FINDING THE FOUNDATION

Foundation of House, Kings River

CHAPTER SIX:  A TRIP TO CHURCH

   Cashing had no discretionary income but indulged in short trips to the foothills, where he would often trespass to explore the trails and village sites along creeks and rivers, the price of retaining his sanity, he rationalized. One day as he drove on a single lane road along the Kings River, he glanced at the floodplain and for a second glimpsed the concrete foundation of a large building below in the flood plain of the river. He experienced at that moment a twinge of remembrance but did not recall the significance of the foundation until he was falling asleep that evening, suddenly recalling a trip to the Kings River with his family when he was eleven or twelve, not long after they had moved to Fresno from Los Angeles. He and his brother had slept on the back seat as the car slowly wound its way up the hills, both of them waking as the car glided into a grassy area next to the road, “In the Ghetto” by Elvis Presley coming in clear on the radio, his Dad, before turning off the car, uncharacteristically allowing the song to reach its conclusion.
   As his Dad fished from a sandy bank, Justin gazed transfixed at a huge spider web in the foliage near the road until he located a bulbous spider in the corner of the web and jumped back, horrified. Justin's brother called from a dirt road next to the river, excitedly yelling that he had found something, then dashing off down the road and vanishing in bushes behind a tall tree. Justin sprinted after him but couldn’t find him. 
   Feeling suddenly very alone, Justin tip-toed between the bushes, expecting an ambush, until he noticed his brother off in the distance in a clearing.
   “What took you so long?” his brother sneered.
   Justin saw several large slabs of concrete. Looking closer, he recognized that the concrete formed the foundation of a large building, a fact which had initially escaped him because several trees were growing inside what used to be a house. He jumped up on the foundation and walked around on a low concrete wall until he reached a point where the concrete was broken up by the roots of the trees.
   Confused, afraid and fascinated all at once, suddenly unable to move, Justin stared at the uncountable leaves inside what was left of the house.
   “Let’s go,” his brother shouted.
   “No,” Justin responded, uncharacteristically.
   His brother squinted. “C’mon, let’s go! What’s your damn problem?”
   Justin just stared at the tumbled concrete of the foundation. His brother took off, leaving Justin alone again. He looked around carefully, disappointed, on one hand, by his inability to comprehend the feelings inspired by the foundation, and, on the other, by the fact that he would never be able to inch all the way around the house on the low, concrete wall, as if on a tight rope.
   Finally, Justin got down from the concrete, suddenly hearing a loud voice in his head, “You will be back in thirty-five years….” 
   Scared out of his wits, Justin raced back through the bushes to the dirt road, wanting to tell everyone about that voice, which he had never heard before. But when Justin crept up to his father, who was silently reeling in the line, suddenly the voice didn‘t seem real anymore.
   Thirty five years later, Justin noticed the foundation of the house as he was driving by, never before glancing down at the river bottom at exactly the right moment on any of the other trips he had taken to the Kings River.
   The next day, during the meditation portion of his daily ritual, Justin envisioned the God Horus standing on a concrete stage at one end of the foundation. That didn’t make sense to Justin because he only remembered the concrete where the walls of the different rooms had been, so he drove back to the Kings River the next week to investigate the foundation and discovered that the house did indeed have two concrete patios resembling stages at both ends--his waking vision truer than his memory of the place. When he stood next to the concrete, everything seemed to be as it had that day thirty-five years before, as if he had been gone only a few minutes, the river flowing serenely beyond a small beach of white sand, the dirt road still heading back beyond huge sycamores and oaks, the spider web gone, his father dead of a heart attack a few years after that fishing trip thirty-five years ago, his family members almost losing touch.
   During the period that he rediscovered the foundation, Justin had become an occultist, communing with Isis, Thoth, and Osiris during his personal rituals. In the process, he had experienced symbolic death several times in meditation as well as a great sense of cosmic harmony, and he recognized that the Christ is not a man but a cosmic force that the symbolic forms of savior figures such as Osiris, Dionysus, and Jesus personify, enabling the worshipper to channel the force into the heart and mind. Thoth, the heart and tongue of Ra, embodies the mighty Logos, the Word that channels the primal forces into manifestation, and Isis looms as the Mighty Mother, the root of all form in the manifested universe. Horus shines as the symbol of the higher self, the expression of Divine Will on the physical plane, conceived after Isis put Osiris back together.
   When he returned thirty-five years later to the foundation of the house, Justin imagined Horus standing on the concrete slab, which was more like an altar than a patio or a stage, and Justin's inner voice whispered that he should not give his spiritual power away to anything or anyone on the physical plane. Justin consciously became at that moment what he had tried to avoid, as if he had suddenly grown into a set of clothes that had always been waiting for him: A renegade who would go his own way no matter what. He wondered for a moment if his new-found friendship with Peter was in any way part of his path now.

