An announcement.

" _menloveme_ " echoes: he hears it with his thousand ears.

That night Laura is swamped by Luke's erotic gambols. He is queerly crazed. Not doing anything he hasn't done before; nothing which they haven't talked about or imaged; no, but there is an edge, hardly perceptible. His looks are just a bit longer; "prolonged" fits her evaluation. His fierce bucking hammers a desperate edge. He pets her and sucks her, but with a series of ending strokes and licks which makes her feel like he believes this is the last time they will be together.

Tonight, they had not performed a special ritual; it was just end of the day hug and embrace ... then a flash-flood of emotions: things happen like that. But there was something dragged in from the ritual; and it was all in his eyes and his unspoken words and his thrashing about from being on fire to flailing about as if drowning. When he gasped and fell asleep — actually, like being knocked-out, he just lost consciousness — Laura drew close by his side; held, however, at his soul border by some force ... and only somewhere in their shared memory did she recall that he had once been like this and woke only to say, "They were here tonight" ... and she knew the _they_ : the monks, the communal dreamers: The Brooders.

If this were so, all she could do was wait for him to wake.

# THE HOLY FAMILY: FATHER

_Father of All_. Luke had dreamed this phrase, felt its image. But it was one from which he fled, not consciously, but actually. For he had enough of a terrible time simply trying to be father of one child, any child, but especially his own; first a son, then a daughter. He fled because it was Her Temptation — _Seed me and I will festoon and bequeath thee with flowers_ : this he did not want to hear, was his patrimony not to hear ... but he heard; and he was Tempted.

For what was being father but being Tempted? It was the Temptation which Yahweh through Adam rejected and continues to reject. As he looked upon Charles just born he could feel the knife through his heart; a knife of hatred; cold, steely, like the ice which is so cold that it burns the flesh, this type of hatred ... for his instant call was to "Slay the child!" Yes, the maternity ward was Mount Moriah and the crib, the heap of sticks, and from his heart he drew the dagger; readied himself; submitted himself to his Father, and slashed the child; sliced open his infant belly and broke apart his ribs to clasp his still beating heart, heart with Her Blood, heart which had fed upon Her Body, this heart, and brutally choked each drop to final drop upon his cheeks, down his throat, across his beard and abandoned into oblivion within his soul.

"You've a healthy son, Mr. Jennings," the smiling male nurse told him.

Luke went insane and wept.

Deep in his cups during Charles' first year Luke would pull at his beard for hours and twirl and twist his hair into knots, yank on them and let them go, all this but an accompaniment to his opening to the Temptation. For loving Laura was easy, at least as compared to this, for yet now he had to pay the price for bolting against The Warrior mythos. How — oh, how foolishly! — he had thought that The Island was his final test; thought that what he had done back there had both proven him as Warrior and broken his tether; how foolishly! ... Charles was another matter. It was not just love; not like with Laura which for all its weirdness and wildness and madness was pleasurable: against her he could fling himself and she would pound him into a new being within her ... women, he loved women, had loved them all: loving them, sexing them, fucking them — it all seemed to have some redemptive play: that despite what one intended, for good or ill, something profoundly and at the same time primitively simple in terms of a Good came from it. But being father, becoming parent ... it took one back to the Dark Vapors.

Was Yahweh the abandoning Father or the abandoned Son? Or both by the time he came to clone Adam? Such Loneliness — where did it seep from? Looking at Charles Luke could only see The Father; knew that it was child — being son made it just more poignant — who carried the primal Temptation, the one before Adam and Eve, the one wherein Yahweh abandoned Family as he Obliterated Her. Yes, there are remnant hints in the Biblical Story, itself. About other gods: the use of we and plural references ... and it must have been so, for Luke cannot configure Life without Family and so the primal energy of Parenting. This child, then, is, in itself — male or female — the corporeal signature of that divine plurality. _Yes_ , Luke mulls, _Yes_ , his head droops in alcoholic fatigue: _Yes_ , there is Laura and me, but then the child: now Charles. One plus one equals three. Isn't that the equation which drives The Warrior nuts? That despite His every effort, Life keeps generating ... it cannot be cloned. Luke laughs and dreams, not thinks, what a failure Adam was: the almost cloned, but somehow He needed that drop of blood which is Her: sliced from his own cock, a blood he called a rib: a ribbing, Divine Humor ... Luke laughs and cries and falls over on to the couch, snoring instantly.

For a fist of years, Luke had totally forsworn alcohol, but he needed it during that first year. All his drinking, however, was reserved for stolen moments when Laura would be away long enough for him to slosh inside the bottle and dry out before her return. He could never face the question as to whether she knew, but how could she not? Yet, he played his cards straight, and if she did, she let him be.

That Charles grew into a boy and a young man almost alien to his own ways frightened Luke. While Laura was not him, her otherness fascinated him; and he plunged into her Well and yet could avoid her when he wanted. But Charles was distressingly other. Luke had met men he differed from, some he respected, some he hated; but "My son?" — almost a, "Could this be _my_ son?" A question which questioned his own worthiness: falling back more than a time or two into a pit of his hereditary Jansenistic Irish depression, feeling that his son was God's Revenge, at least God's Burden, which exposed Luke's unworthiness: that he had strayed somewhere ( _Ever Friar Alfred!_ )... but, ever with Laura, ever face pressed against her creative belly, ever then he opened himself, threw off the shackles of this dreary and dark spirituality and accepted that Charles was from her and so from Her: he to be depthless symbol and sign of where Luke should go ... this his first Parenting insight: that the child is as much teacher as pupil.

When Selene was born, The Warrior appeared not. In the maternity ward, Luke was all new birth blissed out. Selene — just minutes old — held his finger and looked into his eyes in a way Luke has never been able to word or fully image. She was as much akin to him as Charles appeared alien. And as the years unfolded, she taught him things, but they were things he wanted to learn, to explore. They were things he had an instinct and an interest in, himself. Not Charles. Forever Charles jolting and jerking Luke's world about; confounding his emotions; baffling him.

Whenever Luke was at a loss or plagued by a revisiting loneliness, he embraced Laura. Yet, the more he loved her, the more they Bodywandered, the more he transformed and transubstantiated with and through her, so the less — so he swore! — he knew her. At so many moments — _Admit it: most every day!_ — he wondered what she found with him. If he had said that to her she would have laughed and thought him a bit daft if he persisted with the self-flagellating question.

_Heritage of The Warrior?_ Was it that simple? That he, Warrior scion, had to prove himself time and again: quest and joust and slay dragons ... never able to be at home? _Possibly._

But was it The Holy Family? He had asked her a few times, and with this question she, too, was intrigued. For she had felt the tug, a something which kept pulling at her mind, something which said, "More!" and which fluttered the image of birds all at once dervishly rousing from the nest and taking flight. Yes, there was something not only within The Holy Family which was yet to be created but also something Beyond — just a sense, an inkling.

As the years passed and the children grew, Luke became increasingly bothered by his inability to flush out this inkling. What was Beyond? Hell, what was the fullness of The Holy Family? Through their discipline and created rituals Luke and Laura had found a way to bring The Holy Family into vision, image and conscious action. They developed ways to Intend: a practice of continually imaging the presence of Her; being aware of The Warrior way of making people and ideas into Enemy; working hard to find Her in her and him and to join — heatedly in personal passion! — in an imagining of themselves becoming Her and Him in Embrace. This intention drew itself out in an attending ritual. This was a care for the body, not just of each other as Beloved, but of all as Beloved: of the Body. At work, playing sports, at parties: the same discipline — listening and peering and receiving others with a reverence, an openness to the presence of Her through them. In political gatherings they worked upon repressive and oppressive language, but more upon the imagery of the group. Then, with Selene's emergent song-writing talent they fashioned ballads and verses ("Even when hip-hop and Rap were in. Tough stuff!") which evoked images of Her; most successful was a ballad Selene put together for her sixteenth birthday which had the refrain, "She is He and He is She, Their Bodies Embracing Eternally"; and, so, they had worked what Luke considered their Work, their _Labora_.

Yet, Luke felt that he had hardly begun to parent; no, what he wanted to say was that he had hardly begun to allow himself to be parented. For this was the revelation of Charles and possibly the thorniest thing for Luke to handle: that he was to submit himself in obedience to the knowledge and love and creativity of his kids ... _Hell, could I say this to her? That we have to become children. Become born again, somehow, somehow, oh shit! .... What can I say? What is this way? We have raised children only to learn that we are the children. Of something new. Something, hell — I can't understand this, oh, Parents help me! ... Why aren't you as quick with a miracle as ole St. Patrick was? ... Yeah, Eros. There is an Eros to Parenting which we haven't tapped. What we've done is okay. Maybe radical for some. Probably baffling to the Brooders. But, shit, what is this "more"?_ .... For his mind could not countenance group sex. At times he shuddered when that flashed into his mind: other men grappling Laura, mounting her, and she giving them pleasure! She smiling as they fucked her! Oh, god, he hated these images, but they were like gnats: at him time and again.

But could this be it? That their Eros was not fully manifest through procreation? That the Body had to be created ... and here the traditional images of the Communion of Saints and the Mystical Body surfaced ... Is The Warrior alone in his camp, and is The Holy Family to be home for _everyone_? Is that how one becomes Father of All?

Was it Warrior covetousness that kept him from sharing Laura with others? Was he a constricting valve stemming the flow of Her love ... of Her Eros?

How could he be but Warrior if men were in the brood?

Is this where all was leading? Is this what RW has come to slay: this dragon of Eros unbounded? Is this what lies in the fullness and beyond The Holy Family?

# THE HOLY FAMILY - ALIEN

When Luke and Laura had first met, the concept and reality of The Holy Family was fairly alien; more, it primarily existed only in a negative sense: almost totally restricted to that sexless, quite self-parodying, hagiographic use and paternalistic interpretation developed by Christian doctrine and dogma and as visualized through Catechetical pabulum. In time, however, both the concept and the reality began to flow from within their Embrace and from without their personal Cauldrons.

As they embrace, now and forever, so they continue to discover it ... or be discovered by it; whatever.

It is an image, a phrase, an imagining, a Presence of Her; Her as a fulfilling, a blossoming, a thriving Presence.

For Abbot Roch — and Friar Alfred — the concept and reality erupts from the mysterious and baffling mind and Divine Revelation of Almighty God. A profusion of mystical concepts which were explosively baffling, to wit: Immaculate Conception, Virgin Birth, insemination by the Holy Spirit, and, St. Joseph's vicarious fathering through an unconsummated marriage (" _Was Jesus illegitimate?"_ ) — all anchored as a matter of iron-clad doctrine and dogma: the result of thousands of souls, for nigh unto two millennia, hammering at the Scriptural words, images and stories of Jesus, trying to fashion the fuller, the deeper, indeed, the true and holy and righteous interpretation.

For them it is a humbling concept. Called to be celibates they realize that they have come from families: from flesh-pots; from the animalistic — often violent — cravings of parents, parents whose bodies and actions they, as celibates, now, must and _do_ reject — but reject in terms of ascending and leaving behind; for, as religious and as priests, they are super-natural beings. By the grace of God The Father Almighty they have been called to overcome and step-up as well as step-forward.

She is of critical importance: Her Obliteration is a Golden Key for interpreting Divine Revelation. The flight from Her; the alienation of male soul from female soul; the alienation of male body from female body: all this, in its own peculiar but consistent way, is a sacral valuing of Her.

For what Yahweh has Divinely Revealed is that She is not necessary: more, that the Presence and Creative Fire who and which She is, can and is found within the male; within Him: " _I am the Way, the Light and the Truth."_

Roch's commanding passion to enact the exorcistic millennial End-Time ritual stems from this desire to step-up and, so, overcome the present and defective quality of human life: to transform all into maleness and all maleness into Self-Generating Creativity; for in the Tradition, it is Paul's counsel which rules, to wit, better to marry than to burn! Which means better not to marry at all, and that it _is_ better not to marry, _ever_!

The Brooder End-Time ritual, then, is for the final consummation of the Original Sacrifice which God The Father, Himself, made when he moved beyond Her and self-created.

From this perspective, Obliterating Her is, for Roch and Alfred, a good thing (" _and God saw that it was good_ "), a righteous act, and, it is also for them a baffling mystery: they know not why they do what they must, just but that they must!

Like all celibates (male or female), they embrace the bodies and kiss the flesh of family and friends on Visitors Day. _They are not inhuman!_ No, they are super-humans. And their humility witnesses to the fact that super-humanity does exist in profane time and space! Monks and priests do walk about! Do traverse the border between profane and sacred time and space, as such, they are living witnesses to the reality of the intimate dance between sacrality and profanity.

Death, for them, is a welcomed messenger: for now they will live in eternity!

Birth, for them, is a welcomed messenger: for now another soul can be saved!

Daily living, for them, is a welcomed messenger: for through our lives the Love and Justice, Wrath and Compassion: all the divine attributes of God The Father are manifest.

So, Roch is compelled by Duty, yes, but more by Love — Agape, not Eros! —: knowing that the Obliteration of Her — and, from within this agapic Love, he compassionately accepts the continuing and continual gendercide murders of her — knows that the Obliteration of Her is a Call for all humans to overcome, step-up and step-forward: for all to be clones of God The Father Almighty! Amen.

Friar Alfred still accepts this, thus, both disorienting Luke as well as giving him some imaginary boundaries against which to define his and Laura's Holy Family experience.

But, then, there is Rian. And what Rian makes Present through The Round and draws forth from women and the female in males. For not only is Abbot Roch as spiritual head of The Brooders after Rian, so is he — but does he fully grasp this? — as RW.

Recall that Abbot Roch is also RW — more than even Ronald W. — RW as a fully secular being. Take serious that various Brooders exist, on a daily basis, more in their secular guise than their religious, and raise the question: _Who was what?_

Friar Alfred became Luke Jennings again when he left the monastery — but, if Roch is right, he did not leave as much as he was sent!

Was all that I did in Nam, all which happened on The Island, my whole relationship with Cardinal Bao Duc, all this, my secular mission?

:something quite unnerving; something truly alien; an alien presence — possibly himself otherwise transubstantiated? — which is about as Alfred Broods and Luke Dreams, as he does daily, upon this Holy Family.

Alien. Something inarticulable, something which became Present to Luke when within the Dark Vapors: it had something to do with the how and the why of The Brooder Dream as it emptied itself into the profane, secular world.

If this is so, then he fears for Roch. For Luke knows he is more secular now — more non-Biblical — less of The Brooders.

Or, am I?

But such thoughts, such imagining, such Dreaming: Luke cannot host, not now. Not let it contaminate his meditations. _I am a limited human being!_ he groans. It is enough to contest with Remembering Him and Forgetting Her. Enough to battle within himself these Dreams, this sky-rocketing back and forth in and out of the Dark Vapors. _Enough_! _Enough!_ ... _Enough!_

But can _we_ play the secular for simply the back-side of the sacral Hand? _Hardly_.

As the Millennium closes, so it is manifest that other Dreams stem from the alienation from Her and of Her; alien Dreams, alien Dreamers. Some pop-up and catch a fad: tabloid edition sects, movements, revivals, and so forth. Others of weightier Presence establish a beach-head and claim a footnote in history: Communism, Maoism, Hitlerism, Hippiedom and so forth.

One and only one has broken alien pod and spewed seed, and is about here: to the tune of The Brooder — Roch's David? — who pipes in the Rock 'n Roll.

Quite clever: attacking The Brooders at their weakest link: music — group dancing — such expurgated by Catholics _and_ Protestant reformers!

Don't Luke and Alfred and Rock and RW grasp what Rian has brought back? The erotic sway of the hips, the uninhibited touching of another's body, the submersion into a heated pool of ecstatic eyes and arms and legs ... _Janis!_

But ... not that simple. Not just Janis. For Janis revived Her.

Look for the further alienation. The movement beyond The Brooders in an even more backwards motion. Something which has even reduced music to elementals! Something which has even taken the human out of the music creating process: modulated, synthesized ... a movement in the cloning direction.

Yes, look for the ambiguously defined. Haphazardly described. Of such a chance design that it is, indeed, a masterly plan!

Imaginatively, some call it secularism. Others scientism. Still other, empiricism. All correct; but all inept.

For the Presence is beguiling: simultaneously claiming "self-evident truths" while mandating that "seeing is believing."

This alien Presence is that of Shattering. Whereas the Biblical Story shoots a holy arrow through Space and Time so indicating the progressive and inevitable — predestined! — unfolding of The Father's Divine Plan of Salvation, so do the Shatterers slam a sledge-hammer on all that is, breaking it down into smaller pieces and smaller pieces and smaller pieces, forcing one to look backwards to a point of Ultimate Reduction: theirs is a Shrinking Dream.

For the Shatterers, what is, is fully explainable in terms of its parts. They not only reduce, they shrink. For them, Life's value is not in stepping-up but in stepping-down. They grasp Eros in terms of squiggling sperms and coy eggs on a petri dish. For them the Fullness is graspable only as Emptiness.

These are not just scientists. No, they are the White-Shrouded thinkers and Dreamers in all disciplines and modes of life. Politically, Hitler was their most flamboyant star. But Hitler is only graspable if Planck and Einstein and Von Braun and their ilk are appreciated. For they created "value free" scientific principles and algorithms which were made manifest in the human wash called Zyklon B ... through the human art of prestidigitation: called The Bomb. Theirs is a world which can be value-free. One that can be unsentimental. One that can be behavoristically emotionless: for all that one has to do is ring the Skinnerian bell!

For the Shatterers, there is no Dream.

The Shatterers live without boundary: predators. They truly and fully make manifest what Roch and Alfred, Luke and Laura only think impossible: _no_ sacral valuation of Her: that is, they actually move in and out of all Dreams and worlds and modes of existence, move following their probe: Curiosity. Curiosity without Boundary: pornographic: they dissect animals: they dissect spirits: they clone human flesh: they shrink personality to a glob of embryonic cells: they explain all through mitochondria: Anon: Anon.

Why have Roch and Alfred, Luke and Laura not engaged the Shatterers?

For it is — logical, reasonable and experimentally justifiable — for them to conduct their own End-Time ritual to once and for-all rid the world of such foolishness as both the Biblical Story and The Holy Family.

But ... we shall see.

# CHAPTER 10: 1997 FORGETTING

Some years never really exist. 1997 was like that. _Deja vu:_ When he came back from Nam, Luke couldn't get himself to write the year with a seventy in it; he knew it couldn't be that decade, because if it was it would mean that the Sixties were over; yet, it did take the Sixties till 1974 to end: somewhere when Nixon resigned, who cared which August 9th? — " _A day which will live in fabulosity!_ " Amen.

Laura's search for Rian. Did she dial up old commune numbers? Rush off to an astrologer friend? Go down to the Minnesota Automobile Association and ask for a Trak Map? Hmmm. Not quite. Because — and was it The Brooders?; when he thought about it, Luke said, "Naw." — because as soon as she knew, so, as quickly did she forget. She had to forget; for the forgetting was her first step. "You can't remember what's forgotten by remembering, now, can you?" she often asks herself in the mirror: twenty strokes, forty strokes, up to the every day seventy — grays were there: she took these as harbingers of Her Coming, and so as cryptic threads with which to weave the map to find Rian.

If you were sitting atop one of those omniscient chairs — like Dr. Seuss' Cat-in-the-Hat, tottering above reality and at a total loss to grasp what was happening below — yes, if you were omniscient — and it would be a help to be omnipresent, but that's not at issue here — if omniscient, then, you'd " _know_ " the shared stupidity which blanketed Laura and Luke.

He just went about his business of being a professor: teaching and talking and attending seminars and giving them, understanding that everything about was a false clue, a misleading trail; not for naught did he think himself like _Alice_ , and he appreciated the humor of Guthrie's song even more; and Laura, well, she wore the year like a rose wears its petal, with a great desire to shed each month, have it detach, float down and hit the ground all shriveled up: for it was not what the month was, but what it wasn't which charmed her; and she knew that she was being charmed; Snake Eyes; wondering at a moment or two just how this all was for Rian: she who was not Laura in Luke.

In some ways, 1997 was nasty business. Luke and Laura, for the first time, really had to forget each other. Not forgive and forget; just forget. If the issue of forgiveness would have come up, who knows? — she may have clawed his eyes out after she drugged him; he may have sliced her up and roasted her innards in bemusement. But it was about forgetting. Why? Because all they could say to each other was that if The Brooders — still that hesitant, wary unsureness in Laura's mind's eye — _if_ The Brooders were to find Rian, it was logical that they would look in all the obvious places, at least obvious to them. They would search those places they would project a woman would hide in. They'd consult all the fringe psychic talents — which they did — and plumb astrological charts, _I Ching_ hexagrams, explore the grizzly remains of numerous animals, and jot notes as old ladies out on Marblehead read the tea leaves. After all, this is how they had created woman, so why not expect her to act as she was created? Wouldn't she act as they Remembered her?

Laura and Luke didn't want to fall into this trap. Laura was the one who detailed the practice. Told Luke the messages from the bodies she wandered: blank sheets, soundless Morse Code, dead carrier pigeons, invisible hieroglyphics .... this was the message. All that could be said about Rian. It lead Luke to raise the question just once: _Maybe she's dead?_ Laura's intolerant smile: shot small and quick, told him to shut up and forget!

The practice of Forgetting was one of discipline and ritual. The discipline revolved around imagining themselves as the Greater Body. Not as easy as it sounds, for it was not just a mental image, no, it requires carving a block of marble with your breath. Yes, breath; and breathing was the first key. For months they worked at breathing with others; not that they called anyone over and said, _Let's breathe!_ — no, it was their imagining; it required: starting with themselves in the morning, allowing the breathing of the other to become your breath. He'd listen to his own breathing and then tune-up his ears to find hers, then harmonize; and once in sync, they'd begin to move, disciplining themselves in every way to bring all things into their breathing: milk as it was poured into the cereal bowl, the hum of the toaster, the ripsaw kaboom of a near-ice-blocked car's engine, the swoosh of the flushing toilet ... and, then, people: more them than anything, naturally: taking in the image of a him or a her and while working with them on the muscular and mental level, atuning with them on the astral. Needless to say if it hadn't been for Luke's past Brooder disciplines, he would have thrown up his hands — especially when other women were involved: Christ, he'd get all sweaty and find himself ripping off his clothes and wandering their southern lands and ... well, this was why it was called a discipline and not "Fun!"

Laura found it, in the main, almost too easy. In fact — curiously! — breathing with Luke was the hardest task of the day! For it was him — _Surprised?_ — most of all, whom she had to Forget; Forget to find Rian, not his memory of her but her memory of him which wasn't Laura.

But once she got it down, she was off. Others came into her like sheep to the shepherdess — she laughed, often, at the silly daydream of herself as Little Boo Peep! But it was almost that easy: she'd walk around the street and into the supermarket and drive past the local high school, and soon it was like a symphony. It was just like that, maybe even more catastrophically gasping: as when the first time the swell of an orchestra took her heart on a flight beyond her body, she remembers the day: Wagner ... God! Hell, Goddess! _The Ride of the Valkyries._ How many women gasped with their fury, their power? She had wept and she had laughed boisterously; happily. But, then, she came to a poisoned distaste for Wagner: for he didn't Forget, only Remembered — back when, she didn't phrase it that way, but so it was; now, at the close of the first chronological week of this discipline, she had her own symphony of Forgetfulness.

Breathing. Think about it. If you imaged yourself as a symphonic breather: everyone else and every other existing thing: animate and inanimate (" _For rocks are souls!_ ") are the exhale to your inhale and the inhale to your exhale, well, what would you Remember? That you Forgot that you are simply part of the lungs of the Earth; of the Greater Body: that your creation is the actualization of the God and Goddess breathing together? Parents in Embrace: Kissing ... and from the Mouth, so are we born. And if you took this disciplined imagining and turned it into a ritual, what would you do?

Nasty business, this ritualizing. For it can't but hurt for the pleasure. Here, the hurt and pleasure on the astral level. What hurt is that everything done in a ritual is, at one time, a lie. The stones are not flesh. The water is not from her breakage. The eyes are blind. And knowing this, that everything _Which Is, Is Not_ , well, Luke and Laura had to pry open and look under each bush and every rock.

He'd splash water on her and she knew he wanted her to drown. They'd have to Remember this Forgotten aspect of water and sink into the drowning. This apparent gift of baptism, so he'd have to plumb it for all its death dealing force: for water has been Forgotten as Hers, and it has become numerous other things of His: cleanliness, sanitation, sterilization, ice cubes, something to skate upon (Minnesota of course!) ... but never of Her: never the Forgotten aspect of Her within whom as foetal child we drown: drown in Her flesh, drown in Her desires, drown in Her breathing — each and everyone of us begins as drowned ... we gasp for air! But only when we have Forgotten; Forgotten Her and the drowning.

This drownness The Brooders could not remember because it was what was not just Forgotten but Obliterated and shielded from them as the Dark Vapors.

Luke would be there. Not even cock risen. Just there. And Laura would suck him in and he'd drown. All of him. Seventy-seven inches and busting a tenth-plus of a long ton of astral foetalness. Suck him up and drown him, and Forget him: he'd be inside her for hours; ages ... and he had no breath but her breath, and he had no flesh but her flesh, and he had no blood but her blood, and he had no dream but her dream: where The Brooders could never Remember to look! Where they could never, by their rituals, return, because for them water was for baptizing, and baptizing was for being re-born of the Holy Spirit: the Third Male ... three gods, male polytheism: somehow all supposed to be One — re-born not truly through the water but with the sign of the water: the baptized to be cloned, " _Just like Jesus!_ " — never again to live but to live through; never again to live but to be saved; saved from Her Forgetfulness: Second Adams.

Baptism: Remembering being Saved-From, being Con-verted, becoming One-With and so Solely Male. A water trick!

Luke Forgotten is Her Water!

The pleasure for Laura had not even a distant echo of pain. Her ritual of Forgetting was the Remembering which maddened her. No words could describe the niceness: yes, instead of pleasure, she used that banal term: _niceness_. Not that the Forgetting didn't gurgle to her throat the dried blood-clots of women horribly mutilated throughout His-Story, but with every pain came a measure up one inch of fuller Memory: of fuller connection to Her in everyone and everything around. Being in the world became nice. Just a common pleasure. Relaxed. Not emotionless: not the drugged out Warrior mode of stoned bliss, but nice in that way which being hugged and kissed is: curling wave breaking on hot sanded beach.

What is Forgotten, so, is now being Remembered: Rian as the Living Earth; not as One-With, but As-One. Not just Earth-Mother but Mother-of-All. Laura is Forgetting Luke as Luke Forgets Laura and so Rian is Remembered.

Laura smiles. The simple smile of pleasured being: being the living Earth: being the wind in quiet orgasmic embrace.

But for Luke it might as well have been the ritual of Judas Kissing. He'd be taken those moments when she'd suck him up; ambushing him, even though he knew they were forecasted. _Kisses_ : they'd just happen. The stones. The cup. Whatever: he knew that he was inside Her. But what did he expect? He, the one with Warrior armor; Warrior tales; Warrior Memories?

With The Brooders he had to be violently disciplined, able to battle Temptation ... then, knowing Temptation as only and solely Her!

So, how not to be a Warrior? He thought that he had dealt with this in time and space, but, here?

_Shit!_ That's exactly what he felt he was for a long time. Not foetal child, but anal crap. For the first time ever when he was genitally embraced, he couldn't ejaculate. Ejaculate silent oaths and damnations, yeah, but not celebrate with his total being. _What's up?_ he'd ask himself, most fearfully: when he'd roll over having just faked coming.

He didn't even want to know if Laura knew: but how could she not? but then how could she?

Aw, shit!

What Luke hadn't grasped was the reversal. He was trying to Remember Her and her — ever the Warrior, ever The Brooder! — but She was helping him Forget. Forget Himself and become the Sacral Presence _before_ _Genesis_. Become Him who was Her: Embraced ... the Ones who as Two flower as the Third. Luke was beginning to Forget, and, so, be Ouroborically Remembered.

Re-membered with Rian! ... Never in the actual moment so embraced, but ever so within their presence — what he fled, ran from, abandoned with her, left in her arms that day — _Damn Roch!_ — of departure on the steps of the Mother Earth commune.

This, why Rian was there and Laura wasn't.

Or, could she be?

Or, is she becoming?

His head ached, longing to banish this Memory!

Forgetting came to him through practices which would have called the stalwart and redoubtable Warrior to blind himself or castrate himself or jump upon his sword: other men.

These he Remembered as his enemies. Any other single male standing for The Enemy. They to be slaughtered: he not Cain to Abel, but faithful Warrior to his King God.

But as they breathed, so they knew the required ritual elements of Forgetting. They'd bring in things: stones and flowers and gnarled wood ... okay, no problem. But then came people. Those with whom they had breathed.

Forgetting, Laura was the first to carrying these light images into their circle. She'd lay them down so that both could see. Luke had done this during the ritual of Presence, where he'd bring a picture of his Dad or Mom or little brother and conjure them into their presence, and through their presence dying with them so that all were re-born. This was a ritual which greatly fulfilled him. But the first picture of another male twisted his breathing into a growl and unleashed a practiced swack across the face: hurtling the hated visage clear outside the circle. It so moved Laura to growl with him.

Yet, just as instantly, from the first he knew: he had to journey the celestial distance to this exiled enemy image and bring it back: Jason and the Argonauts; Odysseus — whatever you like.

Luke was rushed by the White Whale: fumed with Olympian fury and seethed, knowing in his growl that he, as everyone, had to be destroyed ... and so she became him.

Laura sucked him. Prostrated herself before the throne of his Cock. Whispered feverish adorations. Showered him with kisses. Licked him with loving reverence. Stroked and stoked him till he was fire and from fire to Pillar and from whirling, cyclonic Cloud of Unknown she sucked him in and knew him: knew all the Warrior desires, sucked them both in until she was his breathing: she to become the image; she to become the Enemy within whom this picture made manifest: this picture of Judas: _every male as betrayer_ ... but more, now, _Luke as betrayer_ : he accepting himself as Judas as she sucks him away, sucks away his self-betrayal, sucks him through his penis, now Cock; sucks not just semen and flesh but all Warrior Memory; sucking so hard that he bleeds, and in tasting his blood, so does she Forget him: Forget him as She was Forgotten. His blood. Scratch. Trickle. Nip. Clearly, not registered but as flinch and ouch, but on the astral plane it was all she needed: she, now, The Snake: fangs into him; fangs deeply sunk into his pubis, so deep as to drink from his sacral pool: that erotic reservoir deep within his sacrum, there to tap into his spine and suck down his brain: drink the rain from the clouds! — ah, he has Betrayed ... and now knows this betrayal as his Forgetfulness; Laura now sated with replete Warrior knowledge and Luke all shrunk and shriveled into leathery flesh and rattling bone, and from leathery flesh and rattling bone into ... _Ha!_ it bursts upon him with laughter: what happens when a joke is told: a Remembering of what was Forgotten — a veritable Revelation: himself as Her: _Ha! — rib!_

There as rib. Luke. _Forgotten._ Gazing upon the sated and bloated Lone Male: now, Laura. And the pictured image: Male without name. (Odysseus: "My name is No-body.")

Of such significance, for names are ontologically significant to Patriarchs and Warriors.

Male. He to be born through Luke, and so Luke to become him. This male to be foetal child within Luke. Luke to mother him. Drown him: Suzanne's _Sailor:_ "Suzanne takes you down to a place by the river" ... _Yeah!_ Luke smirks. " _The joke's on you!_ "

This, the opening line of his Forgetfulness. For he _is_ him as he is Her. That's the joke. What has been Forgotten. How he is to ritually link with other males. This what has been Forgotten: that the male is but one foci of mothering; not just parenting; but mothering. The child within Her is the child within Him. _Can you understand why this had to be Forgotten?_

Forgetting: "to live as if you are no one's enemy."

As their ritual ended, as clock time and calendar space robed them, so something within Luke screamed: not just screamed — howled maniacally: imploding with the screech and thud and crunch as one repeatedly runs full speed hurtling oneself into a brick wall and then, strengthened by this Ginsbergean Howl, picks one's self up and hurls one's self again — such it was: wailing, " _Remember! Remember_!"

And Luke wanted to Remember: remember The Island, remember The Brooders, remember everything Warrior ... but, at the same instant, he knew he could never again so Remember, because across from him in measurable space and time: by ticks and quarks, sat Laura: she now Remembering, and in sharing the Remembering, so both sharing the Forgetting.

Laura knowing the many hes Rian forced Luke to Remember. That of herself within Rian which was, not the femininity, not that of Her, but that of Him, of the male, the masculine which Luke wanted to Forget — which was of Him in the embrace before the Forgetting and Obliteration of Her.

Goddess, Rian, when shall we embrace?!

Yet, still not so easy. When up to pee during the night, he is compelled to find the picture ... and over the months it became pictures: a rogues gallery ... and to hate it; only his hating it made it possible for him not to tear it up, which if he did, he'd have to explain it all to Laura, and he was weary, so weary and did not need to spend endless hours explaining, and, if indeed she was Warrior, then why would he have to tell her? ... and by the time he had gone through all of these contortions, he'd spread out the pictures and try to Forget.

Each male came to him. Came and said, _Find Her in me!_ Not saying, _Let me find Her in you._ No, they didn't want to butt-fuck Luke. They didn't wear Prison faces. Though there was something there which moved him to want to say, _Hey, fellas, cram it up here!_ as he bends over and wiggles his muscular ass at them. No, even as he dreamed he knew this wasn't the scene, not the Story; he could Remember War or Prison — _Hell, even here in my dream I'm Forgetting!_ — but he was Forgetting: and they came to him, and he took them in; sucked them up: wombed them ... and he knew what came next: he choked on it even in his dream — they'd jack up his cock and roll over and fuck Laura.

The worst thing of it all was that she was easy, " _I'm easy_!"; and she'd smile, that goddam fuckable, "Come play with me!" smile which Luke wanted only as his ... but, it got worse: she as Warrior came back at him, and he'd have to suffer her Forgetting him!

1997 was a nasty year. A year of Forgetting.

Rian is coming.

# CHAPTER 11: PURGARE!

Brooder Remembering kicked off 1998 with the hunting of Her: like "The Hound of Heaven" The Brooders saw themselves as slavering coons just about to corner and snarl apart the rabbit goddess. As the perennial Ball was dropping in Times Square, so was the Net humming with fast changing stories of atrocities on the global level. Atrocities, that is, if you were not a Warrior.

