Picking Stones Chapters 25 & 26
"The Clinging Fire" & "Passenger"
Table of Contents
Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3 & 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 6 & 7; Chapter 8; Chapter 9; Chapter 10; Chapter 11; Chapter 12 & 13; Chapter 14, 15, & 16; Chapter 17 & 18; Chapter 19; Chapter 20; Chapter 21; Chapter 22; Chapter 23 & 24; Chapter 25 & 26; Chapter 27; Chapter 28; Chapter 29; Chapter 30; Chapter 31 (Final Chapter)
THE CLINGING FIRE
Early the next morning I was awake with her still asleep. There was a daze, in and out, somewhere between her apartment and wherever I had gone the night before. Was it a dream? I shook the question from my mind, it didn’t matter. Legs brought me to living room. I was standing at the bookcase. Next to it was the record that had spun so magnificently sitting beneath its plastic cover. I scanned the books to see what I could learn about her.
Five shelves with various shapes and sizes crammed on. Some old, some new. Some tall, some short. Some spines cracked, others glistened smooth. Red, green, or blue and all with worn edges. Glue crammed on the top of some cheap copies, while others bore names split half on the spine and half on the back of the book.
My eye caught something. Or maybe it caught me first. Sandwiched toward the right of the middle shelf, with two books lying on top of it. Clear as day. How had I missed it last night? Maybe it hadn’t been there. It was squat and its gray dust jacket showed signs of heavy use. I read the tiny white letters above yellow symbol on the spine. The I Ching or Book of Changes.
Hand grabbed book. Time vanished. Question came out of heart. Coins flipped, hexagram drawn, lines read. I stood there for a while, reading and rereading the passage held between hands. The question that had sprung from deep within my soul was simple, dumb even, especially after what I had seen. What was the question? I had simply asked the Oracle if the world was more than black and white.
His response? #33.
#33. The Clinging, Fire
THE JUDGMENT
THE CLINGING. Perseverance furthers.
It brings success.
Care of the cow brings good fortune.
My mind was rampant with the images from last night’s journey, so clear, so vivid. It was as if the book knew what I saw.
THE IMAGE
That which is bright rises twice:
The image of FIRE.
Thus, the great man, by perpetuating this brightness,
Illumines the four quarters of the world.
Speechless. I sat down on the couch and got lost inside myself.
What was it telling me? Its words brought more embers into the fire burning within. I was inspired. Processing. Processing. For a second, I thought I figured out what the book was telling me. Good fortune. A great man can illuminate the world with his brightness. There it was. It all made sense now. Belief. Belief in a world not of black and white, but a world full of life and love and possibility. This would bring fortune, it would bring fire and brightness and illumination into the world and to everyone within reach. It didn’t matter what the answer was. If you believed in the good, it would come. And you could bring that goodness and light to others and a better world would spring forth from you and your light, our light, would live on for all of eternity and forever after. I had found my answer.
I stood up, back at the bookcase, sliding the I Ching into its place. A tap on my shoulder. I jumped.
“Good morning,” she said half conscious. “How’d you sleep?”
“Better than ever.”
Before long I was back at the lighthouse at the same spot where I had found the sticker that brought me to her. Looking out into waves, I realized how in such little time, everything had changed. After coffee, we spoke about what I had seen last night. She had called one of her employees to explain that she’d be running late to work, so she could be with me. I had told her everything, then we went back into bed, and then we went into her studio where she held me and sucked me into the piece she was working on.
The painting was the view from her favorite spot in Acadia National Park; perched on top of a mountain facing Jordan Pond. It was three hours from Portland. Since the tourist season was over she could afford to close up the coffee shop for a week and go on vacation and planned on meeting her parents in Bar Harbor, just outside of Acadia, for three days at the end of the following week. Without thinking, plans were made between us and it was decided that we were going the next day, a week before her parents got there. She was ecstatic, telling me she hadn’t introduced a boyfriend to them in ages.
