Dandy Darkly

Wicked Little Town (part four)

Peer into the astral plane, and still today you'll see two teetering infernos of spinning fire. The columns stretch from the blistered pavement up to the mocking cosmos. Shrieking harpies with bat wings and barbed whips ride the updrafts of scorching air, seeking helpless souls to pluck from the chaos and drop to the ground below. From beneath the fallen beams crawl demons the color of carnage, and a gentle, southwestern breeze supports a rotten-candy cloud of ash, burning jet fuel, and soot covered, contorted faces lost in the dark and gasping for air.

No trip to New York is complete without an obligatory visit. There's the construction pit, offerings of flowers and cards. Annual ceremonies remembering those we lost. Elaborate murals illustrating what's to be. Though it never shall be. The site is cursed. We all know it, but can't accept it.

Look into the past and remember that day. The bravest among us, fire fighters, police, ordinary men and women who dropped everything to help the injured or the fleeing. The wall of dust held razor sharp teeth and goring horns. They found monsters in the narrow canyons of Wall Street. That morning the Veil between worlds fell with the towers. Cowering behind that car. Clutching his briefcase. Everything covered in ash. Alarms and police sirens and explosions, but all he heard was the breathing. And the growling.

Reading a comic book under the covers. Mom and dad are arguing again, but just keep reading. The flashlight's translucent glow pours through the thin paper page and casts a prismatic spray of distorted images on to the insides of the blanket. The safe blanket. Rotate the flashlight, the image shifts. The monsters and heroes melt together beneath the blanket. Count backwards and study the image. 3. Mom screams. 2. Dad screams. 1. Pull back the blanket. There's a monster in the room. Scream.

"FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! DIE MOTHER FUCKER!" - "The fucking thing had two legs and four fucking arms and a fucking spikes here and and and a fucking mouth of giant fucking teeth!" - "fuck where did it fucking come from man!?!?!!?" - "FUCK ANOTHER ONE! THERE!" - "Keep smashing it with rock! SMASH IT'S FUCKING FACE IN!!!" - "FUCK WHAT IS GOING ON?!" - IT'S THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD!!!!"

The matron has arrived, and she has the artifact. The older witches are exhausted. Many of the younger are dead or flying wounded out of the blast zone. The matron steps quickly, her focus absolute. Demons three times her size roar and sprint in her direction. They leap and instantly vaporize into sand. Her thin lips move silently. She manipulates something small swiftly and delicately within her withered, ancient hands. The women rise as she glides past. They follow in her wake. They know her sacrifice is imminent. Their most loved; their eldest. The Green Witches' tears hit the charred cement near where the drops of the matron's blood has fallen. She who was here when Manhattan was born. The matron bids them stop. There's so much more they must accomplish this dreadful day. She opens her tiny palm. To her hand she's painstakingly sewn a wooden button. The witches turn and flee from their loving mother, sister and friend. 

The conspiracy theorists say it's a government cover up for a secret radiation or nuclear testing facility beneath the World Trade Center Site. Think about it, the infected mutants in the Chelsea biohazard zone got loose and somehow busted a reactor core or something. Whatever. If you study the tapes you'll clearly see a green explosion happen at the base of the second tower a full hour and twenty minutes after the collapse. Pause it. Right there. See it? What is that green light? 

It's a sunny morning in the month of September before the September we know was. A gentle breeze blows to the southwest. Three regal women stand on the banks of a wild, untamed island. The natives claim the forests are cursed and want no ownership of it, but are willing to sell it in exchange for a few mystical trinkets. The witches confer and return with a handful of thirteen buttons. Supposedly these buttons have the power to close any door, seal any break and mend any tear. The natives refuse the thirteenth, as their shaman is highly suspicious of the number, and instead accept twelve of the magical fasteners as payment for the blighted land they call Manhattan. The matron puts the lucky thirteenth button in her pocket for safe keeping, and begins helping the sisters of the Green Witch Coven unload their tiny boat.

Overhead Projector

It was 1998, I was on the last flight out from Albuquerque to Atlanta, heading home to visit the family for Thanksgiving. Originally my departure was scheduled for that morning, but bad weather in Washington DC grounded my connecting flight. Ten hours, almost as many martinis (1998 was my martini year) and two plates of chicken fingers later, I sat crammed in a tiny regional jet flying above the desert en route to Georgia.

With a screaming infant next to me, I put my Shania Twain CD (1998 was my country year) into my portable player. With my face against the scratched Plexiglas, I stared into the night sky quietly mouthing You're Still The One.

The ground below was a mosaic of orange street lights. They seemed to scatter in a pattern that suggested a higher power simply dropped a handful of glitter on the center of each town and allowed the shining points of light to rest wherever they may.

Above, the yellow stars matched the Earth's man made jewels in equal splendor. It was a cloudless night and the space outside that humid, oppressive cabin seemed to call to me. Shania's words lulled me to sleep, even as l'infant miserable tried his damnest to keep me awake...

...

...

The jet's engines throttled and shook the sky around me. I drifted lazily and slowly opened my eyes - and sure enough there was the plane, my plane, flying away from me... and I was simply hanging in the air. The distant city lights beneath me glowed with even greater intensity, as did the stars above. And there I was, a non-corporeal entity, swaying in the indigo night sky.

It was neat.

Then I began to panic. Was I dead? I had to be dead. The Void got me. THE VOID GOT ME! This was the Der erste Tod (First Death) which I'd read about in the rare mysticism books I'd uncovered in Berlin! Think. THINK! What were the causal factors that led to my demise. The baby caused me to put on my headphones. The headphones caused me to go to sleep ... and I must have suffocated against the window. The screaming baby was an agent of The Void? The Void is Shania Twain! I paused. Obviously there was a flaw in my logic. I took a deep breath -- although I wasn't breathing, and the flight attendent asked me if I cared for a beverage.

And I was looking at her. She was looking at me. I was back in my body, back in my seat and back on the plane. I shrieked. The baby started shrieking, people around me began to moan. His mother gave me the NASTIEST LOOK EVER. The puzzled stewardess apologized in that customer-servicey way for apparently somehow startling me. Turns out that I hadn't been asleep. I'd just been sitting there staring at her while she asked me repeatedly if I wanted a soft drink. On the floor Shania faintly sang from my discarded headphones.

I declined the offer of a Fresca, and waited while the beverage cart passed. I excused myself to the restroom and splashed cold water on my face. I wasn't dead. I had experienced my first astral projection.

From Wikipedia:

Astral projection (or astral travel) is a paranormal interpretation of an out-of-body experience achieved either awake or via lucid dreaming or deep meditation. The concept of astral projection assumes the existence of another body, separate from the physical body and capable of traveling to non-physical planes of existence.

And there you have it: my spirit drifted out of the cage and came to sit in what my paranormal psyche still considers it's safe place, a dark purple sky squashed by two glorious washes of twinkling stars. To this day when I (rarely) meditate into an astral state, that is always the starting point for my non-physical journey.

I'm not sure why exactly. My meditation instructor, Mr. Patel (he's a burly, mustached macho man who I naturally nicknamed Yogi Bear), is inclined to believe the contentment of the initial location: going home, the sensation of flight and the serene view outside the window, were all factors in why I begin my astral travels at that very spot.

Regardless, astral projection isn't something I particularly enjoy. Whereas Mr. Patel routinely passes his consciousness between the worlds of the Spirit and Man, I'm a little too attracted to my own body, not to mention Mr. Patel's. Woof. I'm more than content to keep my soul inside my body and my body securely on the ground.