1
A man and his young son were walking in a park, in the centre of a beautiful valley.
They stopped near a large palm tree. The father asked his son while pointing at a man standing under the tree,
‘Benny, if I said to you, this is a man, or if I said to you, this is a woman, which is the truth?’
‘Why, daddy, the man is the truth.’
‘Why is the woman not the truth? Don’t women exist as well?’
‘They do, daddy, but not there and not now.’
‘And if a man stood before you and insisted that he was a woman, what would you think?’
‘I would think that the man was silly, daddy.’
‘Why would you come to that conclusion?’
‘Because, daddy, the unreal never is and the real never is not.’
‘Hmm, I think I have much to learn from you, my son.’
2
Five days had passed since Adam’s big day at Stanwell Park. During the week his curiosity had finally got the better of him and he managed to find the source of the incense smell in his building. It was wafting out of a bookshop located on the first floor and literally filling the whole eleven floors of the building with its perfume. Had someone been watching, they would have seen that it looked altogether like the book chose Adam, not the other way around. He wasn’t even looking when he pulled it out of the shelves from amongst hundreds of others.
After work, on Friday night, he called Nancy.
‘Hey, Nancy, how’s it going?’
‘You know, Adam, if you hadn’t called me just then, I was just about to pick up the phone. I found something that might surprise you.’
‘I found something as well. Can I come over? I’ll bring it with me.’
‘We both have a surprise, how nice. Come for dinner.’
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3
Nancy lived in quite a special place. It was a small, converted boathouse right down on the water in the back of one of the big mansions in Wunulla Road, Point Piper. The owners wanted someone to live in it because they spent so much time away from the house and they thought it would be wise if they got someone to move into the unused boathouse to keep an eye on the place. So, they renovated it and made it comfortably self-sufficient. When they advertised it, they didn’t mention the rent because they first wanted to interview the applicant. Their strategy was; if they didn’t like the person, they would ask a prohibitive rent and get rid of them that way. Well, when they first met Nancy, they were initially slightly taken aback by her way-out appearance, but after speaking with her for a while they gradually began taking quite a liking to her. In fact, they got on so well with her in the end that they had her stay for dinner during which they offered her the cosy boathouse for the most ridiculously low rent. They actually considered renting her the place for free, because they certainly didn’t need the money, but they thought that they better charge her something so as not to offend her.
Before the renovation, the boathouse had a large, double-wooden door on its north side, the side that faced Rose Bay. A wooden slipway sloped into the water and in the old days they used to winch small boats up the slipway into the boathouse. The new owners weren’t interested in boating so, as part of their renovation, they built a small, covered, wooden deck on top of the slipway, which could be accessed through a new, aluminium, sliding door. Nancy usually kept the door wide open as she loved the tranquil sounds and salty smells of the bay. There was a tiny bathroom and kitchen at the rear of the boathouse with the main portion doubling as a living and bedroom. She had a small, round, wooden table on the deck with three chairs around it. She ate her meals there on most days, even on the rainy days, as long as it wasn’t too windy. Nancy also had access to the family pool, which was hardly ever used by anyone else.
Although she knew many people, she tended to socialise with very few of them. She had an inherent dislike of groups. Her favourite social gathering was being with just one person. She couldn’t stomach the superficial encounters so typically experienced at parties and other gatherings of people. She usually just had enough and quietly slipped out, without bothering to say good-bye to anyone, feeling the pressure of humanity disperse from her as she walked away into the silent, welcoming night.
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She used to wonder about herself and her aversion to groups. She wasn’t sure if it was normal, but she knew what she liked, what she loved. She just loved being with one friend with whom she could have a close, deep, meaningful conversation. She loved how her affection grew for her friend as they shared their secrets with each other.
She wanted to progress in her understanding of her life, of life itself, and felt that her time was too precious to be wasted on ‘superficial, one-dimensional clones’.
Her two main visitors, at that stage of her life, were Adam and Robbie. She met Robbie because he either came by her place paddling a canoe or, on the windy days, he came flying past on his sixteen-foot Hobie Cat. One time, he spotted her pottering inside the boathouse. After that, he regularly came past figuring that sooner or later she would notice him and hopefully say hello.
One sunny, windy, Saturday morning he saw her sitting on her deck, relaxing. She couldn’t fail but notice the crazy guy sailing his catamaran past her place all morning, hanging high off one hull, first coming this way, then that, and when he saw her watching, he gave her a big wave, and what else could she do, she gave him a wave in response. He demonstrated his absolute mastery over his boat by the way he sailed it perfectly up to the slipway beneath her boathouse.
‘Hi, my name is Robbie. I live just around the point.’
Robbie was a wealthy playboy and young man about town. His redeeming feature was that he valued a good friend. That was why Nancy found him interesting right from the beginning.
Before long, she joined him for sails on the harbour. She hadn’t sailed before and it became Robbie’s pleasure to teach her. She initially found the speed of the sleek catamaran somewhat intimidating, and sensing this he sailed the cat in a more conservative fashion until she became a more skilful sailor. After half a dozen sails, or so, he started lifting a hull out of the water. Ultimately that became Nancy’s favourite thing.
She laughed and screamed and claimed that she felt like she was flying as she hung her slender body way out from the upwind hull. Robbie was even further hung out in his trapeze. They sailed all over Sydney Harbour exploring every nook and cranny, often sailing onto one of the deserted little beaches that dot the many bays and inlets. There they had lunch that was meticulously prepared by Robbie and brought in a special waterproof hamper, which he strapped to the mast of the boat.