Pounding Stone, Kings River and Big Creek

   At breakfast, Peter’s mother asked, "Why are you spending so much time with that man?"
   "What man?" Peter replied.
   "The man in apartment 104."
   "Oh, you mean Justin. We just talk about stuff."
   "I bet I know why he spends so much time over there," Chuck paused. "Because he’s gay!"
   "Mom," Peter whined.
   "Does that man ever touch you?" his mom asked.
   "No! What are you talking about? We just like to hang out together."
   Chuck stepped behind his mother and mouthed the word "fairy." 
   "Where did you get these?" Peter’s mother held out his pack of Tarot cards. "Chuck found these in your top dresser drawer."
   "Tell him to stay out of my stuff!" Peter yelled.
   "Did that man give these to you?" his mom asked.
   "No, he just helps me understand what they mean."
   "And how does he know what they mean?"
   "He knows a lot of things. I don’t know. He reads a lot. He’s a philosopher," Peter replied.
   "I don’t want these cards in my house," his mother insisted. "Your father and I agree. We are a good Christian family and this sort of thing does not belong here." She threw the Tarot cards in the garbage.
   "Mom!"
   "I don’t want you wasting your money on that stuff anymore, and I don’t want you spending any more time with that man. You can’t trust anyone these days. Now go clean your room. I don’t want you to come out until that room is spotless."
   "But, Mom!"
   "Go, now!"
   Later that day, Peter sneaked out of the apartment. When Justin opened the door, Peter mumbled, "My mom found the Tarot cards. She doesn’t want me to talk to you anymore."
   "You’re kidding? Do you want me to have a chat with her?" Justin asked.
   "No, she won’t listen to anyone. She gets an idea in her head and won’t let it go. She doesn’t trust anybody."
   Justin stared at Peter. "I have an idea," Justin said. "Can you sneak out to the church down the street? We can meet there and act like we’re praying."
   "Okay, I’ll meet you there in ten minutes," Peter blurted out.
   Peter hustled back to the apartment, grabbed his bike and told his mom that he was going out for a ride. He rushed out the door before he could hear her reply.
   He was down the street in no time. Pretty soon, Cashing pulled his Corolla up and parked along the curb. They entered together and plopped down in a pew. No one else appeared to be in the church.
   "Remember how I described it, the meditation, I mean," Peter said.
   Cashing stared at the cross on the altar for a moment and then closed his eyes. As Cashing imagined the black Calvary cross, it seemed to come alive in his mind or in some other dimension, and Cashing could almost believe that black energy was floating from the old woman’s body to the cross. Then Cashing imagined her whole being filling with light, and, perhaps because of his compassion for her, Cashing had the sense that he was really helping her.
   Then Cashing suddenly felt regret for things that he had done wrong, and just as he was about to ask forgiveness for himself, he heard a voice, "Can I help you?"
   Cashing and Peter opened their eyes. The minister was hovering over them. "We’re just prayin’together," Cashing said.
   "I’m sorry. I know Peter here because he comes to youth group, but I’m afraid I don’t know you," the minister said.
   "Justin Cashing. Peter and I have recently become friends," Cashing said.
   "It’s so wonderful to have both of you here," the minister said. "It’s not easy to find men who will mentor the youth in our community. Do you go to a nearby church?"
   "I’m just getting back to my roots, so to speak. I thought I would just check out your church because Peter spoke so highly of it."
   The minister looked surprised. "Well, feel free to come by anytime," the minister smiled.
   "Thank you," Peter and Cashing chimed.
   "I think it’s time to go," Cashing mumbled.
   "Do you think we had any effect?" Peter asked.
   "I’m sure we had an effect, but I’m not sure it’s the one we wanted. How well does the minister know your parents?"
   "Pretty well."
   "Well enough to call them to ask about me?"
   "Yeah, maybe."
   "Well, maybe it’s about time you got home."
   "Okay," Peter said and quickly rode off.
   "We probably had an effect, all right," Cashing muttered.

CHAPTER FOUR: VISIONS OF ARCHETYPES

Milling

CHAPTER FIVE: THE GOOD VISIONS

   Justin woke at two-thirty in the morning, but he came very close to drifting off again by three-thirty. By then his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and the streetlight casting thin bars of light on the walls seemed so bright that he began to realize that attempting to sleep was probably just an exercise in futility. At that moment, he had the sense, as perhaps most people do when approaching old age, that he hadn’t accomplished much with his life, and he knew then with regretful certainty that he wouldn’t sleep anymore, thanks to that thought. Oddly, though, Justin suspected that even if he had become emperor, he would still feel the same lack of satisfaction, a thought which, though giving him a strange and unexpected sense of liberation, did not help him get back to sleep.
   As these thoughts were whirling around in his head, Justin heard a woman screaming and cursing as if from deep inside a cave, and he believed for a moment, irrationally of course, that his thoughts had somehow caused her to despair. Like attracts like, and Justin suspected that he felt comfortable around people who cannot hide the damage that life has done to them. That was no doubt one reason that he had ended up in Sin City, a place where the damaged, one step away from homelessness or jail, came to hide or die, or in rare cases, recover. Originally known as the El Dorado District, Sin City had the highest poverty rate in the state. Celia, the drunk in Apt. 105, occasionally howled and screamed her regrets in the early morning hours until the police or an ambulance arrived, so Justin knew he wasn't dreaming. The people in his apartment complex just couldn't hide their strangeness, which was strangely comforting to him. Shirley, downstairs, a housewife, was anorexic, a living skeleton who always had a friendly smile, as if no one could see her condition. Kevin next door would take half a bottle of baby aspirin for a rush if he didn’t have any crank. Albert, who was terribly obese, had boasted that he had dodged the police once already for credit card fraud--Albert had loaded what little furniture he owned into his station wagon and disappeared one night. His rent three months over due, Jackson, a small, sickly man, loaded over twenty rifles into his van at two in the morning and drove off, never to be seen again.
   Justin shared an interest in music with his next-door neighbor Tom, the wildest-looking man Justin had ever encountered, and they jammed together occasionally in Tom’s living room--Tom's entire apartment containing only a mattress, two chairs, and a motorcycle. Justin had the urge to offer something that might help them in some way, but he was always afraid that he would look presumptuous if he tried to help, so he usually just remained polite.
   And in the early morning hours, he would sometimes hear what seemed to be a howl from one apartment which then morphed into pained, ecstatic groans from another, so that he wasn’t quite sure how to react. The voices would fade away or stop before he could tell where they were coming from. Even though they might have been coming from next door, the voices seemed far off, from another world, like the voices in his head that sometimes told him what would happen that day or decades later. Justin suddenly recalled the time he was lounging next to a remote mountain stream with a friend when he heard a man close by singing in another language. Justin exclaimed, “Wow, that’s incredible,” and ran down the stream to find the singer, leaving his friend behind. Justin couldn’t find anyone else even though the singer seemed to be right on the other side the creek, belting out one perfect song after another. A few months later, Justin mentioned the singer to his friend, and his friend looked at him and asked, “Are you crazy? What the hell are you talking about?” Justin secretly concluded that he had heard an angel, but he didn't mention it to anyone else. Other people in the apartment complex were like Justin, in a way. They weren’t sure what they were hearing, if anything at all, so they didn’t get involved, even if a stranger ran naked and screaming down the stairs in broad daylight right in front of them.
   At first light, moans and curses turned into blood-curdling screams. Justin peered out his window to see an old woman strapped down to a stretcher, clawing the air, weeping and groaning as she was wheeled out to an ambulance.
   Peter had stepped out into the courtyard to observe. Justin stepped out of the door behind Peter. "The most vulnerable are already starting to lose it. That’s what happens when the owner raises the rent thirty percent. Most people here, I suspect, are already a month or two behind."
   "May dad says she's just a crazy old drunk. Is that true?" Peter asked.
   "Yep, but that old gal has suffered a lot in her time. She was once a music teacher who lost her job after slapping an incorrigible child--at least that's the story she told me. Other people have told me that after she lost her job she started drinking heavily and neglected her own child, who was eventually taken away from her. Then she started drinking even more and resorting to prostitution. I once invited her to my apartment for dinner because she looked like she needed a decent meal. She didn’t touch a thing I served, and later she started asking me what I really wanted. I told her that I just wanted her to feel better, and she started weeping bitterly and insisted that I wanted something from her. She finally just went home."
   Peter dashed over to the woman and grabbed her hand. The old woman, who had been screaming and moaning, suddenly relaxed and closed her eyes as Peter comforted her.