Boyfriend. Was it too soon? I didn’t care. I was in a dream and loving every second of it. My relationship with Beth was only a few weeks in the grave, but I knew it was a lifetime ago. She was irrelevant, from a part of my life that died along with the rest of the darkness that had plagued me for so long.
The lighthouse stood tall over the cold cliffs. As happy to be there as I was, and as happy as I felt in that moment, I was surprised to realize that there was a strange sense of missing something. Something popped in my head, just a thought. About how nice it would have been to drop in and see my parents while I waited for Ramona to get out of work. But Mom and Dad were far far away in a place I had all but left behind.
Both elbows leaned against the black railing that separated me from the swirling sea. Gray clouds covered the sky and left a chill just above freezing that scattered across the shore. The lighthouse had no reflection in its windows high above the ground. I tried to look inside but saw nothing and wondered how alone I really was there, without a soul in sight. But then it hit me. I realized I wasn’t alone. There was a presence, a feeling surrounding me, watching me. The same one that had followed me home and to work and all the way up to Maine.
Something buzzed in the pocket of my jeans, a white hot burning sensation. I reached inside and felt it, ice cold against the scalding energy it was engulfed by. The card was in my hands. In the whirlwind of the past two days, I had forgotten my reason for being there. Luckily he had been quick to remind me. Slowly, carefully, my eyes read the three blood red letters, NIM, before they blurred over.
I saw nothing, heard only the crashing of the waves below me, and knew that he was at the lighthouse with me. No matter what had happened, there was still a game to be played.
PASSENGER
We left Portland on Halloween. Fall had come and almost gone in the blink of an eye. Back home there would still be a few weeks left. She was driving her car. My rental was somewhere in an airport parking lot outside the city, leaving me as her passenger to soak in the bare trees among the pines that came bursting out of the earth on either side of the long highway.
There was still some remnants of the season; signs pointing off the road and toward some barren pumpkin patches, or advertisements for pumpkin beer to keep you warm as winter whirled its way toward you and turned the landscape into a frozen tundra. Ramona swore winter there wasn’t as bad as TV made it seem. I didn’t believe her.
Fall, or Autumn, whichever you prefer, was everyone’s favorite season. Until the shops closed in places like this and left little to do in its wake. Reds and oranges always come to mind when I pictured it, even though whenever I actually stopped to admire the foliage I’d find half the trees bare and the other half yellow and green. If you caught the season on the right week, which still needed to be on the right day, you’d be in awe. But like everything else, if you turned to look away, by the time you looked back, it would all be gone.
They say that before people die there’s one last burst of energy. I’ve seen it before. Grandma’s in the hospital for weeks. Weeks and weeks with no sign of anything changing, the outlook bleak. Then—boom! She looks great, feels great. The doctors are ready to send her home. But she never makes it home; she’s dead the next day.
When you think about it, that’s fall/autumn with a much more morbid and much less beautiful way of putting it. After the darkness of winter, new plants come to life and blossom and grow and grow, brightening everything and making people smile along the way. Some plants die young, succumbing to the heat of the summer. Others make it all the way to fall as older weaker versions of themselves, knocking on death’s doorstep.
Fall swoops in and gives the world one last chance to remind us all of earth’s natural beauty. For a short time we’re lucky to experience the breathtaking views and the magical colors that define the season. One last farewell, before the kiss of death rumbles over the land. Then it’s the quiet and icy funeral of winter before the thaw comes and the cycle starts anew.
I looked to my left and caught the smile creeping up the corner of her mouth. We stopped for a pumpkin beer, sipped some cider, grabbed a dozen donuts to bring with us to the hotel, and even got to pick up a dusty little pumpkin that had yet to be claimed.
It was one of those perfect days that only happened a few times a year. It didn’t matter if things were really actually perfect. Even for two people acting like they were in love whose realities were worlds and several states apart. We were just happy. Filled with a nostalgic sense of perfection. Memories of youth filled our hearts.