One hour behind the coast, so Luke and Laura were still just kicking back, waiting at their eleven, nibbling chips and dip, sipping some cognac, and in the midst of a conversation about the kids: Selene now off to Berkeley and Charles still roaming the world: not in a program, but there, somewhere on the map, he becoming a traveler, and this fascinated his father, for he had not thought his son so adventuresome: and Luke nodded to himself an approving nod when thinking about Charles — not too many letters, not too long the calls, not too numerous the emails, but it was okay, in fact, a bit of a relief (never Luke to vocalize such), Charles now, as Luke hoped, growing, not that he expected too much would happen, his expectations for his son were never that high or that clearly articulated ... not like Selene, she now part of the Berkeley buzz; all the jazz on Telegraph Avenue: linked not only to the Street but through the Web to nodes of mentality and spirituality and information around the world; Luke liked thinking about her, and so he was thinking, holding her image in front of him, sipping the cognac and seeing Selene shooting that buzzer beating shot for the State title: there, "Hold it!" ... now; _now_ ; now; _now_ , the world wobbles wildly on its axis as the Tube speaks: "Breaking news from" and the announcer stumbles for words, "around the world I guess," he looks off camera, perplexed, "Yes, from all across the globe reports are coming in of break-ins at religious institutions ... so it appears, churches, its seems to be a Christian thing, lots of Catholic shrines and places like that," clearly he is fumbling for a handle as the info keeps flooding into his headset as he simultaneously picks up the latest "Flash" release, "Okay, the picture is forming. Let's go over to the map," and all telegenic eyes swing as a map of the world appears and on it are flashing stars: "As you can see. Mexico," and some jiggling film of a fire and people running chaotically and self-consuming noise, not reportage, is all that comes across, yet over it he continues: booms, "Mexico and the famed Our Lady of Guadeloupe. _Destroyed_. Not sure if it's a bomb. But, wait," and he presses his ear-piece as if by doing so he would better understand, "No. Nothing. No one knows. No one has claimed responsibility." Another star: "The Philippines. Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage. Highly revered ... but it too, destroyed. It appears, right now, that these happened all at the same time. Yes," he presses his ear-piece, again, "Okay. That's what is believed. Now, Austria. This is called Our Lady of Mar ... Marzel, no, okay, Mariazell." Like footage; each piece of footage seems replicative. "Going to India. Our Lady of Vailankanni. Must be strange for non-Catholics." And the image is of an altar destroyed; only fragments of statues lay about; the visual conveys nothing but disaster. "In Croatia, Our Lady of Bistrica." Speaking rapidly, being curiously energized by the listing: "Our Lady of Africa ... Our Lady of Lourdes. Good God, everyone knows about Lourdes! _What a shame_. Oh, my God, Michelangelo's Pieta! ... _What's_ going on?" A quite unprofessional commentary, but one whose bluntness captures Luke and Laura's thoughts: _What is going on?_

Within what should have been a watched moment, the clock strikes midnight, Mid-Western New Year — and with that stroke, a thump of new news: "It's absolutely unbelievable! The reports are too numerous to detail. It appears that just about every shrine and cathedral, devotional site and monastery, every college which has such a statute or any type of work of art venerating the Mother of God, it's unbelievable! — I'm, I'm staggered," and the images flood, run together like a herky-jerky home made movie, "All around the world. North America. South America. Asia. Europe. Like some crazed alien invasion, just like magic, bombs and fires ... all _desecration_." The announcer is becoming thick of tongue, fully baffled and embarrassingly pained, "I have to say, I am _not_ a Catholic. But _this_ , this is beyond the pale!" A runner crosses the screen: the camera jogs after him: several papers slip from his left arm but he does not stop: he hands the announcer the note he has been clutching tightly in his right hand: "The FBI, the CIA, Interpol, police everywhere are furiously searching for clues. If anyone, if anyone has seen _anything_ at any of these hundreds of sites, call the new internationally free line: 101-010-101-01. Rewards are being posted from individuals and religious organizations around the world."

_Click!_ Luke zapped him off.

Stunned: with fear licking her skin and fright sucking her tongue, Laura had watched Luke's reactions as closely as she had the screen's images. She knew that he was off somewhere, back deeply into his monastic past; she did not have to ask him, just watched his face: with each mutilated or devastated Madonna, tears rolled down his beard; not even so much physical and salty — true, these — but tears like scales from his inner eye: astrally, he was pierced each time he saw Her slain.

He looked at her but once. Not just terror, no, she groped for a word: what? — that which she must, herself, had seen: " _It's about time!_ "

Numbed: operating on sheer instinct and ingrained habit, Laura went upstairs to pack: upstairs but yet to stand sentinel at the Moon's window: she needs moonlight upon her: Serene Fire: standing not just to watch and observe but to receive, receive the message: Her Word: for strength: the pit of her stomach churns, her soul rages: anger, terror, shame, a call to flee, a call for courage ... and several beams descend and thread through and around her: binding her: steadying her: empowering her: she will survive, _I will move forward_!

Yesterday, she knew where she was headed. First to Latin America, then up to the Caribbean, then off to Africa ... her year: his on sabbatical, his off on its own to map Goddess spots, places he had been sniffing out for years — allusions from condemnatory text: citing offenses by Her — witches, demonnesses, succubi — at "such and such" a place: places, most often, no longer on maps, referred to as "the northwest fields" or "over the hill where the cattle gather," yet, at times a bit more helpful: "in the ancient grove by the fallen steeple." Luke has received a grant to study "Millennial Images" and though this was vague, for him it meant finding Her ... and hopefully Him ... and even more wildly sanguine, of finding faded traces of The Holy Family. Yes, yesterday, she was going South and he was headed East, but what now?

All her packing completed — if nothing else, Laura was the planner, the one who made lists and was finished before others started such things as packing: she knowing that Luke was "packed" as such a word fit into Luke's mind; at least his clothes were cleaned, if not pressed: "Never pressed!" she softly chuckles.

She carries her bags down to the vestibule and arranges them in neat order by descending height and thickness, then pivots, strides back up the stairs and within a deflating sigh plops down on the bed. Instantly, the Room asks, "Why aren't you more agitated? Can't you hear Luke?" ... Yes, she hears the squeaks of his chair as he rolls from his desk to one of his many bookcases, hears these chirps and scrunches through the ventilation, he being right above in his part of the attic: he officed at the West, she at the East: both to relish The Jennings' Flame; but, now, she answers — with a small smile, _I don't know._

Stasis. Laura just rests. The Room nestles her. She is soothed by Its calm breathing. That breathing which she felt that very first moment she had lain down on this bed. A bed for Luke: gigantic — special gift from Luke's college roommate, the talented sculptor Marsh Hunt: how she had laughed when she first saw it, there in Marsh's modest loft, he who worked, characteristically, on small scale wonders, now had this monstrosity almost too wide and long and thundering to move: for he had worked some fearsome magic for Luke, took some ancient woods from The Pine Curtain up at The Towers and stroked and bent and soaked and curled and — Laura had no doubt — with some incantation made this circular frame. A circle with six posts so placed that you could move a normal mattress to different positions as if following the course of some celestial object or presence. Indeed, Laura had laughed, not at its startling beauty, for it was absolutely overwhelming to behold — as if to step within its perimeter was to enter a space from which one might not return — no, she laughed because it just seemed so right, " _It's you Luke!_ ": so, she had defended herself against Luke's annoyed response to her mirth. Marsh had been unfazed: like a Knight-Errant he held out his escorting fore-arm for Her and dutifully waited outside the perimeter as The Lady stepped over the portal. With a snorting guffaw, Luke had jumped and pounced into the space, and within a tumble was spread upon the floor flailing the air with his feet: " _All right! All right! All right!_ " is all he said, till she laid down beside him, that very first time, laid on the floor, there in Marsh's loft, and felt the calm breathing.

Not a breeze. Not a blowing as upon the neck, but breathing. And they had rested, so it seemed for eons.

When the Portal — for now they so call it after Marsh had dropped the noun — when the Portal had arrived, the Room had found its heart. It was so clearly so to Laura that she never actually described it as such to Luke. But did it matter? For the Room they knew to be alive, this before the Portal, just from their walk-about with the realtor: "This is the master bedroom," was all she had said and Luke and Laura knew it as more, much more: seven windows which were oddly placed, oddly shaped — possibly why the realtor had not entered this room to sing its praises as she had done with every other room? — and oddly glassed: some tinted, one massive southwestern one was stained-glass: very amateurishly done, but a veritable cosmos of distorting bits and glares of color: not just rainbow but of bewilderment, of bafflement, so totally distracting and disorienting as to be a focus if one were disciplined to peer: such was its invitation ... and Luke's mental note was to replace it as soon as possible, but now still there and always to be there ... alive: but not, then, with a presence, more: with a potentiality.

Then, the Portal. Without their conscious design, as it was placed: so did the six posts each strike a mid-point on a window: either at its lip or nose or brow, leaving but interpretation as reminder of yet a world untapped: Luke and Laura caught this as they first made the bed — being able to step inside the perimeter, for their mattress, while large and specially squared eight foot to a side, left sufficient room for them to stand, themselves and other objects: this at first seemingly queer, but also room for them to maneuver the mattress, place it such that they could line up a window through which to Dream and travel and fly ... for they played this way: taking off at one of the six points, hefting and heaving the mattress so that as they laid and embraced and communed and dreamed that a certain quality of light: seasonal moon and sun, timely of day or night, would fall upon them, bathe and blanket their naked and entwined bodies.

The presence made itself just as fully manifest as Luke and Laura Dreamed upon the Portal. It came as a Presence of caring: a relational presence, they knowing that as they lived there, so the Room lived with them and through them, and they it. Yes, the Room had dreamed the Portal and upon it It maneuvered Its fleshly dreamers: they Its Play.

Now, Laura was simply resting; resting; resting the Room ... and imperceptibly but as quickly at full flare the windows — each and everyone — was blazing with the glow of a fire: wild fire, hungry fire, faggot fire: reaching up to consume fire ... but she was calm: all was conflagration, yet serenely calm.

Then: " _Babe!_ " ... Luke like a Flaming Sword before her; she hadn't heard him bound and bounce down the stairs as she had so often when he had descended on excited wings and free-fall, " _Babe!_ " — for sure, it was Luke!

:i'm on the web and there's a godzillion messages, lines crammed, new web pages popping up on this thing and ya know ya know I mean man I got through to Kajowski in Prague and I can't believe this you won't believe this who would believe this? it's like a ring, a ring of fire or desecration or whatever, it's — it's ... well — just started, look actually planned, had to be planned, started yesterday, every time zone, one by one as the clock struck mid-night, but nothing was reported, nothing said, people knew, information was shared, pictures taken, but they waited — _they_ , who do I mean by _they_? — anyways, until New York, ya know Western Time, the Big Apple, _Goddess knows!_ that's when the reports started being reported, though things had been known, only then did it happen and it's still happening, i'm sure, right down to the last zone, where's that, Hawaii or something? Christ Almighty (and he without intention blesses himself) what can it mean what can it mean?

"Breathe," is all she counsels.

He throws himself down onto the Portal.

Upon exhale, Luke jumps up and off the bed: Christ I almost forgot, slaps his head, Christ, I can't believe I forgot, do you know what they said, no, no, no messages, no press releases, no communiqués, just one word, scrawled, one word: " _PURGE!"_ ... and it came off in capitals as he lofted each letter from his tongue into the air where it took flight as "PURGE!" ... he looks down at her, her resting, she the Great Plain, he Soaring Eagle, hovering, gliding, watching her, for it is more than a word: a voice within chides him for being so studiously forgetful! — " _Purgare_!", yeah, how could he ever forget? The look in The Master's eyes as he spoke this holy word: word of Mission, word of Call, word of The End-Time ... Witches eyes, bodies drawn and quartered, large stones pressing the life from nubile maidens, the howls of crackly voiced hags ... so he had been shown, so he had read the sacred poetry of the _Malleus Maleficarum_ : " _Purgare_. Yes, my sons, Christ will return to Purge the world of Satan and all his cohorts."

What spell did she cast to distract him and force him to lay by her side? What potion did she slip into his mouth as her tongue pressed against his through the deep kiss? What hallucinatory incantation did her southern mouth utter as he floated inside her delta cavern? How quickly she made him Forget " _Purgare!_ ".

# CHAPTER 12: MAO

" _Purgare?!_ ... You think this means _me_?"

Luke sat like the Sphinx; staring off into another dimension, not giving away anything he didn't know he was giving away.

"Christ!" He crosses himself; eyes heaven for instant Absolution: received. "You're really missing the point." RW turns towards Laura. " _You_ see what she's doing, don't you?"

"No, I don't. Simply, I don't think the way you do." The _you_ carrying an identification of both RW and Luke.

Not only don't I think the way you _guys_ do, but I don't want to be here. But how would they understand that? If for nothing else, she knew that she'd have to suffer this meeting — _Admit it, you wanted to see this RW._ Sure. And he's spookily a lot like Luke!

So, watch them. They were doing this dance routine before you came along. They're both Brooders, remember!

The Vatican. She had never been to the Vatican. Italy itself was on her Cook's Tour itinerary, but not till towards the end. She searching for healing folklore and unusual ways of tapping into the energy she knew "germ theory" medicine ignores. But, The Vatican. Hmm. Have to admit that it _is_ impressive. A bit cluttered. Being an American, the visual effect of Italy is staggering. It said something about the reality of The Brooders — All this stuff can't be for nothing!? But she surpresses that. Why are we here?

Sure, the immediate cause: Abbot Roch's elevation to Cardinal, "Prince of the Church" — she can give him his sectarian due; but Luke would have come, despite the ceremony, come because he does link _Purgare!_ with the Brooders; uncharacteristically, he didn't explain it to her, rather — and she was mildly shocked, though more intrigued — he said, "It's a Catholic thing. Ronald W. and I have something to do together!" Then he laughed; cynically tinged.

Girl, go ahead, just ask it! No, listen. Listen to these two guys who have tried to kill each other — how many times? — and still they need each other: _Goddess!_ : are necessary each for the other!?

"Why the hell do you think she's behind this?"

With the same magic which Luke had recounted had grounded their recent visits, so Laura watches RW — _Abbot Cardinal Roch, please, madam!_ — clap his hands and video images simultaneously splash against the wall.

It is a Sixties rally; the clothing; the hair; the sound — that folk-song background, Good God, it's _Puff the Magic Dragon!_

And from this seeming footage from the press corps rises the face of her: Rian. Luke can't help himself: like worms who risk all by fleeing their grounded homes after a heavy rain, so the music drenches him and his whole body surfaces ... no other word will do: surfaces. Laura notices. But then she, too, is fastened on Rian's face.

_So, that's her._ Not that she hadn't seen a picture. A couple more than she ever wanted. But here she was in action — _Live!_ — and it didn't take but her stepping up to the mike to send a shiver down Laura's spine. For, if she was not watching the film and had been listening only to the voice, Laura would have said: _Selene_. My own daughter! ... Laura sways at the edge of her chair.

" _... as Mao says, we must heighten the contradictions!"_

The screen collapses into nothingness; the wall remains.

Luke closes his eyes and yields, surrenders into his chair.

Laura lifts her hands to her face and prays for her head to fall off!

"Why do you think I had that jet waiting? From the first moment ... and _I_ did hear the very first report: from a Benedictine Brother in Asia — you know our system" ... said with the _our_ conveying and confirming all the special knowledge he and Luke — hard for him to say "Luke," feeling "Alfred" tender at his lips! — shared ... "and at first I thought it some crank terrorist thing, maybe some Red Army or other mentally petrified group of Marxist atheists. And so I didn't give it much heed. Look, the Millennium's coming, and God knows what type of kooks — Christian and otherwise! — will be doing all types of things. Look, I don't put it beyond Robertson and these CBN guys to Hollywoodize the whole shebang. They like "dramatizations" you know, and God knows they have all the money!"

He stopped. He knows that they aren't believing him.

Ornate. Baroque. Magnificent. Stunning. Garish. Lots of _Bad Taste_. So many adjectives as they had walked up two flights to the Abbot's office. Swank. Decadent. Indecent. _Stop!_ You don't have to live here. He does. They do. Be thankful. Just find out what they want. What they know.

"I don't think you're being totally frank with us." There, I've said it!

"I don't think you're being totally frank with me." Luke had uncharacteristically grimaced at her summary indictment; he was so good in faking her out, she the gullible one — he toyed with her Innocence; but not now, not this night ... she didn't let his muteness stand for his answer: she just went right at him, "You're thinking about her. Rian. Aren't you?!"

:yes, Madonna: who else but Rian? He couldn't help himself. She had weathered earlier outbreaks of the witch-craze, but back then the Christian Keepers had only been a kooky wing, now, they have Cardinals defending them as righteous zealots! ... Each shattered statue, each mutilated painting, each tortured image — only her and only Her!

"It's just that she's so much that, that ... the past."

" _Your_ past." Conveying by "your" the linkage of Luke and Rian.

Luke grimaces.

Laura rolls towards him, breaking the diameter of the Portal; touches him with her breath, latches onto him like a remora on a shark: she wants his blood — " _Your_ future."

:stop it, woman! _Stop!_

But she can't. She won't.

"You were going searching for her. Did you even possibly think I didn't know?"

:Stop!

"Me, _too_."

So, together, they celebrated their departure. Each with a map with her, Rian, xed in as the goal. Both with absolutely different maps!

But they knew that they had to begin, as they anticipated so they would have to end, with her. Her, here with them on the Portal.

He to begin by exploring the map of her skin to discover where she is not; for Rian is not Laura, Laura is not Rian.

She to begin by exploring his eyes: flinging herself into them, to peer as he peers so that she can see, not her mirrored self, but that of Her which is Rian in him and not in her.

It began easily as kiss and touch. Familiar strokes. A faint arousal. But there is scant fearsome fire, tonight. No, it is not Torch and Burn Down the Abode so as to roust out all the suppressed desires of the day. No, she will not dance for him tonight. Not be his Moon Sparkle and seduce him with darkling desire. And he will not throw himself at her feet and begin to kiss and lick and write poetry with his desire up her thigh and across her belly, dancing from Bountiful to Bountiful: no, not tonight.

Tonight, they are what the Jungians call "active imagination."

They're talking. Truly: taking words from their body, but not allowing those words to skyrocket into wildings; no, rather, they draw a conscious picture.

The main theme which emerges is, to their amusement, Rock and Roll!

"I see her. Up there. Thousands before her. She belting out like Janis."

"Whirling around like Madonna."

"All the sexual excess of Icelandic Maiden!"

"Do you hear?"

They started to hum. He tapped on the headboard. She got off the bed and began to mimic Rian's action. Then it came, both: " _I ain't ya mama!_ "

The simultaneity made them laugh. It distracted them for a brief moment.

"What the hell does _that_ mean?"

"You're the _heavy_ exegete!" Laura chides.

Luke swats her with a silly smile.

"Jerk!"

"Naw, naw!"

And they roll on the bed, and like spark and tinder blaze into a hot moment of what both know from the moment they first gasp for air is some hot-house fucking!

"Jesus!" When he came.

:she felt like a truck had run her over.

Just a fly unzipped and a skirt in the breeze: a flower dusted with bee pollen — and they lost themselves, tripping into a heavy sleep: clothes still on; her shoes: off one foot, partially on the other; he leaking from plumbing still pulsating ... and they dream.

_I ain't ya mama!_ Said to each one. Not just spoken but intoned. Like the Friar Abbot at the Investiture of new novices. Words which come from another sphere to take you across the boundary — that invisible boundary into the Brooder Dream.

_I ain't ya mama!_ And she bares her breasts so that they can pet her. Stroke her. Men. Women. Young and vital. Aging and new born. Shriveling and smooth. Stroke her. And when they touch her breasts, blood squirts forth and stains them. It's a stain they cherish. Rejoice in.

_I ain't ya mama!_ And for some she reaches down and beats them off. Or plays with their teats, licking and kissing, turning them hard, then squeezing them harder.

Now it is Luke. Rian cranks him, not gazing at his eyes, but working his cock like it's the handle of a water pump. When he squirts, she works furiously to capture all of his spray; is agitated at losing a drop. Her eyes — not seen by him — are wild and crazed like one discovering a hidden treasure.

His treasure carefully deposited — hands finger-licked and every drop secured — she turns to Laura. Here, a deep and prolonged gaze into Laura's eyes. Hands hard at work. First, softly. Moving about Laura's breasts as if unable to touch them, but, soon, pressing them, massaging them, pushing against them as if they were plungers — Laura can feel the pain, the astral pain, unwordable chthonic pain: even as she sleeps, the pain twists her ... and then milk or at least a milky substance, streaming down, first it was drops, then a trickle, then a stream and now, a gush: two breasts pumping out a silvery fluid, it all drenching over Rian and her lifting a golden bowl to catch it all ...

Shaking her. Luke doesn't like what is happening. Her lowing moans and cracking groans. True, she grinds her teeth now and then, but, she's in serious pain.

"Wake up, honey. _Wake up!_ "

Now, as they listen to RW, they are sharing the dream.

" _Heighten the contradictions!_ Don't you see? All these years she's been in the Underground, what did you expect? It's the Communists. Not the blockhead Marxists — Spit on the fall of Russia! It's Mao. It's Pol Pot. Look at Cambodia, that's what China is slowly doing to Hong Kong!" Messianic fervor: controlled, intellectualized; "adroitly political."

"What contradictions is she heightening?"

RW leans forward and points his finger at Laura — a reflex from his teaching days — "Good question. Precisely! What _does_ she think are the contradictions?"

All are silent for a moment which curves and turns into a collective uneasiness.

"Silver Blood."

Luke's words send a jolt through the Abbot. Like a caught thief, he eyes Laura.

" _She_ knows?"

"Tsk." Such terrible despair!

"Sure, _I_ know."

Roch didn't want to go down that alley. Not now, anyways. With a cool withdrawal and an arrow of misdirection — which was characteristic of his ambassadorial aplomb, he asks, "What was the miracle of 1997?"

They exchange knowing looks. But Roch needs to continue the distraction. "The Year of the Woman. At least that's how it turned out. Certainly, I am confident, no one planned it that way. Women capturing _all_ of the Nobel prizes. The Pulitzers. The McCarthy awards for genius. Top positions in every governmental cabinet around the world. Tops in draws at Wimbeldon; the international Athena league ... you know I could go on and on. The list is truly impossible to comprehend."

Pause.

"So, it got me thinking," and he draws his hands as if into prayer but places its peak just under his nose: another professorial affectation — "She doesn't like that. _Didn't_. Wants to remind women everywhere that they are oppressed. Still under the male's thumb." And he pauses: more, suspension: swallowing muteness: betraying his deep belief in what he has just said.

Luke: "It's a theoretical possibility."

Yes, my son, my brother, Alfred! Consider it. Ponder it. Dream it! Hers is the murderous hand; hers the word of Purgation! ... Verily, still my brother, still my Alfred!

With all of that which is becoming Rian within her, Laura throws an astral broad-ax to sunder and cleave the heart of such a silly — _Such a truly perverted!_ — academic exchange. Luke winces, and groans within. Abbot Roch is oblivious to their severing moment: he is still beaming at Alfred!

"You'd have to believe that she's still stuck in the Sixties. Or, at least tied in with the same crowd of apocalyptic politicos."

Roch's eyes confess: _Excellent, that is what I firmly believe!_

Laura's soulful grip is iron-tong upon the desiccated testicles of His Eminence: "You're a pervert. Pure and simple. Just a dopey guy who dresses in drag and looks for every which way not to look himself straight in the mirror ..."

:she could have gone on and on, for the unacknowledged _Gendercide of 1998_ : the percolating blood which was oozing from every institution: divine and secular, the blood of women, Sisters ... at this moment, symbolic: statues, images ... but she knew: yes, ancient fuel was feeding her, feeding her fury, her rage, her bile stenched hatred, no, Hatred: he _is_ Alfred! — is this the sham-Luke Rian had seen and so departed from; truly her TwinFlame? .... both of them: Roch and Alfred, doing something together: Remembering and not Forgetting; already all the bodies, all the deaths: like the disappearing Argentines, like the gypsies and cripples and other discards even more obliterated from Memory than the six million Jews .... Hatred. Pure. Simple. Fierce. Violet.

:Ah! The Violet Aura descends upon her, from Her: holds her, steadies her, makes her less vulnerable to their savagery while clairvoyantly present to what Roch is Forgetting: gendercide, His one and only Holy Act, not just Immolation but Obliteration: sacramental.

: _Sister, hold! Daughter, patience!_

Remember: for them women are dead: their bodies and their souls: Eve's flesh and soul — from Adam; now, they to move beyond even this necrophilism: to scour and cleanse the earth of the last speck and tidbit of woman: each and every Rib!

Forgetting: this Remembering Forgets me! ("Go, Sister, _Go!_ ")

:I must leave. I am leaving. I _have_ left. Luke. This Alfred I care not for. He, the Adam; he, the Luke: the possibility of He who was present before _Genesis_ : the Obliterator.

True, I feel you, Mother, Sisters. Truly, I see with your eyes. I hear with your ears. These males, _this_ certain type of male: celibate, abandoner, loner, self-isolated; no doubt — they are cause, and, yes, I have left ... _When will Luke and I ever meet again?_

... but Luke knew that Roch wasn't listening, yeah, he was listening, but to what he saw in Laura: just Rian; watching his patrician eyes arch and his thin lips twitch a William Buckley whiplash of disdain ethered with annoyed dismissal ... but before they erupted: "Yeah, Laura's right. You're missing the boat, Ronald W."

"Why?" the Abbot protects himself with a professorial counter.

"Because Rian's not interested in the Silver Blood."

That's not the answer RW or the Abbot Cardinal or Ronald W. wants!

_Heighten the contradictions_. Yeah, just about every aspiring anti-war Radical had taken a Maoist swoon, what the Weathermen demanded, "Take the Class Option!" — as if white-middle-class kids could just jump out of their skins ... naw, what Roch's missing is that _he's_ taken the Class Option, he's the one going proletarian, trying to reduce the Tradition, the Brooder Dream, to some type of Science Lab-like End-Time ritual: faithful to Marxist materialism: attempting to distill the Silver Blood, believing it not mystical as real, but only real: fully transubstantiated: corporeal ... how else the desecration in the chapel: Sacred Coupling ... swayed by his David, and the White-Shrouds?

: _crazy_ , he's just getting crazier, maybe I'm crazy, too, who knows? ... Laura's sleeping: not the monastic jet but the red-eye bump and hump over Iceland back home: yeah, he thinks she must be wanting the Silver Blood because he wants it ... _Jesus, isn't that what I was wanting?_ ... oh, Luke is too tired to chase that: chase his whole story, all its catastrophic ups and downs, seeing them now as his chasing Her Blood, looking for redemption through Her Blood ... _Am I as crazy as Roch?_

# CHAPTER 13: DOUBT

The Abbot didn't care as much about Rian's knowing about the Silver Blood as he did about preventing both her and Luke from discovering only what the Brooders know about _The Hand_.

For The Hand is what the Brooders are all about. It was and is them.

The Abbot knew himself as the chosen guardian of The Hand. What had not been told to Alfred — what is deep secret and _mysterium tremendum tremendum_ — as he was sent into the Dark Vapors, was that The Hand was pre- _Genesis_. Consequently, a Presence which Alfred as Brooder could not Dream, but a Presence which, as apostate Brooder and savage Warrior-Luke, he — so they hoped — would encounter as She became Present to him through coupling with Rian and Laura and other she-devils.

And it was not surprise which really shook the Abbot, months back, when he had called Luke to watch the Sacral Coupling, and, then, to view his own intercourse with her which had sprung the Silver Blood. No, Roch was not surprised, rather, it was what had been wished for and was, with sober and steadfast discipline, excitedly accepted. For it meant that Luke was close, close to becoming The Hand, that is, that _other_ Hand — Hand of Her; Hand of _Them_ , who and what _Genesis_ alluded to in that polytheistic passage which has haunted Biblical exegetes and the faithful for centuries.

Let us make man in _our_ image; after _our_ likeness. ( _Genesis_ 1:26)

_Us_?! ... Who's there?

Roch knew; knows the literal facticity of the esoteric Tradition of which he is guardian: that the Brooders' meditative group is The Hand: the creating presence of Him in the Garden . As _His_ Hand they gather and purify, focus and concentrate their celibate male eros through deep, brooding meditation — not just meditation as thought, no, but as the boiling and spitting Cauldron of Erotic Fire, of Yahweh's intimate Creativity: they, as Hand, His Cock: as Hand, they brood and bodywandering the Sacral Body.

This is how, practically, each day this world is created, continually created, brought into being; sustained: Brooding Eros.

As such, their Brooding continually — on a daily basis, and every minute and second throughout the day around the world as the Holy Office is prayed and Holy Mass celebrated! — purifies the dross of Biblical literalism and analogical interpretation so as to reveal the Tradition's mystical literalism: _What Is Not, Is Not, But Is_.

In this light, the Brooder answer to 1:26 laid in Chapter 2, verse 18.

It isn't good for man to be alone.

_Alone_? But hadn't Man been created as male and female? To wit,

So God created man in _his own_ image, in the image

of God created he him; _male and female_ created

he them. ( _Genesis_ 1:27)

Doctrinal and dogmatic Literalism had taken these words as heard and imagined that within Yahweh was the full and complete image of male and female. Yet, the Brooders' mystical literalism knew that these verses meant that the male and female so cited imaged _only_ that of Yahweh, Father Almighty. Meaning that the male and female image manifested through Adam and Eve is a manifestation, a singular imaging only of Yahweh, Father Almighty: of the Alone Male.

Though they seek only to Obliterate it, the Brooders know that there is — _Still!_ they lament: _Curse of the necessity for The Rib!_ — a fuller maleness and femaleness: that which images Her and which couples with Him: The Serpent.

For the Brooders this fuller maleness is not Good; it is Satanic; Evil ... in this sense: material, bodily, fleshly, genital; and this Satanic Evil must be reduced and shrunk and shattered, and all converted, transformed, transmuted into the new supernatural millennial earth: an abode of ethereal angels and saints: where "they neither marry or are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven." (Matthew 22:30)

_The Serpent_ : the doctrinal and dogmatic Tradition cannot account for this serpentine Him. It is a Presence which lingers amidst the actions and revelations of _Genesis_ as a disturbing contradiction and confounding: where does the Serpent come from? An _imago dei?_ The other in the " _our_ " — polytheistic heresy or a disturbing revelation about Yahweh, Himself?

Only the Brooders know why The Serpent is condemned as Enemy; and why it is stated that,

I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and

between thy seed and her seed ( _Genesis_ 3:15)

For the femaleness of Eve is not the full femaleness of Her; only that femaleness which the Alone Yahweh allows, permits to live: only as Mother of Adam, not as Mother of All; not as Goddess. Yet, it is for imaging enough of this Mother of All and the serpentine maleness that Yahweh condemns Eve to live as Her and the Serpent's enemy.

The fear Roch and the Brooders have of this other Hand: Her Hand entwined serpentine, is of millennial import.

Roch trembles because he knows, as revealed in these passages, that the Serpent's Hand is a male Hand which does _not_ curse an Enemy, and which is male _as_ He erotically bodywanders Her Body! ... Her Body: Tree of Life at the Center of the Garden: Center is Her Cave: Spring: River of Life ... and so — from the day Alfred became Luke, Roch worked with exacting discipline and rigor to control and protect the Brooding as Luke dreamed this fuller maleness: "live as if you are no one's enemy" — which was heard and filled him as he bodywandered Laura.

That this other male Hand is Erotic — and not derivative of nor subordinated to Yahweh's Hand — this the Brooders know because if " _our image_ " had been manifested, two would have been created at once, not just Adam, Alone.

Ah! the Erotic celestial battle which is recorded in the silences and the mute spaces of these generating chapters and between these fecund, creating words!

:His Hand and Her Hand: outlaw imaginings; purloined secrets of _Genesis_!

Indeed, Roch knows that all of Warrior Revelation is contained in these precious few _Genesis_ verses. Yet, he is comforted by the arsenal of other Dreams which can be dreamed and so effectively used to slay Her and Forget this other Serpentine male, namely, all the subsequent Biblical Stories which reinforce Yahweh's message of Obliteration, which strengthen the Hand of the Warrior, which allow his Brooders to imagine — and so have all who serve Yahweh so imagine — that there is Only Cock and No Cunny!

Yes, the creation and dreaming of the Biblical Tradition is their triumph, the victory of His Hand! _Wrath of God Hand._

:imagining for the newly initiated and baptized that God's Hand is only Hand with Sword; Hand Executing Justice; Hand Slaying the Enemy: in eternal conflict, battle, wrestling, contesting with him and her as Adam and Eve _and_ that perplexing, complexing and mystifying Other: Satan: The Serpent: Her Male.

_Genesis_ is, without a doubt, the Story of His Hand, Alone — Michelangelo's finger painting is apt! But the esoteric Tradition receives _Genesis_ as a reactive Story — the Story as told by the Victor, the Omnipotent and Omnipresent Almighty Father — and, indeed, only the Brooders know its greater potency: as Story not only to be Dreamed but one to Dream with against Her and the seductive maleness of The Serpent.

In this light, the Brooders' Dreaming aims not just to Save or Restore Fallen Mankind, not just to purge and purify, not just to heal and resurrect, no, it is to Create: Create robustly, a new millennial Heaven and Earth beyond the mere understanding of humans.

:as we are Hand, as we couple in our communal celibacy, as we become Only Cock — _we_ are the Erotic Dreamers: Hands for the Obliteration: the Eros of War; Hands for Worship: the Eros of Sexual Abstinence; Hands for Creating: the Eros of Remembering and Forgetting ... of the Almighty, the All Powerful, the All-Seeing and All-Knowing Conqueror of All Time and All Space .... He Who Was and Is and Is To Come, Again!

:breathlessly: _That she, and all her she-devils!, may never know this, That Her Hand my never be!_ : so he prayed: _That this other, serpentine maleness be never revealed!_

_Yet_ , the relic, the remnant, the vestige of pre- _Genesis_ Her which Yahweh had to handle: to so form His her: Eve, from out of Adam's rib: this is what the Brooders practically deal with and must finally Obliterate.