Vision

   Cashing squinted, staring at Peter, and followed them over to the ambulance. Suddenly Peter beamed at Cashing. "You know, I had an idea last night. Can I tell you about it?" Peter looked over at Cashing’s apartment.
   "Sure, come on over," Cashing motioned to his apartment.
   "You see, I’ve had other visions too," Peter mentioned when they got inside.
   "I should have known! Go on."
   "Well, once I had a vision of a golden, equal-armed cross. Then I had a vision of a golden crown on my head. Another time I had a vision of a golden plate and chalice on a brilliant white tablecloth. They all seemed to go together. When I had these visions, I felt like these things were not just for me but for everybody. What do you think they mean?"
   "What do you think they mean? That’s what’s important," Cashing insisted.
   "I think they are all good things that we all have inside us," Peter said.
   "Very good things indeed," Cashing replied.
   "Why do you think everything was golden?"
   "Well, gold, because it is incorruptible, is often a symbol of the spirit. White, by the way, not only symbolizes purity--it also suggests unity since white is a combination of all the colors."
   Peter continued, "Last night I started imagining the people I know with a golden crown on their head, a golden cross in their heart, all seated at a table with a white tablecloth, covered with golden plates and chalices. I felt like I was helping them somehow."
   Cashing looked Peter in the eye, "Well, maybe you did help them in one way. It seems to me that you were seeing them all as magnificent spiritual beings with divine harmony in their hearts, seated at a banquet of spiritual abundance. Just looking at other people that way helps you to have more reverence for them."
   Peter looked seriously at Cashing. "But it seemed like more than that. Like these symbols were magical and were actually helping them. I don’t know how to explain it."
   "You mean that concentrating on these symbols was actually affecting those people somehow, as if we are all connected to each other on some level?"
   "Yeah. Let me tell you about something else," Peter paused for a moment. "I’ve had a vision of a black cross too, a real cross, the kind you see everywhere, not an equal-armed cross."
   Cashing smiled, "You mean a Calvary cross?"
   "Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, I imagined giving all of my pain and all of the bad things I’ve done to it. I could see all the blackness leaving me and going into this cross, and then I felt much better. It was like magic."
   Cashing looked surprised. "Okay, wait a second. You’re suggesting that these symbols exist in some other dimension but that we can use them here in our lives? I have to confess that I’ve never thought of using archetypes in quite that way before. In other words, the black cross exists on a different plane to take away our sin and suffering and create harmony in our lives. It would have to be the astral plane, by the way, because that is where the archetypes and symbols appear in picture form for our subconscious mind. According to our occult friends, the higher spiritual planes are formless."
   Peter looked puzzled.
   "Okay, wait a minute," Cashing blurted out. "I’ll be right back." Cashing trotted to a closet in his bedroom and came back with a book. 
   Cashing held up the book. "This is a picture of the Tree of Life, a very ancient glyph, or composite symbol. Legend has it that an angel gave it to humanity. Notice that in the center of the Tree there is a yellow sun, and in the center of the sun is a black Calvary cross. This central sphere with the cross is the Christ center, the center of equilibrium. I think I understand what you're saying--by God, the black cross is literally a magical symbol. If you’re right, savior figures have experienced the archetypal sacrifice to establish the black cross in the center of equilibrium, the sphere of balance, and it remains there for all of humanity. In other words, we can give our negative energy to the cross in order to re-establish balance and harmony in our lives. I had considered it as essentially a symbol of the transmutation of force into form, or vice versa, depending on which way you are travelling, up or down on the Tree. The sun is not only a symbol of life--it is a symbol of purification, the cross within the sun symbolizing the cleansing of the soul. Why, this is, at least, a wonderful idea!"
   "Anyway I was thinking that we could use it to help other people. I don’t mean your average person who is doing all right. I mean like that old woman who might die or go crazy or something."
   "You mean we shouldn’t try to help a person unless the person can’t help herself?"
   "Yeah, something like that. I mean maybe you only have the right to use it without asking if somebody is really in trouble. You might also have the right to use it without asking if somebody is going to harm you or a lot of other people, you know, someone like the landlord."
   "We have to respect free will, in other words? We shouldn’t interfere with someone else’s karma unless we can keep something really terrible from happening?"
   "Yeah, something like that."
   Cashing wiped his eyes. "You know, some people believe that interfering with another person's karma has bad consequences, even if you're trying to help that person, so we need to be careful. What do you propose that we do?"
   "I don't know if that's true, but there is one thing that I would like to try. Maybe we could meditate together, and we could ask the Christ force to take the blackness away from the old woman. Then we could imagine the blackness leaving her body and going into the cross and her whole being filling with light. Then maybe we could do the same for the landlord."
   "That is a beautiful idea. I’m willing to try it. Unfortunately, right now I have a few things to take care of. Can you come back in an hour or so?"
   Peter nodded.
   "Great," Cashing said. "Why not try it--you know, it couldn't hoit."

BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE

Pestle on a Pounding Stone, Kings River Watershed

CHAPTER FOUR: A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

   Parking in the dirt by a load of rubbish near Fancher Creek, Justin pulled up the parking brake: No one in the immediate vicinity. He grabbed the buck knife from the glove compartment, slid it onto his belt, then trotted across Watt's Valley Road, an oiled, single-lane road which snakes through one deserted Native American village site after another in the lower foothills. Before he jumped up on the rock and stepped over the barbed wire, however, he noticed Fresno faintly etched in the distance, so he quickly turned back and checked the car doors and lights again.
   The area safer than most city streets, he could keep hiking all the way to the Kings River if he wanted to, his path only blocked by orchards just before he got to the river. Cows might ignore him or stampede in complete terror away from him (or toward him), quail would occasionally burst out of shrubs, coyotes would pause and gaze and lope off as if hoping to be chased back to the lair. He might encounter a bobcat or a mountain lion or a rattlesnake, but with his buck knife he was ready for almost anything.
   Most of the paths on the bluffs converged in the floodplain of the creek, whose bed miles away had functioned as the Valley's first irrigation ditch for a farmer who lured the railroad, the catalyst of growth for Fresno, to the area. Justin chose a favorite path, noting all the pounding stones and pestles and house pits along the way that had apparently evaded the normal sight of the average trespasser, and perhaps of even the rancher, for over a century. After his first discoveries, Justin had trained himself to notice flat stones where he might find round holes filled with water or earth and grass and leaves, slightly tapered stones possibly used for grinding, and midden earth in oblong or circular indentations in the ground. These, along with the paths kept distinct by cattle and horses, were the only signs of a civilization that had flourished in the area for thousands of years, gone now over a century, in which time the city had grown one pop-n-fresh neighborhood after another, subdivisions leap-frogging toward the hills.
   It was hotter than he had expected. He had planned to hike for a mile or two in his work clothes, but after only about half a mile, he was hungry and thirsty and unusually tired, so he took a detour to his favorite pounding stone, where ten pestles still rested. As he approached the pounding stone he saw a bobcat in the distance stalking something in the grass, suddenly pouncing, then carrying a squirrel away in its teeth. After the bobcat skulked away, Justin found the site of the kill dotted by feces and stained by a streak of blood, far less gore than he had expected.
   A squirrel in the rocks was chirping loudly in fear or grief, or both, even though Justin was only a few feet away. Justin at first thought that he was only projecting human emotions onto the squirrel, but he had never before heard a squirrel make such a racket, even though it was still in danger because the bobcat, and Justin, were both in the vicinity. The squeals may have functioned as an alarm, but to Justin, after a minute, they began to resemble sounds of utter despair.
   Justin sat down on the pounding stone as the squirrel's cries began to taper off. He had been unable to grieve at his own father's funeral. No tears. No moans. No outward display of emotion. He leaned against a tree and closed his eyes. In his mind's eye, he saw his father's coffin in the funeral chapel, so he cleared his mind. Having a mind clear of even the woodlands was more pleasant than he had expected. After a while a few images flickered across the screen, but he cleared everything away again by focusing on blackness, going into the gap between words, between sounds.
   He imagined himself climbing a tree, the leaves wet with dew like tiny stars, and golden eagles wheeling around it. As he reached the middle of the tree, he gazed at the sky and saw, not the sun, but a bright, golden, equal-armed cross hanging, completely still, in the blue. Floating at each end of the cross was an indistinct angel, each one dressed in a colored robe, one blue, one red, one yellow, and one white. He continued to stare at the cross, hoping that each angel would become clearer, and suddenly he was bathed in a warm, golden light, which felt so good that he didn't want to move. He continued to rise, nevertheless, almost against his will, as though he were floating upward, not climbing. People and cars in the Valley below moved slowly in the distance, all utterly impermanent and insignificant, as he rose closer to a brilliant light more intense than sunlight. He looked at his hands, which were empty. His entire body was empty, only transparent, crystalline light. All was emptiness except for the light, which permeated everything. At the light's edge, his mind truly became blank for a moment. He was only a spark, a point of consciousness.

Pestles Just Removed from their Mortars

   Suddenly he heard a loud shuffling sound and with a jerk came back to himself. Only a squirrel scurrying through dry leaves. He had instinctively grabbed for his buck knife, but he couldn't pull it out because it was held in its sheath by a button. Gazing at the pounding stone, he noticed that two pestles were still in the mortars, with grass growing out at the edges. The stone was silent, communicating nothing about the people who had pounded acorns there for millinia. He stepped into one of the house pits. In his mind's eye he saw a Yokut's woman, light moving over her face and shoulders, as though he were envisioning either her image reflected in a pool, or the light from a pool of water reflected on her shoulders and face. Then, adrenalin shot through him as he recognized that the image could be like the reflection of someone in water, possibly himself in another life. He felt as if something were tugging at his ankles and shins and that he could drop in a second into another order, as though through the center of the earth out to the other side, yet he felt at the same time that he was being presented with some choice, as though he were standing in the shallows of a pool, looking out toward the deep. The Yokuts often buried their dead in the earth under their houses, and he imagined his mind somehow mingling with the mind of the Yokut's woman, as if time were an ocean, as if he were somehow part of all of the energy fields of the world throughout human history and beyond.
   And it was empty. The act of putting one foot in front of another, empty. The act of thinking, empty. The city in the distance, growing like an anthill a moment before, gone in the silence a century or a millineum. Justin gazed at a baby blue eye, no longer Justin but the eternal gazing at itself, the observer and the observed and the process of observation. He was the flower and the stone and the oaks, a point of consciousness within a tapestry of infinite consciousness, and he felt the pressure of innumerable points of consciousness communicating with him in the heat in countless messages that he couldn't understand.
   He felt a timeless, eternal emptiness, the emptiness of form. Within seconds he again separated himself mentally from his surroundings, out of habit, carrying with him both the sense of timelessness which imbues everything in the woods and the realization that he was losing the sense of oneness. As he reached his car, he regretted that he was returning home sooner than he had planned, so he headed to an old, disintegrating road, partially on private property and partially on public property, which sloped down to Sycamore Creek.
   Sliced by rivulets and broken up by roots, the road, unused for decades, sloped down half a mile to a "gauging station" by the creek, a measuring stick still cemented in the creek bed. Although it appeared that no other signs of civilization existed for miles, hidden by bushes on the other side of the creek, the remains of a stone wall still stood next to two piles of rocks, both the size of graves. A mile beyond the confluence of the two creeks, the walls of another stone house stood, the stones on top pulled down for six other piles, also the size of graves, nearby.

