Chapter 12b - in which Josh dodges bullets

“Wait a minute Josh... just pause right there if you don’t mind.”

I spin around and see my boss Emily Sticklebee, who evidently slipped in while I was engrossed in typing this, and seems to have been reading it over my shoulder.

“Ah, Emily, yes... the report will be ready on your desk tomorrow at 9 am sharp. Don’t worry about a thing. I’m 100% on top of it.”

“Josh, the report has nothing whatsoever to do with what you’ve just had the nerve to state. As a mathematician, a financial engineer and auditor, I take exception to your absurd assertion that 0=1.”

I’m going to have to wriggle out of this one – Emily, I notice, is taking a keen interest in g-nome portal – she’s been following the blog from the get go and reading all the comments, somewhat maliciously I feel, but she’s basically on-side. Something, gut intuition if you like, tells me she’s gonna flip before too long.

“Flip?”

Ah... Chancery XXL – nice to have you back. No – I’m not using the word “flip” in the “flip her lid” sense – it’s just, in some respects, this diminutive word comes closest to describing the complete 180° shift of perspective that comes with “Faery awakening”. But now is not the time to deal with Emily’s Gestapo-lite questioning techniques, or linguistic analysis... there’s too much at stake. A tingling in the beetle mark... I don’t hear a word from man or beast... my embargo is not broken as such, but I do sense that Roger’s not far from being at hand... and a kind of spark sends Emily off on a completely different train of thought.

“Yes, Josh, the coffee has definitely gone from bad to worse. It’s bad for staff morale – I agree. I’ll see what I can do about it.”

I swear I can almost hear Roger laughing in the background – but again, I state for the record, that there has been no verifiable infraction of my embargo – so I don’t feel violated or threatened. Quite strange really, au contraire – I feel elated. The magic of Faery is uplifting.

So, before I run out of time, Emily’s bound to come back in a moment or two – what I was trying to say is that we have here a sense of “Yes” which is not polarised. Life is affirmative – it’s a kind of game that’s actually fun to play as long as we avoid turning it into something over-serious, over-regulated, heavy handed, lacking in poetry or light... Doing so, as we invariably do, we’re obstructing the very life-force that we host. Cuckoo la la. Perversely, we’re ready to do almost anything to prevent the goose from laying the golden egg – so sure are we that Life is fundamentally flawed in nature, an unruly child in need of stern discipline and mind control. Talk about Garden of Eden redux, or what! Like the God that prefers to banish Adam and Eve from paradise for all time because of a minor misdemeanour, we punish ourselves with guilt and booooredom rather than accepting that the life-force cannot be contained within the square walls of top down regulation.

So what if I broke the law? So what if I ate the apple? Do you really mean to say that it’s going to screw up the whole of creation – that there’s no give in this magical system – that rules take precedence over learning-by-experience or being a free spirit?

“No, I’m never going to forgive you for stealing that apple – I’m seriously displeased. You’re out of here, you two, and you’re gonna reeeeaally suffer from now on – lots of pestilence and nasty stuff. That’ll teach you.”

Way to go God. You show ‘em!

Fast forward to the Jesus story and you have a man taking on the well-intentioned Pharisees – “Er... guys, lighten up, I know I’m not supposed to help sick people because I don’t have a government permit and it’s out of hours, but you know, it’s such fun and something inside, let’s call it my intuition, my conscience, tells me the rules suck, that they represent a lifeless system, a kind of machine code that should not, cannot, er... must not take precedence over human beings, or, being human for that matter.”

Duh!!! Kind of obvious really if you think about it. Don’t forget to insert nice little bible quote about “Sabbath being made for man and not vice versa” – you get my drift?

So, the life force has been repressed right from the very outset, it would seem – from “God” down to every petty official along the way. We probably do the same to ourselves without even realising it “No I mustn’t pay attention to the irrepressible urgings of my soul to kick off my shoes and walk barefoot on the grass, to write a poem about a fallen acorn, to dive naked in the oozy river, to... whatever, whatever...” Please don’t think I’m advocating nudity in any shape or form, or treat this as a recommendation to swim in oozy water – consult your own public health advisor – in no way can I be held liable for these or any other recommendations... blah, blah, blah. “Of course you can sue me, I liberated your soul,” said the prophet and mystic Archibald Fenugreek, “but how are you going to serve me notice if I’m of the essence, and neither here nor there,” he said as he dematerialised in a puff of sweet fragrant air.