This "that of Her" still inside Adam which is intimate with the serpentine Him! That which Roch names and anathematizes as Mother of All and, so, demonically links with the Father of All: these who would embrace and live as if no one's enemy: this what the End-Time ritual must Obliterate.

All that remains, then, is to Dream _Genesis_ in its fullness and so set the stage for the final Obliteration of Her and The Serpent. Yes, here in _Genesis_ is the Millennium ritual.

This was the mystical truth which the Brooders have kept vital through their Dreaming. Namely, that the End-Time will come when He can be and is truly Alone ... without and in no need of a companion, consort: any relic rib!

Come, when His creating will not oblige even the odor of her bloody Presence; when the Silver Blood shall, itself, suffice, once and for all.

This Silver Blood, Roch knowing that only he knew: not Alfred, not Luke, not Rian, not Laura ... only he: was the male blood which can clone: replicate in God's singular image, not "our" but "mine."

His Hand had to, once again — and the Abbot knew: finally and forever! — grasp Her Hand, but this time in Final Sacrifice.

Yet, it was not Her Hand within Her, no, not the Mother of All who the Abbot wanted, needed; not her as Her, but Her as she created what was now to be un-created, the Father of All: he who would — oh, blasphemy and vileness sublime! — live as if he was no one's enemy!

This what the flow of Silver Blood revealed was beginning to be who Luke was becoming.

But this which the Abbot was, now, increasingly on guard to prevent: Luke's fuller, grander, serpentine Dreaming of The Hand.

Driven by this concern, Abbot Roch had the monks dreaming round the clock, round the world. Not that they normally didn't, but that he had them on special alert, didn't want one nano-second to lapse — For what would it take for Luke to dream this? For him to feel _The Hand_ — as it really is; in its fullness?

The danger was that if Luke fully knew, then she — as She did in the Garden — would tempt him ... and could he not but fall? Blather and confess all to Her: Mother of All?!

Ah, the risk of the End-Time: teetering and tottering: just one Brother somnolent and furtively dozing off, and just like that, _Snap!_ — Luke would _know!_

Roch blesses himself and lofts a prayer of gratitude for The Father's blessing: " _So far_!" — a sinful whisper run renegade.

Sighting _The Hand_ next to _Purgare!_ — Is it one of my own? Couldn't be. _I'd_ know. Certainly, there is no way that such a betrayal would go unnoticed? Yes, yes, it _has_ to be her. She out there, in the Dark Vapors, somehow she knows — "Of course, _she_ knows!" — but how is she doing this? Just the details. The organization. It's, it's — the Abbot gropes — it's almost ethereal. But that's it! That's why it is her — demonic. Why haven't I admitted this before? She's what else but in link with the Father of Lies, Lucifer himself. Any doubt the Abbot had ever harbored about the clear vision and practical wisdom of the medieval _Malleus Maleficarum_ — that _Hammer of Satan_ — wielded for centuries against witches and warlocks, but abandoned in these "enlightened times" ... Ha! There is nothing esoteric about its truths, indeed, the Abbot perceives that the _Malleus_ is the mirror for the times, for the End-Time, the guide for believing Christians of all stripes.

"Only torture ..." works his lips as his heart is buoyed by the insight this moment has borne.

Of course, he rubs his hands, of course, he kneels down truly overwhelmed with this divine clarification: _Of course_ , Rian has _totally:_ in flesh, in spirit, in dream, in blood! — given herself over to Satan! _Of course, of course, of course_ , choruses around his image of Rian as sacrifice for the Black Mass. Naked — though, in the Abbot's mind's eye, naked as he imagines every woman to look when naked: hairless, spotless: _Playboy'_ s Eternal Innocence ... he forever the celibate virgin! — Naked and writhing and transubstantiating into the Snake, transubstantiating so that she can couple, slither and slink on her earth lusting belly, moving towards Satan: Snake Eyes: and being inseminated by him — such was Roch's only word for fucking, not even allowing himself to use _copulation ..._ all this so as to birth the Anti-Christ. _Oh, Lord!_ he voices out-loud, Oh, Lord! It _is_ time. It is _that_ Time. It is _your_ Time. For sure, it is the End-Time. _Make me strong, Oh Father. Make me strong and use me as your shield and sword, to strike this unholy couple and cast them into the eternal pit of Final Obliteration, once and for all and for ever! Amen._

But — as Roch accepts as prophecized from _Revelations_ — the Brooder's Dream did not — was not, could not: had been predestined to _not_ hold. _Ah! God's ways are not Man's ways_ : the Abbot Cardinal humbly submits!

Yet, how it was loosed further confirmed itself as sign that the eschatological End-Time was truly in tempo, marking minute for minute, second for second, countable hour for countable hour with the secular millennial clock.

As it happened, the leak came first from a journalist. Just a part-time stringer who had visited Lourdes to get some background. When he had walked up he was instantly taken by the image of a hand. For him, at first, it appeared to be but some graffiti. But, then, it nagged him, and he returned. He stared at it. Then stepped back. What struck him was that no one else seemed to notice it. So he asked around, and then it hit. Just a few hairs on his neck, like a chilled breeze, but it was mid-summer and near-rain hot — _The Hand_ , all of a sudden he felt it as capitalized; felt it because as he looked at it he sensed that it had come and touched him, touched him ever so briefly, just a pinpoint on his forehead, but he couldn't shake the fact that it had happened.

His first field report went practically unnoticed; browsed and filed by an associate editor. That is, except for Abbot Roch. His network of intelligence operative: sacral and profane, picked it up, as the ink dried. With undue speed, Abbot Roch had roused the global net of Dreamers, and locked them into an intensified, round-the-clock, blink-less meditation on _Genesis_.

This done, quite overwrought and exhausted, he sat down to ponder the how of this disclosure. Was it an inside leak? A meditative lapse? ... With a knock on the door, the answer walked in.

Brother Herms laid a thick file on top of the Abbot's desk, and he was not even out of the room before the Abbot knew the how: crimson file with a green-lined label . _Apostates_. Who else?

_Of course!_ Children of fallen priests and nuns. This journalist, the accursed seed of a blackguard Archbishop and a Mother Superior. _Superior_ , for sure! The bitter humor dribbled from his tongue, unspoken, but inwardly bellowed. How many of them are there, now? _Legions!_ Who else would She use but them?

Dropped: on his knees, the Abbot confesses his unworthiness, his sinful act of pride, his stumbling lack of humility ... and his words flew weighted with tears; tears which he wished were blood: blood that he would willing offer in sacrifice to expiate this moment of his failure, of his righteous damnation: _Sweet Jesus_ ...!

_Luke_ : At first, he did not remember. He read the article in _Newsweek_ about the image of _The Hand_. But it just skipped by. The article did not forward the image as "discovered," in point of fact all the subsequent articles simply started mentioning _The Hand_ as accompanying _Purgare!_ without calling attention to its former omission. Even in the professional and academic journals, it just appeared, was discussed, and not much made as to its significance.

Bloody hand. Someone's blood. Not paint. Real blood. Scientists played their part. Ran blood type and DNA identifications: nothing conclusive, that's what they all reported. And no one noticed how strange that was!

The desecrations continued until May, actually May 1st. The mystery of it all had not been penetrated one bit. Still, no suspects had been identified; no clues proven strong; no snitches stepped forward to offer a lead as part of a plea bargain ... no, a hundred little desecrations, and, like inoculation, each subsequent desecration made the general public psychically immune to the true threat of the disease.

This psychic numbing blanketed the world. The Christian Keepers had even ceased touting the desecrations as God's initiatory apocalyptic sign that The End was drawing nigh; that the Great Whore of Babylon, namely, the Pope and his Catholic Church, were being slain as their idols — as all statutes and images appeared to be to these most pure of Protestant heritage — were being slain. "Heed God's symbolic action. It is His last invitation for you to repent! ... _REPENT!_ "

Though some priests and one Indian Archbishop had heeded this invitation, in the main, the Pope's Flock, true _milites Christi_ , held firm.

May 1st, May Day, Mary's Day, Month of Mary, the Maypole: Revolutions in Space and Time ... the playfulness of this day had always set Luke's fertile mind soaring. But not this day, not May 1, 1998. No, he and Laura had lost half of their globe-trotting year because of the desecrations. He had been delayed by numerous requests from academic colleagues and even governmental agencies: they all expecting a simple explanation! " _It's the Millennium. Archangel Michael has come back!_ " Oh, how he wanted to say that! Especially to the Generals: they who had invested millions — along with their once feared enemies, now laboratory allies: the Russians — on para-normal and para-psychological research. ("Rod Sterling's Revenge!" Luke chuckles, but, himself, wonders about the, now, broad acceptance of "X-Files" as hard copy.)

They were less concerned, however, about the How then they were about the Why? "Why would anyone in this secular day and age want to destroy statues?" Luke gave them no satisfactory answer.

Laura had stayed home with him because they had agreed to depart on the same day as they also planned to return on the same day, twelve months marking. She bided her time just sitting on the Porch. Not working. Doing those little things around the house: repairs here, a dab of paint there, and all those thousands of things one puts off to a tomorrow which rarely comes. She was aware that she was waiting, and she was aware that she was not anxious. Waiting seemed the proper way for her to be at this moment.

She did discuss the desecrations with Luke. Everyone was talking about them. At least for the first several months; then the numbing. Laura noticed the numbing in a peculiar fashion. She noticed, in herself, a difference of thinking when she left the Porch to drive into town or walk across the campus to meet a friend for lunch. It was tangible to her; like a veil — never having worn a veil in church, not being Catholic, it at first frightened her for she could feel its weight, a slight heaviness like a paw not fully grasping your head and face but just about, like a hovering, a weight felt as much in its potential as in its actuality. If she had ever questioned whether it existed, her first foot upon the seven steps up the Porch confirmed its presence, for she could feel it disappear, no, not disappear, rather, lift and leave, but lift as if lusting for some further entanglement with her hair, as if desiring to claw her hair ... but that first step freed her. And once upon the Porch, so she knew what was happening; how from that moment forward she would never deny The Brooders their due!

May 1, 1998. Luke and Laura sitting on the porch. Sunset about to light up The Jennings' Flame. Neither knew that the desecrations had stopped. For Laura it didn't matter, for she now knew that it was not the desecrations but _The Hand_.

"Hon?"

"Yeah." Sighed. End of Day. Weary.

"Are you packed?"

"Sure."

His lie comforted her; she smiled a conspiratorial smile.

"Who's taking you to the airport?"

"Fellegy."

"All the way from Mille Lacs?"

"Yep." A monosyllable attesting to a long, tried and true friendship.

"You?"

"Sue."

"Hmm." Reliable old friends.

The Flame was now at full flare.

Eyes which were shut and resting did not even need to open for Luke to celebrate the event. His whole being took in The Flame.

Laura, rocking the swing: she being motor, tonight — she let the warmth and the glow and the inner desire warm her and run through her: she taking every touch of The Flame into every molecule of her being, knowing that on her journey The Flame would always be within her as this memory.

"Hon?" Let's try it, again!

"Hmm?"

"I always saw _The Hand_."

"Hmmm." Almost napped.

"True."

Luke bolts up, body parts swinging into place like a great machine readying itself for work: legs spread and stamped on the ground, arms wide to capture and lift, head alert and swaying slightly, surveying the land, and heart motoring wildly, sending energy throughout; she sees him like a certain snap-together toy both Selene and Charles had loved to play with — they'd put arms on the wrong side, twist the hands backwards, and always laughed when they swiveled the head butt-wards ... so her first response was a motherly smile, "How nice, children!"

" _You did?!_ "

Total dismay. Total curiosity. Total undertone of betrayal. Total astonishment.

"True." And she continued to rock, avoiding bumping into him.

"But why?" Almost plaintive.

She rocked. She stopped. She looks at him: "I don't know. Really, I don't know."

She rocks. She stops. "I guess I just thought you knew."

They left the Porch, grabbed some munchies and a bottle of Zinfandel, and went to their bedroom. There, they sat at the edge of the Portal and ate: he quite rapidly — especially the wine, and she a bit slower. They consumed wordlessly.

Ronald W's words — spoken as Abbot Roch, linked their minds: "They can have the Goddess, but not _The Hand_."

"It wasn't Rian."

"What wasn't?"

"Her. In our dream, the Rock 'n Roll star."

"Yeah, I wondered about that. But what are we to make out of, _I ain't ya mamma?_ "

"The whole thing's a lie."

"Could be." He empties the bottle. Her second glass is still full.

"Shit! It only makes sense when we're _here_!"

Perplexment. Anger. Grasping.

So, she tells him about the veil.

A bit chastened, "I never thought, no, really, it never occurred to me that you questioned the existence of The Brooders, _that much_."

Laura takes Luke's hands and places them upon her heart: "They existed for you. They didn't exist for me. Not like for you. But now they do. End of Story."

End of Story?! His hands held her heart and ... he knew! _The Hand_. Of course, that must be it!

"There's no Hand in _Genesis_. So, where's this Hand coming from?" A question whose answer he only wanted verified, and she does.

"Maybe She's communicating to us through The Brooders." A question of Innocence: "Is that possible?"

Luke laughs a nervous laugh: a higher than normal pitched laugh which escapes him when he is bemused by a knowledge for which he lacks a grounding ignorance. He laughs, and his hands become cold. He feels them like ice hands capping her fiery heart. He laughs, and knows that his only answer is her question, " _Is that possible?_ "

# CHAPTER 14: THE SECOND DEATH

It was of all but only the first of mornings since he married that Luke awoke with a feeling of dread: a heavy weight upon his chest — more, someone kneeling, hands tight against his throat, not choking him but squeezing, and his arms feel like lead pipes: he groans and propels himself upward to a half-sitting posture through sheer and fearsome will power; gasping, sucking air, beaded with sweat, arms now like jelly balloons, he turns his eyes towards Laura: she's not there! Not just up and about; downstairs brewing coffee, no, his eyes roll around inside his head, bird wings sprout behind his ears, his toes start wiggling and turn into tadpoles ... he fears to look again: to see what he has never seen before: her absence.

Her note. Short to brusque. _Selene came. We had to go. It's begun. Within The Embrace, L._

_Selene came?_ What's that mean. Really here? She Dreamed her? Luke was now sitting at Laura's edge, holding her note, trying to connect with whatever vibrations she might have left: forgotten shadows, the smell of her _White Shoulders_ fragrance, the fold of her night-gown ... something! Where? Why? Was Selene really here?

Luke was agitated. He didn't like this. He was spooked. Not just Nam spooked; not just Brooder spooked; no, spooked spooked: garroted inside strangling out, napalm oozing gut aching, cock fucking its own ass puke throated spooked. He could hardly pee. He was afraid to sit down to shit, fearing that he'd be sucked down the toilet! For what was the world without her? A question he had never had to face. One he didn't want to face. _Laura, where are you?_

"Get a grip. I'll be right over."

Fucking big help Marsh is! _Goddam_. Luke knew it was futile but he started furtively searching the house. Running up and down the stairs, flipping lights on and off, calling her name, " _Laura! Laura!_ " as if she'd magically appear from out the wall paper: appear and tease him playing Hide-and-Seek with him behind the rose bushes bordering the family room round; _Yeah, surprise me!_ Luke shouts, sent out as a prayer for help. Up and down. A tad maniacal even to his own conscious mind. Then, out of the house and around the yard. From the yard to the edge of the plunge to the River. Did she fasten herself a raft? Did Selene ax down and strip some branches for poles? Were they adrift on the Mighty Miss-a-sip?

Marsh found him in this crazed state; "Four fucking o'clock ..." but Marsh buried this dark thought.

Marsh rubbed his sleepy eyes, yawned, "What the fuck!" jumped and woke up his grousing mind: Marsh was sure that Laura had left — bags lowered from attic windows, rope ladder dropped, horses waiting! — because she had had enough. _Enough of Luke's brand of mystical craziness._

If he could describe himself, Marsh would have preferred to absolutely only say, "Madly in love with Laura." Forget his six-footer Nordic blue-eyed bewitching smile on a profile buff with flat rain on the washboard of his belly. Never: he could never voice that absolutely: not to Luke, not to Laura and certainly not to himself. From first sight and breath his heart was pierced and he had fallen for her — head over heels and still spinning!

Found her to be his soul-mate: like crystal flash of nuclear blast — he knew and felt that she was the Goddess long before he even knew how she and Luke spoke about the Goddess. In so many sculptures was she thus made manifest; but it was not his to tell. And he doubted that she ever knew.

But she did.

Luke he had befriended because his wacky, blood-serious madness cracked open insights which amazed the mind as they split ribs. They had quickly become beer-drinking, poetry-booming, and cynically-guffawing fellow travelers: linked by the blessing and curse of bestowed Celtic genes and imaginations.

However, Marsh just didn't, and couldn't, see what Laura saw in Luke — at least, mongamously saw. What she evoked from him, so Marsh knew, was not being given to her by Luke: _Adoration!_

If she did love Luke, then Marsh would have to admit that he was wrong, but, with that indestructible ego strength of the bemused artist: ever Siren enchanted and Temptress blinded — he knew he was right! ... He bided his time.

Laura, for her part, was sorely tempted. She knew how Marsh felt before Marsh even said hello — worship overpowers in its abandonment of self, and, at the first, so had she been overpowered.

In that California hip-kooky way, she teased him about knowing him in a previous life. He liked that. Medieval. He a troubadour. She a Lady-in-Waiting. But she knew more. Knew that she would take him in; _should_ be loving him, _now_ ; but that Luke was in the way; _Truly, in the way_ : this something she and Luke had only come distantly close to discussing: how they had to broaden their Embrace and share greater intimacy with others. Not just to fuck: she didn't particularly like the notion of group sex and the orgy ... but, something approaching that — but she knew it was the men, that it was their problem; their dragon to slay. If she had broached the subject, Luke would not understand, even given all they had Bodywandered; still she knew: Marsh was eight years younger, crisply handsome, kept himself fit — Luke never failed to take him on at some sport: basketball, running, water-skiing, ice-surfing, whatever: though each year made it harder; _No, not in this life time!_ ... So, she enjoyed Marsh for whatever could be shared — and gave him more than he would ever know.

"Look, maybe she just didn't want a drawn out good-bye."

"For Christ sake, Marsh, we've never said good-bye. I certainly didn't expect this!"

"Do you think Selene came?"

"Aw, fuck!" Luke walks into the kitchen and tears the coffee pot off its stand, uprooting _Mr. Coffee_ and sending grinds showering on to the floor. He doesn't stop. He strides back into the family room; plops down into his recliner — "Bozo": named such just to amuse little Charles; it stuck — and clicks on the "Today Show."

A message was waiting for him.

A message was waiting for lots of men.

The list of those assassinated is beyond belief. Women from every walk of life. President Vindor of Iceland. The aging matriarch, Betty Frood. Three recent Nobel prize winners. Secretary of State, Martina Gonzalez. Hoopie May, who just won the Wimbeldon. This station's own anchor, Nancy Kerdiskow. It's a dark day. A day beyond sadness. ... (faces fade and throb: so many faces: legions: multitudes: all one face — Her!) ... Governments are in turmoil. Hospitals have been thrown into chaos. Literally hundreds of women have been shot down in downtown Chicago alone. As they drove on the freeway, as they boarded the El, as they stepped into elevators, as they jogged in the park. Chicago, and the same reports from around the world: New Delhi, Rangoon, Tokyo, Rio ... just name a city and there's a horrifying list.

Click!

_It's begun;begun;begun;begun;begun_ — again and forever and always. Amen.

Luke lifts and reads a thumb-worn and red-lined message:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had vanished, and there was no longer any sea ... But as for the cowardly, the faithless and the vile, murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters and liars of ever kind, their lot will be the second death, in the lake that burns with sulfurous flames.

_The Second Death_. How the Christian Keepers had harangued and preached their jeremiad about that! Seeing themselves as the vanguard of this Second Death.

He doesn't notice Marsh sit down across from him.

"What'ja thinking, ole man?" flags his attention.

Luke closes _Revelations_. Says in monotone: "It's begun."

"What's begun?"

"The Second Death."

Marsh braces himself for one of Luke's famed discourses. He could sense it coming. _Maybe it's his way of dealing with this shock?_

"Marsh, have you ever loved a man?"

If he had not just swallowed, he would have spit his coffee up as he gagged!

"Are you _for real_ , man?" Conveying an undiscussed fear: _Do you think I'm a fag or something?_

Luke smiles weakly; shakes his head as if both the question and the answer are inappropriate for the moment. A weak smile but one which brings relief to Marsh.

Luke, releasing an expiring sigh, wearily stands and within two easy but broad-loping strides is across the room: halts before the East rising — waiting for the fuse to be lit on the morning's Flame: sentinel in desperate hope.

"Luke, don't you think we should call the cops? I mean, look at what's happening. These desecrations didn't get my attention, I mean, man, they're like some kind of weird media thing. Some hyped up craziness by some fundamentalist religious group. Until now I passed it off as just theatrics. But, it's _murder_ , Luke. Do you hear me, _man_?" He stands, jolted up by a foreboding: a chilling insight which knocked him awake as the first spark on The Flame struck the darkness: he turns directly towards Luke and shouts, " _Murder_ , goddam it, man, do you think _she's_ been murdered?"

The fear in his voice covered his tears. The echo of his love dispersed as the room began to fill with first light. Luke was oblivious; absorbed on another dimension: flickering. Then — Marsh would never understand how he so calmly stated, "No. She's _not_ dead."

Marsh couldn't deal with Luke. In denial. Crazed. _Fucking-A, I need to get drunk_ : thoughts as he bolts from the house leaving Luke alone.

Alone. Loneliness. That's what it was. Not just absence, but the feeling that he may never see her, again. Hmmm. The Lone Male. _Here I am!_

When RW called, Luke spoke as if tranquilized.

"You okay?"

"What's okay, mean. Like _normal_? What's normal?"

"She's gone, isn't she."

"Are you responsible?" Almost whispered. Confessional. But stabbing.

"No." With an edge of bewilderment.

The wind blew outside. April showers bring May flowers, and Luke watched new buds snag the wings of the wind so as to flag open.

"What do you want?" A honest question.

"We need Friar Alfred." Almost a directive.

" _You_ need Friar Alfred."

"No. _You_ need Friar Alfred."

Luke knew that RW was right. The Abbot calls. One goes. " _He who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God_."

Within the hour Luke had gathered his things — bags still packed by Laura's hand — and was pushing the speed limit on Highway 61 northward, up to The Towers; just knowing that Roch would be _there_ : that St. Clement's was more than just a college campus with a monastery; Yeah that, but more: a Brooder breeding ground ... how often he had wondered why he had ended up there — accident? plan? Now, Roch's life-long chant: "Remember, Friar Alfred, we've got something to do together" ... well, Luke began to believe that Friar Alfred had never really ceased to exist!

Within that thought — but actually two hours of Newton's apple-dropping time — Luke caught sight of The Towers. Just their crowns: ruddy bronze haze. He could almost hear the bells tolling, marking the Hours of the Divine Office. His inner sense picked up the pungent scent of The Pines: that curtain, two miles thick of evergreens, those deceptively undying plants — _Spared the Second Death?_ — which shielded The Towers from the world about.

At times, it all seemed too, too clear.

Luke turns left onto the entrance road. The End-Time Obliteration, so he knew, had begun. What was to be his role in this Second Death?

# CHAPTER 15: BAG LADY

The Second Death. How did Rian perceive this the first time she heard Father Benjamin declaim upon the Millennium?

It seemed a death, as he spoke it, for sinners: apostates, Mortal Sinners, terrible people. It did not seem like a death sentence for her. But, then, the revered and renown Benedictine scholar added, "The sulfurous flames. Do you know how scholars understand this?" What she heard, changed her life.

When she fled America during the previous witch-craze — " _The Fire of the Witch_!" echoes through her memory — she learned how to become invisible. Not just the art of cosmetic and the beguiling skills of a promising thespian, no, Rian observed and practiced the survival arts of those rendered invisible: the bag ladies, the Untouchables, black women, ghetto youth, ex-cons, those imprisoned in old folks homes ... but especially women: her conspirators, those who breathed together so as to protect themselves from the world's attacks: _The Man!_

The art of invisibility was not just the skill of withdrawal and shadowy disappearance. Rather, it was an art of aggression. As the Warrior willed her to be, so, she willed herself to be invisible. Her protection was this power: mental, astral, spiritual — an art of being present, making her presence known, but that of which she had not made known before. In this manner, Rian had found passage into the many corners of the patriarchal Warrior world as well as into her new found world of the invisible.

As Warrior, she walked among those who persecuted her and her Sisters. Dressed as an attorney, projecting the Warrior female, Athena, within her, she boldly entered the enemy's camp much like Judith did to slay Holofernes. She simply acted like she belonged, and she summoned the craft of distraction, mis-direction and contradictory meaning to wend her way into retreats and special meetings where Warriors of all ilk: military, academic, religious, commercial, artistic — all these discoursing in their own way on what Father Benjamin had given insight into: the Second Death.

She came to know the funded rabble-rousers sent to heckle feminist speakers and who later initiated the murderous attacks. She knows them. Remembers their names. But understands that their name is all One: _Son_. Each in his own being — and times in a her's being — acting out filial obedience to The Father. For they saw the feminist movement for all the potential it did have: the freeing of Her from the Dark Vapors.

As such had Father Benjamin warned them, warned the women of St. Clare's: "The sulfurous flame is the Serpent's tongue! And the Serpent's tongue coils and nests in the Temptress' cave!" His words did not need elaboration. All the "young ladies" understood the monk's clear message: the Second Death was unrequited and insatiable female sexual lust!

As she journeyed among her Sisters and throughout the invisible world, Rian grasped the impossibility of the task. For two years she bottomed-out in despair that no one nor any group, not even the whole human race, could change what needed to be changed. At Dachau she sat and listened as they talked from within the Dark Vapors. There, so understood the Biblical character of Nazi fanaticism. Grasped how invisible Mother has been and is. At Wounded Knee she followed the connection to the invisibility of the Earth. There, with the Ghost Dancers, she danced so as to walk the path of Memory which the Son had eradicated. In Calcutta, she starved while sitting at a Brahmin table of monstrous feast, having only an invisible spoon. Alone down the Amazon and off across Tierra del Fuego and up from the Cape of Good Hope until she was back on the Bowery-bound subway in New York and then, once again, observing the session of a Supreme Court: in all places and times she was, but was present invisibly.

She rose, again, as she had come to practice the knowledge which Dachau had initiated; which Wounded Knee had danced; which flying in the sky and bolting underground through cities vast and countrysides plain, yes, as she could but not speak what at the same ouroboric moment came forth from the soul of her TwinFlame: " _live as if you are no one's enemy_."

:to live as if such, is to overcome death: disappear from Memory: be invisible — in the world but not of the world, not the Warrior's World; and for those who do live as if they are everyone's Enemy, so is there the Forgetting: the psychic numbing: she knowing why they did not write article nor chronicle in their textbooks the Second Death: the slaughter of women, the abuse of Her, murder of bodies — every day, every paper, ever news report, every police blotter, but more of Her soul, her soul, her smile, her touch ... but she had found women who had, indeed, been resurrected, who were living as if they were no one's enemy; and it is they who were and are Mother of All: here, still, in Warrior time, though invisible: signs of the Christian Apocalypse, this she knew only too well, for they who lived this way were called witches and incubi and succubi and Temptress: had to be here so that He would come again: so that His Hand would again offer sacrifice, The Final Sacrifice.

Invisible: This is how Rian met Selene. Humorously, on a bench in _People's Park_ just down the street from Berkeley's main campus. A place on the Sixties' counter-cultural "Monopoly" board. Just there; coming to a solstice celebration: just there, and Selene on a sociological field trip: "Hi! I'm Selene"; sent down with pad and pen: unabashedly and sincerely, "I'm doing a class and I need to talk with, with someone who lives on the street": a head filled with categories and the privileged nomenclature of academia: "alienated and marginalized," "cognitively dissonant and experientially aberrant": walking down and spying what she took to be a Bag Lady

"Oh, my dear," Rian says, perceiving how she is being perceived: "just call me _The Bag Lady of the Warrior!_ "

Selene smiled, wrote furiously and felt that she had a real winner here, a talkative, seemingly smart — "Probably an alcoholic" streaks across her mind; she does not write that down — and so, talk, talk, talk, as sophomores are wont to do, she speeding headlong into her second Fall of Berkeley Wisdom: mentally eyeing the "A" on her graded report!

Towards the end of this "field experience," Rian allowed Selene to see more and more of her. She did this because she knew that she knew this child. Knew her somehow in that strange way things had come these last two decades. Like staring through the wire at Treblinka and finding oneself being stared at!

Whose eyes does she have? Her hands: those gestures. Rian was teased, almost annoyed, she had to know.

"How about some dinner?" Selene said rummaging inside her knapsack, checking for some extra dollars and change.

"Chinese?"

"Sure."

"I know a good place."

And without being disturbed by the incongruity of this supposed Bag Lady knowing about restaurants, Selene followed.

"Child" — why am I calling her _child_? I never call anyone that. Old pomposity of the avuncular monks! Why am I not calling her _Sister_? ... What she couldn't face, at this moment, was her distracting desire to call this fetching girl, _"Daughter_."

"Child, what are the students doing about the desecrations?"

"Desecrations?"

Rian shudders, barely escaping the slice of the question's hook.

Selene furrows her brow. "Oh, _those_. What ever did happen?" And her thought lost hold to the tantalizing smell of "Buddha's Delight" — a favorite for all Berkeley vegetarians.

"Child, the murders?"

It's not that Selene didn't answer. No, it was that Rian spoke but wasn't heard. And so she knew why she had come to Berkeley. Maybe she'll go to the solstice, but, now, she's absolutely sure that the Sisters and Mothers she anticipated would be there, wouldn't be.

As the sides of a mobius filament, so, over the years, had Rian's and Luke's experiences, language and imagery develop. If they had ever had the time to sit down and draw up a list, they would have been mystified. As Luke had Dreamed, so had Rian; as she, so he: Twin-Flames.

This is what Laura knew, and why Laura found herself compelled to find Rian. Not that she needed Rian as much as Luke and Rian needed Laura, but none among them knew this at this time.

Now, with chopsticks working to feed her soul as much as her belly, Rian watches this form, this presence, this accidental — " _Accidental?!_ " — acquaintance, and knows, laughs but uneasily inside, for it is both a knowing and a dreading, that this Selene is the who and what for which Rian has been wandering about, searching for, these last decades. For though she and Luke had mothered and parented as Laura bore their children, here was she who was herself in a celebration of flesh which Rian had not so far encountered.

But it was she who Selene must find: this the wisdom the chopsticks carried. So, Rian began the ritual. Knew it as she had begun it so many times before: the simple embrace, the invitation to dine, and the fire of the dance.

After Chinese, Selene had no thought except to stay with this woman. It was past ten and one part of her studious self sternly summoned her back to the dorm to finish the report on this field research, due tomorrow. Yet, another part of herself politely informed all around that she was _never_ going back to the University.

"You haven't asked me my name." Rian voiced the ancient Call: the one unanswered by Yahweh: and, so, She was abandoned within the Dark Vapors — not called to co-create, rather ignored, rendered invisible, wished into Obliteration. All around the globe she had traveled simply moving women to the first spot of Sisterhood: voicing their name.

"I haven't?" The stupidity of the response was the first indication that, at least, Selene was beginning to hear her.

"I haven't?" mused upon. Furrowed brow. Dark delicious tresses whirling about like Medusa hair as Selene shook off the spell.

"But it's like I know you!" Childlike Innocence.

Rian smiles. And in that delightful smile, Selene reads her name.

" _Mother!_ " — the ejaculation of discovery, without a hint of darkening doubt.

Rian laughs; fully belly pleasured laugh.

"Oh!" Selene is confused.

"I mean ...," she stumbles, fumbles, is bewildered.

"That's okay, Selene, just call me Sister. I've many names." Words which came freighted with all the love the invisible world harbors.

" _Sister_." Selene carves the word with her tongue: astral blood. "Sure, I'll call you Sister, but, ya know, I don't have a sister, so this is real special. I like that."

What she felt but couldn't convey to Rian was that her Mom was her Sister, but at this moment it didn't seem necessary to say.

"Where are we going?" Surfacing to time and place.

"Oh," as Rian takes Selene's hand and directs her directly west, "Let's drop in on some old pagan friends of mine! ... Child, have you been to Golden Gate Park, yet?"

# CHAPTER 16: WINE

With hands uplifted, with holy verse tugging him upwards and tip-toe, the unblemished youth struck Luke as one of that lineage of Vestal Virgins who unhesitantly offer themselves to the savage God of Sacrifice. Here, ever more frightening, for the voice was as high-pitched as any feminine voice could be, and, despite himself, Luke feels his cock harden ... " _Good God!_ " ... as the strains of the " _Magnificat_ " lose themselves amidst the stalwart pillars of the monastic basilica; well, Luke sighs, half-laughs, calls himself to sobriety — what did you expect? To have forgotten what happens in the Lone Male world?

He had refused the Abbot's offer of robes. Not even the honestly pained face of this long time fellow traveler could change his mind. "I don't do robes," was said without any hint of outlaw humor.

But Luke did accept the offer to sit with the Friars and Brothers as they chanted the Divine Office and celebrated the Mass. He reasoned with himself that it was a sign of his openness that he also receive Holy Communion; knowing that this could be mis-interpreted, and indeed, without looking at him, he could feel the Abbot's sigh of prodigal satisfaction.

"She has miscalculated. _Grossly_." Spoken as a truth, one bolstered by evidence and articulated after argument and conclusion: no tinge of pride or smugness.

Luke raised his wine-glass: fleetingly admired the thick beauty of the heavy port, and said, "You're out of your fucking mind, Ronald W; _don't mind me!_ "; he gulps the oenanthic blood in heady emphasis.

The Abbot was unperturbed. He rose and drew near his beloved Friar Alfred, pouring him another glassful. Nothing Luke could say would alter the truth.