Pestle still in Mortar

   The first time he had trespassed, Justin knew when to stray from the old road into the grass to the pounding stone on the ridge, perhaps because the faint rushing sound in the distance pulled him from the road or because he had noticed a trail etched in the grass, but because of his excursions in the foothills he had begun to believe in retrocognition. He couldn't see the past, like a truly gifted psychic, but on occasion had known with overwhelming certainty, in places that he had never been before, where he would find trails and pounding stones. Once, sitting on a pounding stone, he actually heard the laughter of women, as if the earth and the stones were all to some degree conscious and retained the memory of all that had transpired, and he could access that memory because he could tap into the timeless consciousness in moments of profound stillness.
   Several times during a long hike, possibly because of the heat, he had felt himself, as he sat in the shade near trails thousands of years old, part of an ocean of consciousness holding all time. He was the rock, the tree, the squirrel--his consciousness not just a wave but the ocean itself. He also extrapolated that he was also one with every human being but dismissed that thought immediately. 
   When he had first started trespassing, he had dismissed the possibility of finding house pits as unlikely because at least a hundred years had passed since the tribe had occupied the area. For a long time, he had believed that resting cattle had made the indentations in the ground, but after witnessing many abandoned village sites, he finally understood, with a slight shiver, the significance of circular hollows near pounding stones.
   Obviously he could not prove that where he stood uncountable generations had loved and slept and given birth and died, not after one hundred years. He couldn't prove that settlers (probably all killed around the same time) were buried under those piles of rocks unless he wanted to dig up the bones, and he lacked both the time and the stomach for that. Showing how those settlers had taken over an ancient village site would change nothing. Proving that an ancient civilization once thrived there would not keep the area from being developed. Far worse had happened there already with the help of the government: most of the tribe had been killed or driven onto a reservation where the members succumbed to alcoholism and disease and starvation, the most recent generations growing rich from the casinos. He was quite certain of one thing after finding many abandoned village sites along the creeks in the lower foothills: after a point no mercy had been shown anyone. And history, he suspected, without a major change in the human psyche, would keep repeating itself.
   He counted the mortars in the pounding stone again and stared above the tops of the sycamores to the ridge on the other side, squinting to see a hint of the other pounding stones across the creek, his gaze finally following a slope down to another ancient village site about a half mile away on a small hill above Sycamore Creek. He tried with his binoculars to make out the trail that led on that slope to the village site near the ruins of the stone house, again without success, but he could make out without difficulty the house being built on the ridge half a mile away.
   He could still go out on a little night hike, since no one was living in the house yet, douse the wood with gasoline and light a match, and no one would know he had started the fire, in all probability. This was his window of opportunity. He decided then to hike on the trail next to the creek, past other pounding stones, climbing over barbed wire to the building site.

Pestles Uncovered from Moss and Leaves

   Standing on a slope overlooking the creek, the house was less than a mile from a hub of ancient Native American trails where a rancher had dropped blocks of salt. On a forty acre lot, the house was ostentatious, commanding a view of a large territory he had explored for years, with only cattle witnessing his intrusions. In that area alone he had found a pestle collection and three pounding stones with pestles still in the mortars. Two of the trails led over a hill down to a huge abandoned Yokuts village next to another creek several miles away. For sale signs had popped up all along the road advertisizing other forty acre lots, with wells and utilities.
   Each time he had trespassed in the hills, photographing the artifacts and the rare or threatened species, he had imagined himself spearheading an effort to preserve the lower foothills, pressuring government officials to buy up development rights along a fifteen mile stretch where ancient village sites were still connected by a network of continuous trails thousands of years old. The ranchers obviously did not go beyond their own land. No one else seemed aware of the sigficance of the trails or the mortars or the pestles. (He estimated that about one out of eight pounding stones he had discovered still, unbelievably, had pestles on or near them.) A freeway extension was being constructed in the valley just over ten miles away from the main village site at the base of the hill, but along the creeks, little had changed for over one hundred years except for that house.
   He sat down on a pile of wood and pulled out a box of matches from his backpack. He struck the match and let it burn down to his fingers. The house where he had grown up was still at the end of its street, nondescript, occupied by another family for many years. This mansion was being built for elites, promising seclusion and happiness for the family that would live there. Justin's family, on the other hand, had been a failed experiment. Justin was seventeen when his father died, and Justin discovered that his family members harbored little sympathy for each other. They couldn't grieve together, and soon the family dispersed. They still saw each other occasionally at Christmas.
   The thought occurred to him that he was in a fire of illusion, which made him chuckle for a second as he lit another match. Little was left of what had been his family, a family that he had considered normal and well-adjusted before the day his father died. After ten or twenty or thirty thousand years of occupying the area, the tribe was totally gone. He had failed to hold most of his relationships together. He had failed to hold a job for more than five years (though that was not entirely his fault given the nature of capitalism--he was expendable like everyone else.)
   He wanted his life to matter, so he would have to be careful about losing himself too much in the timelessness of the woods. He let the match singe his fingertips. This mansion was the first sign of urban sprawl that in the next twenty or thirty years was going to engulf the foothills. The last traces of a whole race would be wiped out in the process, conveniently eliminating all signs of genocide committed by a system spreading into the far corners of the earth, ecocide the logical partner of genocide.
   He held up the flame, hearing woodpeckers cackle and the peeps of bushtits, the air growing cool. Being an activist in the Central Valley was like stepping with a bow and arrow into a mine field to face the tanks of a well-equiped army; he would have to continue by fighting an anonymous, covert war alone until they caught up with him. He, for instance, was stuck in stupid jobs, working as a substitute teacher and also as a part-time instructor at a rural community college for fifteen years (without benefits). The vast majority of the teachers he subbed for could not write a one-page lesson plan free of grammar or punctuation errors, yet he suspected he would never be hired as a full-time teacher even if he went back to school for a credential. Anyone who attacked the system, he'd noticed, was sooner or later slapped down (usually sooner, if effective) and they were not forgotten by those in power, only by the public. A few had lost jobs, professionals had been slandered with impunity, organizations had closed down because of bogus lawsuits, one activist, a teacher, was fined and bankrupted for using his democratic right to sue the government for higher review of a local land use decision (perhaps the judge had neglected to read the constitution). He had witnessed activists threatened and blackballed by developers and government officials alike. 
   He felt spaced out, a little unsteady on his feet, unable to belch, with pain in his joints, all symptoms of his allergies. He had indulged in several pieces of toast (which contained gluten and corn) at breakfast and was suffering the consequences. If he ate any more gluten or corn, he would risk feeling severe muscle and joint pain, fatigue, and depression; he might have difficulty functioning at his job the next day. If he continued eating it despite the warning signs he would begin to believe he had cancer or some other terminal illness, and would feel hopeless. He would be unable to function in jail. He felt at peace in the woods; he even felt a kinship with the rocks, a kinship that he had felt with only a few human beings.
   He indulged again in self pity, which at least kept him from losing himself completely in the stillness. Even though the cause of his sickness was the chemical contamination of food and air and water, no one could avoid the fact that he was often fatigued, depressed, nauseated, aching, nearly always, therefore, without much energy, except sometimes in the woods where he could breath fresh air. Relationships and jobs had ended because he couldn't hold it together, not knowing from one moment to the next if he would feel too sick suddenly to function, for no reason apparent to anyone else. He sat still. His life was significant now in relation to what surrounded him, no more and no less significant than the tribe members before him, no more and no less than the buckeyes and sycamores and oaks, the bluebirds and the juncos, the rosinweed and blue curl.
   Wouldn't it be nice to burn up this entire sorry civilization, he thought for just a second, every last bit of it. He should feel anger like a clean flame (he chuckled), not self-pity or even mercy, and he should let it burn out all the corrupted places, cauterizing as much of the cancer as possible, not just a little bit.
   He was making a speech again in his head. Sighing, he put the box of matches away and sat extinguished in the growing darkness. He envisioned a white flame at the crown of his head,the flame forming a crown at the supernal centers of his being, the centers of the spirit, the flame stretching down to his heart, then down to his groin and feet. He was on fire while everything around him was swirling, transient, empty.
   Bats looped silently overhead, the sun kindling the bare branches of the oaks in the distance. The moss-covered stone, cold in the light, now seemed almost as warm as an animal in the cooling air. The buckeyes and sycamores smelled dusty and wet at the same time, the creek still gurgling, making more sense than he could ever understand and no sense at all. The first lights were appearing in the valley and the sky, one constellation on the ground for a moment appearing to reflect another in the sky. He stood up with a groan and hiked back on the trail toward his car. 