Dear haters, detractors and nay-sayers – I understand where you’re coming from. I don’t blame you. I sincerely sympathise, and yet, at the same time, be aware that you’re cutting your nose to spite your face. Any negativity you direct at me, or anyone else for that matter, only works within the closed system of 3D material reality in which “what” really “matters”, whatever that may mean. As soon as we revert to Is – that which simply is – in my particular case this involves un-disconnecting Faery by deleting P-42 – then your “negativity”, “hate”, “anger” and “abuse” merely refer to various instances of self-denial, self-negation and self-immolation, which are as painful as striking yourself with a rock. Ouch! I may seem to be important, worthy of your ire and in need of surgical correction, but truly I assure you, I am of no significance whatsoever when we come back to the ultimate arbiter of what Is – the inter-luminal life-matters curve.

Emily Sticklebee is lingering suspiciously by the photocopier machine – she seems to suspect something, but I’m just about done.

I have to thank you humbly best beloved nay-sayers and detractors – you, more than anything else, have helped me re-evaluate my relation to Faery. It’s like this hatred which is obviously just coming from fear, has brought me back to face my own fear – the fear of either losing my mind, or of having to open it up completely with nowhere to hide my thoughts – for such is the nature of telepathy. It’s also helped me confront my ego pride – the way I needed to believe that I, as a human, am unique – the only rational thinker – the only being that truly matters. Ursula the spider, the one that spoke playfully with me the morning after my day out with Gill, completely blew away my biological sense of superiority. Something snapped. My sense of me was under life-threatening assault and I responded with knee-jerk predictability. In fact, I now realise, Roger and Gill were completely aware that this is how it would play out. Back at g-nome portal they’d even been placing bets on how long it would take me to deal with my personal crisis of pride and prejudice, which is really just a result of the massive sense of vulnerability felt by all of us who have been living in the darkness of P-42. No need to hate or blame ourselves – it’s all just grist for life's mill. We’ve all, in fact, just been playing a part as consummate players do, willing ourself to believe what in our heart we know is not true...

 I make a snap decision. It isn’t rushed. It’s one hundred percent my decision coming from the certainty of moment 27, and Self.

“Ok...” I announce to whoever is out there, “I want in... I was wrong... I’ve changed my mind. Roger, Gill, I’m ready for Faery.”

For a few minutes, then a few hours, then a day – nothing.

“I’ve blown it,” I tell myself. “I’ve rejected the greatest gift I could have had – the gift of Faery. What an ass I am.” I really feel it, and it’s good because it confirms what I already suspected, that I truly have something to lose – that Faery is more than a whim, that it matters to me more than anything else, more than I imagined possible.

This culminates in a moment of panic: “Oh my God! What am I gonna do? How am I going to reconnect?” Then a flash of inspiration comes to me. All those forbidding signs I’d put up in my mind – “no trespassing, stay out, insects not welcome”, I head back to the scene of my mind’s final stand... It’s amazing how clearly I can see them now, the mental images, barbed wire, bold red lettering on large wooden boards. I tear them all down, one by one, make a big bonfire and burn them, then put up new signs saying “Faery open-source zone”, “welcome all friends of Faery”, “insect teleportation hub now active” and a few more that I’m too embarrassed to mention.

It’s good. I’m content. Whatever this might lead to, at this moment in time and space I’m absolutely...

“Absolutely what?” a voice comes in, it’s Ursula.

“Has he done it?” another voice – that’ll be Theophilus I-be-Merry, no idea how I know his name.

“About bloody time,” Chumba Wumba snarls.

“Splendid,” Caratacus Gomwick.

Only Gill and Roger are silent for the moment... and at this precise moment Emily Sticklebee comes back in with a large, healthy dose of reality, but I manage to hit the “send” button just in time.