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On one memorable day, during a huge swell, he sailed them north towards Manly.
When he saw the giant swells rolling in through the heads, he sailed the fast cat out to sea, turned around out there and came screaming back into the harbour, surfing down the front of the massive, unbroken swells.
They must have ridden at least twenty giant waves that day. For Nancy, it was something she could have never imagined doing, yet she did it, and seemingly without fear. Later, thinking about it, she realised that it was Robbie’s sailing skill and his confident, decisive nature that made her completely forget to be afraid, even though they were sailing in waves as big as houses.
When the wind was due west, Robbie liked to sail under the Harbour Bridge from one pylon across the water to the other, sailing as slow as possible with one hull high out of the water all the way across. Nancy loved that trick. There was a certain surrealism about the moment because when they looked up, the sky was a broad, dark mass of steel and the whole space echoed with the sounds of man and his machines. As they sailed across the harbour under the steel colossus, balanced precariously on a fine edge, she sometimes felt that what they were doing was high art, ‘like a dance, like Christo.’
Robbie kept his boat in his backyard. There was a boathouse there as well. His dad had that converted into an elegant sunroom. Robbie’s house was one of the most exclusive residences in Sydney. It was absolutely spectacular. The view from the magnificent house was straight down the harbour towards the city. It was like a painting with the city skyline on the left, the Harbour Bridge in the centre and the white sails of the Opera House billowing between them. The zillion-dollar view was rounded off with a big sky and an expansive body of water, which was surrounded by abundant native bushland. To add a little seasoning to the visual feast, there was a constant parade of sails and every other type of floating craft imaginable. There were sun crystals shimmering on the water in the afternoons and occasionally there would be a southerly squall rampaging furiously up the harbour. One tended to forget to use a clock but instead told the time by the passing of the Manly ferries. And to go with one’s first dry martini or, depending on one’s drug preference, one’s first joint, this masterpiece, masquerading as a view, transformed itself completely into a night spectacular with all the lights of the city shining under the dark, starry sky like a set of a Stanley Kubrick movie. And during the part of the year when the full moon set behind the Harbour Bridge, Robbie often sat on the end of his jetty and marvelled at how the surface of the water shimmered like mercury.
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On the harbour side of the sunroom, Robbie built a new jetty, which projected about six metres out towards the water. At the end of the jetty he built a wooden, sloping slipway, designed to fit his Hobie Cat. He kept the catamaran at the top of the slipway, on the flat part of the jetty. At the beginning, when he first acquired the cat, he sailed up to the jetty, got off and dragged the boat up the sloping ramp. After a year or so, he started sailing the boat directly up the slipway, cautiously at first, but full speed in the end. At full speed, the cat slid all the way up the ramp and neatly parked itself on its spot, on the flat part of the jetty. Anyone that saw him do it was left slack-jawed because of the extremely tight fit onto the ramp. Robbie measured ten inches clearance between the hulls and the two, eighteen-inch-thick, wooden piers either side of the lower part of the ramp. Sailing up to the jetty, with him up on one hull doing about twenty knots, aiming at a gap that looked too narrow for the boat, scared the crap out of Nancy every time she had to ‘risk her neck’ with him doing his ‘lunatic party trick’. But she didn’t mind stepping off the boat directly onto Robbie’s terrace.
He got it right every time, except once with Nancy. The wind was particularly strong on that day and it blew across the jetty. He threaded the needle between the thick posts all right, and they flew up the ramp OK, right up to the top, but just when it looked like another perfect job of parking the boat, a gust of wind hit the mainsail. It didn’t give Robbie enough time to let out the mainsheet so, in effect, they were still sailing. But instead of the boat going forward into the sunroom, it started sliding sideways, towards the side of the jetty. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The cat slid slowly sideways until one hull dropped off the edge.
‘Grab a hold of something, Nancy, I think we’re going in.’
‘You grab a hold of something, I’m getting off.’
As the boat slowly toppled over the side of the jetty, Nancy casually stepped off. She watched in amazement as Robbie waved goodbye as he disappeared over the edge with his boat and splashed down some ten feet below in waist-deep water.
4
Nancy was making chicken risotto for Adam’s visit. She loved to cook dinner while her guest sat there with her, either opening a nice Merlot or rolling a perfect joint, or both.
She played the best music, that Adam had ever heard, through a giant pair of Altec, Stonehenge Three speakers that totally dominated the tiny boathouse. The speakers generated a rich, deep, woody bass, even at low volume, and wholly produced the
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clearest, crispest sound imaginable. She got onto them through a music-industry associate of hers who put her onto a guy in Kent HiFi, which was, during the seventies, the Mecca of music-equipment shops for all discerning, practising audiophiles in the greater Sydney basin.
Between the speakers, on the floor, were two long rows of record albums. Nancy had collected over five hundred albums, most of them gifts from music-company reps, although tonight she was going to focus on one album, the one she wanted Adam to hear.
After dinner, they sat outside on her deck, he reading the back of the record jacket of Van Morrison’s, Astral Weeks, while she flipped through the pages of Adam’s new Bhagavad Gita.
‘It would take some time to really get into this book,’ she said.
‘There is a section in it that talks about yoga meditation,’ he replied. ‘It goes into the breathing and mind thing, and it talks about the existence of things that cannot be seen with mortal eyes, and divine sight.’