PATH 32 ON THE TREE OF LIFE

Pounding Stone near Friant-Kern Canal

CHAPTER TWO:  THE WORLD

     Peter was painting a picture of a figure eight when Chuck walked into the bedroom without knocking.
     "What the hell kind of crap is that?" Chuck scoffed.
     "It’s the mathematical symbol of infinity."
     "Oh, that’s what it is.  I thought you were just painting like a monkey," Chuck laughed, scratching his ribcage.  "Why DO you paint, anyway?"
     "Because I’m trying to develop myself emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, but you probably wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?"
     "Oh, C’mon, everyone knows why you paint."
     "Why’s that?"
     "Because you’re ‘different,’" Chuck made quotation marks with his fingers.
     "What are you trying to say?"
     "You’re gay, obviously."
     "That’s it.  Get out of my room!"
     "Make me.  It’s my room too, jerk off."
     Peter lunged at Chuck, who easily shoved him to the ground.
     "Why don’t you develop yourself physically, for a change, so you’re not such a little girl?  Act like a man instead of a sissy, and stop painting this stupid shit.  Everybody thinks you’re gay, and they’re starting to wonder if I’m queer, too, because a’ you."  Chuck held up a threatening fist.
     Peter looked up with tears in his eyes.  He darted out of the room, got on his bike and took off, pedaling furiously.  Since it was Saturday and he had finished his chores, he headed east toward the foothills.  Even though he felt tired most of the time, occasionally when he was on his bicycle, he could forget about his illness and pedal for miles.  Now he was determined to keep going as far as he could, possibly never turning back.
     At about two o’clock, he reached the end of the grid, where the road suddenly veers northeast and curves gently into the lower foothills.  He crossed the Friant-Kern canal, which contains the water of the San Joaquin River flowing south now instead of west in its natural course, and then he stopped, watching the swallows loop above the water, in figure eights, he imagined.  He took a slug of water and chewed awhile on a granola bar.  He had a package of energy bars in his backpack that might last him a couple of days.
     About a hundred yards from the canal, Peter noticed several large, flat stones that contained circles from which grass was growing.  He got off of his bike and rolled under the barbed wire.  He found a Native American village site next to the road on a slight rise above a narrow stream that emptied into a marsh next to the canal.  Imagining that he was a Native American standing by the pounding stone, he gazed a long time at an egret, a white question mark reflected in the shallow water, while he listened to faint, tranquil buzzes and chirping noises.  He crossed the road and climbed to the top of the rise where he found two more pounding stones.  Whoever had made the road had just plowed right through the village site, probably removing pounding stones and destroying house pits which were also graves.

Pestles in a Pounding Stone

     Peter had written a report about the Yokuts people after he had found several village sites one day, complete with pounding stones, pestles and house pits, while he and his father and brother were looking for a fishing hole on private property.  The creek was too small for decent fishing, so they wandered around the trails in the area, scaring the cattle.  Peter was the first to notice something unusual about the ridge.  The earth was more disturbed, less even.  Then he noticed the holes like cups in the stone and faint paths that led to indentations in the ground.  They all followed a path and found another village site.  His dad sneered, "This is what happens to you when you’re weak."
     It was almost three o’clock.  Peter soon pedaled to a more wooded area, where hiding from passing cars would be easier.  Deciding that he should try riding his mountain bike on the trail, Peter heaved his bike over sagging barbed wire and then rolled under.  The main paths in the area were smooth and easy to travel.  Every now and then, however, he would encounter a rock or a branch or an incline that would force him to get off of the bike and walk.  Following the trail along the ridge for half a mile, he finally curved down toward the floodplain of the creek.   Between two small hills, he found a pounding stone with eleven pestles on top.  He got off of the bike and rested in the shade.  The sun was beginning to sink toward the western horizon.  He was getting very close to the moment when he would have to decide whether or not to go home.