Luke did not look Ronald W. in the eye, nor did he look at any part of his physical presence, rather, he gazed at the superbly crafted and cut crystal wine-glass, knowing it to be of Continental design, most likely from some ancient monastery up the Rhine, one of those monastic larders which remain filled with the treasures of wars: even yet the Crusades. In this instant moment, the crystal beams a spar of such pure light that Luke remembers the young Friar Alfred — terribly young and hurtfully earnest — being guided, after a well received seminar by his Teutonic Masters, up into a dusty and creaky doored attic: there to gaze upon craven treasure no angelic spirit had ever touched!

"Knights Templar." Pointing elsewhere: "Nazis," the avuncular monk whispered with a tinge of conspiratorial secrets: treasures familial!

"This is all you'll," and he lifts his eyes from which fly daggers to carve out the unknownness from Ronald W's eyes," is all _you'll_ ever have!" Not spite; not hatred; but the cold iron of a pain never before shared; an actual gift.

The Abbot is protected: he not Samson, Luke not the messenger of Delilah: angelic arms thrust The Father's shield to protect this his most cherished Son.

Ronald W. sets the bottle down on the end-table next to Luke. Turns. Returns to his seat. Lifts his glass, "If that is so, this is all I'll ever need."

Could he have understood? Should I have said it more directly? Luke is readying for bed. Why should I assume he is less the intuitive than me? But, how can I be sure? He pulls up the covers: _Why do I need to be sure?_

The Abbot wanted to be sure. He didn't trust himself to be Luke's equal each and every time. He knew — _Oh, I know what you don't know, my dear Friar Alfred!_ — that Alfred's was a special task: one which, in details, Alfred, himself, did not know fully.

So, this dream. _We're Dreaming, Alfred!_ This, a power unknown to you. All of us now here and just you there. To re-run the play; that concrete land so shadowy. _Tell me what you were saying. Clarify your meaning._

Like the babbling sleeper he is, so does Luke obediently respond. Dreaming not a dream of which he is part, but of which he was a part. This the Abbot's special power: reversing time, playing it back on one or several of its other layers, in its other dimensions. Here, he knows that Luke said something to him which his sensate mind did not and could not properly translate. _Speak, Friar Alfred!_

:Cock, man! Yer neva gonna 'ave a cock! Whooeee! Suck down 'at bluddy wine bud ya neva gonna sip 'er sweet juices! C'mon, watch me! Lookeee, 'er. A small patch uv Nam pussy. _Rice patty_ , at's whad wese calls 'em. Yay, 'n I'se eat rice wit every meal! Guddam, ain't war grate!

C'mon, pud ya tongue 'ere. 'Atta boy. Werk et. C'mon tongue, werk et out, carve 'er out, cut 'er up! Guddam, fuckin', ain't nuttin' like et!

C'mon, shes wants et. Man, shes wants et. Lookey, 'er. Da man's wife's comes ta confess. Confess shes wants yer beeg fat priest dick; yer 'er Holy Honey Sugar Daddy, she's yer Lil Honey Bunch! So, c'mon, man, whips et out 'n let 'er suck it! Suck all ya juices, man. Hell, no wells ain't gonna run dry!

C'mon, man, ya gotta pick grapes, 'en ya gotta stomp 'em, 'en ya gotta fur-ment 'em, man, knows whats I'se means? Pick yaself a lettle unripe peez 'n take 'er 'ome ta yer stompin' grounds 'n grind 'er every bit uv Sweet Holy juice: man, ya can lick et, ya can nip et, ya can squeeze et — et ain't gonna run dry! ... 'en wen yer've fucked 'er till yar pecker's gots da Purple Heart, man, goddam, man, 'ats et, git back en 'er 'n suck 'er up, make 'er give et ups alls fer ya! Whip 'er sweet ass wit yer dong 'n rip 'er apart, man. Whooeeee! .... _THAT'S HOW YOU GET THE SILVER BLOOD!_

The Abbot shrieks. The whole attendant Dreaming horde of monks drop unconscious: blacks-out.

" _That's how you get the Silver Blood._ "

Roch struggles mightily not to let that thought slip into any one monk's consciousness. Never before had he shrieked; it freaks even him. But it was the proper response; divinely inspired he has no doubt. Protecting his friars. They, now, waking; feeling the bludgeoning pain of the moment, but not knowing why.

_Silver Blood_. How did that get in there?

Is that it? That simple? That Luke believes we will never be able to consecrate the Silver Blood? That our grapes will only make wine and _OUR_ wine become only expiating blood but not His Silver Blood?

The Abbot broods. Alone. He had sensed that the crystal was the Virginal Her. It came to him that Luke had looked at the wine and known it not to be Her blood, for, indeed, Friar Alfred as Luke had tasted Her blood. But had it corrupted him? Should I be wary of that? How could I be sure that She has not bewitched him?

In the morning they strolled around Lake Camillus. Late Fall in central Minnesota is stunning; no other word; maybe, breathless; and the lake as serene and other-worldly as the saintly monk for whom it was christened. As he walked, Luke began recalling his college days, here, with fondness. He had been a top scholar and stud-athlete, and there had been a quality of enjoyment: dreadful and intense: physical and emotional, to his years, here, at The Towers which he had never again found. _Perverse_ , now, he notes: almost pure Warrior passion: Sin and Grace burning the moments ... Ah, he recalls all the horror and the joy of brooding Kierkegaard: "Sickness Unto Death" ... "Fear And Trembling" ... and the stiletto's edge: "Can the individual transcend the ethical?"

But he quickly drew himself away from this reminiscing to focus on this last walk with RW — for Luke, as he told the Abbot, "Two days. I'll stay two days, max."

"The Second Death, don't you see, it's what the Maoist tried in their Cultural Revolution. It's what Stalin achieved through the Gulags. It's the face of Pol Pot. It's what Westmoreland wanted in Vietnam. DeBeer almost fulfilled his mission in South Africa — what? — just last year. So, you must not forget that we — I mean, _We_ — the whole Church: Father, Son and Holy Spirit ... We are the _only_ divine protectors."

Luke kicks a clod of dirt lounging at the edge of a grassy knoll. Plunk, right into the water. "Two points!" was an imagined cheer he ignores.

"I can't believe this, Ronald W. I'm fucking-A totally bummed out by how you've been trying to manipulate this, all this, the desecrations and the murders, that Rian would do this! Are you totally insane, man?" Prison cell block door-clanging-shut silence: " _Sweet Jesus!_ ... Not just murders but mutilations! Who, _who_ could be doing this _but_ true believers, religious fanatics, for Christ's sake, RW, you've moved among the top political circles, you've met these religious terrorists. I know you know the Christian Keepers — they're not Billy Graham milk-toast, don't tell me that! They're teeth to chattering teeth as mad as the Zionists and the Sons of Allah and all of their ilk." Not a pause, but a regrouping: a strategic re-evaluation — _Am I talking to him or myself? Who's listening?_ ... Desperate sigh; hand pulling on beard, "God, I'm losing it!" Confessional; repentant — "I know my history. Our history. The Castrati. The Flagellants. The Galli. Assorted Gnostic weirdoes and weirder practices tolerated within the monastic cell. I know. _I know_."

They have perimetered the lake. Laps of silence; the silence of guilt; the silence of knowledge; the silence of Dreaming.

"Rian isn't a Maoist. Sure, she's a revolutionary, but there's no capital R there. Where are her troops?"

Roch glances out over the water as if he was expecting a barge — _Arthur?_

"Please, please, _please_ , dear brother, think most carefully, here. The Second Death is consummation by lust, that's for sure. It is _not_ manifest through the destruction of holy images or revered statues. It is most certainly _not_ manifest through murders and mutilations."

"Bullshit! Have _We_ forgotten? Crusades. Genocide. Witch-hunts. Where were you when this happened the first time they came after her? What are you doing, _now,_ to stop it?"

"Tsk. Control the anger which blinds! ... Forsooth, I think she stirs you too hotly!"

Luke turns and walks away; walks with a purpose, but with the certain knowledge that he cannot, yet, walk away from the Abbot. He sits down under a sprawling, majestically crowned pine.

Roch turns and with practiced gait quite slowly paces over to his friend: a pious, reverential walk of one in deep meditation. At the effective moment, he sits down beside Luke.

"Force re-mythologization. ... Awkward sounding, but that's what it is."

Luke strains to be open to the notion.

"I thought you knew this by now," the tone drew Luke up sharply, " _she_ can Brood."

_But, of course!_ Driving faster and faster. _But, of course!_ Christ, better slow down. Luke's heart is racing. His mind a blur of images. He can hardly confine his butt to the driver-side seat: " _Noted Professor of Religion Speeds to His Death"_ — Don't want that headline! He brakes and slows the car. In tandem, his adrenaline peaks and gradually ebbs.

That's why Laura said she's in you that's not in me. I should have understood, _back then_. It's not that I was thinking about Rian, but that she was Dreaming Laura and me. Great Goddess, what a rush!

# CHAPTER 17: THREE

Selene never returns to Berkeley. Not in time. Not in thought. Not even for a very long, long time in Memory. For when she and her Bag Lady met with her San Francisco pagan friends, it was a meeting with her own — now Remembered — Forgotten companions: presences of the Goddess she had not been with since she had crossed over from the Dark Vapors. Yes, it was within a dancing moment. Not knowing that this was called The Round; not caring too much — as youth is wont to plunge without much circumspection — so she spun into the trance, whirling and spinning and being spun such that the faces and bodies around her became her. While some Sisters and Mothers spun webs of intimacy and romance with unabashed nakedness of flesh and spirit, what transformed Selene was the Sight — her first moment of peering: from this side, without the Vapors — and she saw the brokenness and the embarrassment and the incomplete gesture: in vision above her floated _The Hand_ : her never having seen it _as Selene_ but immediately grasping or being grasped by it, for it was all about them, touching them, holding them, lifting them ... yet, its terror: emptiness, the incompletion — it signified both: for it was created by all, all these Sisters and Mothers as suffering the Obliteration.

:though others whirl about to the endless thump and bang of the tireless musicians, Selene is full stand-still in their midst. Remembering: so she sights _The Hand_ as it parts the Dark Vapors, peers at it as she falls, free falling, gracefully floating, parachuting into time and space: as Luke and Laura — Forgetting.

_Chaos_ : so it has been for sometime now understood that the sacred cows in India farting cause Major League pitchers to spit on their balls which jilts the counting of one plus one so that ice cream flies and no one dies ... or something like that. She was stoned. Never having been really drunk or truly stoned, Selene just guesses that this is it.

When Rian comes round, Chaos reigns most unashamedly: she saying, "I know, _fully_ , you are my Mother."

" _So,_ I am," amazed Selene more than it did Rian. The two held hands and waltzed till thirst demanded its due.

Rian presses several ice cubes against her throat, and as they lap at her heat and so were lapped, she frees them to slide and thrill down her aching breasts. _Why aching?_ she asks herself. Throbbing. Hard nippled. Becoming almost muscular in their stamp and mold. _Why?_ At other Rounds she had been aroused; aroused and sated. But this wasn't that. _Caused by Selene?_ Some peculiar quirky reversed reaction to discovering Selene as Mother of All? _Possibly_.

The ache became a pain, and Rian knows she has to leave. She doesn't want to sleep here; no, there was yet another strange pull upon her ... she wants to sleep in a hotel! Not just any hotel, but a good hotel: one without neon glare, without a naked sign indecently luring her: one of crisp, cool sheets: fluffed, thick towels: decadent sunken bath-tub with golden fixtures, seething with bubbly bliss! ... _But how?_

How many streets had she walked: in how many cities, towns, villages and back-country trails with no appointed place to lay her head? I was younger then, she laughs to herself as she remembers Julie Andrews' counsel to whistle in the dark. Tried that. Back-fires: it only alerts everyone to how afraid you are! But, tonight, she whistles. Whistles her way onto the E-trolley down to the BART, and with BART tootling the Bay on a near empty run, and, then, silently blowing her own whistle-stop at the campus exit, there to be lead by her fading, lung-weary, dry-rattling whistle back onto campus, finally to this faithful whistle's end-stop: right up to the doors of the _University Club_. There she terminates.

_Golden Bear_ : fine frosted glass inset on dark weighty wood — the type Oxford Dons she has seen smoke: briars and brains; she remembers embarrassing a special Don with an argument for the necessary companionship of British Intelligence with Curls of Burley Smoke ... it's amusing, but she admits to a bit of confusion: it's late, the temperature drop has sent a chill on her walk stressed bones, and, so it appears, all she can do is sit on the stoop and wait — for she knows only that here she is to wait: _NO WHISTLING ALLOWED!_

Selene's vitality succors The Round. Most would have left several hours ago, but it was impossible to tear oneself away from Selene's magnetism. They were attracted to her not so much as lover but as babes at suck: she was nourishment, food, The Milk Maid ... unknown but to the most questing as a rare presence of the Mother of All.

Her touch put several to sleep; others to Dream; yet others she healed ... and in the healing she sights this Warrior of whom Rian is the Bag Lady. A Warrior who uses his _Hand_ to choke women, suffocate them, hold the sword, slip the noose, snap the head; never before had she so seen — nor been so peered at!: for each and everyone in The Round carried the Warrior's story on their flesh ... _Oh, they are too eager! Too eager!_ ... and within her Selene panics and shatters the glass, pulling the alarm: calls for help, seeks out the comfort of _The Hand_ from which she had slid and so bounded through the Dark Vapors ... _Aaaaaaggggghhhhh!_ chorusing _Aaaaaggggghhhh!_ ... several women are convulsing on the floor and as the others become aware of them so, too, do they begin to convulse, not all cast upon the floor, rather caught up in a collective swoon: empathetic: a gathering hymn of their shared misery ... and as they cry and moan and roll and pitch in pain and stab and cut and slice so does this all avalanche upon Selene; she within a breath is all their pain and all their misery — all filling her and bloating her and stuffing every corner of her body and soul and mind: " _MOTHER!"_ .... to Her come all the Daughters so mutilated, not allowed to die swift death, but to be punished and so Purged through torturous dying — this Righteous Justice in imitation of Him, the Crucified, this why they mutilate, take the breast and cut it with a thousand slithering cuts: press thorns into nipples; why they hold the nose and carve away the flaps of flesh, hoist an eyelid and drop acid upon the pupils who have so sinfully erred! ... all this Agony: all this Memory: all which is happening right now, this moment, this instant, forming the Eternal Now of the Obliteration ... women being cut by words, cut to the quick, quickly stabbed and the blade drawn out slowly, like penis withdrawing after savage plundering ... ah! the police find legs, they count them: Memory of Vietnam — the Media glorify the Body Count! ... faces without face, arms without hands, shoulders without arms: Fate of the Disappeared! ... eyeballs gouged and stuffed up assholes ... the favored death-by-pressing of ages past, now, age present: women found flattened, not just crushed, but compressed: one dimensional ... and Mother receives them all; accepts them all; knows them all ... "living as if you are no one's enemy."

:Selene is running: she bolts; she flashes; she prestidigitates; each and every motion of flight ... running down the Street; nameless Street; under alien Sky; on burning sidewalk; across empty lands: ghost-towns with ghost-towners ... fearful of looking back, freaked out of her mind, totally zoned in a fog of liquid terror ... running and running and running till she realizes that she is not moving, that she is motionless, that she is suspended, that she is ... _cupped_ , cupped on all sides: even with eyes closed she sees what cups her: it is _The Hand_ , in Warrior grace: all about, warding her off, fencing her in, suspending her: she is its Toy.

Calmness. Ridiculous and hilarious and foolish calmness. _Why?_

As if in response, she hears a voice, a familiar voice, and watches _The Hand_ become a familiar hand: _Selene_ , the voice addresses her, _Selene, return into the Dark Vapors_.

Yes. _His_ voice. Dad. _Father_. Luke. Of immense and immersing compassion: a voice of presence: nurturing, comforting, caring ... knowing, now, that for the first time ever she is hearing Friar Alfred's voice.

" _To the University Club_ ": having been here only once before: on the college review tour she and Selene took back, now, what? eighteen months? She shifts in her seat. It is only eleven, here, but her body is screaming that it is one in the morning: never a night creature, Laura simply trusts the taxi driver, assumes that she knows — _What a tough life! You wonder how some people keep it together?!_ — that she knows the town and the college, every exotically nomenclatured apartment complex and every gated street and avenue and every secreted path and by-way in Berkeley's affluent Hills ... _Off!_ ... So, I'm here. Not thinking about Luke, not in a worried way, for she did not feel absent from him, no, rather she almost feels sent by him, he having given her the _Club_ 's credit card — though he had jokingly said, "Maybe someday you'll just need to flee in the night and have an escapade or two!" ... certainly a joke? She passes the card: rapidly, incessantly, from her right hand to her left: it is dark, only those who are meant to see notice this comforting tic ... _Where am I?_ Everything looks so different at night.

She gives the cabbie an extra large tip. It didn't make her feel good — just a finger on the scale tipping it back this way. Whether the woman used it for her kids — two in a crumpled photo above her ID pinned to the passenger side visor — or, whether she'd stop after her route for a numbing nip, no matter, _Just do it!_ ... _The University Club_ is the academic version of the Hilton Hotel chain. Its own pretension to privilege, at least since it was taken over by that same Hilton chain at the beginning of the decade. Luke preferred to stay nowhere else. He just loves Eggs Benedict, and he is oft pleased to recount to other academic travelers that the Eggs Benedict at Minnesota's University Club is the world's best, "Bar none! Nowhere. Never. You'll be amazed." Laughing to himself, confident that the former _Chef d'Oeuf_ from Dinkytown's treasured _Al_ 's would never be surpassed; nary a shadow falling on his legendary specialty.

"Are you waiting to get in?": pressing the night bell.

The woman was dressed, no, let's be honest about this Berkeley-San Fran bohemian thing: she's motley attired! Laura chuckles to herself, remembering how Radical Chic it had once been — _Still is, out here?_ — to pick-over the racks and bins at the Free Stores, now Thrift Stores.

Both are waiting for the night watchman to open the door.

Without extending a hand, but with the utmost sincerity carrying her words: "I'm waiting for you."

They did not touch. Not an introductory hand-shake. Not some mystical ecstatic embrace. Nothing but just accepting the fact of each other, thanking the night-watchman — _A woman, again!_ not allowed to stir her consciousness — entering the _Club_ , registering: no need to change anything since Laura had planned for Selene's visit ... and moving everything in morning quiet to their room: 222A, back-side, nice view, and opening the bountiful and gratis refrigerator: small but stuffed — pawing over dead animals and sugary baked goods and magical concoctions of science (Poly-this and Mono-that, indigestible words ending in ese and ate and other linguistic testimonials to the absence of nature in any semblance or posture) but each and all in its own way satisfying to the Greater Stomach of the Fuller Body ... "Hungry!" Laura laughs at both of them: an initiatory first word. Rian catches herself like a thief with purloined goods crumbling at her cave's entrance, a trail of evidence for full conviction! ... "Yeah," muffled, "there may be nothing left when we're done!"

They ate in non-conversation, just those, "Good!" and "Want some of this?" and like chatter of two old familiars who were on a picnic or at a relaxing late afternoon tea. They simply had no need to talk. Just to be present.

Laura breaks a cookie — macaroon, her most favorite! — and offers half to Rian. "A taste to die for!" she tinges with sarcasm as she shares it with Rian — with that deftness of feeding another which one who mothers characteristically comes to master.

Rian, as unselfconsciously, accepts and communes, and within her swallow has layered a cracker with a thick knoll of a brie, "The garlic in this will ward off any love life you have left!" Laura's eye-brows arch and break into amused acceptance.

Maybe a half-hour, maybe a little more: they finish. Laura sets about unpacking, and Rian enters the bathroom.

Who called the tune? Who choreographed their flow? Who painted them, mixing each on the other's palette and laying each other as pigment and color, tone and high-light, line and stroke each upon the other?

A sufficiently extra-large bath-tub was their medium. Huge like this, Laura evaluates, because of over-sized athletic alumni and professorial jocks like Luke — 222A being that special room he always reserves, one of the benies of being both a prominent scholar and a touted Warrior graybeard — volunteer scout and enthusiastic basketball recruiter, so he has been for the U — but this is not of the moment. For them it is as much their message as it is their medium.

Water world. Water creatures. The liquid embrace which shares them: penetrates each other's nooks and crannies; washes over and cleanses each with one another's sins and graces; the warming, soothing and pervading touch which wafts from each's inner fire to the other's, there to spiral in moist smoky thoughts and airy, misting pleasures.

The moment both touch common water, Rian's breasts subside into their normal grace.

" _So_ , you're Rian!" Clipped and sent on the wings of predatory hawks.

Rian wipes the heated sweat from her brow; fans at the mist which has submerged them in this room with a fat fog not unlike that which stuns and enchants Golden Gate Park now and then: " _So_ , you're Laura," tinged with a teasing curiosity, a _Could you be but anyone else?_ tone.

Neither speaks.

In a stroke of time both burst out laughing.

Belly buckling laughter, causing tides to rush and crash upon the flesh of one another.

They had been here before, not in the constraint of this unique time and space, but here within each other's presence. They stretch out, entangle limbs, form an engram of pleasured being and welcomed Remembering.

"Why, _Father_?" The formality of her question struck her as peculiar but then as correct, as if proper etiquette. It was an honest inquiry, yet posed as from a child to a parent.

"You know, my child." She cringed. _Why?_

"I don't." Stubborn; conveying that she was not falling for his trickery: carrying the accusatory sub-message: "You are _not_ my Father!"

"True," spoken as quickly as her unspoken accusation was thought. Selene flinches; looks about; commands a rising panic not to rise: _Am I talking to myself?_

_The Hand_ presses in upon her: visually, tactilely, upon the fragrance of a priestly palm: spiced with the allure of virgin beeswax mingled with the sweet cloyishness of High Mass incense ... it presses upon her breath and then upon her gaze and then upon her hearing and then upon her bones, soaking her flesh with its flesh — for now it is felt as her flesh, flesh curling up and away like the edges of burning parchment: flesh now upon her spirit, becoming burnt-offering of her essence: holocaust of her most sacral soul ... and it is all Memory, now; clear Memory, so clear that it is just Now: crystalline instant ... and _The Hand_ is raised in sacrificial slash and sunder: arcing as Moon slashes across the Sky chasing Sun on downward consummation with the Earth ... priestly _Hand_ , Fatherly _Hand_ , Friar Alfred's _Hand_ ...

Hands served them well. Like potters. Like sandbox kiddies playing _Walk the Spider_ and _Patty Cake, Patty Cake_. Playful. Like fingers artfully crushing and crumbling savory herbs and spices; a finger dipping into the batter and licking the pole of delight ... _Hands_ : first the feet became hands, each sending toes as spies to steal the secrets of desire, she massaging a big toe, she holding each toe in turn and tapping it to send Morse code messages to the other end of its universe: indecipherable messages, except to those with private language; feet which are kissed and taken to cheek, taken there and pressed upon the beloved's flesh, flesh of acceptance, accepting the journey the other has been on, accepting the other as worshipper who has come to venerate and as Goddess under whose foot one is joyful to be but dirt ... feet and calves and thighs: all hands — cleverly embracing, seductively communicating, wondrously creating ...

Selene woke within the whisper of a grove. Morning whispers. Brisk swaying of branches awakening. Sea-gulls stretching the sky. Dew like tear drops ... she touches, she licks, she receives: pains, pleasures? ... up she stands, all damp about, her hair like a rifled nest; she shakes her head, stamps upon the ground, and draws all to a halt: one gigantic halt — no breathing, just the halt of all, and in that momentary awareness of pause she gathers in it all: here, at the edge of Golden Gate Park, where she has never been before but has returned: The Grove ... she walks up the lifting bank of salt-air hardy grasses and native flora, crosses the geometrical plane of the modern age parking lot, slips off her shoes without breaking stride as the sand of Now explodes about as it did at the moment of this earth's Creation; she, now, moving: a most effortless glide, through these dimensions, then to arrive at that moment of complete immersion: not tincture but full immersion!: into the Memory of Her, Breaking Water, Shimmering as Presence Upon the Horizon: within the Dark Vapors ... Forgetting: _Mother of All!_

# CHAPTER 18: FOURFOLD

There had always been the question; felt like a tug at the elbow; as if to turn around and say, _Yes, I know! I know!_ ... and then re-turning, understanding that it was a task of such terrible import that one had to lie, yes, the Big Lie, a LIE blazoning at every letter and in between every microscopic space of the word, itself; but it had to be done; necessity, maybe inevitability: just the balance, The Balance of All Living Things; a moral ecology; she to place her finger on the scale so as to balance ... a chortling: one deep, cavernous, rising to a spewing forth of thick laughter, one carrying an odor, fetid, chilling even in its smell, laughter coming from within her bones; _There is delight in this!_ , so she confessed, so she felt as she raised her hand to strike ...

"Why did you let him go?"

" _Let_ him?!"

"You know what I mean."

Pause. Sip from a mug.

"Why'd you _stay_ with him?!"

Evasive bitch!

Rian and Laura had gone out to play San Francisco. Walking Golden Gate Park. Riding the trolley up and down; leaning out and swinging perilously on the wide turns as all tourists from Normalville do; yeah, snicker, who cares? What the fuck do _they_ know?

Tell me about The Round.

What's to say you don't know?

I know the how, but not the why. I'm not a great group person.

And you're Selene's mother? Devilish smirk. Brewed steam misting her face.

What? Goddam, she's making me work for this!

Scanning the horizon. The best view here at _Ghiradelli's_. Ocean and birds and the blowing horizon doing its vaudeville show.

I mean, how can you enjoy it?

_It_?

Her turn for a vaporous sneer.

I mean, I _could_ see a couple of men. She hums a delicious bar. I could have them. _Is Marsh truly incarcerated, there, on Alcatraz?_

There's no difference.

No difference?

Not if you don't get hung up on the apparatus.

It makes her laugh. Both see the flying trapeze artists, hanging from boobs and swinging on dicks!

Apparatus! Humph. She laughs at how silly it all is.

A twirl of the cup: her third mocha. _You've never been?_ Sincere but probing: like a rookie agent on her first interrogation, a bit too much identification with the suspect.

Didn't _have_ to. There! That should shut her up. Put the sniveling whore in her place!

Rian thought she understood. For some of the Sisters the Lesbian Way was not a necessary path. But, yet, could any man, even a Luke, really touch that part in a Sister? She doubted it. But why did Laura have to get on this? She's heard about The Round, but what?

"Did you really _like_ him?"

"Ha. Back then, liking wasn't even in the ballpark. Just touching merited punishment by Angels with Fiery Swords dive-bombing from the heavens to hack you in two and have you roasting in hell, _forever_!"

Catholic crap!

"Do you like him, _now_?"

I come before the Court with a plea for Eternal Justice. Who is this woman to trifle with the Fire of the Gods and Goddesses? Do I demean her by saying that she just plays — frolics, merely trifles — with this Fire? That she is still a child, no, more an infant. And, like a toddler, all she has done is smear herself with every thing she can grab. What are women, truly, to her? Aren't they just toys? Rubber Duckies! ... Like men play with her? Isn't she, truly, a betrayer of all that is Woman? A Judas among the Sisters? For she has turned her Sisters into whores while doing nothing for her men. Isn't this the ultimate betrayal?! I ask you, Revered Ones, don't you see how she hungers for me? Like a babe wailing for the teat, so is she greedily upon me at every moment. ... And, so, I ask, how is she different? How is she justified?

" _Now_?"

She waits. Feigns journalistic indifference.

" _We_ have no now. ... That's not right. The now I have with Luke is right now with you."

"I'm that in Luke which you're not. Is that it?"

Her face brightens, delighted in the cleverness and accuracy: "Well put!"

Fucking-A, Sister Bitch! You sit there with your cunt lapping away at memories of my man and all those fingers of the half-fucked Sisters who came there to learn from you, what did they learn? Just to take and take and take! Are you a mother? Are you a wife? Are you anything but the Great Whore they all accuse you of being?

O Wondrous Ones! My Sister mis-reads the purpose and meaning of the Fire. I do not, have not avoided motherhood or wife-hood. Isn't it that I have become, or at least have striven to be, mother to all, wife to all, married to all men and women, parenting in this way which must be, at least, for this time? My Sister, I fear, is counting the molecules of flesh too closely!

"I stay with him because of what _we do_."

"Which is?"

"Making present a new story."

She wants not to hurt, but, then, she is full Amazon: " _New_?!"

My Sister, here, has not hated! That is her most vicious offense. Without hatred the Fire cannot burn! It loses its core! For what is Creation but the strike against flint, the Love against Hate? ... and only when you have become the other, only when you have given him your cunny are you readied to receive the full, everlasting and eternal hatred of his cock. Only then!

"Are you surprised I'm not Catholic?"

" _Honestly_? ... Yes."

She wondered if this cut or salved?

They had come to a place for the night. The nest of two middle-aged lesbian ... Why did _that_ adjective always need to pop-up? ... entrepreneurs; corporate executives in their own right; successful; smart, classy, dressed to kill ... a fashionable home around Lake Merritt — evening lights awake and a wreath of fairy-luminescence crowns and majestically rests gently upon the Lake.

One room, one bed; it was _assumed_. Fucking perverts!

So, hear me!, Distinguished Justices, for she looks at me and what does she see? Only a mirror of herself. I, another woman. Her Sister. Kin of the Egg. And her look is the look of the Lie, of the Liar, that Betrayer, the worst of all, the Self-Betrayer! For she touches me and only touches herself. There is no giving here. She cannot take or give what a man can. She cannot wander as he can bodywander. It is all idolatry! Making herself in the image of herself. A quest for parthenogenesis — that which is not Life but only Nothingness. For Life thrives on Diversity. On the Difference: Males and Females. ... Consider, how she wandered: pressing her lips to my lips and finding only her lips, with my tongue, only her tongue, and with my cunny, only her own cunny, for how could she penetrate? She has no Cock. ... Laugh with me at her fingers! They are not cocks! Nay, all she can do is imitate and simulate. There is no penetration. No penetration. Hear me, O Ancient Ones! Hear me: There is nary a breath of penetration!

What does Luke find in her?

What does Luke find in her?

(whatdoeshefindinher?)

"Sweet dreams!"

"You too."

Covers pulled up. Bodies in parallel. The dusty warmth of an unfamiliar room. Just a couple of minutes. "Do you Dream?"

Just voices. Imagination does all the rest.

"I know what you mean."

"So, you _are_ Catholic?!"

A silence they both know is amusing.

"What was it like?"

:endless rows of bodies winding up and down Moriah, and endless Moriahs popping up and down, peaking at below and above, just one face, one look, they are all the same, we are all the same, something I read in Dante, once, some of those great male paintings, the El Grecos and Titians and so many others, it just lets you know that something was not Forgotten, that the Rib was truly Their Great Fault, Their Original Sin, ha, it gets to be too much, no matter where I went, Ireland, China, even once to Antarctica, there was always the look, that face, that touch, I knew that She was there, is here, had never left ... but it is the Dreaming, The Brooders, I knew them before he named them, knew that they _had_ to be, just the Pill, it made you think, _Is this all_? — just this pill and I'm free? Like it's all biochemistry. It gets you thinking; molecules and atoms and all those squiggly sperms they show — Frog sperm, if you were raised Catholic! — ha, and the joke is that we weren't allowed to "Do it like dogs!" No, just spread-eagle and get poled! Too much like dying on the Cross, but that's another matter. It was the Dreaming. It _is_ the Dreaming. All about. But without the Body, the flesh, see that's the rub. The Consecration. That's the rub. The priest swilling down his Pill — drinking _my_ blood, eating _my_ flesh ... I know he'd puke thinking it menstrual red and pussy sweet but what the hell _was_ he doing up there? _Only_ She is eaten. All of us eat Her and drink Her blood, we're inside Her for Christ's sake, ha, ha, maybe for the Goddess' sake! But that's the hardest part. No one talks about cunt and pussy and Her powers and Her flesh ... no religious tradition. And I met them all. Even the Mothers of India. They can flash their yonis but they won't let you eat them! ....

Do I need to recount more? O Excellent Ones? The words! The filth! All that she desires to do is drag us back downwards into the mire and into the muck. Pardon me but she wants us to be shit! ... Need I continue?

Rian slept, heavily. To Laura she looked like a log. Her breathing was not noticeable, just the scurrying hum of her exhale. _How foolish she is!_ Laura reaches for the golden knife stowed under the bed. _How gullible_! She raises the pale dagger: darkness drapes it, weights it. _Liar! Liar!_ she screams silently as she plunges the blade into the sleeping back, once, twice, until seven times: the seventh stroke, blood everywhere, not menstrual, just red, oxygenating cells, bleeding her like a rock striving to live, so is she emptied ... Laura grips one shoulder and pulls Rian onto her back: there is no need to look at the eyes, _Eyes of Satan!_ What have they seen?! No, the ritual must be honored. The gutting. The evisceration. For the Voices steady her, guide her steps: the ancient way of the slash, and so she slashes: from throat clear down and through sternum, parting the belly like ancient waters and slipping out through her vile valley so loosing all her potions: bile and spleen, acids and salts, lusts and cravings ... _It is done_! resounds _It Is Done_! choruses _IT IS DONE_! rocks the Dream: six thousand Brooders fall dead at their posts: Dreamers in beds of hay and straw, Dreamers in palatial suites but inches from their paramours, Dreamers driving semis and donkey carts; just after a song; having just flushed the toilet: six thousand and six thousand and six thousand and six ... for the sacral lancet to pierce.

Laura retreats from the body. Done so with so little blood upon herself. She is proud. She is exhausted. She must find her way out. Quietly. Silently. Like a mute wind.

"Laura." Not a question. Not a call. Just her Name.

"Laura." Again. She doesn't want to look. But closing her eyelids does not shield her eyesight.

"Laura."

Rian she sees. But then she doesn't. What she sees is an emergence. How to describe it? What is butchered remains butchered, but it is, it is ...?

"Laura."

:it emerges. A body. Like a light from a long distance, just a dot, then multiple pulsations rippling into a wave, and from wave into an apparition, yet self-contained: almost an egg, with a circular river of light: restrained luminescence.

"Luke?" but it is not spoken; simply heard.

Child. Infant, Yet adult. All at once. Coming.

