Chapter 13 again - in which I completely lose track of space and time

Rewind... several readers have asked why Roger and Gill are absent when I reconnect to Faery – why they aren’t the first to greet me when I came back online.

The main reason is quarantine. It had to be 100% my decision without any outside influence – and they were the two with the most influence over me – so it was desirable to have them out of the picture. Furthermore, my communications embargo had force of law, so they couldn’t contact me even if they’d wanted to. As far as they were concerned my eventual return was a foregone conclusion, so they were busy plotting the next stages of story with Mr Wu and the gnomiki...

Now, where were we...?

“Master Wu?”

“Yes, come in. Not a word please.”

Ah yes, I remember... so without a word I follow him, or it, into a dimly lit room and we sit down on cushions. “It” I say not out of any disrespect but because Master Wu is elflike and hard to place in human terms.

We start our meditation and after five minutes or so he gets up and shows me to the door. I’m a bit surprised and ask him if anything’s the matter. He replies “no, same time on Thursday” and I go home. It’s only when I get outside and see it’s already dark I realise something has happened. I’ve lost an hour at least – maybe more. I glance at the time on my phone – 8.30 pm – I’ve been in there an hour and a half. Unbelievable. I try to reconnect my missing sense of time but can remember nothing.

Please don’t ask me to explain how I get from Tunbridge Wells in England to Manhattan. Gill tried to do so but to no avail – we have what natural scientists refer to as a missing link. But how on earth my mind fails to notice the reality shift from Kibbles Lane in Tunbridge to Manhattan’s lower East side, I cannot conceive, but fail it does – spectacularly. Suffice it to say there’s no way I could have flown the distance in the time available or with my meagre finances. So, let’s just put it down to g-nome’s teleportation and translocation department – that, and the mind’s natural ability to ignore or completely overlook anything that it simply cannot comprehend.

Thursday comes and again I knock at Master Wu’s door, determined to solve the mystery. I do everything possible to stay mentally alert and avoid losing my time awareness yet discover to my chagrin that again, approximately two hours have passed by unnoticed. This continues for three weeks before Master Wu unexpectedly tells me to open my eyes midway through our session. I’m surprised by this as I’m absolutely sure at that moment my eyes are open – that I’m looking directly at Master Wu, and also because his voice seems to come from behind me to the left – which would have him on the other side of a brick wall – but something quivers, twitches, a flickering spasm, and the next thing I know I’m sitting outside with Master Wu next to a beautiful lake covered with lotus flowers. Double take. I’m looking at Master Wu sitting under the shade of a tree by this lake. It’s warm. We’re wearing loose fitting oriental clothes, I feel very peaceful, strangely confident, warm and tingly inside, while at the same time I’m aware of myself back in Manhattan, sitting rigidly with my eyes open, oblivious to all that’s going on on this side of Mind.

I’m about to call over to myself, to attract my attention, but Master Wu asks me not to – without uttering a sound. I just know he said it, or meant to, and I’m happy to comply. So I leave my Manhattan self alone, and continue enjoying the feelings of well-being that I’m now experiencing as never before – and they seem to be unfolding like a lotus flower – taking me into new areas of conscious-awareness, starting with my little toe, working throughout my body, then connecting with the lake, with a tree nearby, with a cloud, and onwards. I’m able to experience aspects of myself and the world around me by allowing these temporary connections to form and then dissolve, sensing, almost tasting what they have to tell. It’s amazing... wonderful... yawn!

Behold, the inadequacy of words – why we so rarely dwell on the sublime in literature – as language seems to be designed to make it sound flat and dull, and always describes Lucifer’s hedonistic hell so much better than God’s harpy heaven... But the experience itself – I’m completely absorbed. Ah – there’s so much... so much to feel, to learn, to know. The present moment is like a well of unfathomable depth connecting me with myriad levels of consciousness, and I’m drinking thirstily, deprived for so long of this kind of Mindful experience. And will I remember it at all when I wake up in Master Wu’s dingy apartment?

No such luck! Zilch. That part of me is still in the dark, when I shift my awareness back to the regular level, but elsewhere, in parallel, there’s the me that  continues to experience reality from the lotus lake, which is able to watch and observe what’s going on in my normal existence. This is something new. I’m in stereo – and I know without any doubt whatsoever which part of me is more real.

“What’s the point,” I complain to Gill in a moment of lucidity. “I’ve learnt to connect with countless realms with Master Wu, yet am none the wiser in my normal state of consciousness? I haven’t even figured out the minor inconsistency of his apartment being in Manhattan. I could spend the rest of my life accumulating experience that I’m unable to apply, as I have no recollection whatsoever of whatever I’ve learnt.”

“Wait and see,” she replies. “Your body isn’t stupid. It remembers what you don’t” – which sounds suspiciously like I’m being told I’m dumb. Fair enough – I can handle that.

By the time we get the all clear signal from the gnomiki for first flight I feel a sense of... if not exactly optimism – eager, verging on heady, anticipation. I shouldn’t be at all confident. After all the sessions with Mr Wu I’m none the wiser regarding how I’m to reconnect to g-nome. It boggles the mind – somehow every single cell in my body has to become a receiver-transmitter of g-nome portal’s heavily encrypted signal, known as “Cuckoo la la”. If I’m able to tune into it then the genetic material in my cells, instead of being passive junk, suddenly realigns itself into a vast biological computer with g-nome portal as the hub and router. It’s a chrysalis moment of metamorphosis. All being well I’m going to become a different species – homo gnomicus.

Having gazed longingly at the electric blue beetle countless times I almost feel like it’s become a part of me. I’m really looking forward to this first encounter. Gill’s buzzing around the room, a little nervously, as the moon comes up. The sky is clear. It’s a beautiful night. This could have been done in the daytime but it’s felt that I’m more a night owl, so that’s why the gnomiki have gone for night flight. It feels right to me. I’m tingling with chills going up and down my spine, aware of the deep mystery that’s about to enfold me.

“Now just make yourself comfortable as Mr Wu has taught you,” Gill says. I’m thinking to myself, “that’s a joke, he’s taught me nothing,” but no sooner do I settle down than I feel myself coming effortlessly, gently, peacefully, deeply into my tautological self, and absolutely loving the feeling – like nothing could be better, nothing could be finer than simply being within myself – feeling the whole breadth, depth, range and spectrum of my body and my being, and in this state I’m once again connected, once again aware of my being with Master Wu. Time and space are irrelevant.

Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosh!!!! I’m away.