the uncle Sarge dream

flowers, surrounded us. hues of brilliant pinks, reds, blues and a sprinkling of lavender and yellow. and i had finally found him. the flowers made a perfect happy circle around us and we sat flourishing exactly in the middle, just him and i.

time outside the circle marched on. i could see the greys and the various shades of nightfall's black so clearly. and then the light baby blues of day-skies breaking gently. i saw the sun rise and set gloriously and numerous times either way. it even rained and then stopped abruptly.

butterflies, and birds, they flew and they chirped. a nurse waited for him outside our circle, in her severely starched white hat and uniform. it was a clean, organized English lawn we were sitting on. and he was alive and cheery, and he changed repeatedly as we spoke. from being his black-and-white self in a pin-striped suit with short thick curly black hair and his thick black round frames from days long past. to himself at 60 something and in vivid color, just as he was before his stroke, the year before he passed on.

we never moved from where sat, the two of us together, in the all encompassing circle of flowers. we were blissfully still, and only our mouths stirred. the words were there, being exchanged, rapidly at times between us. i could see that we were talking endlessly, and we were belabouring points. we were laughing at times, and then i was crying and then we were laughing all over again. he was ever calm, paternal, and loving throughout.

i felt warm and genuinely fuzzy, and i had a real sense of support and belonging. he was sharing with me finally, the universe's biggest kept secret of what happens to you when you die. the journey beyond. the process of becoming dead. the rules of afterlife and beyond. the answers to if you ever come back, and the when and why it sometimes doesn't happen. the answers to: do you get to watch your loved ones move on within their karmatic circles of life on Earth? do you get to guide them and reach out to them in dreams and whispers?

he was keeping his promise of coming back and telling me this ultimate truth. and i was with him again, sitting there just absorbing greedily. only i couldn't hear the sound of those words, from where i suddenly was, standing outside that circle watching myself within. it was like God himself had turned off the volume and moved my conscious soul into an observing silence, least He sacrifice the age old debate of life-after-death in allowing the words to filter through. yes, uncle Sarge did keep his promise of coming back to me in a dream, after he was gone from us, to finally reveal it all.

deep down, i am sure i know now, what to expect, even if i can't tell you in our man-made words. i am at peace and i know it is sitting somewhere within my subconscious, these answers to all our long debates. i know too that he is in utter bliss and that he went back to the UK. that he is walking upon his gentle green lawns, and that he dresses like a right gentleman. and that he frequents the pubs still, and everyone knows him by name.

Door number 7

Mi futuro es tan brillante que tendre que ponerme gafas = My future's so bright I got to get some shades.

walking through life blind. i think that is pretty much what karma is all about.

you think you have laid out all YOUR choices, there they are all lined up, out there on the table now, and you have studied each permutation of each possible variable. ready to deal now with what you chose.

and then ka-pow. one letter is dropped into your lap, giving you under 10 minutes to decide to take what's behind Door number 7. it's non-negotiable.

and Door number 7 is inevitable now, it didn't exist 10 minutes ago. it has just shimmered into existence, simply because YOU didn't do what you needed to do by now, on your road map of life. you haven't learnt all you needed to learn, or settled all that you needed to by the time you got to this exact life marker. clock is ticking and to stay in the game, you need to suffer a little. time for some pay back to the universe.

so what to do? you have no choice. you open Door number 7. sometimes with a breaking heart, and very shaky knees. but you do it anyways. sometimes you open that symbolic Door with your eyes wide open, like an animal caught in somebody's headlights. sometimes you're squinting. but most times you blink rapidly, forcing yourself to remember to breathe, and not to start crying.

in hind-sight, Door number 7 was the God-most-awful decision anyone could have made, and it takes YOU as many years (as in an equivalent number) of keeping your head down, and your actions honest, to be able to take out that dark stain on your life's history of choices. before the whispers finally stop and your family and friends can look you in your eye and smile again. before you wake up smiling.

but then you start all over and are back to laying out all those options, on the table, again. and then you get this next letter dropped into your lap. and although every iota of e.v.e.r.y. cell in your body is telling you that you are in love, and your friends are telling you that you are glowing and they have never seen you happier, that letter, it says clearly your "man" he ain't never going to love you the way you love him, sista. and guess what? he will also start to extricate himself from your life as one big sacrifice to his friendship, so his conscience is clear and he feels this will make you move on and so he imagines that very soon YOU will get to feel all white-fluffy-cloud-feeling + pink-heart-romance all over again. with someone else.

and no matter how many times you feel like you need to scrape your guts off that kitchen floor, to be able to open up that next Door. and your soul, she dies just a little bit more, all over again, and with moist eyes, and innards twisted in anguish, with a hardened heart and a malicious sway, you away...

reflections of my friend, Narelle

she is just lying there now, her body crumbling from the inside out,
and she is losing her battle to death-by-cancer, in fast-forward.
closing my eyes here at my desk in Kuala Lumpur, i am a lifetime away and i can only imagine her there, wedged deep within her blinding anguish. it is surreal.

i wonder constantly where her soul is now? is it still trapped inside of her, feeling each fresh pulse of pain, each fresh battle lost, as the cancer continues on savagely to consume methodically and to decay some more? i can almost see it moving on in sheer precision to the next untouched spot, to devour and to corrupt. or is her soul thankfully embracing the heavy doses of medication, meted out to numb her into oblivion and bridge the journey she must now undertake alone?

is she already floating above? watching her new-12 day husband and eternal soul-mate, her sad father and her strong mother, her loving friends, as they rally around her stagnant, emaciated frame? watching each one of them helplessly, unable to come back? or maybe she has already said her good-byes to them, and leaving them sitting there still, has simply flown out of the window, and up into the clear blue Melbourne skies above?

i remember vividly the very first time we met, Camo and i. and how i was absolutely awed by her red hair, and sparkling bright eyes, her heavy doc martins. and now in a blink, 17 long years on, i remember the very last time we met, pre-Chinese New Year 2007. all bones, naked skin-head, she was struggling to hold herself steady on her steel crutches, smiling contagiously as she opened the door for me. noticing my Double Happiness pendant and calling it by name (which is no small feat), she was convinced i should start dating on-line, and how i may just meet my prince there (as she did herself all those years ago now).

she had this thing about her toes back in university. she would never ever walk barefoot least someone accidentally touched her feet, and she was petrified of the shivers it would then start deep inside of her. i think of that often when i walk barefoot now, and i wonder when God will finally take her?
or is she gone from us already, and her comatose body merely a symbol for us that hold on to her still?

the ant

Un arenque, por favor = One herring, please.

i almost walked onto an ant in the elevator, the other day.
tiny and black, crawling quickly in small crop circles,
its movement immediately obvious to me on the cold marble floor.

i lifted my boot, and let it hover over the little creature, wondering what it was doing in the elevator and all alone.
it was oblivious to my shadow, and kept to its sacred mission in life, faithfully and without deviation.
i lowered my foot away from it then, a little shameful to have even considered, sending it back to its maker.

it continued on, in equal frantic circles, making its way dizzily onto the blacker marble slabs, slowly disappearing into the darker design.
i wondered then how God decides which one of us should be "taken" from our daily rituals of life. which one of us will be next?
and i shook my head clear, stepping out to start the afternoon.