Nights on the Soul©

Silence. Is my friend. When all is quiet and I can concentrate only on the black, I feel nothing. This is not bad. This is when I am free from my body and all of the constraints of life. Some days I don’t cry. It must seem pathetic to others, my existence lost because of love lost. Yet you couldn’t even know the extent of my true relationship. It was the division of two Gods. Two Gods that fought to be one, but in this, one would always be consumed by the other. It was either me give up my God-ship or him. To be together was almost disastrous. But I don’t know if being alone is any better. I long for hope to come back, but at this point I also long for the void.

***

I saw Dave the next day. It was Saturday. I’d hardly slept all night for the multicolored visions of him kept thrusting themselves into my brain. I gave him directions to my house and he picked me up in an old green Falcon. I had brought along an overnight bag stuffed with a change of clothes, various toiletries, a notebook and my camera. I didn’t know where we were going but Dave said he wanted to go for a long drive. We got on the interstate and headed south.

“Where are we going?” I asked. “Down,” he said. “Hmm, how about Miami?”

“OK. Anything in particular you want to see?”

“Just the ocean.”

“OK, the ocean it is.”

As we drove he played some harsh music, Skinny Puppy, Circle Jerks, Ministry, Descendants. All to my taste. It didn’t surprise me that he shared my appreciation of industrial music. I asked him to tell me about himself.

“I was born in Maine. In a small town. My mother died when I was very young. I lived with my grandmother until she died when I was 15. I never knew who my father was and I was scorned by the locals for my dress and attitudes. So I took off. I make a little money here and there when I need it, but mostly I find that when I want something I just manifest it. Actually, my grandmother was a sorceress. Don’t laugh, she really was. Our roots go back to Ireland. My last name is McKay and granny taught me so much about everything. She never stifled my unquenchable thirst for knowledge. She taught me a lot about nature and living one with the earth. She taught me how to survive. She talked to me and listened to me, not like most adults who address children like they’re not really a real person yet. Every question I asked she had an answer for. And not just something made up, she just knew so much. I think her spirit was very old, but mostly very wise.”

“What did you do when you ran away?” I asked.

“Well I didn’t really run away,” he said. “Since I wasn’t running from anyone. I just went exploring. I went north to Canada first and then throughout most of the northern states, west and east, until I ended up in Atlanta. I lived there for about a year before I heard an old girlfriend of mine lived down here in Florida. I’d only been here once as a child, just a vague memory of visiting the Everglades. So I came.”

“And what about the old girlfriend?”

“Oh, I’ve seen her,” he smiled strangely. “Miranda, do you ever feel that a situation is so totally real to your personal specifications that you absolutely controlled every aspect of its happening?”

“Like a dream come true?”

“Sort of … I’m so happy you came up to talk to me.”

“Really, Dave? I just thought you had such a presence. I wanted to see you up close.”

We drove on in silence for quite awhile, the music stopped, my eyes closed. The rushing of the warm wind was the only sound to interrupt my meditations of myself and Dave.

I could see us dancing round and round in circles of glorious color globes. A bubble of divinely collected light playing across our forms. My face was radiant, Dave’s content. He looked me full in the eyes with a smile of such pure happiness, I thought he must have the answer to the universe.

Could it be love? We seemed to be in another time. There was candlelight glowing everywhere, but no candles. There was ethereal music all around us, but coming from inside us. I felt brilliantly alive and everything was pure, everything was love.

“Miranda?”

“Yes,” I didn’t open my eyes. I felt his fingers lightly brushing my cheek. Then they passed ever so slowly across my lips. I shivered inside and wondered if he knew my heart beat ever swifter in response to his caress. I opened my eyes. The evening had embraced us while I had been daydreaming. I looked up to see the most graceful bridge I’d ever seen. The design displayed was numerous steel beams illuminated in pale yellow, beige, green and orange. The colors were so fair and they blended so well and as we reached the hump of the bridge I was thrilled and turned backwards to see the lights both ways.

“Oh, Dave, this is wonderful! I’ve never seen a whole bridge lit up like this! It looks smashing! That’s the rebuilt Sunshine Skyway. Wow! Years ago it was hit by some huge boat and totally cut off the road, and like a car and maybe even a truck fell off into the water and people died and everything. Yikes, I remember seeing pictures of the bridge just smashed. And then there were so many delays with the bridge being reconstructed. Anyway, what a fantastic piece of engineering! After such a tragedy, hmm. I’m usually afraid of bridges because I don’t like water, but this is incredible!”