‘Van Morrison makes me think of me. He’s singing about my life. He makes me feel like there is someone else that is going through the same trip as me. His songs are about things that most people don’t even think are real. He inspires me to not be afraid. He makes me feel that extreme experiences are normal, in the scheme of things.’
Adam looked out over the bay.
‘Is that a ferry?’
‘Yeah, that’s the Watson’s Bay ferry. They run till late. Some nights they put coloured lights all over it making it look just like a Christmas tree.’
‘Wow, look at the stars. It’s hard to imagine that we’re looking at infinite space, that we actually exist in infinite space. You know, the closest galaxy to ours is the Andromeda Galaxy. That’s just the closest, and do you want to know how far away it is?’
‘No … yes … how far?’
‘Two million light years. That’s two … million … light years. That means that the galaxy we’re looking at, through our telescopes, is the one that existed two million years ago. It’s massive, the universe is absolutely massive.’
‘Or …’
‘Or what?’
‘Or maybe it’s actually not so massive at all. It might be that we are just so incredibly small.’
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‘Alpha Centauri, our neighbouring star, is 4.2 light years away. That’s 4.2 years of history already recorded in light, transmitted and on its way at the speed of light, but not yet received by us. We’re seeing what happened over four years ago. It’s all old news, and the bigger the telescope, the older the news.’
‘Aren’t they looking back in time the further out they look?’
‘Maybe, but it’s still old news. Like reading last year’s newspaper. Like watching a Charlie Chaplin movie. None of the stuff they’re looking at exists anymore. It’s long gone.
There’s something else there now.’
‘You mean that what we are looking at, all the stars I mean, all this,’ she pointed at the sky, ‘isn’t really there?’
‘Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s all just an old movie.’
‘So … what’s real?’
‘Things we can’t see because their light hasn’t got here yet.’
‘Would you care to roll?’
‘Sure.’
Adam began rolling another joint while Nancy pondered the big mystery. After a while she came up with a conclusion.
‘So, therefore, the closer we get to us, the closer we get to what’s real, to the truth.’
‘Yeah, because we’re getting closer to right now.’
‘So, our heart, being the centre of the centre, must be the domain of absolute reality, the domain of absolute truth, the place of the absolute right now, the only place that is actually … it must be like a point … the only place that is actually absolutely real.’
‘To, er, us … to our consciousness.’
‘To our consciousness?’
‘Yeah. It’s different in each of us. That’s how we get to be individual conscious living things, with er, with our individual point of view, with our own individual, er, truth, I guess.’
‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘So, whose truth is real then?’
‘If you analyse it logically, everybody’s truth is real, because everybody’s reality is real to them, to their consciousness.’
‘So, I am my own perfect example of the absolute truth.’
‘Yeah. Do you feel like a cup of tea?’
‘Oh, that’s a good idea. I’ll make it.’
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Nancy slipped into the kitchen and boiled the water for the tea. When she came back out with the cups she sat down and continued the conversation.
‘How did you meet Robbie?’
‘Some of my uni friends knew him. Have you got a light?’
‘Sure, here you are. One sugar?’
‘Please.’
‘I love nights like these. Careful, it’s hot. The sky is such an amazing thing, Adam. I remember one night, a couple of years ago, at a Midnight Blues concert, I went there with Melissa, a really good friend of mine … well, we dropped a trip each and I swear I got 360
degree vision, and the sky was the most spectacular thing, you couldn’t ever imagine it, it’s so hard to describe …’
‘I’ve only ever had acid once,’ Adam replied, ‘only half a dot.’
‘How was it?’ she enquired.
‘Actually, it ended up being one of the most memorable days of my life. It’s a bit of a story. Would you like to hear it?’
‘Love to.’
‘OK. I was away on a trip up the north coast with Robbie, as it turned out, in his new Range Rover. We took tents and sleeping bags. Robbie drove up deserted beaches at night and we made camps on top of sand dunes, miles away from any people. I remember one night on Tallows beach, just south of Byron, we’d been in town drinking at the pub, when Robbie drove down onto the beach, in total darkness, looking for our tents, he drove the Range Rover straight into the ocean. Suddenly, all we could see out of the windscreen, in the headlights, was surf. Robbie just planted the accelerator and turned the wheel, and Nancy, I don’t know how he did it, but he managed to drive that amazing car right out of the ocean, laughing his head off the whole time.’
‘Yeah, Robbie’s a scream. He likes to be a bit of a wild boy, but it’s what makes him fun.’
‘Well, I told Robbie about this incredible, natural waterslide, up the back of Currumbin Valley, and we decided to include it into our itinerary. I had never dropped acid before, but Robbie assured me that his stuff was amazing and he suggested that we both share one drop. Actually, it was just a tiny piece of blotting paper. Robbie cut it in half with a pair of scissors and we both swallowed our halves parked under a tree, just past the turnoff up the Currumbin Creek road. I can’t remember what the music was that
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he put on, I think it might have been Pink Floyd; I just remember it being perfect for the occasion. The acid kind of sneaked up on me. I began to feel a bit of a rush, a bit of speed, a bit like too much coffee, a little scary cause I didn’t know at what intensity it was going to level off. The initial fear spoilt the first half of the drive for me. Robbie was having no such problems though. He wouldn’t stop raving about how beautiful the valley was and singing, that’s right, that Pink Floyd song, Money, it came on. I think he likes that song.