:and he opens his arms: from within, without cleavage but yet like flowering, the bee emerging from the butter-cup, comes another, glowing into a presence, a form: Selene! ... wondrous surprise, cresting into her form and her face with her eyes peering right through to her mother's heart, it is Luke embracing and Selene kissing, yet Laura stands physically apart, steps, measurable steps, but universes: Olympic eye-view ... and with the embrace and the kiss comes another beam, throbbing, pulsating, rising from but then overcoming, enveloping all, rising from within and rising up above all: Charles!

" _Charles!_ " Just one word. One sound. But like just one bomb exploding: all is shattered. Laura jerks and hurtles upward: freezes like a chair set upon the bed. Dry. Cold dry. Wrung dry. Frightened dry. Amazed dry. Dry unto brittle. Feeling like her skin will pop and peel away dry.

Rian's hand is upon her. "Okay?"

"Charles." Laura speaks the name as she did when he was first born.

Rian puffs up the pillow behind Laura. Laura automatically settles back.

Was I Dreaming?

Being Dreamt, you mean!

_Really_?

That's what I found.

Where?

Everywhere. Just one moment. It came. Not just to do the Dreaming but to allow myself to be Dreamt.

This is what's in you that's not in Luke?

Pretty sure.

Wow! ... But _what_ was being Dreamt?

My murder, what else?

You mean sacrifice?

No. You murdered me.

Really?

Don't be so stupid, Sister. What else? They don't want me as sacrifice, they only want me murdered.

And I did it?

Could you look and sound any more like a dumb cow?

Breakfast. Bagels and coffee. Strong, unwhitened, unsweetened coffee. Brew.

"What would Luke and I be if we let ourselves be Dreamt?"

"Not the question for now." Abrupt.

Laura gives her the look of one still traumatized by insight.

"Look, Laura, last night _we_ were Dreamt. And _they_ now know me as slain. Betrayed and slain. Their work with you is done. So, they think."

" _The Brooders._ " Reverently. Almost inaudible. Yet, speaking the name for the first time ever with its full power. She now knowing fully.

Time and space. Friends kiss and exchange their good-byes. They who are about their work go to work. Laura and Rian are at their work. At table.

"Where does this take us?

"Where? _Just_ here?"

"Here?"

"Inside the Dark Vapors."

Laura can't suppress the giggle.

"Get used to it!"

"Wow!"

# CHAPTER 19: 1999

The months were rolling, faster and faster the days, the proverbial rolling stone, but this time gathering moss: a cover, a layer of something — new, no, not new: old; no, not old! — alien! peculiar! odd! ... rolling along and compressing, pushing time into stopless seconds and whizzing days, "Zip!" it's night-time and Luke's fighting his tiredness; the man pushing up the hill: Ye Ole Sisyphus, but not a time for humor, not even a marginal crack, Luke is wound tight, labors against his body, _What has been happening these years? Where am I going? Where is all of this going? Where is Selene? Rian? Laura? LauraLauraLauralauralauralaura ..._ her absence is how he'd define pain, how he'd mold confusion, how he'd score the image of emptiness; how long ago was it? Coming back on the train, that pit of emptiness he had felt, back then he didn't know it was her, not Her, but now: _Is the knowing even worse_? He reaches for his twentieth cup of coffee, knowing that he'd never be able to donate his kidneys to anyone!

Everyone has forgotten about the murders. Everyone has forgotten about the image of The Hand. Not a mention on TV; not even a miserably rated PBS Special. Nary an opinionated column in any left-wing rag. Not even a triumphal self-congratulation loosed among the Christian Keepers. _Just forgotten._ No, again, he realizes that it is not forgotten, but Obliterated. _I am living in a moment of Obliteration._ This he knows. Only this. Knows it and then feints and dodges from what this knowledge brings, namely, that all that he has ever lived has been yet this Obliterated moment. Looking back he sees young Friar Alfred and before him the young Luke, ever back, now with cosmic eye, to his own insemination, the delivery of The Father into the flesh through the Cock, his father just the instrument, the probe, and his mother doing her wifely "Duty," fulfilling her spiritual "Obligation," not in any way or manner seeking her own fulfillment, no, never! and certainly, more than never, her pleasure: _For I was conceived in pain, not pleasure_. Isn't that how he was taught, that birth was a curse, the main punishment for the Original Sin, the Sin of Woman — what comparable personal punishment was inflicted upon the man? That he had to work by the sweat of his brow?! Hardly comparable. No, his mother would have to spread-eagle herself to be crucified by the lusts and stares, the hands holding down her arms, the weight crushing her into the mattress springs, hardly able to breathe, being there nailed time and again by his stake, stabbed by his sword, impaled upon his frenzy; yes, it was she who bled, bled in body, bled in soul, bled so that She would not be denied; but she didn't know this; didn't know about her own Obliterated Cunny; was just there ... _How insane!_ ... Luke cannot stop this. Stop the insanity. He weeps. Truly weeps. Body gone limp weeping. _Is my time past? What I am to do, done?_ ... He throws himself onto the bed and dies to the night.

The New Year had come with unbridled global festivity and unembarrassed optimism. The forces of Hollywood were revving up for the next display: _2000: Year Zero_. All around, from every corner: academe, church, corporate America, the dens of artists; from every part of the globe: intellectuals and visionaries, average workers and even imprisoned poets, all around exuding happiness. _Happiness_ with a self-congratulatory pat on the back. For not only had America proven — by Gallup Polling, no less — to be the "Civilization of the Millennium" but it had been judged the "Civilization of the Future." Such a designation implying that it is, has been and will continue to be the "Best and Brightest" of places and peoples and times ever to have been or become ... guided by the benevolent Invisible Hand of The Market.

Energizing the core of this bubble-gum Happiness was the internecine admiration for America's talent for self-criticism. This praised self-criticism being set as a foundation for unbridled optimism, indeed, capital O Optimism. For even all the "sins of the past" now no longer had to be visited upon sons and daughters. Much in the image of the abiding mythic character of _Star Trek'_ s Captain Picard, America was extolling itself as having solved the problems of the past. With the technological efficiency of a Commander Data, so the new _Genesis_ Story is being told: that all the knowledge of all time and places is being put to use to solve all the world's problems — which are being solved. _Praise! Praise! Praise Ourselves!_ ... What was once error is now recognized as such and its truth extracted through formulae. Racism, sexism, economic imperialism, war-mongering ... with bubbly and bouncing galactic enthusiasm storytellers recount how they are now part of the Past, never to be part of the Present, again, nary a scintilla of doubt that they will ever re-exist in the Future.

As told, crime is down. More, that criminals are converting. Pledging themselves to personal reform and "renewed stewardship" — vast numbers being reaped in a "Millennial Harvest of Souls!" by the Christian Keepers. Accordingly, women leaders sway the banner: "Balance!" — and the knee-shaking word "feminist" finds no public tongue. As ultimate proof-in-the-pudding, eponymous racial groups vigorously and with fervor publicly eschew ethnic identities, all seeking to re-name themselves, searching for words which will denote only The Future and not The Past: moving away from primary crayon color terms and finding humorous delight in aligning themselves with flavors: not shying away from the delicious unity of _Baskin-Robbins_ , rather calling themselves not Afro-American or Black, but Chocolate or Butterscotch or Fudge or Licorice; not Chicano, Brown or Hispanic-American but Cinnamon or Cherry-Berry; not Asian-American, Yellow but Melony or Hazelnut; not Native American, Red but Persimmon or Nutmeg; not White or Anglo or Caucasian but Peach or Vanilla or Creamy ... all to deny visual separation and to move deeply into _feeling_ about each other — recapturing the now re-invigorated — and Millennium fashionable — "Hippie Way": "feelin' groovy, man!"; Hollywood and Madison Avenue turning each race and person into a walking commercial for consumption; getting all to see the other as delicious and tasty ... Ah, Luke knew that this was their most triumphant claim, not just to have created a Rainbow People, but to have created the secular moment of transubstantiation: the People in full communion as they consume one another .... Was the hand of The Brooders not to be seen here? That of Saul?

So, Roch.

"Saul?"

"Yes. Who else?"

Wigless, Abbot Roch scratches his defenseless pate.

"You doubt it?"

"You're not implicating him in the murders?"

Luke is stone. He wants the pigeon to land.

Roch swivels and faces the sun at high afternoon salute: a time when the flaming sword of St. George glows through the overhead stained-glass window. Luke sees only frail hairs, raised as if by static, jutting a fingernail's breadth over the back of the Abbot's high-collared chair.

"I've Dreamt it." Stated like a scientist in white-shroud backing away from the microscope.

Repeats and expands: "I've Dreamt it. Just me. No one else. That's the oddity."

Pauses.

"But I think _that_ is Saul's power. The power of song which he wields. He has me, and only me, as his audience."

Luke hesitates, not wanting to prematurely stopper this disclosure.

The Abbot swivels back. Hands in prayerful fold, finger-tips at his lips, a face absorbed but not distant, pondering but not lost, intent but not oblivious that Luke is part of this Revelation: "He has had Rian slain."

Luke is still shocked at the sense of relief the short obituary bounded loose. He had, at first, heard the words but not seen the image; made no audio-visual connection, then, _Kaplunk!_ He sees Rian swaying from the Tree. Hanged.

He sees it, and he smiles.

Not that he smiles, but that the smile crawls outward from his mouth and pushes up his cheeks; not a grin, not elusive, a genuine smile.

Happy, now, Friar Alfred?!

Relief. As if that giant Rock Sisyphus was rolling actually plummeted down over the precipice. _Congratulations, Friar Alfred, job well done!_

Relief. The gift of the Message. A gift because brought by someone else. That something given which one could not, properly, give to one's own self. Here, the death of Rian. _Bless you, Friar Alfred!_

Relief. Because the Door closed. Once and For All and Irretrievably. She is gone. The Temptress. She who now could no longer force him to do what he did not want to do. Once, again, now and forever: Alfred-not-Luke! ... _Yes, Rian is Dead. Amen. Alleluia!_

Back at Laura's home. On the Porch. Sleeping at night on the couch, not the Portal. Back, now Summer. Now, already Fall. Now, already Advent: preparing with the world for the Day, no, really, the Night: _Silent Night, Holy Night_ ... maybe not Silent, but certainly Holy. He having Forgotten them all; content to be distant father: _Where is Charles?_ He had no answer but a vague wave of his hand and a peremptorily weak-cheeked smile which conveyed his irritation with the question and his unconcern for an answer. Selene he never mentions; never asks others about. Laura: _Am I not an abandoned spouse?_ Haven't all her years of witchy trickery now played themselves out? Need I talk about the trollop, on her global trollopping? He idiotically laughs within at the ditty and the image.

Rian: even her name is untongueable.

The Porch. Could life be better? Minnesota in December. Crisp, cold, just below freezing, snow dusting and snow expected. Bright sunny day. Clear nights. His breath frosts. His thermos is full. He's as warm as ever, ice fishing, here, from his porch! ... Yeah, fishing and watching The Flame: _Ah!_ , a blade of sundown-light glistens off The Flame and tingles the edge of his nose; almost frost-bitten muzzle .... _Aw!_ he screams; lurches upward, booted feet thudding on porch planks, old ice creaking, and a hand to his prickling snout: Blood? Why the pain? What's up? .....

:the slow boil about to bubble, bubble pop and spew: hot stuff, fire spit ... _God, my nose, let go of my nose!_ .... and who is to appear but Santa and his:::nononono!!!!

:Charles walking up his nose.

:Charles striding, arms flailing against the cold, towards his eyes.

:Charles reaching and opening the lid to his Third Eye and entering.

: _Charles is home!_

"Why are you _here_?"

Charles smiles; amused. To anyone else, it would have been a complex answer because the question smuggled so many complexities: Luke's doubt about who he is anymore: _Am I your father?_ Luke-now-Alfred's irritation at being woken from the snuggling Dream of Obliteration. Luke-now-Alfred's hostility at having another cock, albeit a small one (so bites his tongue) in the house. Luke-now-Alfred's annoyance at this disturbance of his worship of his Lone Male God: _Fisher King._

"Why are _you_ here?" he teases back at him; knowing how this will confuse the old guy, divert him for a second or two.

"If you're going to be rude, leave right now!" Assertive. A bit of the old Iron Rod.

"Where would I go?" Unexpected innocence; toying with his fatherly sentimentality.

Luke stumbles; crushes a word or two into a grunt; frees an "Aw, shit!"; rises, rubs his head, slurps down a cone of frigid air, stomps his feet, turns his back on Charles, and begins to peel off his layers as he exits the Porch.

... _That bottle of whiskey_ : Marsh's half-empty left-over, it's in the kitchen, this he knows.

In the living room: roasting-buffalo-size fireplace; roaring, crackling, sizzling, making all the sounds Luke's making; having not spoken for the last two hours to his son, but coming in to sit by the fire the boy has made; sitting and wiping himself one thin layer of drunk deeper with each finger he pours: _Wild Turkey_ (" _The bird, the bird, the bird's the word, now_ ...")

Charles doesn't say, "Drinking, again?" with that disapproving air; he had never really known his Dad in his cups; those soggy years well behind him when they were growing up. But he knows a drunk when he sees one, or, in this case smells one, Christ, he wants to say: Don't sit by the fire, you'll explode! ... Just soused; the old man's soused!

When the bottle ever so imperceptibly begins to escape the clutch of his sodden fingers and palm; falls like ice melting, first just a drop, almost evaporated before it hits the floor, then several, then a quick rush into a streamlet, first just one glass-eyed point of a bottom edge touches down, then two, creating almost a wobble, a line, but then three to four within the release, and the bottle is standing, fully empty, all its elixir racing, now, around the looping course of Luke's venous system, _Ah, Venus!_ .... and Charles gets up from his chair, picks up the bottle, places it on a nearby TV-tray and returns to sit next to his slumping Dad.

Charles was calmly ecstatic to be one, again, with The Flame. During all his travels he had found the new and the different to be exciting, yet, his only nagging sense of loss was not being able to salute the day with The Flame, rising and falling. Somehow, he knew that he had always identified his Dad with The Flame. Not that Dad had every made that claim; maybe it was that as a kid it was the moment when his Dad truly glowed: The Flame was all magic in his father's eyes — small child looking up at the looming patriarch: simply enthralled and raptured, how else was he but to make the identification?

Now, his father as spent wick. The body had aged a bit. This the first time Charles could accept that his father was but an inevitable victim to Death's minions: gravity, wrinkles, a spot (not a freckle!) on the back of his left hand, and — ah, never was he vain! — the marauding grays, now several even into his eye-brows!

He has been sleeping — snoring and snorting as is his way! — for how long? Half-an-hour? _Does it matter?_ Charles has been holding his hand and stroking it, lightly, not so much bodywandering as merely tending; being there.

: takes hold of his father's left hand, hand of the heart, holds it, lifts and places three finger-tips against his brow: astral connection ... _Knock! Knock!_

# CHAPTER 20: SHIFTS

The monks are at their conjurations: a millenary of altars upon a millenary of hills: a vision and a practice without horizon. Charles attends Friar Alfred.

:I'm _not_ Friar Alfred! I'm your _father_!

No, _you_ are Friar Alfred. I _am_ your father.

The shift, dear Friar Alfred, is as the one you took upon entering the Order. Or was it that you had returned, having only left the Order to become one in the flesh: that singularity of the Dream? To enter the profane, corporeal plane, and so to be on the other side of Fiery transformation!

You jest! Such drivel!

Ah, deny you that the Dream is, and that is-ness is merely but an aspect of the Dream?!

Touch me! What of this stuff is Dream?

Everything!

They sit. Luke reclines; slumped into sleepiness; mild stupor. Charles at his feet. Yet, Charles _as_ his feet.

:Where are we going?

Nowhere. We're _here_.

_This_?

Yes. Only just here, dear Friar. Here beside the water, Mighty Water ... It's struck you before, hasn't it? Why you came to camp and sweat here by the River?

It's a great view from the porch, what else?

A view. True. A view onto the wildflower planes; at its most beautiful, true, this, but for you a singular comfort. For isn't this where you are seeking your solace at this moment? Haven't you allowed the Brooder Dream to settle in, to inoculate you ... to revive you as you have prayed: as God's Warrior? Faithful soldier. And where else to be at the Millennial Moment but here, where this water has washed away so many sins, so many sins of The Biblical Warrior?

You never were _that_ bright, young man! History wasn't your forte.

Should it have been?

What else should have been? _Dance_?!

Such disdain! And why not dance?

Ah, yes, _my son,_ the poet. The lithe one. Like the butterfly. But what else do I detect? His soft underbelly. His perverted weenie. My little boy's a dancer ... _queer_!

Always on point, Friar Alfred, I commend you for that. No doubt, it is queerness. But just how queer, does the Friar know? Do you think you are the only Dreamer? Do you think there are only Brooders? ... Just how queer are you willing _queer_ to be?

Luke flinched and jerked, almost pulling his hand away from Charles' temple. But he would not let him flee; not this time!

Why are we naked?

Are we?

You're not supposed to see my nakedness!

But you said I'm a pervert!

Why can't I strike you? God, Holy Father, turn me into Thy Avenging Sword!

Tsk, tsk, Friar Alfred, you've a hard-on!

My sword! _My sword_!

Then they were flying. Up and down and around the house. Attic to basement and up, again, through the kitchen and the living room; den, study, garage, out and back from the porch ... flying, faster and faster, until they were only sound.

:Cast me into the river! Drown me! Slay me! Father, I surrender my life to you!

Admirable! Admirable! The stuff of martyrs!

Abominable one! You mock the Father as you cast your lustful eyes upon my nakedness.

Sweet Friar Alfred! _So precise_. _So correct_. For it is my lust which makes you spin and whirl and fly-about. Not I, but your cock so fully propulsed! ... But this is the queerness you must fear, for your nakedness is the shield of your murder. Know I that you have raped our Mother, taken from her every ounce of soul ... and given nothing in return. That it is your queerness to scoff at the Balance, the Harmony, the Fire. Know I this: not your simple flesh, but what your flesh is Dream of. Know I, that your Story of Truth is, as must all Truth be, that of Lies ... and so the River: which is Muddy, you deny, seeing only its Innocence.

Here, you come here to celebrate your blindness, not eyes ripped out by your own hands, no, not that: rather, the Lie that the Water cleanses you, that it forgives you, that it heals you. All: from the Lies of the massacre and the genocide; all: from the gendercide. As here, so at the Beginning: for there the Lie spoke: "the earth was a shapeless, chaotic mass."

_Lie! Lie!_ For the earth was not, but She was. Her Body was not shapeless; the chaos was in your confused mind. "With the Spirit of God brooding over the Dark Vapors" — Remember! As we sit here by Her Mighty Water: Cloud Weeping which is the line of blood of her Holy Cunt; yes, so it is! ... Deny it! I know you deny it! For you it is healing because it is His Water: Sacral Ejaculate: river of sperm. So, do you lie! ... Is this not your own queerness?!

_Whose_ child are you?

You know.

Such a Liar are you!

Down the stairs sounds a muffled rumble. Without turning, Luke knows, and the hairs on the back of his neck bristle in terror. With all his dreadful might he labors to release himself from this Dream; to smash through the barrier of his eyelid and reclaim the darkling light.

:Have you no shame, son? Throw you father a blanket!

Charles snaps a large leaf from a thriving rhododendron. He laughs but twice.

Do _they_ have to be here?

Where else could they be?

In hell for all I care?

Sweet father, Selene affectionately protests, we cannot be but where you are!

Are you all blithering idiots? Out of your minds! Father, _save_ me!

Is there still salvation? Laura and Rian chorus together.

Friar Alfred-Luke, the Dreamer of _Genesis:_ at the moment, all of these identities are him, yet not him; and it is the not which unnerves him. For he has Dreamed. And he has sculpted the Story in the breaths and touches of so many whom The Brooders have directed. He was not unfamiliar with queerness; but it was always one which he could control, or at least knew that such was being controlled by his Brothers and by his Father.

: "Let the vapors separate to form the sky above and the oceans below." So, how can this be?

Really? You ask that from within the Dark Vapors?

_Here_?

Selene, Rian and Laura have pulled back pieces of furniture, and holding hands begin a circle dance, dancing slowly, counter-clockwise, and humming a lullaby melody: "Rock-a-bye baby ..."

_Shut up_!

Father! Father! Father! Charles is vigorously shaking Luke's rigid shoulders; gently touching with his other hand the head so violently jerking, wrenching; calming him: _Father, wake up!_

Luke's eyes beam a razor's glare; cutting through on various levels, surfacing from Dream and astral plane and the Well of Forgetfulness.

"Charles."

Charles sees it. His name. Delivered as if roasted meat. Set down on the silver platter, right there for all to admire: a concoction, not natural, cooked; it is a word his father offers in mystery.

"Charles." Twice.

And he allows it to be heard, and so he becomes Charles.

"I flew in from London, last night. Not exactly last night, you know, the time zones and all that." He stretches himself and yawns. Luke watches him with fatherly curiosity.

As he had begun speaking, Luke had risen and taken a few steps towards the kitchen. Like hunting dog and master, Charles follows: coffee so often the drink between them.

"Your mother," Luke reaches into the freezer for the tin of Sumatra, " _and_ your sister are still traveling." Without guilt or regret, Luke adds, "I don't know where they are."

Charles smiles. He prepares the cups. Both will be thick and bitter.

The kettle heats. There is a move towards boiling. The blast of steam is just about. The filter is set. The beans are ground. Luke, always the alchemist. Charles, always the perfect guest.

"Why are you here?"

Luke halts in his movement towards the kitchen chair. His notched eyebrows betray the complexity of the question. He falters, "I": honesty and sincerity: "I don't know." Pause. "I guess."

Charles fragments into laughter: spits and snorts and a shaken leg. Luke resounds with his timbre in responsive echo.

All is still. Father and Son. father and son. Luke and Charles. Not Friar Alfred.

" _Wwwooooooooo!"_

Two cups. Four cups. A shared moment. Filling this dimension. Fitting. Proper. They back in the living room. Fire on. Slight night chill. Two tired men. Alone: together.

"Charles!" Luke proclaims. Yes, a startling address. As if he has just found him, _there_.

From his chair in one continuous leap and bound, Luke is up and over and hugging his son; lifting him off the ground with a characteristic monstrous bear hug: death-inviting embrace: "Charles!"

Charles wiggles, squirms, gasps, quarter-laughs: exhales.

For the next fist of hours, hammering time into early morning plate, Luke is all question and Charles all answer. Where? Why? When? What happened? Ain't that so! Incredible! Tell me that again! Is that true? How does that jibe with common sense? Are you still in touch with him? With her? With them? Why did you travel so much?

:travel — It was just supposed to be Europe. See those things you've shown me. To the Vatican as you said. And then, Dad, you know, I realized, it wasn't me in Europe, it was you! _Hmmm._ Yeah, you. But maybe that's how it was supposed to be. All those years you poured out what you did and why you did, well, I guess, what else could we expect? _But that's not all, is it? I can tell. Something happened, right? Why are you shy all of a sudden?_ Not shy. No, not that. Worried. _Worried?_ Yeah. _C'mon!_ Okay. I found out what you didn't tell me. Maybe what you didn't find. _And that is?_

:blindness — You're blind. _I am?!_ I don't want to hurt you. You know I love you. _Hurt? Me, when in search of truth?_ Hmmm.

:kidnapped — _Really? Are you jazzing me?_ Maybe. But what if I told you it was by angels? _Angels._ Yup. _You did drugs?_

:culture-cide — Not just the massacre of people, but the eradication of their Memory, even of their scent. _Yeah, I understand that._ No, you don't! You don't! _YOU DON'T!_ .... _Ok_.

:mysticism — I met Friar Alfred. _Your lips are moving but I don't hear a thing!_

:mythos — I dreamed queer dreams! _You look sleepy, son, maybe we should call it a night. Or, more like a morning?_

:eros — I'm living The Hand. _Don't forget to say your prayers!_

Here we are, again. _Here_? Well, you keep avoiding rational conversation. You're telling me you're rational? _Pshaw_! Pshaw, yourself, father! Look, why do you think I'm here? Can't you accept how outside The Brooders' Dream you are? That they selected you to slip back within the Dark Vapors ... that they chose you to face Obliteration, c'mon, c'mon, old man, get with it!

Obliteration?

Playing _that_ game! I'm not impressed.

I'm not a criminal, you know. I'm not a prisoner. Right! ... Right?

Left. Maybe on your left. Ha. Can't laugh for cat's whiskers, can you?

None of this is funny.

True.

So. So. So. I have to accept that you Dream?

And Mom and Selene and Laura.

_Never_!

Only in your Dream.

How cruel you are!

The Brooders were all about the place trying to locate Friar Alfred. They had ventured into as many Stories as they could: Noah and Joshua, Samuel and David, Sarah and Abraham, but they could not locate him. They knew he was about. They paused to read the bends in the River. To divine its misty messages. To follow its sinuous lead, but it only got them to the house: on The Porch ... and from there they could not go farther. There were doors but they would not open: _No Conjuration Allowed_. All the windows were darkly vaporous, serving only to reflect their curiosity and consternation.

So, ringing the house, linked in Silence, as rope into the Well they Dreamed Messianic Expectation. Patient waiting: sores leaking and calluses aching long-suffering: in the Diaspora. Forty-years in the desert, trekking in ouroboric pathways. Could they but do otherwise?

"Accept that His time is ending."

"There are no Endings!"

"Heretic!"

"The penis points straight when it's erect — do you really expect me to believe that _that_ validates _Heilsgeschichte_?"

"You've never grasped the subtleties of exegesis! ... What do _you_ know about sex? About it, no less its erotic mysteries?"

Charles holds up his hand. Palm outward, all fingers closed together.

Luke is staring at it, but Charles knows that he is not seeing it, at least not hailing it into recognition on the level Charles intends.

"What's that mean?," snidely, "You're in love with your hand?" Deep belly guffaw; lung imploding.

"Yes, father, with _The Hand_."

Luke closes his eyes, or they are closed for him, as are his ears: wax is poured in; his nostrils are stuffed with white cloth, and dousing him, all about him, perform clouds of incense: frankincense ...  
The Finger. On the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Yahweh giving The Finger to Adam. All that is of His Erotic Creativity. The Spark of Life. The Finger which — need we be too sophisticated here? — is the Cock.

Two Males. Actually, One. The Lone Male. The Lone Male God replicating. Cloning His image. _Imago Dei_.

Unless you confess to this, dear father. Unless you bare your soul and confess what Friar Alfred knows must be confessed, then what can I do? Pour knowledge into your ear?

I was in Europe. Time warps, there. A certain Lingering of Ancient Lights and Shadows. In the stones. The Cathedrals are both tombstone and crown. Crowns of The Lone Male: His Conquest: He as King — _Christ the King! Alleluia!_ ... They are Crowns but are crowns insofar as they are tombstones erected on the graves of alien Stories, especially Stories of Her. Tombstones wreathing Her Groves.

Know you why they have murdered?

Have you already Forgotten?

You told me, from my earliest years of conversation and debate with you, about the Cold War. Ah, how it sounded so alien to me! Could I _really_ believe that you believed that Russian and American ICBMs would cavort across the oceans and annihilate all humankind? Or, as you would have said, _man_ kind. I listened. But I could not see. It took me into your discipline of peering. You taught me. You told me how they had taught you. The Cold War, so you claimed, was but the secular version of _Genesis_. How unabashed you were about War. About the eternal war between Yahweh and His People. His People, here, being His Sons. Did you know that I could never believe in Original Sin? Maybe I should have told you. Maybe _then_ you would have understood why sports were not holy warfare for me!

You laugh. Okay. But understand that for you there is an Enemy. An Evil One. Who walks the earth. What I have come to understand is that it is Her. I know you have these words, these thoughts, and I know — Should I tell you what Noah's son saw? What Story was told upon his naked flesh? For what he banished his son Ham? But then you know, don't you — know what Roch fears to know. But I digress.

The Cold War. The History I learned. The _His_ -story I had to unlearn. As I learned about the Stories of women, slaves, immigrants, manual laborers, religious outcasts, anon, anon. The Cold War was so comprehensive, so omniscient in that it saw All and saw the common thread to all, so it claimed, and the thread was Conspiracy, the thread was Paranoia, the thread was Enemy.

In Europe it was The Cold War. In Asia it was The Cold War. In South America, Cold, too. All flipped and flopped and folded together, all events, reduced and shrunk down to this one singular Story, so apt, so fitting for the singular, monotheistic Lone Male God. The Erotic Warrior with only his singular penis: sacral Cock.

It was there, in the paintings, in the sculptures, in the cathedrals ... there in its Forgottenness. This is what I came to Memorize.

And from this oddly peculiar genital eroticism, so came monogamy. At least as it is for The Warrior: where women are chattel. Booty. Genital slaves. And as such marriage is but an act of celibacy, for it is abstention from Her mysteries, from worship of her flesh .... True, there is no Holy Matrimony, no Sacred Marriage — merely genital slavery.

Where is the cathedral of the Goddess? Of the Great Mother?

Do you think I grew up after your Free Love Revolution and did not read about vaginas and cunts and vulvas ... and pursue the decadent literature (scarlet, one fair Jesuit tagged them all!) of lingam and yoni, of Tantric and Sacred Sexuality?

And so it is you, dear father, who are perverse. Not Freud's polymorphous perversity, but just a cranked out stultified erotic perversity: a dead-end. All masturbatory frenzy. This I learned from you.

Did I mention that I met a distant cousin? One you failed to mention. Jepth and his Aaren? Now, that's a story for another time!

Where's all this going? To say that you taught me well! For you taught me to peer, but instead of seeing Devils and Witches and Communists and Socialists and all things Red ... what I did see was Blood, but not of an Enemy, rather a common blood: coursing through my and all the veins of all creatures, human and not.

Some will call me Enemy, but I don't have to live as such. " _To live as if I am no one's enemy"_ — This _your_ wisdom. But as your wisdom gets cork-screwed — like Satan's tail! — in the perversity of your masturbatory eroticism, that of The Finger, of the Lone Male's Cock ... well, I peered and found my motherly blood. True, dear father: _my son_ , within me. My own Cunny. That within me which I doubt you, dear Friar, can face. Sacred and Sacral and Holy ... and Powerful!

"So, I'm damned?!"

"In your world, yes, Brooder damnation. Not in mine."

"Universal Salvation? _No harm, no foul!_ "

"Mock me, if you feel so mocked, but know there is growth, there are greater demands on creativity and the communication of your Fire."

"Mock you? I mock myself. For where are my Brooder Brothers? I sense them not." Contemptuous vulnerability.

"Come with me."

:The Portal. He is watching himself make love with Laura. There is no embarrassment in the presence of his son. What is seen is the Fire. How it banters between them. How it flares into images of their common Dream. She is there. Mother. Luke and Laura in ouroboric embrace. Mouth to mouth for eternal communing; eating each other; consuming so as to be One, and as One to be Other. All of wondrous erotic Fire: fire-searing bodies and extracting Silver Blood. A Dream most beatific. Yet, then, Luke peers and they are there: Brooders. Fencing the Dream. Beating the bushes and driving Her towards their capture. Snaring her. With chant and incantation they conjure her a prison: golden, laden with ivory lace, diamonds aglitter, fencing her with majestic aura, enthralling Her with chant: " _Mother of God, we praise you!_ " .... seductive manly melody working its esoteric power .... power of milking; extracting from their conjuration drops of the Silver Blood.

" _This_?!"

"What else?"

"I was free! _We_ were free!"

"Were you?"

:The Portal. There is Laura and Marsh. Rian and Selene. All abed. All glowing with intensities of Fire. Luke shudders, attempts to shout but he cannot move the muscles to work his jaws. Charles is gone from his side. He is _there_! ... They all turn towards Luke, peer at him, and beckon for him to come join them. _Save me! Save me! Save me!_

"Monogamy is the Lie?!"

Having taken him there but having compassion for his pain, Charles has returned to The Porch. Out of all time and space. Not in Minnesota. But on a Noospheric map. At a place and a time where Luke can see all, if he so wants to see.

"It's a Lie because you forward only its singular Truth."

"But it _is_ the discipline of dedication. Of commitment. Of attention. _You're_ too young, you've never been married, how can _you_ know anything?"

"Have you not claimed the bed as rack? Have you not peered and seen what only you as Friar Alfred, Dreamer of _Genesis_ could see? That She who is on this side of the Dark Vapors, that She is not to manifest Her powers? ... You know this. You have searched for Her body through Laura. You have raised her Pillar of Fire and unleashed her Orgasm so long sealed inside Her Cave."

"Yes. Why then call me Liar?"

"Because you have not unleashed her Orgasm within yourself."

("Because you have not unleashed her Orgasm within yourself.")

becauseyouhavenotunleashedherOrgasmwithinyourself.

:Understand The Finger. It gives the Lie to The Hand. For in _Genesis_ , so you know, there is no Hand. For The Finger merely points. The Hand reaches out to grasp another. Hand in Hand _Genesis_ is not. Not His Hand reverencing Her Hand: God and Gooddess, Not!

My orgasmic Fire is not simply genitally erotic. It is of global conflagration: ouroboric.

Peer with me.

:I found in you the Warrior Male. You were my own Lone Male God. My Father. Yet, your Fire drove me steadfastly towards my Ocean. There a different kind of maleness, not Warrior. There a queerness. Not simply genital queerness — which is not of this moment — but soulful queerness.

Like flowers, you once told me, _Women are like flowers; and you must be like a magical bee;_ I remember that!

But men are like flowers, too. _This_ you did not say!

We, men, are fecund, fertile, embraceable ... you did not say this!

I once thought to marry. Yes, this is true. A Celtic beauty: hair on fire. But she said she would not marry _until I married myself_. You never prepared me for _that_!

It is the Dream of others who Brood. Do you think your Order is _that_ esoteric? Powerful, yes, but powerful because so many others are imprisoned by its Dream.

She came to me, not as Her but as Him. Loved me with her desire to find Her within me, within our embrace.

I came to her as Her, not as Him.

:The Hand — we came to be ten. First as couples. Paired by practical attraction. That ability to cohabitate in close spaces. That sharing of privacy. Respect. This as much of monogamy as we needed.