“Why don’t you like water?”

“I don’t swim.”

“In Florida? I can hardly believe that!”

“Oh no, when I was a little girl I was bit by a crab on the beach. I didn’t see my mother and I couldn’t get the darn thing off my toe and I started to cry. It’s funny now. But there I was shaking my poor little foot and I fell down. I was so little and I panicked and didn’t know what to do and waves started crashing over me. I almost drowned. Some old man picked me up and took me back to shore. It turned out my mother had been looking for me and I had wandered off about a mile from where she was. I remember being just terrified and I never went in the water again.”

“Sounds pretty traumatic. Yet you consent to go to the beach with me today?”

“Oh, I’m going to the beach with you but I’m not going swimming with you.”

“Afraid of a few killer crabs?”

“Certainly not, although I do hate seafood! But I love to walk on the beach. I just don’t go in the water.”

“I like the beach when it’s dark and raining.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because nobody else is there. I like it private and quiet.”

“Miami’s not exactly private or quiet.”

“Oh, yes, but it’s now dark and I believe we’re expecting rain.”

“Really? It was such a sunny day!” I looked outside the window. We were off the bridge now and I could see the trees being rushed by the wind. The way the palms leaned with the fronds blowing all directions sure looked like the approach of a tropical storm.

“What are you like some kind of animal?—you can sense storms, Dave,” I snickered, but with a tinge of anxiety.

“Let’s just say I wanted it to happen.”

We reached the beach at three o’clock in the morning. It was absolutely deserted, alas we had no trouble parking. Light rain had been falling for the past hour. As we got out of the car a cool air brushed my face. I was thankful for the turtleneck sweater I was wearing. Dave had a black bomber jacket over a t-shirt. We both wore jeans and sneakers and were ready to romp around like little kids in the rain.

I got out of the car and gladly let the sprinkles gather on my upturned face. The sprinkles felt good on my skin and refreshed my drowsy head, though Dave had done all the driving. The ocean was dark, but the light from the pastel colored deco hotels behind us splayed light towards the beginnings of the beach. Dave took off at a run and stopped under a cluster of palm trees.

“Miranda! Look!” He was jumping up and down beneath the trees. As I got closer I saw that he had a large round object in his hands. I saw it was a coconut.

“Look …” and he sprang up into the air, grabbing for a palm frond with a forceful tug he swung on ends of the spiked greenery, and we were bombarded by the grainy orbs.

The situation made me laugh. Here we were, alone on Miami Beach in the early hours of the morning. It was raining and not just cumuli, but coconut fruit as well. Dave was simply too terribly funny as he was dancing around in a circle like an Indian, stopping briefly to juggle coconuts every once in a while.

I lay down in the wet sand, staring up at the cloudy sky. I caught varying sights of the full moon as it was shrouded by fast moving smoky clouds, and then beaming a silvery white against the India ink of the sky—so bright I had to close my eyes—then splintering into a million tiny lights sent from the heavens to dance in glee atop the waves of the Atlantic.

I heard Dave drop a coconut and his childish giggle reconfirmed my first impression that he was like a little kid in a grown up body.

There was a moment when it seemed another worldly force took over my body. I saw one cloud formation that was circular, thick and lighted. It lowered itself from the other clouds above where we were. My body felt heated and without gravity. I thought I was no longer lying on the sand but above it. I gazed into the bright cloud feeling wholly loved and safe. The moment was shattered by Dave tackling me to the ground. We tumbled over and over and he landed almost on top of me. His eyes held concern but his lips were smiling.

“What were you doing?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I must have fallen asleep. I think I was in a dream where I was floating toward heaven.”

“You sure dream a lot, Miss Miranda! Did you know you could levitate?”

“What!!? What are you talking about?” I stared at him in disbelief.

“Let’s just say when we came smashing to the ground just then, it really was to the ground because you were above it. But never fear for I am at your service to save you from the powers of the unknown.”

“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute! I am not a floater! Now I have been known to sleep walk, but I simply do not float! Are you kidding me, Dave, or what?”

***