Well, he’s singing away and I’m starting to relax a bit and notice how all the colours were getting brighter and how I was noticing all the sounds much more. All my senses seemed to be going into overdrive.’
‘I know, it’s such amazing stuff.’
‘Yeah, but risky. There’s no escape if you’ve taken too much. You’ve got to take the ride. It’s definitely not for the easily frightened.’
‘Yeah. I think that it’s going to be one of the main causes of schizophrenia in the future.’
‘That’s for sure. Tripping on LSD can be like throwing your brain into a blender.
Anyway, by the time we got there, I was tripping off my face, but feeling great, like an excited kid. We were both like a couple of excited kids. We parked the Range Rover at the beginning of the walking track and I guided us into the jungle towards the sound of the rushing waters. I can’t describe how I was feeling at the time. My heart felt huge. I had this big feeling, like a house with no roof on it. Anyway, we eventually got to the water slide. I showed it to Robbie and he just went kind of quiet. I think the fear got to him. The place can do that to you. He said he’d watch me go down first. Well, he watched me all right. I started sliding down the slide, first one go, then another and another. I couldn’t stop myself. Later on, I figured that I must have got an LSD induced attack of the braves.
It was stupid really. I got myself into some kind of frenzy. I’d slide down, climb out of the small pool at the bottom, scramble up the rocks back to the top and slide down again. I felt like a kid. I couldn’t stop laughing and everything was so intensely colourful, and the sound of the water and birdlife, and everything, sounded like we were in a huge cathedral or something. Intensity, that’s the word, my senses were absorbing everything with an intensity I had never ever experienced before. My eyes must have been bulging and every time I scrambled back up the rocks past Robbie, I’d go; come on Robbie, it’s heaps of fun, have a go, but he just sat there, feeling quite contented to just watch.’
‘That would be me, Adam, I’d just watch.’
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‘After about forty slides in a row, I stopped and sat down next to Robbie who looked pretty blissed out. He didn’t feel challenged by the slide at all. I told him about the pools up the creek and we set off to explore them. The next two things that happened, Nancy, are what really stuck in my mind. The day was hot and steamy. We were deep in the rainforest with trees one hundred and fifty feet high making a thick canopy above us.
Underneath were palms, ferns and thick, long vines hanging off the trees. There were exotic, multi-coloured birds all around, flying and singing, and the whole cathedral echoed with the sound of rushing water. In the creek bed we were like in a green tunnel in the jungle. We followed the rocky terrain up the creek until we got to the first pool where we had a swim. The water was beautifully clear and cool. There was a small waterfall cascading into the top end of the pool and we sat under it and let it wash over us for ages. It was really incredible under that waterfall; I can’t tell you. Anyway, Robbie really enjoyed the swim, we both did. After having cooled off enough, we proceeded on up the creek looking for the second pool. As we carefully negotiated the slippery boulders along the edge of the creek, we began to hear the sound of children playing. As we quietly approached the source of the laughter, we were both stopped completely in our tracks by the vision that presented itself before us. There was the most beautiful natural rock pool, bigger than the first and more, I don’t know, inviting. Just perfect. And swimming, no, frolicking in the pool were four beautiful kids, about eight or nine years old, they were quite tiny actually, maybe three feet tall. There were two girls and two boys and they were all naked, splashing around and, and their bodies were brown, like dark suntans, and they all had really long, very light-blond hair hanging half way down their backs. We stood there motionless, literally frozen by the magical vision. One of the boys climbed about twenty feet up an overhanging tree and jumped into the pool from up there and, as Robbie and I stood there in plain sight of the kids, it was as if we were invisible. Have you ever had that experience, Nancy, where you thought that you were invisible because you were in some place where absolutely nobody looked at you? It’s like you’re invisible. Well that’s how it was with those kids. They just didn’t seem to see us. We stood there, maybe for five minutes, not moving an inch or making a sound. We just stared at the scene, becoming more and more unsure if those absolutely perfect young creatures were real or some kind of apparition. After a while, we quietly backed away and made our way back down the creek and back to the Range Rover. Then the second magic thing happened.
There, where the track came out of the jungle into the small clearing, where we parked
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the car, what seemed like waiting for us were these two young surfer guys. They were sitting on the grass in the shade of a low tree and they had a huge watermelon and a machete. And as we arrived, one of them cut the watermelon in half and said to us; just in time. We couldn’t believe our luck. We were hot and thirsty and those two really cool, cheerful young guys wanted to share their watermelon with us. It was sweet and it was cool, I can’t tell you how good it tasted, Nancy, something you never forget.’
‘That was an amazing acid trip, Adam, really amazing. Acid’s different to the gas, isn’t it?’
‘Oh yeah. On acid you’re punching your energy through all your senses, hyper-connecting with the world, cranking up all the dials, but on the gas, you focus all your energy into bypassing all your senses, shutting them down. It’s a near unconsciousness experience, a totally different trip, and you can switch off any time you want, with the gas, if the trip gets a bit too scary, but with acid you’re strapped in for the whole ride. There’s no getting off if it all goes psycho.’
‘I’ve heard that some people come out of it screaming.’
‘Personally speaking, I would prefer to avoid such extreme experiences, seeing that basically I am still your run of the mill, average, everyday coward.’
‘I don’t think you are a coward, Adam. Acid is a gamble every time you do it, no doubt.’
Adam’s gaze drifted over the water.