The women had been in a Round. There is where I found Rian. Was it Greece? Possibly Tasmania. I don't recall. Not important. But they were foraging for the Embrace. We, just guys, just men hanging out, we had drifted into a Group, intellectual, talking, then into Play, imaginative, demonstrative, then into Worship, first external, then — how are such moments accounted? — then as Cocksmen: we were filled with our cocks and unabashed about our Fire, yet, we came not to Battle — though there were battles! — no, we came to Her. Found Her curdling our blood; boiling us; found ourselves yearning to be penetrated, to be explored and made manifest: our common maleness screamed and wept and jerked about in a frenzy ... till we came one day, all just knowing where, to this place: a house: _This house_ , dear father! .... Yes, here in the attic. By the westerly turret: all come, I knowing but yet not knowing fully, and Rian said, _Here is your Mother_. _Here is your Sister_. And she spoke to me, pointing at me!

We stood together. Five male fingers. Five female fingers. Knowing that we were all to each other: Mother, Sister, Brother, Father ... Son and Daughter.

A Hand reaching out to clasp a Hand.

Hers, His: Lovers: Parents: Holy Family.

What can I say? ... _Profane ecstasy_!

"I just love The Flame." Satisfied.

"I know you do." Tenderly.

He pushes the swing, picking up his feet and pleasuring the play of gravity.

"You know, now, don't you?"

"I know what RW ... what Abbot Roch, _must_ do."

"And what _you_ must do?"

Luke stakes his feet to the planks of the porch, arresting the swing's plunge and sweep. His body thrusts upward as if propelled, as if compelled, by his words: " _Now and forever! Till the End of Time!_ "

# CHAPTER 21: JUDAS

Ronald W. — being Ronald W. in the space between RW and Abbot Cardinal Roch; a distraction he allowed himself less and less these last weeks, for had he not to be on guard? Yes, Ronald W., with all his worldly sophistication, wagged a knowing finger at RW and the profound Abbot Cardinal: " _Judas_. In so many guises!"

Preparations for the End-Time ritual were proceeding quite well. The worldwide _Garden_ — as they called their private, ultra-secure Web — was humming with quality control reports, approved changes, new drawings, all evidences of accomplished workmanship and superior management. It was simple, "Divinely simple!" so it had appeared to him upon hearing Friar Francis' plan ("He, my David!"). Yes, the simplicity of grand spectacle. Necklaced around the globe, a gem in every time zone, the liturgy of Redemption, the moment of Sacrifice, the song of Memory. So, it would be; Friar Francis' Hollywood expertise laying proven plank and nail to the scaffolding of this millennial event. "Highest of dramas!"

Yet, that of Ronald W. still inside him bred flowers of whitened shrouds. Abbot Roch knew, from years of night prayed _Compline_ , that, "The devil roams about seeking to devour" — yes, _Beware! Beware_!

So, he was not surprised: not in the shocking, head-snapping startle of unexpected surprise, no, he did not know the time nor the place, that would be enough of a surprise, but he knew it was inevitable.

"Alfred."

" _Where_ are you?" Swatting at vaporous sounds.

"You must leave your house."

_There_ , they met. Off The Porch. Away from the River. In a field, a field of Dreaming, but safe.

"You look, look ... God, man, you _look_ drugged!"

Luke shakes and stomps and arm-flails at his own body.

"God be praised! You were _there_." Awe. Stunned admiration thrilled with fear.

Friar Alfred smiles wanly.

"God be praised!"

:the point is that the world will know, not only know but have a choice: to be in the _Garden_ or out. I've seen it. Been inside it. God The Father has His ways, but I fear we should have Dreamed Her, should have not been so smug about Her Obliteration.

Roch's eyes are anvils upon which Alfred beats out Her vision.

:it is Our Father's time. His End-Time. To put a final end to Her. Fleshly annihilation and resounding ethereal Obliteration. This time we must carry the Battle outside the _Garden_. Pursue and pursue before they can propagate!

:that's _not_ Her vision. I peered and saw Her in my son — _my son_?! I wonder!

:fear not, we Dreamed him.

:not! _She_ dreamt him!

: _The Horror!_

When Luke appeared at the hotel in Jerusalem, the Abbot welcomed him without indication that he was but expected.

They met, and realized in their meeting that they were, indeed, as Ronald W. had so prophesied, "Doing something together." Like magnets, they clung and repelled, but even in their mutual repulsion they were acting together.

"Friar Francis has the performance hitting all the right marks."

"I was afraid of that."

Roch swerves to catch the full import of Alfred's comment.

"It's just all wrong." He walks distractedly about. "It's all just too, _too_ programmed."

The Abbot gathers his robes and sits down. The Round-Table meets within the hour.

"It's like a distraction. Just like all of TV and Hollywood is. _What Is, Is Not_. Remember the wisdom in that?!"

"But all liturgy is ..." Roch catches himself, stifling his academic response.

"Yes. Yeah. _I_ know. For God's sake, Roch, I know, and that's just it. We can't _make_ the Millennium happen. It's not a matter of just marking a date and then turning the calendar page and saying, "Hallelujah! It's the End-Time!" The Holy Spirit is _not_ like canned laughter."

The Abbot reflects: like the Garden of Gesthemane, it was proper to be there, but as humans fall asleep so then does God act! He rubs his chin as if rubbing a genie's bottle, hoping that angelic insight will beam down upon and pierce through his monkish skull.

The meeting bell, in high pitched call, alerts him that it is time.

"All is ready _in the West_." The words float out over the gathering of the Twelve; it is as if the words are sky-scripted for all to see by a magical hand; indeed, they are alchemical; they are like the fourth of a set of astral keys which, when fitted into the lock, open the Door: here, to enlightenment and fulfillment, here, to the End of Time.

Not a gasp. Not a sound. Bodies frozen in time flash.

A faint light auras the room. Glowing. Pulsating. Becoming roseate light which permeates all present and brings them into communion with the Presence.

The Revelation is uttered, "We know, _now_ , the ritual."

All noticed Friar Alfred, but then they had not. Not counted on the arithmetic plane that if he was there, then one who was there, was not truly there. For it was Twelve, always Twelve, could not but be Twelve ... and only the Abbot was granted the burden of knowing that Alfred's presence meant that — _Alas!_ — one who was there, had been there all along, was false. That Judas was within their Dreaming ... or, more chilling, as Alfred had revealed to him, that he might be being Dreamt!

"Friar Francis."

"Yes, Your Reverence."

Ever delightful. Always primed for a "Hollywood minute." So, Roch felt confident that he would not suspect his suspicion.

"Bring our Brother, here, Friar Alfred, up to date."

Friar Francis, early forties, boyish — one for whom all his life the visage of the eternal _puer_ would be his — slender but exuding athletic fitness, Alfred noticing the reddish sparkle to his eyes, "Contacts?" he muses, but lets it pass.

"Alfred! It's been a while," practiced mumbo of the cocktail set.

"Some would say that," Luke wryly rejoins, slipping a sardonic wink towards the Abbot.

Two hours to the chime for _Divine Office_ : "Quite comprehensive." Alfred's admiring judgment. Friar Francis' media show was all anyone organizing a millennial event could ever want! The younger Friar basked in the tone of approval and admiration; a basking, however, which was a talent showing off his wares, not a novice being promoted.

"I'm pleased that you approve," sincerely stated.

"I must ask," Alfred began, then hesitated — Wasn't the answer obvious? — "I must ask how you got all of them to consent."

Friar Francis rubbed each of his hands up and down his whiskerless cheeks and, then, drew them together with a clap; the effect was fascinating and amusing!

"It's the music!"

Later and late that evening, Friar Alfred locked himself into the White Father's monastic library: "High tech mavens!" he mused as he sat down at a terminal. Alfred proceeded to lock himself out, actually. For he wended his way by password and encryption through _Enter_ and _Exit_ of globally numerous libraries, religious and secular — dropping through every age of archived time. A dizzying and exhausting night, but, at its conclusion, he halted in his tracks and hosted the memory of how it had been when he was a fledgling monk-scholar. How much footwork was involved, back then. Yet, but how exciting — yes, _exciting_! That air of mystery, always like solving puzzles, akin to his enjoyment of the fictional medieval Benedictine Brother Cadfael solving curious murder mysteries — yes, back then, there had been human contact; _then_ , yet the play was as much immaterial as material, for the eyes of the custodial monks had to be unlocked: they trained to prevent leakage, ever so jealous of their parochial treasures, but treasures, nevertheless: Noospheric treasures not just of Memory but of Forgetfulness ... he rubs his reddened eyes and accepts the joke: he just there to stroke the computer's keyboard: technological eroticism! — yeah, today, it's all cyber lock and key; digital trickery and phantasmagoria, but so it is, and must be.

He had gathered the music. Classical. Popular. Ethnic. Avant Garde. Rock 'n Roll. All types. Friar Francis had outdone himself! Yet, had he betrayed himself? In saying, "It's the music!"?

Digitizing all. Filtering by pattern. Working it against ancient charts: cosmological, astrological, divinational, geometric, tonal — searching for the sacred theme, the power of the tones and/or the power of the numbers and/or both together: The Music of the Spheres; The Harmony of the Spheres ... Luke recalls the famed, early 17th century cosmologist, Johannes Kepler holding that the earth was scaled between the tones of _mi_ and _fa_ : Misery and Famine! ... but a nostalgic laugh sobered by the pattern he spies of what else?: Harmonic Convergence! ... Yes, possibly. But for what? ... Luke hears Roch's voice: _Judas_!

And Luke remembers: "they will be shattered like a pot of clay" (Revelations 2:26); remembers Francis linking the story of David and Goliath to this passage; indeed, why Roch feared him: called him, jokingly but with nervous jest: "the shattering Friar!" ... was just nervous talk, said on a walk one day, seemingly incongruous, but, now, Luke ponders: Music to Shatter? ... Friar Francis using his musical powers to shatter the Brooders' Dream ... _Could Francis be a less worthy adversary?_

Feast-days: _All Saints/All Souls._ Friar Alfred — yet Deacon, not-ordained — still altarboy! ... kneels and shakes the silver bell as the Abbot Cardinal holds high the blessed bread and offers the chalice of wine in remembrance and consecration.

:Where was Luke?

:What of Charles and Selene?

:Of Rian and Laura?

As all these knew, so was Alfred-now-Luke back from within the Dark Vapors. Gone from his home atop the flow of the Mississippi. But, yet, not gone. They from The Porch peer at him. Peered and beheld how marvelous were the gathering wonders of this, a truly End-Time moment.

# CHAPTER 22: MASKS & DANCE

There are profane Truths smuggled under the robes of sacred Lies. To instantly counter that, there was an Original Lie smuggled under the naked flesh of Adam. His flesh being the profane Truth of the Lone Male's cloning and the sacred Lie that males could self-generate; a lie smuggling the truth of the rib: the truth that She still Dreams.

The imprint of The Hand could not be seen next to the rallying cry of _Purgare_! because it was _She_ Dreaming.

When Luke peered and saw, so was it known that he was within the Dark Vapors.

Once "back" being Brooder Dreamed, all of Her truths he exposed carried this Lie: that he was _not_ of Her.

Charles, these last several years, had gathered with those who had peered and seen The Hand. In cities and towns, villages and suites, it was but a hand lifted and the sign verified what his travels through the cathedrals of Europe had revealed: _What Is, Is Not_.

It was only as he met Her after a Round that Charles experienced that _What Is Not, Is_.

:he had been more Warrior than his father knew; more than his father ever was, in some instances. He had not needed The Island to lift the cup of enemy blood and drain it dry. Astral and ethereal events like that happened to him in the same manner as profane and measured things did: such as his first step, his first bout with fire, his first erection.

Women came to him as the eyes of all men also inevitably lashed onto Selene. Over the years, he had captured booty; he had plunged and twisted his rapier!

Yet, Charles was a "once born," not a "twice-born" like his father. His was not as to be converted as it was his to manifest and proclaim.

He had been Dreamt by Her.

Laura had known this about her son, with a knowledge inarticulable.

I am not male.

_I am not female_.

Thus, they had greeted.

And Charles knew it was Selene.

And Selene knew it was Charles.

In every face. In every touch.

Fascinating.

The Warrior in them both was repulsed.

But so it had become, regardless of gender.

"Other men," he was drawing his account to a conclusion, "Other men are what prevents him."

"As much of a jock as he was or is — Do you ever stop being a jock? — I doubt that Dad will ever be involved in The Hand."

"You know what that means for me?" Laura sighed, hopelessly.

Rian chiding: "We _never_ know what's beyond. What's coming. When all this is over and done with, who knows?" _Ah, Sweet Millennial Hope!_

Charles had known that someday it would come to Cock. He knew this for absolute certain the instant he had found Her within himself; felt and pleasured his own Cunny. For it was the Warrior's last stab: " _Fuck me! Fuck me, good!_ " ... But he knew that the sweep was grander. That males, once they claimed their Obliterated Cunnies, would explode with creative Eros of many masks.

The Masks of Eros. How few friends Warriors have. How few truly collaborative co-workers among the "Take No Prisoners!" competitors. How scant their faithful groups: leaving only armies and athletic teams as the acceptable and permissible modes, and, always only if "professional."

He listened as the three women discussed the Round. Dissected its intent. Probed its emotional validity. Pondered its discoveries.

For them, The Masks of Creative Eros had become, simply, lovely. And so they Danced. _Moonshine Foolishness!_

It had not always been like that. They, also, recalled the pains and pangs and tortures and horrors of the fumbling years. Years they now know wherein The Brooders still Dreamed them; now, they being Dreamed by Her.

Years to conceptualize the Discipline of the Holy Family. For the structure of words was needed as ladder from this society of language. Yet, words which yielded images. This they knew was the sign. Sketched images. Danced symbols. Terrifying and fascinating. Some were driven away; some simply missed the beat. But the group began to form, to gel, catalyzed by faithfulness; faithfulness to _What Is Not, Is_. This becoming manifest in the profane truth of the discovery of their Cunny. The deeply mystical and transforming discovery — as shocking as Adam's missing belly-button? — that _What Is Not, Is Not, But Is:_ for the males: that, _their whole and complete flesh is vulva_.

Every aspect of their spatial and temporal existence a celebration of Her. They, each the cunt of the Fuller Body. This, then, how they came to rejoice in their vital Cock; how they came to jettison the Lie of the Circumcised Penis.

Males revealing to their Brothers and Sisters their laughter at this moment of creational exuberance: " _It is good!_ " — in reverence and exorcism. They sharing the blessing that the penis fits the vagina as two foci merging; merging and wondrously complexing into other dimensions: penis and vagina as Masks; Masks of the Sacral Dance of Cock and Cunny. This the mode of transformation and transubstantiation. One plus One becoming Three, and never the same yet One, again.

So much just the catalyst, so all have come to agree. Women having found in The Round all the maleness and Masks of the Cunny and Dance of the Cunny which now communes with the men whose flesh revels in the Masks of the Cock and Dance of the Cock.

Years. For a special few, just days and months; sometimes the Eternal Flash. This is how they came together, grasping when together — and only then — that this was so much of Her Dreaming them; them accepting the Brooder Dream and moving through and beyond it, exposing themselves to cries of _Idiots! Perverts! Pornographers! Pagans! Criminals! Traitors!_ anon, anon ...

Ten: somehow the number worked. Five men. Five women. Large enough. Small enough. Privacy. Practical public ritualizing.

Yet, the Masks and Dance of Creative Eros wobbled pornographic.

How to avoid such when all was a perversion of The Warrior?

But then they knew. Don't avoid. Integrate. Consume. Transform. Transubstantiate!

They Brooded together till the Lone Male Dream cracked and splintered. Until Adam was known not as Father, but as Clone. Not until this Sacred Truth was humbled by its Profane Lie was it that no longer were the males afraid of each other's body: " _Fear God!_ " was laid to rest ... or at least put on a balancing scale.

The Masks:The Dance.

:the music is on. Foot-stomping beat. Quickly, the heat of mere bodies works their imagination. The scent of desire seeps from the walls. It is desire, though, which is not forced. Some have come with a desire to be cherished. Others, held comfortably. Still others, to unwind and empty the buckets of molten lusts. That this is accepted, that this is searched out and discerned: this the first Discipline of the ritual.

For all Intend to create the Body. To mold it. Inspire it. Dynamize it.

For all are here to Attend. With iron softness, Attend to the bodies.

There is dancing. This the first. For the music becomes the stirring rod. No special style mandated. Just bodies finding their flow; their energy; and working on what their every day clock-lives do not unleash: their non-verbal selves; flesh as symbolic conversation.

The hugging. Deep and long for some. For yet some, several bodies deep. Multiple arms. For others, a touch on the cheek, a respecting nod and wink.

Not that the sexual is ever forgotten at any time. _This is not the Obliteration!_ This is not the Forgetting. Rather, it is the proper placement of each Mask, and each Mask has its honor.

Hours, almost always hours. Food about. Some drink: herbs and booze. Some ingest sacred plants and hallucinatory seeds. But the Discipline is trusted. That each has prepared him/herself. Spent the time during the day Intending this coupling; and Attending to their bodies and souls as they prepare to Attend.

Each wants the Greater Body. The Fuller Soul. True profane ecstasy. Not the masturbatory " _The thrill is gone!_ " but the orgasmic " _Imagine!_ " Endless imagining. And so eternal presence, _here_ , one with each other.

Five seemed to counter boredom. Five seemed to be Memorable. Intending The Hand and the Attending of ten bodies, each to the other, was practically manageable. Enough diversity; sufficient spicing.

When men _aren't_ shrunk to being just Warrior, and when women _aren't_ shrunk to being just Booty, what happens? ... _Almost_ anything!

:the Mask of the Eyes — amazing fabulations of the mirrors of the soul: masks which accentuate: enlarge, diminish, expose, conceal: paints and feathers and sparkle and mis-direction of shape and form: truly theatrical, even for those who sit with blank expressions ... and it is to see what the other sees, to peer how the other peers: sometimes a question, sometimes a challenge, sometimes all is rhetorical ... but that one whose Eyes are now communal Eyes, they play the creative role, calling others to silence or mime or demonstration: playful in any and every way — witty, dreadful, off key ... yet, each Disciplined to be the metal beaten or the anvil beaten upon or even the hammer wielded by the Beloved: for whose Eyes it is, is the Beloved: not Treasured Booty, not Conquering Hero .... Beloved.

:the Dance of Separateness — respecting communal individuality; that the foci is, itself, private, alone, distant ... a queer Well, yet, all draw from it: coming into a humongous body press, feet shuffling, lungs grunting, flesh compressing, a shuddering grope which bounds and reverberates into the collapse of each and all into distinct and unconnected and separate and private spaces, not just physical, but emotional, not just emotional, but spiritual: on the astral plane, reveling in the giddy distancing, falling, free falling into the moment of pure and ecstatic individuality ... and as such, Beloved.

:the Communion of the Fuller Body — the humbling and the exultation of Sexual Eros: coming for the celebration of the Mother of All and the Father of All. Flesh and Blood, the Bread and Wine; taking the symbolic flesh and blood and through worship transforming and transubstantiating; this the exorcism of The Warrior: the Remembering of the Obliteration: consecrating into being, _Here and Forever Now_ , the presence of The Holy Family: Father and Mother, Son and Daughter: celebrating the power in each and everyone of Parenting; Remembering that each and every one is Son and Daughter to someone: physical and spiritual, in dimensions ecstatic ... and as such, Beloved.

:Mother of All — the Beloved of One made manifest as the Beloved of All. The privacy of a treasured cunny now shared as communal joy. One body expressing itself through every fiber of its being; allowing the Story of All to be read upon the ribbon of her flesh; touches and kisses, robes and jewelry, gifts of speech and the artful hand, the enticing dance, all presented and all accepted, she now in full array of all they have and now she in full array of all they do not have: her nakedness is their body; she is worshipped: feet, and hands, the beauty of a fallen hair, the seduction of her lips ... and they come to her: come to her so as to come to their Fuller Body ... Accepting, Receiving, Nurturing, Suckling them close to Death .... and as such, Beloved.

:Father of All — the Beloved of One made manifest as the Beloved of All. The privacy of a fearsome cock now shared as communal joy. Gifted and worshipped, songs sung and tales told. Power and might, the Quest all dramatized. An arm grasped in brotherhood; a hand drying a tear of a sister. There is the prancing and the race; the throb and the death-defying risk: feats of mind and body, of soul and spirit; noise and shout! Hearty laughter, and the weeping as the babe newborn is cradled ... and as such, Beloved.

:Cock and Cunny in conjoining and celebration. Each and every male worshipping each and every female, and coming unto the Mother and unto the Father: the humbling of All and the ecstasy of All! ... and as such, Beloved.

:the Mask and Dance of the Discipline — each and every day, Intending the Fuller Body, Attending to specific bodies: their own, others; ever present to The Holy Family; ever in quest of Parenting and being parented: for each and all, in Brooder Dream or wherever, is Dreamt by Her and so by Him, in their fullness, as each erotically creates and plays ... and as such, Beloved.

_The Hand_ — what Laura and Luke sensed was drawing them beyond their Embrace. Why Abbot Roch (and RW and Ronald W.) said, "The people can have their Goddess and Goddesses back. But they cannot form The Hand."

Charles smiles with ironic mirth as Laura so quotes The Brooder's Abbot. Yet, it is Laura who has seen what yet Charles and Selene and Rian must see: she who has peered and beheld the Warrior's Biblical End-Time ritual.

This why she leaves; not leaves their Presence but, rather, departs The Hand; walking out the door and down the steps of The Porch.

She does not have to look. She knows that the River is cresting high and wide with Blood.

Blood splotches on the Virgin Ice.

Blood swirling crimson snow.

Blood of seed.

Blood of leaf and flower.

Blood breathed.

Blood smelled.

Blood awash.

Blood — a terrible and terrifying image; for so she is terrified and trembling.

But it is her way: hers and Luke's. Their Calling. Their Vocation. Married under Warrior Oaths and Vows, so they must complete and fulfill their Duty.

Does he know?

The car is a refrigerator on wheels, but she does not notice: pounds her freezing feet against the fire-wall: shivers to stoke her inner warmth: flushes at the moment the heap of iron begins to cough up dry fire — static electricity binds her to the seat. She drops into Drive.

: _Luke! Luke!_

"The Devil roars, seeking someone to devour!"

: _Laura! Laura!_

# CHAPTER 23: WHITE STONE

Luke knew that he, himself, was insane. Friar Alfred simply felt that his faith was being tested.

For Alfred, he knew that the End-Time meant change: cataclysms, The Rapture, The Second Coming, Four Horsemen and all that long-ago-time prophecy. Things were supposed to change; more — good Christian that he is — he waits eagerly, expectantly, no, more: excitedly — for his new name; yes, a Sign of the End-Time was that he was not to hold onto this Brooder name, even if it had ordained him, no, he re-read, out-loud, pacing his cell:

Everyone who is victorious shall eat of the hidden manna, the secret nourishment from heaven, and I will give to each a white stone, and on the stone will be engraved a new name that no one else knows except the one receiving it. (Revelations 2:17)

Luke was not as sanguine, in fact, he was downright terrified. For the days were moving like molasses on a ten-below-zero January morning. Here, what to others was November fading into December, all upbeat with expectation, was for Luke all " _Fear God_!" and screams of Divine Justice ... for there was that — still remnant, still instinctual — of Friar Alfred in him which was something even Friar Alfred did not know: Luke was absolutely terrified to read the name on the white stone.

Names: as in the Beginning, so in the End.

Naming: the Creative Eros of The Father.

Luke and Alfred began to fully realize and recognized one another in that they, for truly the first time ever, began to hear their names distinctly and clearly.

For Alfred the name "Luke" embodied the Final Temptation. Yes, with certainty, he knows that all which Roch has told him is true: that his venture into the Dark Vapors was his Dreaming Tarsusian Saul's Dream: " _We now see as through a glass, darkly_." This verse, he now knows, is the guiding beacon of insight Dreamt by The Brooders as Alfred wandered and became Luke.

That, there is no such thing as psychological truth or fact for true believers, only the delusions of mind. It is the soul which is: the personality but an affect. So, for Alfred, he disciplined, prayed and prepared himself for the End-Time by distancing himself from "Luke": a distancing as spiritual method: employed from his first years in monastic life to ward off the devilish temptors who had tested his fledgling vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience.

For Alfred, Luke was dead. In fact, never alive. Just a mask: a robe of flesh and mind and spirit donned as Alfred had donned cassock and surplice to serve at Holy Mass. Here, Luke as Black Mass, the Mass devoted to contact — not distancing — with the Evil One, this a Mass known only to and practiced only by The Brooders.

Alfred had known the risk. Had been told by the Abbot who preceded Roch about the loss of souls who had ventured to see through this vaporous glass.

Not for Alfred were the Dark Vapors truly anything but an illusion, a deception, a beguilement. That he let Luke sincerely believe all that he had found with Her, this was simply the risk he took. Luke was for Alfred his own sleight-of-spiritual-hand, his own phantasmagoric trickery played on the Prince of Lies, the Dark Prince who resides within the Dark Vapors.

Luke never existed for him; not as a soul, only as a personality. As such neither is Laura nor Charles nor Selene — and certainly not Rian! — part of him: the siring flesh he gave as Luke was simply clay: he had offered himself to the Lord as clay for the Divine Potter's spit and wheel, and what God the Almighty Father has wrought is more Holy Mystery and Sacred Truth than Alfred knows he need suffer to understand and comprehend in this Vale of Tears.

It is for Alfred, now, to prepare with Abbot Roch what must be carefully, and in great detail, prepared to fulfill the prophecies of _Revelation_.

Luke was terrified because he also valued the transforming act of naming. He — and maybe only he among all those he loved — truly knew and deeply felt the strangeness of being Luke-not-Alfred. When he had left the monastery he felt uneasy about retaking his Baptismal name. But what was he to do? No one, back then, would have understood such a peculiar act. Indeed, they would have questioned his sanity.

As the Sixties progressed, re-naming became both absolutely silly and deadly serious. Those who dropped out — customarily after dropping acid and taking an hallucinogenic Trip! — fashioned themselves with a new name, a Hippie confabulation: Sunshine or Flower or Aries or even insects: Ant, Kangaroo, some even numbers: "Call me 24," one friend of Sunflower had said!

Luke knew that he wasn't the Luke his parents had baptized.

He knew this, especially, after The Island.

Now, he, too, awaited the naming.

Yet, Alfred was excited because the naming calmed things down; identified one as not to be slain in the Apocalyptic War. For Luke, the new name meant facing the fact of accepting transformation. Here, meaning recognizing that all Roch said is true: that Alfred still lives! That Luke must die.

Luke knowing what Roch fears: that Luke has dipped his hands into the Creative Fire as he not only loved but transubstantiated with Laura. Luke being transformed because the She Roch fears does exist!

Roch, not Alfred, knows the true task which lies ahead: to Seal the Dream!

Luke's fear is the other side of his unnerving hope: that he will find Her, that what he and Laura have started will bear fruit: that they will become The Holy Family — not just in question, not just in Dream, but in a new reality: he, too, anticipates a New Heaven and a New Earth ... an unknownness which must be created by his re-birth as "?"

But there is more for Luke; more which makes him tremble. It is that he clearly understands that She has shown Herself to him only in the Dark Vapors. Like the Saul-renamed-Paul he now despises, so is Luke the bearer of all that the renamed Paul bequeathed.

Luke waits to embrace Her whom no human has ever fully embraced — having only touched the Forgetfulness of Her as it was Remembered as Rib in the Obliteration of Her as The Father cloned himself.

How can I possibly prepared for Her? What am I to do?

Compounding his already schizophrenic fugue is the fact that his first book had been on St. John's _Book of Revelation_. An in-house publication: twenty-five copies in all: it was written to fulfill The Brooder requirement that Alfred show himself master of all the methods, insights and wisdom which the secular, academic world had delivered in the last century. It was his task to show them that Alfred was prepared to venture through the Dark Vapors as Luke-again.

Now, he realizes how consonant has been his journey in this one respect, namely, that he had revealed Her to his Superiors even through the hand of Alfred!

Luke never has mentioned the book to Laura — he now questions the intent, if any, behind this omission. She has at least seen his every other piece of work: article, speech, class outline, video ... but not this manuscript.

Today, he knows why.

He reads, silently:

She boasts, '"I am queen upon my throne. I am no helpless widow. I will not experience sorrow." (Revelations 18:7)

How he had discoursed upon that — before he met Laura! How crazy he was: he slaps himself upside his right temple, slapping like the Bishop does at Confirmation, he, now, hoping that some magical creature will erupt from his brain and save him — save him from himself!

Forty-seven cups of coffee — _At least_! — a mouth so cigared that his tongue is coated with a layer of white soot: does he ever want to sleep, again?

RW and Ronald W. and Abbot Roch — names; yet, not the final name, all waiting for the white stone.

Adam was given the power to name the animals. _Hmmmm_

The Christian Keepers. Friar Francis told him that he finessed their cooperation by adopting part of their name, calling his millennial extravaganza: "Keepers of the Light" — fully aware, as many of his fundamentalist Protestant compatriots (ahistorical in their hermeneutic!) might not have been that the Pope as St. Peter is — historically and throughout the Tradition — the Keeper of the Keys! Yes, the young friar was clever and quick and smart: hip and cool and iced as they say today, all Hollywoodese: ways of saluting themselves; Luke smiled at the trivialness of it all.

But that's it. Is it trivial?

Luke knows Friar Francis' aim is not simply to choreograph a hip spectacle, a mind-altering Rock 'n Roll extravaganza. No, all that any of The Brooders intend is to convert. And music can convert, at least the MTV Generation if not the world, and what Luke had found when he researched Harmonic Conversion that grueling night in Jerusalem, this sends a chill up his spine: the hypnotic power of the celestial spheres!

But what exactly will Friar Francis be doing that Abbot Roch won't?

_What Is, Is Not_. So Luke is drawn to carefully attend to the Friar's global celebrations: truly global, some critics touting cleverly that they know it to be cosmic, at the least, Friar Francis has aced all the Divines of the Secular Arts, to wit, he has netted Speilberg and his _Dreamwork_ crew, has usurped the Virtual Reality gurus over at _Spawn:_ where _What Is, Is Not_ and _What Is Not, Is_ have their own special twists for these imaginists and psychic Cyber-cloners, and he has captured the SuperStars of Rock and Blues and Country and Classical Music.

_Does it matter?_ Another voice inside his voice.

.:I _am_ going crazy. No doubt. Don't laugh. You know The Brooders seemed crazy when you first suspected. But it all began to queer in a way you could handle. Then, the Outside World seemed crazy. People literally killing themselves for dirt: gold and colored paper and jewels, all dirt things: Filthy Lucre, Capitalistic Shit! — things which will go back to the dirt; treasures which will corrupt and crumble. How comfortable you got to be as Friar Alfred!

_But I am Friar Alfred!_ Of course you are. John sat on Patmos and flipped out — or did he flip out and then go to Patmos? Remember how you interpreted the "unrolled scroll" for your Superiors! How hip you were! How "relevant" was your hermeneutic and exegesis! How impressed you were with their being impressed! Proving yourself not just Friar Alfred but a "true academic," one flexing his secular "intellectual freedom." What did you say? That the "taste like honey" and then turning the stomach sour sounded like John was ingesting a hallucinogen: papyrus, decoded as parchment of hemp — _How clever!_ Can't you still hear their stand-in-Silence ovation at the meeting's conclusion! ... _Ha_.

:I am _crazy_. How can I stand up against _The Revelation_?

And the nations will weep in sorrow and in terror when he comes. Yes! Amen! Let it be so! (Revelations 1:7)

: _IT WAS THE WOMAN._ Can't believe that, now. Can I? _Can you_? Again: She boasts, '"I am queen upon my throne. I am no helpless widow. I will not experience sorrow." You said — _Friar Alfred said!_ — this was in anticipation of Mary. The assertion of the Second Eve. A bold statement clearly stating that women were not damned. Were not Obliterated — but you didn't have "Obliteration" back then, not your word, you, then, spoke of being "second class citizens" or some such _Feminine Mystique_ or _Second Sex_ drivel!

Mushing it all up with sympathetic resonance to the grand Civil Rights struggle. _Were you ever so shameless_?

: _I forgot the terror_. Did my Brothers so intend? Not to remember until I had come upon Her throne and served Her?

The woman wore purple and scarlet clothing and beautiful jewelry made of gold and precious gems and pearls and held in her hand a golden goblet full of obscenities. (Revelation 17:4)

Worship Her! Haven't I worshipped Her! "Babylon the Great, Mother of Whores and of Idol Worship." She who claims that she needs not man: "I am not a helpless widow." ... Isn't that her boldness, her sin?! Harkening back to the woman _before_ Eve.

Oh, yes, Alfred Remembers Her: Her shadow on the Dreaming. He could see Her in Adam's eyes: but he did not know Her name. Until now: _It is Rian. It is Laura. It is Selene!_

Fear. "Fear God and extol His greatness. For the time has come when He will sit as Judge." (Revelations 14:7)

:a bottle of _Jack Daniels_. Drained within the hour.

Torture: "They were not to kill them but to torture them." Nights on his knees; knives of desire cutting his gut from Black Fasts; whipping with his three-knotted cincture at _Culpa_ ; _Torture, I know torture!_

:a vision — repenting; the robe of white linen being held out, if he repents. I _repent of all my sins. Of omission and commission. Of all my worship of Her. Of all earthly pleasures ever taken. I repent of my flesh and my thoughts and my desires_ .... He passes out.

:dreams — with Jesus, The Son of Man, sickles in hand, scything those who are not marked; hip deep: "blood flowed out in a stream two-hundred miles long and as high as a horse's bridle" ... as high as a horse's ....

Laura finds him sprawled across the kitchen table. A bloodless bottle of _Jack_ by his side; old companion she remembers; a stinky mash of cigar butts — she lifts and throws them outside onto the compost heap; books — Bible splattered on the floor, she doesn't bother to pick it up; then, a book she does pick up, _Revelations and the Great Whore ..._ "His!?!" ... she thumbs through, more than a bit curious about why she had never seen this, marked as 1966 — but no copyright?!: years before they met, but just before he disrobed, yes, the author: Friar Alfred Jennings, O.S.O.: _Didn't even know he had been writing back then. Hmmm._

:the Great Whore. Not even aware that she is Earth. The Earth Mother. Certainly not — not in this book! — not the slightest bit aware of the Mother of All! How could he have written this? And been on the cusp of meeting me? How could this book lead to _us_?