The car zipped off the highway and got on Route 1, driving through tiny cookie cutter towns along the coast toward Acadia. There were white churches and lobster pounds and antique shops and bookstores. Was I truly experiencing that magic? Happiness. Eyes closed and I let myself go, letting the memories of fall and everything in it take me hold.
Car rumbled and swerved to miss a paving truck. I caught a glimpse of the ocean before closing my eyes again. The static warbling inside my head eventually faded and I saw that I was back in Queens walking down the street. Wind blew and jacket zipped. A full moon casts a yellow glow that barely illuminated the street around me. Lungs gulp cold, clean air. Where were the wide open fields and the pumpkins?
Then headlights flew past me and I flinched. Quickly I jaywalked across the street, realizing how unsafe the other side had been. A scary movie watched years ago then sprang forth into mind and I knew of the evil that could hide beneath the hood of a random passerby, all the weapons they could hold. What horrors had they seen? The pep in my step increased just as the moonlight gets blocked from a swaying tree whose jagged branches reached over the street and stifled the light.
Then I was swept up in darkness and pulled on my hood for an extra dose of protection from whatever or whoever was out there. Paranoia set in, heart pulsates. Footsteps scrape the concrete sidewalk behind me. I prayed it wasn’t the smiling man with his mechanical movements and inhuman eyes.
Eyes opened. I saw her smile again and wave off the dream. What about the fall makes the perfect day turn into an unforgiving night? Its easy to forget about its nights, when the endless summer is gone and seven at night might as well be the witching hour. The nights of Fall are dark and without life. The cold feels a little colder, the air a little more stale. Just dark enough that you can’t see anyone in the shadows, with no winter frost to stop anyone from lurking inside them. How was one of the best times of year also the most creepy? I thought of the yin yang symbol, and the message behind it. Two opposite forces, the balance created by good and evil.
Sharp turn, twenty miles out from our destination. A giant tree, bursting with the surging light of thousands of bright red leaves stood off the side of the road. Such beautiful colors before they died. That was it, I realized, why Fall was just as synonymous with pumpkin picking and flannel shirts as it was with ghosts and ghouls and evil spirits. Fall is a time of dying. All its lush colors is that last burst of life as it lay on its deathbed. Like what happened to grandma. The Fall is the time when the fingers of death embrace earth until its landscape finally crosses over to the afterlife.
Winter is the dead one. We don’t fear it for death has come and gone from it already. Fall is when death is there, all around us at every turn, waiting to grab another victim. Why would death hang around the winter? There’s nothing else for it to get. It’s why that feeling of fear can creep up on you one cold dark night in the Fall. Death is in the air as we stand amongst the dying, trying to not join its ranks.
It made sense why all the horror movies and fall themes revolve around the season. Why the Gaels had Samhain. Why South Americans have Dia de los Muertos. And why on that day all along the coast of Maine and everywhere else in the country, people were dressed up in costumes celebrating Halloween. We remember all of it. The time, the feelings, the death. Even if we don’t realize it. I squeezed Ramona’s hand as we drove past a sign that welcomed us to Mount Desert Island.
I was happy, the fear of what happened next was gone. But I wasn’t going to be ignorant of it either, I knew it would come sooner rather than later. I needed to capitalize on every moment I could, we all did. After all, there was such little time. Even if it felt like forever sometimes.
Like right then, when we were staring in awe at the wonders of the world, the mountains that turned to lakes and ponds and ocean and cliffs. As beautiful as it was, there were still some things not to be forgotten. Every dawn has a dusk, every life has an end. And when the sun sets on a picture perfect Fall day, you can’t make out the colors in the night.
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John, you write like we are there with you!
I have always hated fall, it has always felt like the harbinger of doom to me, so this resonated in ways I hadn’t expected and had me thinking of the reasons behind this feeling. Fantastic writing and I felt the reeling in this one!