‘You have such an absorbing view of the lights along the shore of the bay … the way they reflect off the water. … How come you always have such good dope?’
‘Hmm, I guess it’s the dealer you know. It’s funny how all that works, the picking it up, I mean. You make a call and you say something else, but he knows what you’re really talking about, and he says, yeah, come on over, and you go over and it’s all about the pickup, the dope for the cash that’s in your pocket. You go to his home and act cool, trying to reassure him that you’re cool and that he’s got nothing to worry about with you, because it’s a trust thing between you and your dealer, and you kind of act as though you are friends and catch up on a bit of news. He usually lights up a joint to smoke over the deal. You’re, kind of, friends but you only ever go there when you want a deal, and every time you’re there it ends with; and what would you like? And you say; the usual, thanks, and it ends as a business deal. Maybe that’s what it actually is, just a very personal business deal where the customer gets special, personal attention, not really right for a
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friendship. The really cool ones, they’re so cool, they’ve always got the best heads and they always act so laid back, discrete, you know that no one else knows. Would you like to roll another one?’
‘Sure.’
‘There’s one thing about my dealer that stands out in my mind. Whenever we part, he says God bless to me. No one else I know ever says that. And you know, every time he says it to me, I actually feel something … like, like I’ve been …’
Adam laughed, ‘Blessed by your dope dealer?’
She smiled, ‘No. It’s just that he’s the only person that I hear it from and that, I guess, kind of makes it special, which is silly really, because essentially he’s a crook, but an honourable crook.’
Adam’s attention focussed onto the ferry in the bay.
‘What a job.’
‘What job?’
‘The ferry driver. Do they call them drivers?’
‘The helm, I think they call them the helm.’
‘Imagine going to work every morning, out there.’
‘Yeah, helming around the harbour all day.’
‘Look how perfectly he docked with the jetty.’
‘That must be the last job they give you before you go to heaven.’
‘Here he goes, he’s undocking. Look how peacefully it glides through the water.’
‘There’s a story behind every story. Imagine the people whose lives were enriched by being involved with that boat.’
‘Like the people who built it?’
‘Yeah. And even the people who cut the trees and sawed them into suitable planks and … thicker bits of wood.’
‘And don’t forget the young deckhand, how all his Christmases have come at once.
He’s out on the harbour all day, tying and untying the ferry at the various wharves …’
‘Not a care in the world, except for his hair. And he’s an efficient user of time, never missing an opportunity to express his basic urges to a pretty, young girl passing through his rather expansive, personal space.’
‘Should we light this joint?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ she answered.
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Adam gave the smoke to Nancy and lit it for her. She thanked him, then asked,
‘Were you born in Sydney?’
‘Oh no, I was born in Yugoslavia, Slovenia actually, the capital, Ljubljana, way back in ‘48. My family emigrated here in ’59.’
‘Wow!’
‘I can still remember how all our possessions fitted into three suitcases and how all three of us slept on canvas, camp beds, all in one room, and how mum cooked our meals in two saucepans on an upturned, two-bar heater.’
‘Gosh, you’ve never spoken about your arrival to Australia before. It’s fascinating.
Your parents must be something.’
‘Yeah, I guess it must have taken a big leap of faith, and a good dose of communism aversion.’
‘It was a big deal.’
‘Yeah, especially when you consider that they couldn’t speak very much English. The first year was the toughest. Mum talked dad into starting a black dental surgery. It was amazing. He started working as a dentist in a tiny, first-floor room in the heart of Cabramatta. All he had was a kitchen chair, a reading light, a pedal drill and a bucket for the patients to spit into. And because he was the only Yugoslav dentist in town, and half of Cabramatta was Yugoslav, he was busy right from the beginning. The money rolled in and he quickly updated his surgery. The Dental Board required immigrant dentists, from the continent, to pass a special exam before they could become registered, so dad started studying for that. He actually attended the same hospital that I would study in twelve years later. After a year, he got his Sydney Uni diploma and away he went. And the whole time that he was studying, he was working illegally and building up his practice. You’ve gotta watch those wily wogs.’
‘You sure do.’
‘You do?’
‘Yeah, the way they sneakily weasel their way into your heart.’
Adam was sitting on one of the veranda chairs, turned out towards the bay. Nancy shuffled over and sat on the floor between his legs and invited him to massage her shoulders and run his fingers through her hair.
‘Weasel eh?’ he said.
‘Yeah. Do you want to see? Here, I’ll show you.’
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She, ever so slowly, unbuttoned her shirt and, little by little, exposed her small, white, perfectly-formed breasts.
‘See?’ she whispered softly.
Adam felt his heart begin to beat more intensely. Instinctively, he slid his right hand down across her chest and tenderly caressed her left breast.
‘Is this where your heart is?’
‘Pretty close.’
She tilted her head back and rested it in his lap. Seeing those red, succulent lips of hers beckoning towards him, he bent down and kissed them. He had never kissed lips so warm before. They were almost hot. She closed her eyes and immersed herself in the tender softness of his mouth as she caressed his lips with hers. He had never kissed lips so soft or so delicate. He gently stroked her torso, lightly running his hand over both breasts. He paused at each one and muttered something like, ‘I think this spot needs a little extra attention,’ and tenderly explored her perfect shape. When he felt her nipples, he felt them swell and become firm between his searching fingertips. Like a cat, she arched her slender back and slipped her shirt off her shoulders, allowing him to more freely explore her fine, long torso.