In his dreaming he had smelled the sulfur which rose from the stink of the Lake of Fire and Brimstone:Hell: but he awoke to it as the remnant gift of his immersion in the cloud of burnt offerings; gifts to the grand vegetation deity called Tobacco — but his mind wasn't working that way at the moment. No, it lived in his sniff and it remembered itself in his aching head and the growl in his stomach was greater than that of a roaring lion ... "Laura!" wordless; motionless; "Laura?" True hallucination? In Hell, and to be punished by longing for her?

Feeling like he had seven heads — _Ha!_ — Don't laugh at me! .... feeling his head for his ten horns ... _Ah, it is her_!

"I'm not laughing at you. You _do_ have seven heads and ten horns."

She closes his book and places it, out of sight, on a chair as she, simultaneously, slips him a large mug of black coffee, as bitter as she could make it!

He sips. "Great!"

_Weird guy_ , she laughs to herself.

She sits down, across from him. Smiles at him: a smile of someone truly happy to see you.

_What?_ is a banner flying in the worlds of Alfred and Luke and on the astral plane and all over his aching, stiff body. Luke puts down the mug and rubs his arms, massaging himself into circulation. Clock-time reality is ever so slowly emerging.

:the book? Where's the book? _Fuck_ , she's seen it!

"Armageddon."

"Correct."

"The Keepers of the Light?"

"That's what he said."

"The murders continue, you know."

" _Somewhere_ , I knew."

"But She's here, _anyway_."

So, let's get at it. _There_ are multiple levels of Memory and Forgetfulness. And every Memory is structured upon some forgetting. Memory is limited. Focuses on just a few things. But those few things which are fulcrum for the worldview. _Revelation_ is such.

True, _Revelation_ is such. Look at Her: _Notorious Prostitute._ _Great Whore_. "Drunk with the blood of martyrs." The sin of sex. Just like in _Genesis_. Death is brought only by war. More, it's seen as a punishment by God for not fearing Him. True.

True.

But women are _being_ killed. (" _Achtung!!!!"_ )

Yes, I know. ... In the soul of the Keepers and all of the Biblical Faithful this is a terrible time. For the Millennium must validate the Fear. They murder, not knowing it; not at least admitting it, rather the murders validate the Wrathful God. who, in His Righteousness, is wiping out Satan and all his demons: feminists, ya know, reaping punishment for seeking Liberation from marriage and monogamy and tempting all the celibates of the world! Boasting: "I am no helpless widow." ... Imagine ... I can imagine this:

And written on each head were blasphemous names, eachone defying and insulting God. ( _Revelations_ 13:1)

You've _been_ imagining it. She picks up the bottle of _Jack Daniels_ and spins it on the table-top as if playing "Spin the Bottle."

Yeah, even if they don't feel the earthquakes — and he painfully strokes his head — or gasp when the sky disappears, well, inside themselves it _is_ all real. As in the End so in the Beginning. _Precisely_.

I know you're doubting _us_.

It shows?

Don't make me laugh! ... _Friar Alfred_ , she whispers, conspiratorially.

I Remember too much, that's all.

So, try Forgetting some of that. There are somethings worth Forgetting.

_Really?_ ... I'm not sure.

Okay. Don't get pedantic for Christ's sake!

Ooops!?

Hmmm.

They're killing women. They destroying and desecrating Madonna and Goddess sites. Yet, no one is talking about it!

No one?

Yeah, I mean, fucking-A — in what reality, huh?

Truly.

But _it's_ a great reality, I mean, it's global. Look at what Friar Francis is doing! He's merging the secular with the holy, but, hell, it's more secular. _They're_ winning!

_You do_ really doubt us, don't you!

She didn't have to tell him about Rian and Selene. He didn't have to tell her about Charles and Abbot Roch. When together, they seemed to just know. Not either Memory or Forgetfulness, rather just a Presence. When together, they were Present.

:scarlet robes, crowns, diamonds, lustrous feathers, sweet perfumes, and he in a white robe: "I am the Morning Star!" ... items from their repertory of Play; performance enhancements; but, now (daytime, nighttime?) parts of them: expressions of their desires and dreams and wishes ....

:I am Earth.

:I am Sky.

:We are Alpha and Omega.

" _Holy, Holy, Holy!_ " their common breathing; spoken through their peering, heard through their Acceptance: at her Ocean's edge, true Lake of Fire, Fire from which hot blooded creatures emerge, not beasts, not monsters but joyous presences, healing beings: tonguing her, kissing her, worshipping at her delta throne, all the hatred of scarlet which he had inherited and dreamed, these fall empty and shatter like clay pots ... there is Fear, here, there is Awe: She is _mysterium tremendum_ ... _But, so are you!_ speaks Her southern oracle, It is you whom I fear, you great Tempter — Cock of The Walk! Come close and we both shall quiver and quaver. We are the earthquake and the ocean run dry and reasons the moon turns blood-red and the sun is draped by a negating cloth, _Yes_! ... we are The End-Time, our touch opens the Seals which are ourselves imagining, opens them and riding forth come all the horses and all the riders whose trumpets blare! ... _Yes_! we are, _we are_ The End-Time!

They woke, each with a gift: golden chain with white heartstone banded with a trace of shimmering silver. Did they have to look? But they did: on the back, inscribed in cobalt-blue line, the simple word, their new name: _Beloved_.

And, so it was: Charles and Selene had opened The Portal.

# CHAPTER 24: ENEMY

_Beloved_.

Luke fingers the white stone. He wanders the Dark Vapors.

_Enemy_.

Small letters. Capitals. In codes. Whatever: Wasn't this what his whole life has been about?

Humans as Enemy of God. Sinful. Disobedient. Sexually Disgusting. Invoking the Righteous Wrath of Yahweh. Of The Father.

The Serpent. Forget for a moment the annoying question about, "Where did _it_ come from?" And the companion irritating question of, "How could an All-Powerful God create the Evil One?"

Forget them: as mysteries. God's Unimaginableness.

That's just it: imagination. Imagining.

_Genesis_ is all and everything about Imagining.

Imagining is the creative act.

_Imago_.

Is Satan an _Imago Dei_?

Forget this, for Christ's sake! ... Yes, for His sake.

Hmmm.

"I am God's Enemy."

"I am The Enemy."

"I am born in Satan's Clutch."

" _I am born from Satan's Seed._ "

True?

Satan. The Devil. The Evil One. Certainly, the Millennium's Anti-Christ. The Serpent. How far off base are the Depth-Psychologists when they identify The Serpent with Eros? The Serpent as sign, metaphor or image — take your choice! — of humankind's sexual frustration? _Hmmmm._

It gets scary when the hagiographic rumor spreads that some Nazi (take Eichmann or Goebbels or any Franz) stood on tip-toes to peek at the gaseous Jews and so was rewarded with a nice firm hard cock ... maybe even a jack-off from some jack-boot? _Hmmm._

Was it something like that? Like Yahweh watching Adam get some nice smooth pussy fuck and being the jealous asshole that He is, He pisses and moans about not "getting any" and so kicks the fuckers out of Paradise? _Hmmm_.

Can it all come down to just Cock and Cunny?

Really, shrink down to just the Circumcised Penis?

Or, why did those guys do _that_?

"Whip it out! And I'll know who you are! ... Oh, _my_ God!"

So, the Cock is The Enemy. Or, can be. Or, is, if used a certain way. Which way? _What way is a Circumcised Penis used?_

Like raising your sword when saluting The King?

Something _only_ males can raise. Maybe that's the first clue.

But maybe that does say something. _Hmmm_.

Eve talked with the Serpent. _Conversed_. Spoke with him as she did with Adam and Him. All on equal footing, so it seems. They talk. They eat. " _And the eyes of both were opened_ " ... what did they see? ... " _and they knew that they were naked._ "

Again: talk, eat ... and, peer. Yeah, they saw something that was there which was always there but they hadn't seen. Symbolically, they close their eyes, again: " _and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons_."

Closed their eyes ... by "closing" their cock and cunny from His sight? _Hmmm_.

So, assume: The Serpent talks with him and her and Him. What is spoken leads to a seeing, but not with eyeballs, otherwise, wouldn't they have put the aprons over their eyes?

Raises more questions than it answers!

Clue: Enemy. The Serpent gets cursed only after Eve and Adam peer.

Clue: Enemy. "From now on, you and the woman will be enemies, as will your offspring and hers."

So, The Serpent will have offspring.

QED: The Serpent is a creative ... indeed, a pro-creative Presence.

Is this an (inadvertent) admission that there are children of The Serpent?

Of course, say the Biblicists: Devils! Evil Ones! Fallen Angels!

But let's go back.

If Yahweh created The Serpent, then, The Serpent is, somehow, Yahweh's self-expression.

_No!_ — Yahweh created "from nothing" — _ex nihilo_!

Ah! The nub! The nub! "Without form," "void," "darkness" ... let's try this as: " _with the Spirit of God brooding over the dark vapors._ "

Yes, brooding. Moody. But also sexually implicative: like a hen incubating her egg. The Cosmic Egg. ... Going too far afield?!

But what is Creation — at least as it can be known to humans? — except that it includes, somewhere, somehow, genital docking, sperm and an egg ... orgasmic Fire?

Why do you open the Bible and feel only an eerie chill?... seeping from Void and Nothingness.

_Hmmm_.

Luke has struggled with all this since the first moment he had gazed upon a crucifix. The mangled body. In his Church a truly Baroque, brutally tortured, legs broken, gashes galore, horrid clumps of flesh gouged, eyeballs screeching, head gooed with blood, all pain, pain of thorns, pain of body hanging in fierce agony-slicing-gravity ... "Breathe! Breathe!" some angelic voice had commanded, for the young Catholic — wordless and without words to describe; dogmaless at this incipient age — was turning pale unto death, but he only fainted. _How old?_ Probably around seven. "The Age of Reason," so the Catholics aver. Him, probably, for the first time truly aware of Sin: readying for Confession, his First ... and having heard how, "You are responsible for His death!" ... Blackout. Mind-boggling. Primal Fear.

So, when he first read _Genesis_ how had he been prepared? Jesus was male. The Father was male. Everything came from males. Was done by males. Would return to blessed communion with The Father: Lone Male.

Was it even a moment's difficulty to grasp that the apron was put over the genitals because The Serpent was a sexual pervert who — somehow, somehow, but never explained how — tricked Adam and Eve into seeing His penis and Her vagina? Sacral Cunny and Cock?

It's only the fruit from the tree at the center of the garden

that we are not to eat. God says we mustn't eat it or even

touch it, or we will die.

Did Luke-Alfred have to flunk "World Literature 101" not to grasp the imagery? The tree is the body: trunk, limbs, with fruit: the power which carries the seed — Her Body.

Does one have to consider the ancient writers to be _that_ stupid? For they knew that the basic Revelation is that the name of Man is Enemy. Upon the white stone around Adam and Eve's necks is the naming: Enemy.

And, Enemy in what sense? Creativity, naturally. For what is _Genesis_ about but distinguishing and distancing His creativity from Hers.

"... in the center": the Mighty Mississippi — what is in the center but the creative power, here, genitals, here, Her vulva from which All comes. Why else would he call her Eve — "the life-giving one" — and claim that, "She shall become the mother of all mankind," unless He wanted to forget Her and Remember Eve?

Eve even Adam can handle!

Could any good Biblicist could read it otherwise?

The Genitals: aproned.

The Genitals: The Enemy.

Jesus' Death: Crucifixion — Satisfying The Father for Our Sins ... Sexual, " _Don't Touch Yourself!_ "

Upon the Tree: he the Revealed Second Adam, crucifying, again, the Lone Male: Son: that of Him which does not talk with Her but only with the Second Eve: Mary.

So, what shall be done, again, at the End-Time?

Yet, not to read backwards: not to go from this Revelation and doctrine to grasping that The Serpent and Adam and Eve and God, YES, GOD, FATHER ALMIGHTY! ... talked and peered and shared a _creative_ relationship: what Adam and Eve and The Serpent did, _did_ have a profound effect on Yahweh, don't you think? I mean, sending in an Avenging Angel and all that .....!

The _Beloved_ rubs the white stone with his two thumbs, then, places it, presses it against his Third Eye.

_Backwards_ : The Serpent enables Adam and Eve to peer. How can this be? _They see what only Yahweh can see_ (may see, should see, must see?) ... but The Serpent must also be able to see what Yahweh sees or how could he/she/it enable Adam and Eve to see, to peer? _Hmmm_.

So, this is where The Lie comes in with every Truth. Every Memory with its Forgottenness.

The Serpent is not just someone Eve talks with, so, it is not some restricted aspect of the feminine. Adam talks and God talks. So, it is also masculine. It is also divine.

At least The Serpent's presence and relationship forces this type of definition, because Yahweh cannot be The Serpent's creator if The Serpent has the power to change the relationship between Yahweh and Adam and Eve. Somehow, all four are in this together! They _are_ the creative relationship. Together, they are the Fire.

_Backwards_ : The Lie is Truth — She is there. She is The Serpent. She is that in both Adam and Eve (in both femininity and masculinity) which can see — peer — the Sacred Creative Fire.

When Adam and Eve eat the apple, they eat each other — commune at a level where their Presences are consuming: feed one another, nurture, but more, where their relationship is transforming and through this transformation they are changed in substance from "creatures" into beings who share in the Divine Communion: Eternally Alive. An erotic, sexual communion of Ouroboric Embrace which, so the text directs, is shared by The Serpent and Yahweh. ... _Whew_!

Why have the Biblicists tortured the sacral relationship so fiercely?

Why have they strained so hard to Obliterate Her?

Did they truly believe their own Lie? That Yahweh could create without Her?

_Hmmm_.

But Luke shivers. Not from some arctic cold, no, his hand is upon another bottle of whiskey: fluid fire, but he does not drink: he steels his craving, he opens himself: he walks to the center of Eden's Garden: teeth-chattering, goose-bumped chilled, knee-knocking cold — "inner cold" as Laura would tag it.

So cold.

So cold that only the word "Void" can approach it.

Void: torturing the brain to imagine a reality which the brain has never encountered: nothingness, absolute emptiness, bottomless pit .... cold.

Was it such cold in Dachau?

Biblical Cold. _Genesis_ Chill. Loneliness.

Where am I?

Not just who, but where?

For Friar Alfred is not just me but a Presence.

For Luke is not just me but a Presence.

Am I either?

Is this it for me? Like on The Island: to become The Serpent? To become, not just change, not just evolve, truly transubstantiate ... but it was only with her, as we became Her ... as we became Serpent: Ouroboric.

_Evil_. Why have I forgotten about Evil? Acting — playing through all this like The Holy Family was not vulnerable to Evil. Intellectually grasping Lie and Truth ... cleverly articulating The Obliteration ... pounding the keyboard with capital letters ... but not with Evil. Why?

_Evil_. True, when he had first lain down with Laura there was something guiding his hands, blessing them, protecting them from her Evil. When he kissed her southern mouth and tongued deeply, when he danced with her clit and drove hot spikes of searing lust into his brain and ripped out his heart and savaged it with her ravenous mouth ... _Christ_! He was possessed! Truly. Possessed by Her. And possessed by Him. Both pulling and tugging and wrenching him: backwards, forwards, somersault ....

_Evil_. On the perimeter of his vision: Jesus on the Cross: always there. Eternal reminder of The Serpent.

Yet, the murders of women, this continuing gendercide which no one talks about: he knows that it _is_ Armageddon. The Final Battle not just through bodies but through souls. That the murder is not just in female bodies but manifest through male spiritual cadavers.

The Keepers. Sacred and Secular: all Biblicists. All working to slay The Serpent. And as they do so, so do they slay part of themselves. This _Beloved_ now knows.

Knows that The Serpent is that within Eve which talks with Adam. Talks with him and enables them to peer, for it is when they are ouroborically coupled that they have the Sight: when they peer and so see things divine.

Yes, the Evil is Cloning.

Now coming in total physical Obliteration.

Just a decade of success, not without imagination that the first was a Lamb. A cloned Lamb. _Lamb of God who takesth away the sins of the world! Have mercy on us!_

But, how, in comparison to all the incomprehensible torture inflicted upon the flesh: inflicted like scientific experiment — calculated, with measured instruments of pain: a cannon designed by the majestically artistic hands of a Leonardo da Vinci or an anti-personnel bomb loaded with slithering flechettes erupting from the corporate imagination of an advanced team of majestic physicists at Honeywell or MIT ... how, spanning all these years, and all these imaginations: secularly grounded, sacrally anchored ... indeed, how to place against these the Obliterated Cunny?

The flasks of liquid screams.

The vials of defiled blood.

The bowls of ground bones.

Heretics.

Martyrs.

Saints.

How to measure when the scale becomes genocidal?

How, then, to call all this back to its source: the Circumcised Penis?

It is his life, here, in the twentieth century, the one ending with a Millennial Creation of a New Heaven and a New Earth; this one, the only century he has; the century in which they have, indeed, taken pictures of the pain.

Just in high school: seeing The Bomb: seeing the hollowed eyes of Treblinka. He knew there was a connection; not a healing one, but a connection.

Just in college: seeing the sign: _I Am A Man!_ :and the dogs set upon the marching Negroes.

Just being: TV footage of Nam and then Pol Pot and then Idi Amin and then Hitler, again: Nixon, Haldeman, Kissinger ... Colson, Cronkite: " _The Best and The Brightest._ " Over and over. Even though he was there, himself, in Nam, it took the pictures!

Pain.

Napalm. Flesh as fire. Dow chemical: _Spray your toilet, kill the Enemy!_

_Enemy_. How to listen to himself? Maybe The Brooders had sent him. Maybe She had begun to Dream him. Maybe Charles is my father. _What does that make Selene_?

I have been searching for Rian.

I have been transforming with Laura.

Or, have I?

_Enemy_. Is it that I am the Final Enemy? That Yahweh cloned Adam in bitterness? That He only cloned Him because He had to find a way to Obliterate Her?

_Enemy_. Is Yahweh the Anti-Christ? The One who wants to prevent humans from becoming christic: God-Conscious? The One who, truly, wants to be mono-theistic: the only God: One and Only One: Lone. _Hmmmm_.

At her cunny: knowing that it is not just genitals; knowing that he can enter and then exit; knowing that he and she can be Void; all nothingness ... but knowing that it is simply this: the peering as The Serpent enabled them to peer, to see Yahweh for Whom He Is: The Enemy.

In His End-Time, _Beloved_ is the Enemy.

# CHAPTER 25: SON OF GOD

Why hadn't I imagined that?

RW called: Man of the World: not a dissembling monk; something was irking and jerking him all over the place, "For God's sake, Luke," ( _Luke_ , not Alfred?) "it's all just falling out of place! What can I do?"

Not: _we_ do; sees himself as alone, That's RW! — _Mr. Big Time_.

Alfred Dreamed it, and he wasn't worried. Knew that Creation was all Chaos and Dark Vapors and stupendous feats of divine prestidigitation: " _Let there be ....!_ "

Alfred, also, had spent his life repenting for sins; what was his Vocation: his Calling but the repenting for the Original Sin? He took deathly serious his Call to Suffer On The Cross with Jesus; to suffer, and through _exquisite_ Pain to make known the Lord's Plan of Salvation.

Such is why he had accepted his role as Dreamer of _Genesis;_ yes, there had to be his personal acceptance, for though the Abbot had named him such — and such a naming elicited unreflexive, dedicated Obedience — yet it was his: his personal commitment to will his body and risk his soul for the greater good, for the Body of Christ.

Indeed, he rejoiced in this naming like the sainted martyrs of yore who had welcomed the ax splitting their heads or the arrows piercing their bodies, they, like the inspiring Saint Lawrence: he on rack, being burned alive and tortured beyond gruesome, he turned and said to his tormentors: "Turn me over, I'm done on this side!" — such dedication, such Will, such Absolute Trust! And so had Alfred Trusted: ventured into the thick of Her — Dreamed into the Dark Vapors and opened himself to Her Dream upon him.

Here, now, Final Revelation. Not the Book, but the Event. _Big Time_. Oh, how he eagerly awaited the festivities of Friar Francis' hand: the ultimate ritual of the End-Time!

Yet, Abbot Roch's goal (goaded by himself as secular RW) was to enlist Alfred in an effort to stop Friar Francis. Stop him before he would forget his name. For the Abbot saw it, not Saul and David, but something else. Something even beyond Ham: not just one of them marked, not like a Cain come home as Prodigal Son, no, there was something which he knew Dreamed Friar Francis ... and from what Alfred had reported, it was not Her!

The gendercide he knew about. Accepted. "Consider: how many years had it been prophesied on TV?" Endless looping of Battered Woman Syndrome fading in celluloid haze into Unsolved Murders careening into corners of Unexplained Mysteries and ending up — as it had all started! — symbolically upon the altar: bread and wine, true body and blood.

Ritual: not of male body and blood, but that of Jesus which was Her. The Rib, forever consumed. Having to: compulsed: daily, twenty-four-hours-a-day, round-the-clock, around-the-globe, Warrior sacrificing Her: Jesus' Rib — this the bread, this the flesh; and the wine was his blood, and all his Cock and Semen. Roch knows this; RW knows — knows as he has Dreamt it: as it has Dreamt him.

What to tell Friar Alfred? To tell him that he was not the only one sent into the Dark Vapors? That The Brooders had sent others — for the last thousand years! — but that Alfred had been the only one to return? "Should I tell him _that_?"

"As Brothers, how does it stand?"

" _Judas_. ... It must be Friar Francis."

Alfred — without reacting to Roch's condemnation of Friar Francis — rises, walks about the room, pausing to reverence the panoramic and majestic view of this most Holy City: the city of Jerusalem lays at his feet, he gazes towards Golgotha: "The spectacle is set?"

Roch nods.

"It's brilliant!" — sincerely moved, "Francis has proven worthy. Worthy of Copernicus and Mozart and Miles and all who have composed cosmic music — such Music of the Spheres! ... _Brilliant_! — Altars all around the world: linked with The Millennium Society's festivities being held at such notable secular sights and wonders as the Taj Majal, the Great Pyramids of Egypt, the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, Stonehenge, anon ... linked with Masses simultaneously celebrating in each time zone: "LAUNCH — FIJI" "TERMINATE — WESTERN SAMOA": chants and music and dancing and images and pictures and videos, from all traditions, all ethnic groups, it's simply amazing! It's Grand. It _is_ Millennial!"

Roch is depressed, "Can't even you _see_?"

Alfred's blank stare frightens the Abbot Cardinal, _Has Francis hoodwinked Alfred, too? ... If so, what can I do?_

Time passes between them like sliding blocks of ice.

Roch calls upon Ronald W: invokes the daimon of worldly wisdom and craft.

" _Luke_ , you dope!" slaps Alfred; the tone, the verve, the command are jabs: one, two, three and the eyes tell Ronald W. that _Luke_ is there.

"What?!" annoyed, but present, aware.

"It's really Big, _really Big_ Time!" said teasingly; self-mocking.

"Yeah, I've watched it. Read the write-ups. Saw some clips. What the fuck! Just one goddam incessant High Mass."

"Missing it, bucko!" Ronald W. salvos.

" _What?_ " — cranky.

"Like the American Indians, my world renown Great Thinker! ... Dead bodies everywhere. And you think the government doesn't know? The Vatican doesn't know? That they're not furiously filling out Baptism of the Dead certificates in Salt Lake?"

It is Luke, but Luke-without-Laura; Luke Forgetting Rian; Luke-father-not-son of Charles; Luke rejecting Selene as within The Hand.

"Yeah, yeah, it's war. What the fuck did it mean in Nam to ratchet a body count? _Who_ the fuck gave one single goddam? ... Just war: War of the Sexes — not so Big."

Ronald W. had, with practiced slight-of-hand, raided the Abbot's storehouse of profane elixirs; he pours Luke a small pond of brandy: "Praise be the Benedictine Brothers whose earthy labors we now reap!" — both swig what should be sipped; gasoline on raging fire: they need to move quickly, so Ronald W. knows.

" _Murders_." He pauses, gauging how much distance he needs to cover.

"Murders?" ... A long distance!

"Luke, Luke! You of all people! ... The secular is just another face of the sacral, isn't that what you've said, over and over again, yes? _Yes_!"

Luke listens: eyes and ears siphoning RW's wisdom — listening to his own words, words of profane wisdom: hearing it confirmed by Ronald W. stabs his brain, slices and cuts and re-arranges the parts which Friar Francis had so carefully altered as he had sirenically snatched Luke-Alfred wandering at the edge of the Dark Vapors.

Intense; Iron Will — "C'mon, Luke, my political forays showed me that everything _you've_ been saying is true. But," and here he heaves the rope ladder across the chasm, "But, it goes _both_ ways." Pauses. Luke frowns: cogitation's wrinkles: _He's got it!_

How to stop it? Get government and religious leaders to denounce it?

Hardly. They're part of it. Not willingly; at least not them all, but it serves their purpose.

How's that?

The Woman Warrior is weak, at least weaker than the male. Look at America's experience. Bi-sexual army — doesn't really work; really hasn't. Just proved their point.

Their?

Don't you see all the fine points? You — of all people! — know that Hitler was their trial run. The Teutonic mythology just a layer beneath all that German Catholicism. And I know you know, that Luke knows — not Alfred! — you know that if they can make six million disappear, so systematically, yes, who noticed? _Everyone_ noticed. But who did anything about it? Why? Because they ritualized it. They finessed The Mass with a substitute Order of Sacrifice. Not bread and wine but the flesh and blood of Jews and Gypsies and anyone else who fit their symbolic name of Enemy.

Hitler is coming back?

No. _No!_ Jesus, Luke, sometimes I wonder what the fucking Brooders did to you!

_Fucking_ Brooders! — Naughty, naughty!

Jesus, I should've let them strand you on that Island.

_You?_!

No time for that! Gulps and gulps of brandy; a common blood; hot breathing ... time to reveal an esoteric fact.

_Friar Francis is the Son of God._ Cold-blooded statement.

Luke's brain is a dervish's delight: hallucinatory ecstasy.

Son of God. We're all sons of God. Old rote Catechetical response.

No, damn it! He is _the_ Son of God. He is the Warrior Son. That's _why_ he's Judas.

Why hadn't I imagined that?

RW had left; actually, abandoned the moment. He returned to be Abbot Cardinal Roch, to work and war with what he considered his only transforming power, that of Sacral Warrior Dreaming: of Biblical Story; with maddening hope he would gather those he felt not swayed by Friar Francis and take them with him to Dream the Return, take them atop Golgotha, that Holy of Holiest spots which Friar Francis had scheduled to be shown on split screen as every other Mass was celebrated in each time zone. Take them there and Dream what he now knows Luke does understand, but for which Luke cannot become Alfred: that _Genesis_ is Memory of what _the secular_ is now Remembering: that The Warrior in the male _defended_ Her against a nameless Presence, one whose horror and depravity and perversity was immeasurable, who sought to pierce the Dark Vapors and alter the balance of Life and Death so that not only is She Obliterated but that within the Lone Male which protects her as Warrior is, itself, annihilated, exterminated. That _Genesis_ is less a Forgetfulness of Her as it is a Forgetfulness of Him: a naked and bereft Story of that of Him which remained after all that The Warrior could offer was Obliteration.

This, another esoteric Brooder truth: not just The Serpent and the war with the Mother of All and the Father of All, but still from within the " _our image_ " yet another Dream: one which Shatters: Dreams not just Obliteration but Annihilation.

This was the Abbot's Dream: Dream of _Genesis_ and of _Revelation_ : why and how he accepted the Obliteration of Her, and justified the Brooder's inaction towards and ignoring of the savaging and rampaging gendercide. For him: in full Abbatial stature: now, it was but to Dream an even more potent Warrior Dream: that of The Return ... to slay — as he feels was done as his immediate generational forbearers had Dreamed against Hitler — this Shattering, Annihilating Moloch: more than monster, more than depraved human and depraved spirit, not just gargoyle or hippogriff, but more a basilisk with sphinx mystery, the power to baffle and stupefy: to come looking like Innocence, yes, yes, maybe to actually be Innocent, that was its corrupting power: offering the Millennial Dream which is hardly fulfilled by a Warrior Savior like Nazi Hitler ... no, there was something _even beyond_ this Innocent Dream, and the Abbot had to flush it out before he could name it as Anti-Christ, slay it, and cast it down into the bottomless Pit, forever and ever and ever! Amen.

Luke had welcomed RW's disappearance. The instant he had grasped how Ronald W. perceived Friar Francis, so, he knew how so much fitted together, how after all these years, all this Dark Vapor stuff, _Yeah, it fits_! ... The Biblical Story of Enemy; the Secular Story of the Shatterers; the Mystical Story of The Holy Family ... all linked in this struggle, contest, search, quest, drive — whatever! — to manifest maleness and femaleness.

But Luke wills not to become Friar Alfred as RW slips on his Abbatial robes. No. White-Shrouded Hitler is Dreaming, Luke knows this; knows that it was, indeed, a World War, truly global; consuming the human spirit; a cosmic performance, yes, of _Genesis_ — but more telling: a Millennial Act: fully Revealing — and what factually happened is that The Bomb concelebrated and Sealed Hitler's triumph! "The Final Solution" is the Empirical and Experimental triumph of the formulaic conversion of creational Fire into a new Anti-Christic Trinity, as Oppenheimer, himself, had grasped and so aptly named his Nuclear Presence — _The_ Nuclear Family!

Yes, Hitler institutionalized. Programmed. Curriculum-ized. Transubstantiated into White-Shrouded Experimenter: physicists, geneticists, social engineers, anon, anon. The Jack-Boot Beat subliminally piped in on the thump and crash of Rock n' Roll — _Ah! So, enters Friar Francis!_

But who is willing to accept what Luke saw within the Dark Vapors? Not Friar Alfred; not him most of all! For he, like his kin of the Biblical Warrior stripe, Dream the linear line of Salvation History, and for them Hitler is not of their kind: not a Son of God; they call him Anti-Christ who was but their Christ! They cry that the Secular is not Sacral, that the Profane is not Sacred ... that through their Machine Wars that they can defeat Satan and His minions ... who among them will accept that Hitler is the Son of God as Friar Francis is the Son of God, not He to be Sacrificed but He to Sacrifice: for what is the Biblical Story but the Lone Male God demanding Sacrifice ... calling Abraham to Sacrifice, calling Jesus to Sacrifice ... and so they do, these Sons: sacrifice humans: this the Warrior Dream ... and as passed on in Tradition so it is the Sacrifice of that within themselves which is not-Warrior, namely, Her: there on Moriah, Isaac was spared as Sarah was Sacrificed: She the Lamb, "But where is the Lamb for sacrifice?" is asked: "God will provide" is the answer: Truth is the Lamb: Lie that it was a Ram, no, it was, in-deed, the Lamb: Her in the presence of her: Sarah ... this revealed to Luke within the Dark Vapors.

Revealed that the Presence before _Genesis_ is that which wanted nothing of the Experiment called Human. Did not want not only not Her but nothing within Him which could, in the least — not even the infinitesimal Rib! No, wanted absolutely nothing of that of Her within Him ... this Presence not wanting Creation nor Evolution nor Dreaming nor Brooding ... a Presence driving, now, to its millennial ritual: "shattering like clay pots" these pots of clay: humankind ... Shattering: breaking down into parts, dissecting, re-arranging, a New Machination, not of a Heaven and an Earth but of a Machine: that which before _Genesis_ could not Sin.

This Friar Francis' Dream: Dreaming the White-Shroud.

Luke knows that the Abbot will dream his End-Time Return Dream: of Jesus, Christ the King, Warrior King, Returning to Slay the Anti-Christ ... he accepts that Friar Francis will Dream whatever his Dream fully is: for it is the Hour and it is the Year and it is the Moment ... Zero: the Apocalyptic horse is out of the Millennial barn!

But for Luke: What? How? If not their Sacrifice, their End-Time ritual: what is he to do?

Not as Luke. Not as Lone Male.

" _Beloved_."

"Who calls?"

"Come _home_."

# MILLENNIAL INTERSTITIUM

# END-TIME: FRIAR ALFRED: THE FINAL SACRIFICE

_Midnight, New Year's Eve, 1999._ Abbot Roch ascends the steps towards Golgotha's high altar. He rises amidst the bewitching scent of flowered wreaths: but Lily and Rose, steps up at adorational center upon billows of frankincense and myrrh, raises his arms in devotional gestures, all his desires on wings of the hypnotic strains of Gregorian chant: a sweet, vulnerable _Credo_ lofted from a choir-mouth of Innocents, to then touch the Sacred Book and open for the intonation of the sacred words of Sacrifice ... " _Hic est enim_ ..." and as he began, so was the Word heard:

I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First

and the Last.

_Rapture!_ Total and complete physical rapture, akin to what the greatest of great painters had done to depict the ecstasy of the martyred Saints, but, even more, beyond words: _transfixed_.

No one needed to utter that word, it was simply that the world: all beings, all creatures, from single-celled ameba to the crafty dolphin to the imago dei, Man Himself, were transfixed.

_As it was Revealed, so it Is_ : The Lord arrived surrounded by clouds. He was clothed in unutterable Purity: not just white but the presence of Purity, itself; and upon first sight did the heavens split and a great throne appear.

And as written, so it was:

Great bursts of light flashed forth from him as from a glittering diamond or from a shining ruby, and a rainbow glowing like an emerald encircled his throne. Twenty-four smaller thrones surrounded his, with twenty-four elders sitting on them; all were clothed in white with golden crowns upon their heads. Lightning and thunder issued from the throne, and there were voices in the thunder. Directly in front of his throne were seven lighted lamps representing the seven fold Spirit of God. Spread out before it was a shiny crystal sea. Four Living Beings, dotted front and back with eyes, stood at the throne's four sides. The first of these Living Beings was in the form of a lion; the second looked like an ox; the third had the face of a man; and the fourth the form of an eagle, with wings spread out as though in flight. Each of these Living Beings had six wings, and the central sections of their wings were covered with eyes. Day and night and night after night they kept on saying, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty — the One who Was and Is and Is To Come."

Roch intoned, "Holy! Holy! Holy!": and the world: all creatures in voice and tone participated: "HOLY! HOLY! HOLY!"