Path32

     He took out his pack of Tarot cards and decided to examine the last one, THE WORLD.  In the center of the card, a naked woman floated in what appeared to be a large mirror fringed with leaves of some kind.  At the top and bottom of the mirror, a red ribbon twisted into a figure eight seemed to be holding the victory wreath together.  In each corner of the card was a head: in the upper left corner the head of a man, in the upper right an eagle, in the lower left an ox, and in the lower right a lion.  The previous night he had read that they represented the four elements of Air, Water, Earth, and Fire respectively.  He had read also that card twenty-one, THE WORLD, represented the thirty second path--the path between the material world and the lower astral plane.
     Peter closed his eyes and cleared his mind.  The woman floating in the mirror might represent the soul in the center of the elements, spirit manifested in matter.  Since the body is floating, however, Peter thought, perhaps it represents the soul detached from matter, a ghost floating in another dimension, on a different plane.  She appeared to be ascending; perhaps the soul can only ascend if it has mastered existence--if, totally centered, it has mastered the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of life.
     Peter began to wonder how he could possibly master all those aspects of existence.  Only the material plane seemed reflected in his life, or perhaps it was the other way around--his life only reflected the material plane.  The only things that connected him with those other levels were art and meditation and now the Tarot cards.  Peter looked around at the pounding stone, where the pestles seemed to have been abandoned only yesterday, then at the one strand of barbed wire still linking the leaning fence posts, then at the smog obscuring the creek in the distance, the earth tranquil and quiet.
    Maybe Cashing could help him understand it.  Peter got back on his bicycle and pedaled home, making it just in time for bed.

THE GRAY FIGURE EIGHT

Posse

CHAPTER ONE:  THE LEMNISCATE

   Peter paused before the punished door of the apartment. His mom was vacuuming while his brother was watching the tube. Where was his dad, though? Peter listened a few more seconds. When he peeked through the door, his mother was vacuuming with her back to the living room, so Peter tiptoed toward the bedroom, his older brother mesmerized by the TV. Peter caught a glimpse of his dad lounging on the back porch, a beer can next to his chair, the aroma of grilled hot dogs and hamburgers wafting through the screen door.
   Peter slipped into the bedroom and closed the door as quietly as he could. Then he dropped his backpack on the floor, stretched out on his bed and emptied his mind. The day before, after meditating for over an hour, he had envisioned a gray figure eight on its side floating above his head. He had seen it and the wall and ceiling so clearly that for a second he thought he might have opened his eyes without realizing it. So he blinked, and the figure eight disappeared. Now, the dull roar of the vacuum and the jabbering of the TV destroyed Peter’s ability to slip totally into the void.
   Then Peter heard his mother and brother talking. A few seconds later, his mother peered into the bedroom.
   "Why don’t you come out here and make yourself useful?" she asked.
   "Why don’t you have Chuck help you? He’s just watching TV," Peter moaned.
   "At least he’s doing something. You’re just being a lazy bum. C’mon, get out of bed and help me with dinner. I need something from the store. Why don’t you ride your bike over to SAFEWAY and get a bag of salad and some ice cream?"
   On his way to the grocery store, Peter stopped in front of a hole-in-the-wall bookstore called THE GOLDEN CHALICE. He immediately glimpsed a pack of Tarot cards in the store window and suddenly felt the urge to check out the store; when he got inside, he noticed his neighbor reading a book.
   "Hey, Mr. Cashing, how ya’ doin’?" Peter blurted out. Since Peter was normally shy, his sudden friendliness surprised both himself and Cashing.
   "Just great, thanks. How ‘bout yourself?" Before Peter could answer, Cashing glanced at Peter and smiled, "Well, I didn’t know you were interested in esoteric philosophy."
   "I didn’t either. I’m just on my way to the grocery store, and I noticed that pack of cards," Peter pointed at the store window.
   "So you want to tell the future, eh?" Cashing laughed in an amused, slightly ironic tone.
   "Sure, why not! Is that really what they’re for?"
   "That, and much, much more, from what I understand," Cashing replied.
   "Maybe you can help me pick out a good deck," Peter blurted out.
   "Here’s a good one, and it’s used, so it’s half price. Only ten dollars. Better check it to make sure you’ll be playing with a full deck." Cashing opened it and looked carefully at the cards.
   Peter appeared nonplussed. "Ten dollars. Wow, that’s a lot. I only have five. Darn it."
   "Don’t give up so easily. Give me your five and wait here. Let’s see if we can make a deal." Cashing ambled over to the register, unobtrusively slipping out his wallet. He pointed at Peter and laughed. The cashier put the deck in a paper sack. Cashing walked over and gave the bag to Peter.
   "Wow, you got it. How’d ya’ manage that?"
   "I’ve got friends in all the right places," Cashing laughed.
   "Wow, really, I owe you one. Maybe you could show me how to play these cards sometime. I got to go now, though. Thanks again!"
   "Don’t mention it, really," Cashing replied quizzically. "Have a good evening."

Path 12

   After dinner, Peter took a look at the cards. To his great surprise, a figure eight on its side floated above the head of a man in a card called THE MAGICIAN and above the head of a woman in a card called STRENGTH.
   It was exactly like the figure eight Peter had seen in his vision during meditation two days before. Peter could not believe his eyes. He stared at both cards a long time. "I’ve got to ask Cashing about this," he murmured to himself.
   The next day after school, Peter made a bee-line to Cashing’s apartment and hammered on the door.
   "Well, hello again," Cashing said.
   "Yeah, well, I wanted to thank you again and ask you a couple of questions, if this is a good time."
   "Sure. Come in. Come in."
   Peter stepped into a dim room. As his eyes adjusted, he could tell that Cashing made minimal effort to keep his apartment tidy.
   "Please, don’t mind the mess. Come in and sit down. Now what can I do for you?"
   Peter sat on a dingy couch. "Well, you know those cards I bought--we bought--yesterday? I was hoping you could tell me a little bit about them."
   "Sure, I suspected that you might have questions. Fire away."
   Peter pulled out the pack. On top were the two cards that contained the gray figure eight.    "I was hoping you could tell me what these are."
   "Why, they’re called lemniscates. The lemniscate is the mathematical symbol of infinity. They are floating above the heads of these figures to suggest an awareness of the infinitude within. In other words, they recognize that they are eternal, spiritual beings."
   Peter stared speechless at the cards, then at Cashing.
   "Is something wrong?" Cashing asked.
   Peter hesitated. "Well, I’m not sure I should say this, but...ah, but I was meditating a couple of days ago, and I saw the same symbol floating above my head. It was gray too and everything."
   Now Cashing looked surprised. "You had a vision of a

lemniscate?" Cashing whispered.