‘Stay.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Yes.’
He kissed her lips again and said,
‘Do I ever tell you that I love you, much?’
‘Yes, you do, and then you tell me, don’t take this the wrong way.’
‘That’s because you started that. Do you remember? You’d hug me or kiss me and then say, don’t take this the wrong way.’
‘I love you too, Adam, in a probationary sort of way … no, I’m kidding, I truly do love you. I love your heart, you’ve got a good heart, and mmmmm.’
She squirmed around to face him, knelt on her knees, slid her hands under his T-shirt and gave him a tight squeeze and a long, slow, passionate kiss. After what seemed to him like an eternity lost in the blissful warmth of her lips, she rose to her feet and suggested they go inside and sit on her bed.
‘I want to play Song of The Wind for you,’ she said, ‘I love that track.’
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Adam made himself comfortable on the bed, totally captivated by Nancy’s beautifully-sleek, half-clad body. She placed Santana’s Caravanserai album on the turntable and, before playing the track, switched on her bedside lamp. She gave him another juicy kiss and then lowered the stylus onto the vinyl. As the music slowly faded in, her whole personality took on a magical transformation. Suddenly, Adam could see a wild cat, like a Cheetah, flexing and squirming to the music. As he watched her dance in circles in front of him, she unfastened a button on the side of her skirt, allowing it to fall to the floor, revealing her long, lean, white legs. She danced in circles around her skirt, swaying in front of Adam, who was by now ready to blow a valve as her sensuality completely entranced him. Without breaking the rhythm of her dance, she slipped off her brief panties and let them fall to the floor as well. Completely naked, she closed her eyes and danced to the beat, holding her arms up, turning and arching her back, with the warm light of the bedside lamp softly highlighting all her exquisite features. Dancing free and uninhibited, she lovingly displayed herself to him. He could feel his heart thumping away in his breast as his eyes, intoxicated with her slender, white, almost-glowing beauty, drank in the colour and bouquet of her fine wine. As the song ended, she spun her body around and let it fall into his arms. They gazed deeply into each other’s eyes for what seemed like an eternity, then, almost simultaneously, they softly whispered to each other,
‘Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think I love you.’
Next morning, they awoke in each other’s embrace. The morning sun was streaming in through the open door, warming their bodies. She turned away from him, towards the sun, and wrapped him around her body like a blanket. They lay there like that, glued together without saying a word, until she turned her head and closed her eyes, beckoning for him to kiss her. Eventually she rose out of bed first, saying,
‘You relax while I make some coffee.’
She put on Astral Weeks and began making the coffee. She swayed to the music, then sashayed over to him and kissed his lips, followed by a little spin and then a glide back to the kitchen, all without a stitch of clothing.
‘Aren’t you cold?’ he asked.
‘No. I want you to enjoy me.’
‘Oh, I think it’s working,’ he replied, nodding his head.
‘Good.’
‘Do you want me to do anything?’
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‘No … yes … never forget me.’
‘Oh, I don’t think there’s much chance of that.’
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘You’ll always live in my heart, Nancy. You’re part of it.’
She looked outside.
‘What a glorious day, and it’s Saturday. Why don’t we take the ferry into town.’
‘What a great idea. We could have lunch down at the Quay and then we could go to the surgery.’
‘Or we could go to the surgery first, after taking the ferry into town, and then after, we could take another ferry to Watson’s Bay and have lunch and a beer there.’
‘We could have a late lunch and catch the afternoon sun. I love that beer garden. It’s so magical there in the afternoon sun.’
She brought the coffees to the bed, placed them down on the bedside table and lay down on the bed next to him, saying,
‘You know what’s magical for me?’
‘No, what?’
‘What’s really magical for me is when I feel your hands caressing my body. I can feel the way they search the surface of my skin. They remind me of bees around a flower when they hover around my … ah … around my …’
‘You mean where the sun shines?’
‘I love it when you touch me there.’
Adam knelt up on the bed beside her and began softly running his hands up and down her long, thin body. She began to squirm and flex, expressing her pure pleasure at his touch. Her breathing deepened as she spread her arms across both pillows and opened her legs wide, inviting him to caress her warm, yearning wetness.
Later, as he gently eased his body over hers, she tenderly whispered into his ear,
‘I know where the sun shines.’
It was a moment of as perfect a love as he had ever experienced. No one had ever made him feel like they truly loved him as much as she did. No one had ever given their love to him so freely. No one had ever offered their body to him as lovingly as she did.
They loved each other, there on her comfortable bed, bathed in sunlight, surrounded by the sounds of soft music and the tinkles of the halyards hitting the masts of the gently rocking yachts, moored in the bay outside.
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5
Later that morning, they stood together on the bow of the ferry for the whole trip into the city. They waved back to the people standing in front of the new Opera House and enjoyed a gelato on the pier at Circular Quay before heading uptown to Adam’s surgery.
‘I’m going to try to concentrate on my breath today.’
‘I’m just going to try to let go more completely and focus on the centre.’
If one were a fly on the wall, watching them, one would have seen two people sitting quietly, with their eyes closed, breathing gas through grey, rubber hoses stuck in their mouths. The room was dark, except for a series of thin, parallel bands of light streaming in through the narrow gaps of the venetians. There was not a sound because before going into their ‘meditations’ they decided on silence so they could listen to the ‘inner rhythm’
that became subtly audible under the influence of the gas.