And all was raised to celestial tune by the hand of Friar Francis who directed musicians from all lands in their multiple-toned and tongued songs, all — countering as at Babel — were converted, instantaneously, into One Tone and One Song: intelligible to all ... and as it was written, so it was:

To everyone who overcomes — who to the very end keeps on doing things that please me — I will give power over the nations. You will rule them with a rod of iron just as my Father gave me authority to rule them; they will be shattered like a pot of clay that is broken into tiny pieces. And I will give you the Morning Star.

Friar Alfred knelt; enraptured. All that was human became that of human which participated in the being of the Son of God. "True God and True Man." So, the doctrine had confessed; and so it is!

Roch turns towards Alfred; Roch now not just Abbot, not even just Cardinal but, rather, the esoteric Pope — Roseate; Rosy Papa!: for he is now, now, the Hand of Abraham: and it is Alfred who is his Isaac, and he leads Alfred upward and places him upon the altar, there, laying upon him His Hand: the Anointing Hand, the Ordaining Hand, consecrating Alfred as Isaac: Isaac through whom Abraham peered and saw nothing any longer of Her: he now purified of even his birth from Sarah: and it is Sarah whom both Abraham and Isaac take from the bush: the bleating bush: Her Southern Mouth: draw Sarah — for within her is the Ram: that of Him which was before _Genesis_ : that relic, remnant desire, lust and ouroborically hungering Eros: she who couples to embrace life, yes, her in Her and Her in her: they lead Sarah unto the Altar: for she is to be Sacrificed.

Alfred rises, now, fully priest; now, truly a Brooder, now, the Dreamer: Dreaming the Millennium with _Papa_.

The Holy Mass — Roch and Francis and Alfred are joined by all who were faithful to the Word: the Christian Keepers, all denominations, all sects, all who had minute differences but were one in worship: each and all Dreams: each and all The Hand.

And as it was forecasted, so did they rule the earth: " _You will rule them with a rod of iron...._ "

The Millennium Revealed clearly — more clearly than ever — to Friar Alfred the confluence of power sacral and profane.

For The Coming was The Return. For The End-Time is, indeed, The Beginning.

Nothing less than the Restoration of the relationship which existed _before_ _Genesis_ — before Her and before Her Original Sin.

The Restoration of the relationship of Adam and The Father: therein, lay the Second Creation. The basis of the New Heaven and the New Earth.

The Final Sacrifice is that of the human. What was begun in _Genesis:_ the severing of Him from Her: of Cock from Cunny: of Mother of All from Father of All: so that which is beyond and non-human may arise: what The Father Almighty holds to be super-natural, divine, here is manifested through ritual slaughter: making pedestrian and obvious all that has been held as holy and symbolic by the Biblical Warrior, namely, the breaking of the bread and the consuming of the wine: now, here, bodies and blood: here come up to the altar, before Father Alfred, the human tribe: human because it still harbors "that of Her," The Rib! ... and he systematically and with deft ritual skill and expertise cuts off their breasts and slices off their cunnies, and as they are cut and sliced, so do they rise upon angelic wings, are bathed in a Bright Light, are transformed and transubstantiated ... for hours, for eons, this moment: Father Alfred carves out the corruption from the female human to render it fully-human which, as the Tradition states, is to be One-With-Him Who, Alone, Is Now and Is Forever.

As Father Alfred performs his priestly duty, so is the earth as known disappearing. All becomes transubstantiated: super-natural. Saved. Ransomed. Redeemed. Cleansed. Purified. Beings of Light. For it is written:

Then I saw a new earth (with no oceans) and a new sky ... (Revelation 21:1)

... with _no ocean_ : meaning, with no Rib: nothing of Her: no Water: no giving in life and taking in death ... a _new sky_ :: meaning, a new Cock: only Him: Alone: with what is now called The New World: land without ocean, dry without wet ... no Delta, no Southern Mouth: no Cunny: no Ouroboric Embrace .... and, it ends as he severs that which is personal, intimate, of his body and flesh, his dream and Dream, of his earthly time and space: Laura he slices, blood rises to his hips; Rian he slices, blood rises to his armpits; Selene he slices, blood bathes his face ... and into the Eternal Now he is Dreamed, as Marsh and Charles and Roch and Francis and Alfred become Him; Him, Alone.

_Midnight, New Year's Eve, 1999._ Abbot Roch ascends the steps towards Golgotha's high altar. He rises amidst the bewitching scent of flowered wreaths: but Lily and Rose, steps up at adorational center upon billows of frankincense and myrrh, raises his arms in devotional gestures, all his desires on wings of the hypnotic strains of Gregorian chant: a sweet, vulnerable _Credo_ lofted from a choir-mouth of Innocents, to then touch the Sacred Book and open for the intonation of the sacred words of Sacrifice ... " _Hic est enim_ ..." and to all about and from around the world through satellite eyes, so it appears that he opens and is about to recite the well-known traditional words of Consecration when, for him, not for them, not at this instant, no, just him: the pages are blank, more, bereft: _Abandoned!_ .... in that instant he peers and trembles: for he is being stared at, more, he is being pierced by a bloodless stare from Depthless Eyes: peered through and so transfixed ... then all see; gasp and shudder in joy and terror: awe, a sight of magical eye — most interpreting it as visual trickery, as part of an entertaining performance, albeit a holy one .... he is lifted, is levitated, up by hands unseen and floated, laid upon the altar and, in the flap of an angelic wing, Friar Alfred is there, attending, straightening out the Abbot's robes: Master of Ceremonies: neating him, and looking, peering deeply into his eyes: a close-up betrays the eyes of lovers, gazes entwined; enraptured ... then, the Anointing: the Ordination: Alfred now priest, and there is the raising of the hand — some see it as the Offering of the Oblation — and the appearance of the blade: pellucid, casting not a shadow: a sliver of lightning: quiver of terror — some see it as the Adoration of The Host: his body now truly His Body — and all hear the resounding, echoing Call from the choir: crystal clear in all tongues, understood by all: "Take with you your only son and sacrifice him as a burnt offering!"

The bread is broken: the knife falls.

The wine is drunk: blood drenches his robes.

Laura screams: it is hers to watch.

Shadowless strikes: the purifying blade: again heart pierced and again eyes gouged and again belly slashed and again testicles sliced ... for out from the Final Sacrificed rises the purified and redeemed bodies of all Sons of God from all times and all places: for this is the Sacrifice of Him: the Serpentine One: " _our_ " _imago dei_ : The Serpent as Present in ancient and unknown visages — faces from cultures recognizable and tongues indecipherable: Aztecs and Chinese, Mayan and Nordic, faces of christs, avatars, buddhas, saviors: males and females: Beatific Smile, Martyred Rapture, Enlightened Bliss ... each and all transubstantiating into the Abbatial place, each and all ritually slashed and methodically dismembered by Father Alfred; artistically slashed and diagramatically dismembered in testimony to the Efficacy of Sacrifice: for it was Revealed:

They were not to kill them but to torture them for five

months with agony like the pain of scorpion stings.

(Revelation 9:5)

... all to be Sacrificed, all to be the Final Sacrifice: for within all males the He-who-couples-with-She: relic and remnant: Serpentine power: this now, not only to be broken and bloodied but eaten: slain like Sarah the ram, burned like Sarah the ram, eaten like Sarah the ram: savaged, their body parts thrust and jammed and dropped into the maw of that Presence which still clings to the phantasm called Friar Alfred; true cannibalism which is now and forever repeated at each Mass in each time zone, time and zone not being what it was ever to anyone, here, the Presence which is cannibal, which is marauding, which savages: _Devours_ : which rises, for the ultimate Final Sacrifice, even now, to grasp the Friar himself and slit him throat through belly; there, again, the pounding into mash of his flesh, the grinding gouging of his eyeballs, the belching chew upon them, the snarling gnawing on his bones, the ravenous consummation of his testicles ... yes, all Sons of God, _even_ Friar Alfred: cannibalized ...

so, Laura sees; peers:

:for she sights what the Biblical Dark Vapors reveal: the glass darkly, now translucent: unveiling the many rhythmed Swirl of Stories from which pulsates the varied Stories which sustain the multiple dimensions of what each claims to be reality: Truth and Lie: Beat and Silence: _Is, Is Not; Is Not, Is_.

:this now the Biblical Swirl from which The Warrior tells his Story, namely, that if not the discipline and order of The Warrior: if not His Millennial Rule — if not the Rod of Iron, if not the Torture, if not a stream of blood "200 miles long and as high as a horse's bridle: if _NOT_ His Way, then only chaos, marauders, cannibals ... worse: if Not, then, The Holy Family! — that relic, remnant polytheistic family: " _our_ image."

Yes, The Warrior Yahweh proclaiming that only He can be the Final Sacrifice: only He the One to Save All: He preaching His Story as the Only Story: Evaporating the Swirl, and so, His Story professes, being the One and Only Truth Without Lie: Silence without Beat.

:but she watches Friar Alfred suffer in anguished and terrified expiation as she had foreseen, but knows that he dies yet only within his Story: Warrior Story: Story electing to conclude in a Millennial End-Time: but, then, Never-Ending, for always must there be an Enemy.

:their Eros of Enemy: Cock Only rising and falling: they slaughter and gather the cocks: they gather and cook the cocks: they cook and eat the cocks: eating cocks: and from their new cocks spew the Silver Blood: Hand jerking millennial blood: blood of the cloning God-Only-Father, Almighty: as the new earth is without ocean, so the millennial Being is cock without cunny: no Ouroboric Embrace: nothing of Her coupled with Him: nothing of Mother of All and Father of All: nothing of "our image": anywhere in either Memory or Forgetting: just — _JUST!_ — _Alone_.

As Enemy Laura sees here the fullness and completion of the Warrior's Story: peering: hers and Luke's: Luke's and Rian's: dying/rising here with Abbot Cardinal Roch, Friar Francis and Friar Alfred: each and all, now and forever, Son of God: the bright Morning Star: _Alone_.

Amen.

# END-TIME: FRIAR FRANCIS: THE SHATTERING

_Midnight, New Year's Eve, 1999._ He placed the white stone charm around his neck. It simply said: _Frank_. For, indeed, it is all he ever wanted to be: frank — honest, open. This the reason the Brooders had sent him to Hollywood: to cut through the hype and the ballyhoo and all the pretense with his frankness.

Yet, he had become Hollywood.

Recognizing that all there is, is Reality. No matter how much you try, everything _is_ dress-up: the Bard's, "The world's a stage ..."

Performance. He realizing that being Friar Francis was a performance — nothing more, nothing less.

Accepting what the Glitz reveals — that there is no Revelation!

There is Now: in the light: humans, as Keepers of the Light: so, Frank utters — supremely confident and proud — as the curtain rises: "I am the Morning Star!"

So, The End-Time is to be all that can be: "A Good Time for One and All!" — a solid Performance.

Around the world: charted on a wrap-around screen from IMAX — floor to ceiling — and sensitive to everything which needed to be monitored and controlled, The End-Time is the _Greatest Show On Earth!_ — just the greatest of everything and everyone: "Everyone Who Is Someone!" .... bands and orchestras and singers: operatic and folk; and dancers and screen actors reciting ... and it is endless: the channels are full, actually choking with performers: and all is Dazzling ... only capital letter words can describe the Event: _Astonishing! Amazing! Fantastic! Joyous! Incredible! Outstanding! Magnificent! Zounds!_ ...

and it is as Frank wants it: Reality.

For he has Seen: looked beyond the rouge and the lipstick, the penile enlargement and the breast enhancement, the bodily nip and tuck, looked beyond them through the eyes into the soul ... and has found: Reality.

Reality being Now. What is happening, today. Passing out the playbill or the schedule of events or the agenda — as is fitting — and having the audience member experience the majesty, the ecstasy, the fulfillment of the Now.

For there is only Now. This is the non-Revelation which converted Friar Francis to Frank.

A non-Revelation fitting for the Machine Dream — words fail him! Technology has delivered as has Hollywood. Technology as Curiosity and Experimentation being what Hollywood is: all Special Effect, "the triumph the eye": a way of peeling back beyond the cosmetic to Reality.

_Objectivity!_ Critical. Dispassionate. "Either you've got it or you don't!" ... "If the audience doesn't laugh, you're dead!" ... this is Reality!

Hollywood as microscope. Here the confluence of the Sacred and the Profane yielding What Is and Only Is, namely, what can be seen, touched, smelled — Performance.

"What is Technological Truth but Performance?" This what Friar Francis had asked of Friar Alfred. "Repeatable. Just like a gig. You go on stage, do it again, do it a thousand times, and if they clap, if they hoot, if they holler, than you are ... ONLY then are you!"

_Make it happen, again._ Verifiable Experimentation.

There was a comforting brutality about this non-Revelation.

"Just Frank." That's all he need ever say.

Need more be said?

Life is a Performance.

Life is a Gig.

And so The Band Plays On.

On and On and On.

Morning, 2000 is no more nor no less important than any other day. Just a turn of the calendar. Just an xing of a day on the road. Another Morning Star sighted.

Frank is happy.

The House is Rocking!

Midnight, New Year's Eve, 1999.

... they will be _shattered_ like a pot of clay that is broken into tiny pieces.

Friar Francis laughs; drawing breaths with the savor of sipping his favored honeyed tea; laughing in such manner that only he could relish how laughter dipped into and molted into pain; for it was pain which delighted him; a pleasuring beyond the word, more from the look, the eyes as portals to depthless suffering, eyes and then the voices: whimpers which were but creaks portending the Shattering ... _Words!_ he laughs at words: sacred and profane: _Verbum Dei_ : Holy Script: Theories: Proofs: QED — for they can never capture the Shattering Dream, _Never!_

No, the Shattering is sound; one sound; the only sound; _The Sound of Silence!_ he laughs; yes, The Monotone: all music being just this one sound: reducing sound, shrinking sound — he orchestrates all musical sound into this one, not a Harmony — as Alfred thought he spied — but a Collapse: entropic, not ouroboric: one blinding, searing, melting, congealing, coalescing and confounding Shattering sound: Full Stop.

Friar Francis works words and laughter and all other contortions of normality into his End-Time Ritual of sound: The Shattering, for it was the shattering of the Biblical Warrior Dream he sought; how he, how all his kind hated _Genesis_ , that Story which protects, for there is to be no Fatherly Protection, no Redeeming Saviors, No Expiating Sacrifices ... _Not this time_!

Warrior Dream. _Frank_ senses The Brooders marching about. He clearly spies the Abbot's tactical plan. He laughs. Have they never seen how they are only minor parts in it all?

But not to worry; now, just to execute ... and he laughs at how own double entendre.

_Midnight, New Year's Eve, 1999._ He laughs again: 999 as 666 — _Just depends whether you're standing on your head or not!_ Laughs: a minuet of snorts and sniggers at the sacral numerology of it all: Zero, Year Blank, No Mark, No Measure ... True Pinpoint, Touchdown: "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" — raucous laughter as slide-rulers whirl and digital nexi intersect and ....

Overhead a gigantic computer screen is flashing with signs, symbols and codes: pulsating instructions, reports, and updates throb across a global Web. All in all, things are going smoothly. Golgotha _is_ front and center.

He watches the preparations, the crowds gathering; satellite eyes and ears tuned to convey even the slightest mishap, the minutest irregularity, the most unanticipated blip or burp — no matter the source!

Altars the most spectacular; each one a beauty; carved of the finest woods: ebony, mahogany, ancient redwood, all depending upon the site; altars adorned with wondrous cloths: embroided, embossed, crocheted, woven, knitted, weaved, from the whitest of alabaster whites here on Golgotha to the purplest of the most violet standing upon the Celtic ground once Stonehenge; each spot selected for its once powerful link to some Dream; for he wants _all_ the Dreams: of Him, of Her: of Hand: of Silver Blood: all of them to burn up and billow away in the clouds of incense and perfumes and most exotic and hallucinatory smells which each chosen site will properly offer; and the dancers, from the almost immobile Protestants to the boot-clicking Keepers to the earthy stomp and fury of native peoples all about; yes, he is excited by the dancers: for through their symbolic movements he sees the weaving, the slithering of the threads from the depthless depth, that hypnotic Monotone Vortex, there where he wants to lure them all: lure them into The Shattering.

For such is the ritual of Shattering: to invoke not symbolic sacrifice, but real; not symbolic Obliteration, but real ... for Frank is of those who deal only with Reality; who exist in Total Objectivity; who disdain anything mysterious, mistrust anything metaphorical as they worship on the Literal; it is for them to be Formulaic; Experimental; _Curious_ ....

so, Laura sees; peers:

:the Shattering Swirl: dynamic spiral, convoluting with intersecting mobius coils of other Stories: source yet a Point not needing a Beginning nor End, and _she_ sees what the Abbot could _not_ see and what Friar Alfred would _not_ reveal: that Self-Devouring Curiosity is the measure of the Story of Scientism: that tale of Ultimate Reduction and of Final Shrinking, where _What Is, Is, and Only Is_ (The proper, fitting and just profane Shattering of Yahweh's insufferable ego: "I am who am!"): Monotone Dreaming — Sees how the ravenous Beast of _Ratio_ has come to justify its self-consummation through imagining Curiosity as Truth, through imagining Empirical Method as Revelation; and, so, all the world, the full and complete Story becomes explainable, totally and plainly interpreted: Life as Evolution, Life as Cloneable, Life as Deathless Birth ... yes, others who watched yet saw Frank conduct himself with utmost restraint and dignity, not intoning the words of Consecration, "This is my Body, this is my Blood" but rather the plain, "Do this in remembrance of me," evoking thus that it is _only_ an inspirational Story retold: _Words!_ : and as such something we are only and fully doing _now_ , (" _Cut! Print!_ ") not something done at any other time, for, for him — and Frank dons the White Shroud of the Laboratory Experimenter — all: All: that ever need be said is, "Curiosity is the Way, the Light and the Truth. Amen."

_Laura screams:_ mute to the calculating scale: she shields her eyes from the Self-Devouring glare, the Monotone voice: Hitlerean: Oppenheimerean: Tellerish: Crickian: Einsteinean ....

Frank observes Abbot Roch's Final Sacrifice: as inept as that old fart Pope Sylvester II back in 999!: _He laughs_. ... What else in response to the pathetic earnestness of Vicarious Sacrifice! _Vicarious_. Need more ever be said? For the Biblical Warrior's Story, in sum and _in nuce_ , is of a Life never lived, of a Dying never dead.

"The tittering humor of The Resurrection!" Frank can barely sustain a glance at Friar Roch and his toady Friar Alfred.

On Golgotha. There at the sacred spot of The Warrior Dream does Frank initiate The Shattering. _It is fitting. It is proper. It is just_.

:not women, not Her, for She is only Rib, and this Literal Truth defines Her existence: that she does not exist; there is not a need to fear the feminine weaknesses: emotions: ah! to be emotionless: heartless: hardheaded: cool-handed: with an unblinking eye ... ah! Frank smoothes and adjusts his White-Shroud ....

: _Curiosity_ : what was She but He probing inside Adam? As such, She is found there, so the White-Shroud is curious only about Him; accepts that He is Self-Generating: accepts the Biblical Revelation of Sacral Cloning, but, now, grasps that Curiosity is the Only Truth, there can be no Lie!

: _Curiosity_ : Truth through Shrinking: peeling away: and, so, the End-Time Shattering is Curiosity Ever Probing: Dachau: _WHAT IF_ .... we drain the blood and replace it with animal fluids? What if we submerge one into ice and then toss _it_ into fire? What if a whole Race of people was obliterated? What if the Swiss Banks melt their golden teeth into coin of the realm? What if we breed humans like we breed plants and animals? What if we shrink fuck down to the jiggle inside a test tube? What if all people could be reduced to a gas?

For isn't it that we've come from a Gas? And to Gas are going? Merely, now, the expansion within The Big Bang!

But was it the cosmic bang of the bunghole farting or the orgasmic bang of a Cock and a Cunny?

_Shatter it!_ For all is not Evolving but Devolving. Indeed, orthogenesis but towards the Ameba and then to the Molecule and then to the Quark and then to the ....

: _Curiosity_ : It is for the White Shroud to perform the ritual of Curiosity: it the ritual of Shattering: and for the Performance, for sake of The Ratings, ever the scion of insatiable Hollywood Curiosity, so does the White Shroud perform.

:Human Experimentation: beheaded and skinned alive; limbs drawn and quartered and stacked in neat piles; thumb-nails ripped off, then fingers chopped, eye-balls popped: the precise and methodical experiment and measure of laboratory pain; standing some vertical for the wild exuberance of machine-gunned defoliation; others in a flash: nuclear-atomic-formulaic disappearance ... over quickly, "In a Snap!"; a fitting end for Huxley's "evolutionary burp." No _Amen_.

Yet, "Amen!" — "So be it!" — in praise of the simplicity of All Life: the soundless monotone of the Digit: the 1 and 0 of the computerized song; a song of one; zero being but a place marker; there being — finally Once and Forever! — just 1. Not even word "one" but the digit: the simplest of strikes on the paper; symbolized by the scatological finger: Yahweh 1, Adam zero.

Frank is Shattered!

As _Beloved_ , Laura and Luke behold the End-Time ritual of Shattering. They peer and grasp the Dream of Friar Francis, now the White Shrouded Presence.

They observe this Story within the Swirl and respect its connection, derivation, fulfillment from and with and within other Stories. For all that is Story is true, as all is Lie.

Peering, they understand that The Shatterers will Dream and through Dream become their Curiosity, and so arrive at their End-Time, where all Which Is, Only Is. With formulaic finality, they will shrink the flesh into cyborg form. They will shrink the cyborg into robot reality. Dreaming the Shrinking and the Shattering.

_It can be done_. Laura utters in astonishment.

It _will_ be done. Luke confirms. _Peer. Their Dream truly shatters._

Beloved!

Called: It is, now, for their Dream. Their End-Time Dream. The ritual of The Holy Family.

# END-TIME: LUKE & LAURA: THE HOLY FAMILY

Manifest and as from within the Dark Vapors: The Swirl: Coil: Mobius: Twisting: Convoluting: Creating Cauldron.

Now, no longer the Dark Vapors. Now, no longer Friar Alfred. Now, no longer Luke and Laura: Rian and Marsh: Charles and Selene. Now, _Beloved_.

_Midnight, New Year's Eve, 1999._ No Scripture to quote. No Technological Truth to reveal. No grasp on Reality or Delusion. No steadying of Beat and Silence. No resolution of Good and Evil.

Not being Luke nor Laura.

Being _Beloved_.

Attuned to Laura: so, as she peered at The Final Sacrifice, Luke — on his way home — had to halt and fully stop at The Porch's stoop and rest: the fearsome and awesome imaginings of Roch and Francis played with his body in torture and annihilating pleasures: despite the freezing night-cold, despite the raging Fire of Cannibal Lust ... as she peered, so he beheld: all about Luke was blood: dried blood stacked like wood; small geysers of blood gushing from under the snow; seeping redness to all about: the Sun turned bloody; the Moon fallen at mid-day, sodden with fleshy wine: " _blood flowed ... as high as a horse's bridle_." ... and he knows what the Abbot is doing! and what Friar Alfred is doing! and he knows what Friar Francis is doing! and he knows what the self-devouring White Shrouded Frank is doing: for this latter non-Revelation had been there, slipping and sliding within the Dark Vapors: all variants on The Warrior Story: all variants on the End-Time; all variants on The Final Sacrifice: already he has known and been and attended them ... rising, he knows what he has to do; knows why _he_ had moved Laura to so call him home.

Inside the house is Home. Within the Swirl: the Home is a locus which was harmonically gyrating with many, many others: there being loci: spots, so to speak, more like splotches of throbbing light: drawing and spewing positive and negative energy, words, images, storylines: these throbs thrived with each other, passing in and out of each other, creating and transforming each other: the intersection of several which create and will continue to create Millennial End-Times for The Warrior ... and several which now converge, like notes forming a chord and chords forming a rhythm, all rising upon a melody: singing what Laura and Luke hear as _Home_ , here abrim the Mississippi, an exact location on a precise Automobile Club map, yet, actually, nowhere and everywhere all at once and never.

:he sensed in a way which gave a meaning to the word Eternal that first instance of kiss, kissing her southern mouth and so kissing Her; linking with her in Ouroboric embrace; sensed in what cannot be called just knowledge; even more than understanding, that the transformation was not a flight, at least not permanent, and that the transubstantiation was not a destruction of substance, at least not solely: rather a flying, a gliding, a swooping up and down and throughout the Swirl, changing, transforming, creating and being created ... Yes, the Friars Alfred, Roch and Francis have celebrated and consecrated and so have become in body and blood one with their Warrior Lord; no need to deny that Brooded Story! ... Yes, the Ronald W's and Lukes and the Franks have transformed and transubstantiated the world into the method and Story of Machined Imagining; they have created a world which thrives on self-cannibalizing Curiosity: which draws out the Biblical Story to its savage conclusion, literally: Cloning and Self-Consummation; the Presence Monotone; no need to deny that Story! ... but the _Beloveds_ understand that each is just a single, a minute, a limited Story awhirl within the Swirl: limited by their recounting of a Beginning and an End, of a Coming and a Return: this their Warrior Story; this their Experimenter's Tale: and as such, theirs also ... but now, another Story: where there is no Beginning and no End, rather Turning Points within the Swirl.

The Portal. They are waiting. Hands open and inviting. Another thousand hands waving him off; furiously signaling danger ... Luke laughs: _Never Again!_ as he slips on the silver chain and the white stone.

He and Laura. Rian and Marsh. Charles and Selene. Sisters from The Round. Men and women from Charles' _Hand_ ... all who have been Dreamt by Her! ... At once themselves; at once each other. Embracing. Around each neck, the hearted white stone and the fuller name of each and all: _Beloved_.

_Beloved_.

Beloved as Turning Point: as Fire engaging Water: as Breath sculpting Earth.

Yes, the Turning Point in the Warrior Story was the Biblical recounting that Adam was not a Beloved Son, nay, a Clone.

Yes, the Turning Point in the Warrior Story was the Biblical recounting that Sarah had to be savaged, sacrificed, devoured by Him as a burnt offering.

Turning Points which turned into the White Shrouded Tale of the Silver Blood: of methodically distilling the essence of divinity and humanity into a vial.

:touching the white stone:

Oh! Luke is weary and he sheds this name.

Oh! Laura is weary and she sheds this name.

:touching the white stone:

Oh! the Hands grasp — reach, touch, stroke, explore, feel ... Bodywander

:as Fire, not always moving in any direction, not always consuming, not always being consumed, for at times combining and communing, at times collective effort for change and transformation, so, they are as Fire, logs of desire and blankets of warmth; cooking rawness of soul and spirit ... it is not to counter the ritual of Sacrifice as it is to exact its Lie and so plumb a Truth it knows not that it carries; it is not to deny the Devouring Monotone as it is to exact its Lie and so plumb a Truth it knows not that it carries; as such, knowing that they themselves are Lie to some Truth and carry a Truth they have yet to birth ...

:the Silver Blood, their Truth and Lie — _WHAT IS BUT IS NOT THEN IS NOT AND SO IS_ : this the Beloved's imagining: coming when they are coupled, not just juxtaposed as two, but monogamous with all; All: here, the blood between males and the blood between females, here, the blood drawn forth by the penis as the Moon favors their Embrace; blood of sacrifice, yes, sacrificed not to devour nor be devoured but to swell like yeast does the body and soul of another ... this blood that of transformation, only that which is both Sacral and Profane, being so only when commingled; when the Beloved is Chalice and the Beloved is Host.

:The Hand, their Truth and Lie — ever one, ever singular: ever a foci in dynamic embrace: ever the many, ever the group: One and All: Eros and Death: Embrace and Alone.

The coupling refrain: "live as if you are no one's enemy." Becoming _Beloved_ : the Ouroboric Embrace: flesh which is the Memory and the Forgetting: so is his body wandered: knowing that he has been made his own enemy: the flesh his enemy: so taking it to be not his enemy: how great the Pain which is Memory Forgetting and how great the Bliss which is a Forgotten Remembered.

They are _Beloved_ , but as so they are Luke and Laura, Charles and Selene, Marsh and Rian. Living forever as themselves: not Obliterated, not Annihilated ... not Shattered!

They are Dream and they are Presence.

Luke as Forgotten is the full power and presence of his Serpentine maleness. Not The Serpent on the Island which was simply murder, but The Serpent which becomes the spine of another; which penetrates into another; which moves through the bowels and intestines and up through the lungs and enters the heart to coil about the brain: so peering into and through each other: males: the male within Her and her: the male within Him and him: finding within Ouroboric Embrace the presence of Father of All: whose Bodywandering disperses the Warriors Dark Vapors and beholds the Mother of All in all her terrifying and amazing Majesty!

She, now, who beholds Him, Father of All, in all his potency and presence.

Together, Parents.

Embracing Ouroborically: The Holy Family.

_It is Midnight, 1999_ , here and now. Laura and Luke and Marsh and Rian and Charles and Selene and all of The Round and all of The Hand: each and all Dreamt by Her/Him: _Beloved_.

:each one and all: within and the presence of The Holy Family: parenting and being child: of and being the earth and sky:

:each in their own personal space and time, but each and everyone thus intimately at Home:

_It is Midnight, 1999_ : Imaginings Swirl:

A clock strikes midnight: the hour hand and the minute hand and the second hand are one. _Yawn_.

Descending upon Golgotha, throngs see Christ Return! Alleluia!

Rising from the Ganges, hordes are enraptured with the Sweetness of Avatars!

Buddha's Compassionate Smile expands in cosmic sweep and stirs legions!

There are uncountable Raptures in groves and by river beds.

The Hand stirs and imagines The Holy Family!

There is Ecstasy unexplainable.

All. Everywhere.

.............................................

The Millennium is!

# AFTER READING

The "times" common to most who have read _The Hand_ — to this ending point! — is one in which The Millennium has not yet occurred.

If it had, you wouldn't have read this far.

That's the main clue.

Friar Alfred had no need to write this imagining.

Luke Jennings had no like need.

Those _Beloved_ , more than likely, join these others.

So, who is imagining?

Most likely, _you_ are.

You've sensed, intuited, anticipated — whatever! — the Swirl. That there are Stories in abundance. And each Story has its myths and its mythic structure, and so its varied levels, forms, twists, Dark Vapors — whatever! — of Truths, Lies; Imaginings.

Be aware, if you are reading this, that you are within a Millennium Interstitium: which means that you're caught or stopped or hovering or falling or dancing — whatever! — between Stories.

That is, in itself, an imagining, don't you think? ... Or feel? Or intuit — whatever!

"The Millennium" happens in some Stories, in others, not.

For the Biblicists, it is always happening. Meaning, that when you're God's Enemy, then Armageddon is an ongoing spiritual reality. When a counting period of a thousand years ends, the Story simply takes on group meaning: everyone must be slain!

Grasp: the key to most millennial experiences is that it must be a group experience.

So, in the Year Zero — an interstitium quite unique — Biblicists of every stripe and ilk: Christians, Jews, Mohammedeans, Gnostics, Mormons, on and on — they will experience The Millennium.

If you're not of their kind and you are around, don't deny it!

It will happen.

More, it will continue to happen in Year One and subsequently because, for them, The Millennium is nothing if not Anticipation, Expectation ... The Millennium is always an End which is a Beginning.

If you like, the Biblicists hold that "the world ends with a bang" not a "whimper." (And so begins again — can't you hear all those bangs in _Genesis_ : "Let there be ...!"?)

Within the Swirl — where assumedly you are — you can see the playful imagining of the White-Shrouded ones.

Their Story is that there are no Stories. No myths. Nothing which Curiosity cannot, ultimately, explain after probing, dissecting, modeling and replicating.

They like to deny that The Millennium happens for anyone at anytime, anywhere.

They cite Zero as a mathematical marking; a figment of an imagination which does not imagine.

Listen to them!

For in the Swirl, their Story shares a web-strand with the Biblicists. And so, in Year Zero, when they see nothing: look at the sky and do _not_ see Jesus coming on a cloud — grasp that this is their imagining! Their non-millennial imagining, but imagining no less.

If you are of the White Shroud — and you read all the way through _The Hand_ — be suspicious of yourself! A latent self-flagellating Biblicists lingers within your imagination!

For the White Shrouded ones, the world began with a Big Bang but it will end with a Whimper.

Just molecules or atoms or quarks or some immeasurable something squeaking in a Return to the Primordial Soup ... or Fartless Gas.

Is it too late to say: the White Shrouded ones aren't simply scientists?

That confusion could easily arise, but that is not, so simply, their Story.

_Beloved_. They claim to see — peer — and behold the Swirl. Okay. Maybe.

There's a certain misleading unholiness (ha!) about these three Stories: Biblical, White Shrouded and _Beloved_.

The Swirl is both Emptier and Fuller.

But ... the _Beloved_ lead in another millennial direction.

Where the Biblicists and White Shrouded ones "come from" staggers the _Beloved_ 's imagining!

They are not as much Revealed nor Measured as they are Playful.

The Biblicists make much of the individual in that everything revolves around personal salvation. Group salvation pivots on personal holiness.

The White Shrouded ones trash these "humanistic" categories as merely unmeasurable, so there is no individual and there is no group, there is only Chance. No human relationships, rather, formulaic permutations.

The _Beloved_ Story plays with what both the Biblicist and White Shrouds posit as facts or Revelations or Truths or Lies or Errors ... anon.

So, for the Beloveds, The Millennium is an utterly serious event. For all Stories are heard, and so they, in Year Zero, will hear and peer at those in Biblical Rapture.

In like manner, they will hear the White Shrouded imagining at the same time.

Then, in utter silliness, they will Play.

Play with Fire!

:fire: which is always an Ending and a Beginning: always Ouroborically Coupling! — but theirs is the most awesome and foreboding of all Stories — for it plays with the simultaneous transformation and transubstantiation and like dynamics, energies, Fires — whatever! — of the personal within group Eros: of your cock and your cunny: of Cock and Cunny.

:call it The Hand: call it The Holy Family: for them you are me and I am we and they are you all together!

................................................................

Okay.

Know that for the Biblicists, if you are reading this after Year Zero that you missed it. So, begin imagining Messianic Rapture and Return. _Maranatha!_

Know that for the White Shrouds, The Millennium was marked and the story then trashed. .... _Move on!_

Know that for the _Beloveds,_ you are _Beloved_ , and that I and they want to Play with Fire: Ouroborically Embrace ... Whew!

... _Imagine that!_