Path 19

   "Yeah, I guess. You don’t think I’m crazy, do you?"
   "Oh, no, on the contrary. Tell me more about it. You can’t be more than sixteen. What made you start meditating?"
   "Fifteen, actually. Well, you see, I need to rest a lot. I have this problem, food allergies. Anyway, I lie down a lot even though my parents think I should always be doing something. So I got this book on meditation because I guess I wanted to look like I was doing something when I was just lying around. Anyway, it said that a person should mentally cleanse the chakras, which are energy centers in the aura. So I did. I imagined each chakra as a turning margarita glass. Then I wiped out each one mentally with a white cloth. When I was finished, I started having visions."
   Cashing tried not to look startled. "What kind of visions?" Cashing asked.
   "You really don’t think I’m crazy?" Peter paused. Cashing shook his head. He too had experienced visions during meditation, but he didn't want to mention it just yet. Peter continued, "Well, when I was done clearing the trash out of my crown chakra, which took hours, I had a vision of a pure white, four-petaled flower, which suddenly blossomed into a brilliant white flower with lots and lots of petals. I thought it was a rose, but then I kept hearing the word ‘lotus’ in my head. I did some research the next day on the internet and discovered that the thousand-petaled lotus is associated with the crown chakra."
   "My God. Have you told anyone else?" Cashing asked.
   "I told my family at dinner, and they just kinda’ looked at me strange. My brother called me gay for the thousandth time."
   "He’s probably just jealous. Typical sibling rivalry," Cashing replied.
   "Yeah, well, he likes to beat me up. I don’t know how typical that is."
   "Sometimes older brothers just like to beat up younger brothers. All I can say is try not to let him discourage you. This is truly remarkable. It's one of those things that force people to entertain the possibility that there is something beyond the physical realm."
   "What is so strange about this, I mean the figure eight, is that I saw it in my vision several days before I actually saw it in the cards. How do you explain that?"
   "I’m no expert, but I’ll tell you what I think. The mind, during meditation, sometimes slips into a timeless state and can see basic patterns, or archetypes. Then, through what some call synchronicity and others call coincidence, the inner vision or mental state is sometimes reflected in the physical world. Most people automatically believe that what one thinks is the result of what one experiences in the physical world. Others would say that what we feel and think ultimately manifests in the material realm, which is basically a reflection of our inner state. Others say that the mind and the physical realm, the self and the nonself, form a combined reality reflecting each other."
   Peter looked puzzled.
   "Okay, maybe I’m not explaining this very well. Let me try again," Cashing paused. "Imagine that there are different dimensions of reality. There is the physical dimension that we all know and love. But imagine that there are other dimensions that we can’t perceive with our senses. Some people believe that there are at least three other planes behind physical existence. Behind the physical is the foundation of all physical manifestation, known as the astral plane. Behind the astral is the archetypal world, which contains the basic patterns for all the forms in existence. And behind the archetypal plane is the spiritual plane. The spiritual ‘world,’ so to speak, generates the basic ideas, which manifest as archetypes, which then manifest as diverse forms on the astral plane, which ultimately manifest in the physical realm as the physical objects and events that we perceive with the five senses. Are you following me so far?"
   "Is this the asoteric philosophy you were talking about yesterday?" Peter asked.
   "Esoteric, yes." Cashing smiled. "Esoteric means 'for the few' and is often associated with the word 'occult,' which means ‘hidden.’"
   "So these ideas are hidden from the average person?"
   "Exactly," Cashing replied. "I think most people would agree that there are at least four dimensions to our being. Even college professors, I think, would agree that we are physical, emotional, and mental beings. Our esoteric philosopher friends would say that there is also a spiritual dimension which sometimes intrudes in strange ways upon our sense of reality. Look at it this way. You’re an artist, right?"
   Peter nodded.
   "When you create, you usually start with a basic inspiration, right? Then you create some kind of basic pattern, which as you develop your ideas usually turns into a more complex, concrete idea, which ultimately manifests as an image on the canvas, right?"
   "Yeah," Peter replied.
   "Well, according to our friends, God works pretty much the same way, except his canvas is the world, or more precisely, the cosmos. According to our esoteric friends, we use the same process because we are made in God’s image."
   "So I’m seeing basic patterns--what did you call them, arc of something...?"
   "Archetypes. I believe you might somehow be tapping into the archetypal energy of the cosmos, possibly because as an artist you have developed your inner vision," Cashing paused. "Another explanation is that the archetypes are part of the collective subconscious, and we can access them through our own subconscious, the way one might find a channel from a lagoon out to the ocean. In any event, what you have experienced is a kind of synchronicity which cannot easily be explained or explained away. But by all means don’t let anyone make you feel like you’re crazy when you have visions. It’s really a gift, a very special gift."
   "I doubt anyone else would think so. What do you think I should do?" Peter asked.
   "Like I said, I’m no expert. I think, though, that you should continue working with the Tarot cards since something or someone appears to have pointed you in that direction. Here, I'll let you play a game that I made myself called Paths and Thrones. It will help you learn the cards. Memorize them, visualize them, meditate on them. They are rich in symbolism, in archetypal energy, so to speak. Come back and tell me what you think, if you feel like it. I would be very interested in hearing what you have to say."
   "Thank you," Peter said as he was leaving, sincerely grateful. "I’ll tell you everything--if anything happens."