Adam’s plan was to breathe in-harmony with this rhythm. He thought to himself,
‘I’ll focus my mind on my breath; get it right, smooth and steady.’ As he started breathing and listening to the inner beat, an image of a long, heavy pendulum came into his mind.
His in-breath became the pendulum swinging towards him and his out-breath became the pendulum swinging away from him. He intensified his concentration like never before.
She lay comfortably in the patient’s chair trying to completely let go. She gradually narrowed her focus onto what she imagined to be the centre of her consciousness. ‘An infinitely-small point,’ she thought to herself. Then, when she thought that she was there, in the centre, in the infinitely-small right now, she sent out a prayer to the great infinity, the great eternity.
‘Dear Lord, I am faith in You.’
As she thought that, she found herself sitting on top of a large, wooden wagon being pulled by a team of ten horses. They were rolling across a green clearing. She turned her head when she heard the sound of galloping hooves. She saw a rider, young and strong, approaching at some speed. His clothes appeared to be from a long-gone age. As he rode up to the wagon, he beamed a smile at her, took a leather pouch, which represented all his worldly wealth, from his saddle and, not breaking out of his gallop, threw the pouch into the back of the wagon, then rode ahead, and this was the strange part, she knew he rode ahead to join the King’s army. The wagon she was riding on was the war wagon that
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followed behind the army. It contained all the common wealth of the whole army, which fought for, and gave their complete allegiance to, their warrior King. As she watched the rider gallop into the distance, she noticed the brilliance of the sunny day, the blueness of the sky and the greenness of the grass and trees in the far distance. As she breathed in, she could feel the coolness in the air. Her awareness then drifted to the sounds and bumps of the wagon and its hard-working team of horses. Just as she began to distinguish the sound of the wheels, something began happening to her vision. It was as if a laser was piercing into her sphere of reality. Suddenly the centre of her vision began to disintegrate and behind it was nothing but intense white light. The reality of the wagon slowly completely melted away and was replaced by uniform, intense white light, as bright as an electric welder. It was as if her vision had become spherical and all she could see in all directions was intense white light.
She tightened up in the chair and pulled the hose out of her mouth. She opened her eyes, gasping for air, with a look of startled panic. She calmed down quickly as she saw Adam, sitting there on his stool with a straight back, looking like he was gone to the world.
As she came more fully back to the surgery, she noticed how her T-shirt was soaked from perspiration. She relaxed back into the chair.
‘Wow,’ she whispered to herself, ‘love is light … and light is life.’
Not long after, Adam stirred to life and opened his eyes. Initially, he just stared blankly into the wall, with his mouth open, holding the hose in his lowered hand. He appeared stunned, totally blown away. After a long pause, he slowly turned toward Nancy, who was now looking at him slightly concerned, and calmly asked her,
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, thanks, but you looked a bit suspect for a while there.’
‘I’m OK.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. … How was it?’
‘It was … it was … indescribable. But I want to hear what happened to you first.’
After a short pause, Adam asked,
‘Well, do you want me to start at the beginning or at the good bit?’
‘At the beginning. I want to hear everything.’
‘OK then. I started today with the idea of focussing on my breathing. I closed my eyes and everything was dark. As the gas took effect, I heard the beat.’
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‘I know, I hear it too. What is that?’
‘I don’t know. It could be coming from us … or …’
‘Or what?’
‘Or it could be coming from … how shall I put this … from our universe, that being everything that surrounds us.’
‘I only hear it on the gas. Do you think it’s there all the time?’
‘Probably. The gas most likely attunes us to it, although it could be something else.’
‘Something else?’
‘Yeah. It could be the rhythm of another dimension. Like going to the sea to take a swim and hearing the sound of the surf before you dive into the water.’
‘Oh, that’s so beautiful, Adam. What a perfect analogy.’
‘Thank you. Anyway, as I was concentrating on keeping my breathing in time with the beat, I got this idea to visualise a giant pendulum and breathe as smoothly as it swung, which isn’t as easy as you might think, and the next thing I remember is looking up at a cloudy, smoky sky, through a circle. As I looked around, I saw that I was lying, squashed up, in the bottom of a big wicker basket. I clambered onto my knees and looked over the top, and Nancy, you won’t believe this, but the basket I was in was strapped to the back of a huge white bird, with what seemed like a fifty-foot wingspan. It was enormous and brilliant-white all over. The bird was flying high, maybe three or four thousand feet, and I could hear the wind passing over its massive wings, and it was carrying me on its back.’
‘And this was real?’
‘As real as us sitting here … realer.’
‘Wow, what a wonderful experience, like in a magic fairy tale. Oh, Adam, this is so exciting.’
‘I looked around and literally froze with trepidation when I saw the most frightening sight I’d ever seen in my whole life. We were flying over a giant canyon, I don’t know, maybe as big as a thousand Grand Canyons, maybe ten times deeper, as big as a small state … and the whole place was on fire.’
‘On fire?’
‘Yeah. It was like a giant hole in the Earth. All the rocks were glowing red-hot for as far as I could see and there was boiling lava everywhere. There were explosions, and cracks and hisses, and huge sides of cliffs were splashing down into the lava pools. The sky was full of smoke and there was a strong stench of sulphur in the air. I got frightened
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because I couldn’t see anywhere that we could land. Then I looked over at the bird’s face and I swear to you, Nancy, that bird was smiling, and oddly enough, he reminds me of this other bird experience I had recently, but that’s another story. I then knew that this bird was flying me over this unbelievably huge, molten canyon.’
‘It’s like he was trying to show it to you. Why else would he fly over it? You were meant to see it. Wow!’
‘Really? You think so? I can still hear the sounds, the cracks and hisses and explosions echoing around the canyon, and I can still see the place, red-hot and molten.
It was seriously hostile … like hell.’
‘Look how clearly you remember it. It’s amazing how, after it has happened, you remember it as if you’d actually gone there. But you’ve been sitting in this room the whole time.’
‘ Part of me went. I think the me part, not my body, but I remember myself there with my body. It’s weird, but it is how it is, and that is how it is.’
‘Yeah, that is how it is, not how we thought, not how everybody thinks. Just think, Adam, you’ve flown on the back of a huge bird, and you heard the sound of its wings?’
‘Yeah, swooooooosh, swoooooooosh.’
‘And you saw his face? Birds can’t smile, can they?’
‘I saw his face and I felt his smile, really amazing, like my face was his face. A calming, reassuring feeling came over me, like his feelings became my feelings. It’s just so indescribable.’ After a brief silence, he asked, ‘Are you feeling hungry?’
‘A little. What time is it?’
‘About one o’clock, I think.’
‘Can I describe my trip on the way down to the Quay?’
‘Sure.’
Nancy paused and took a long look at the dark surgery surrounding them.
‘It’s so dark and quiet and small, like a tiny, dark hole somewhere in the middle of the universe, and it’s such a contrast to the places we go, and yet, it is the most magic of all spaces, like the inside of an egg and we’re the little chicks breaking out through the shell.’
‘You think my surgery is magic?’
‘Yes, Adam, very magic, but it’s only because it’s filled with your spirit. It’s everywhere and it’s hidden from the whole world, secret and mysterious.’
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Adam momentarily lost himself in her pretty face.
‘Did I ever tell you how irresistible your lips are?’
‘Really?’
He leaned over and tenderly kissed her.
‘My friend.’
‘My best friend.’
They both slowly tidied everything up, stepped out of the surgery, rode the old, rickety lift down ten floors and strolled off down Castlereagh Street towards Circular Quay.
‘The city has a much more subdued, uncongested ambience on Saturday afternoons.’
‘More fun to walk through with a handsome man.’
‘Where you gonna find one of them?’
‘I know … I don’t know.’
As they strolled down the long, sunlit canyon towards the harbour, with their arms around each other, she told him about her trip, going into great detail describing the rider and his magnificent steed and marvelling at the intense light in her head, which ultimately made her panic. She concluded,
‘We only need to know that God is real, that is enough. Know that I Am. After that, there is nothing to believe in anymore, nothing to read, nothing to hope for, because you know, because you’ve seen it for yourself. It’s so exciting, Adam, and a bit scary. I wouldn’t like to be doing this on my own. I don’t know how I’d handle it not having anyone to talk to about it.’
‘Just think about it, Nancy, we can fly through space forever and not reach the edge of our universe, or we can sit perfectly still, not moving a millimetre, and go beyond the edge, beyond the infinity of our universe, and enter another one, more than likely just one of an infinite number of others.’
Half an hour later, down on the wharf at Circular Quay,
‘Hey, here comes the ferry. I’m really looking forward to being on the water. I really feel like getting off the land.’
‘Will you hug me all the way?’
‘Like a grizzly bear.’
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The ferry leisurely cruised around all the bays of the Eastern Suburbs, finally gracefully gliding through the flotilla of moored yachts dotting Watson’s Bay and delicately docking with the old, wooden wharf.
The day was warm and sunny, and there was a pleasant breeze wafting from the northeast. The sky was bright blue and cloudless and the air was smattered with seagulls flying around and squawking, competing with each other for morsels of food thrown to them by the many tourists enjoying the tranquil ambience of the bay. The beer garden was full of young people, drinking, laughing, eating and soaking up the afternoon sun. As if by magic, a couple sitting right down the front, overlooking the tiny beach, rose to leave just as Adam and Nancy arrived. Nancy sat down while Adam bought the beers.
They sat there for the rest of the afternoon, relaxing in the cool shade of a beach umbrella, checking everyone out through their trendy sunglasses, talking about the day, eating lunch, drinking beer and sneaking in the occasional, discrete peck on the lips.
‘How that sun reflects off the harbour,’ he mumbled.
Nancy just kept looking at him.
‘What?’
‘ You are my sun,’ she said to him lovingly.
‘Nancy …’
‘You are my sun, my moon and my stars.’
‘Even the stars?’
‘Yep!’
‘I just had a thought. There must be only one infinity.’
‘Hmm, I think I’ll call it Adam.’
‘Naaah! That would be like starting a new religion, and God knows we’ve got enough of them already.’ He looked into her sunglasses. ‘Did I mention how attractive you look right now?’
Her attention suddenly became distracted.
‘Look, Adam, look how those people came in a speedboat. Who needs cars?’
‘That’s one of those old-style, wooden boats, like they used to have in, I don’t know, the thirties or something, with a big inboard engine.’
‘Look how they just drove it up the beach and now they’re coming in for a beer.
Would you like another beer?’
‘I wouldn’t mind, but let me get it.’
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‘No, you relax. I’ll get it. Schooner?’
‘Middy, thanks. The schooners warm up too much before I can drink em.’
…….
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