Flight of the Night

November 2009

Dr. Jensen Toublain of the Scorpion Age of Aquarius Institute had finally solved the death mystery and millions were lining up for tickets. Jensen had attained a status reminiscent of both Mick Jagger and Jesus, and he didn’t like it. From a small town in Idaho, he spent his youth reading Thomas Aquinas, Greek tragedies, Salman Rushdie, and Kurt Vonnegut. By the age of seventeen he was a drug addict with a penchant for heroin and a longing to sort out the many theosophies clouding his mind and judgment. He was involved in a vehicular manslaughter charge that was ultimately dropped but changed his life anyway by driving him to India, which seemed a healthy distance from Idaho and appeared to be the sort of place where one goes to sort out one’s mental fragments. In other words, he showed up in Andhra Pradesh hoping to redeem himself.

We met en route to a train station in Maharashtra, about 40 miles north of Andhra Pradesh, in Southern India. He’d first arrived in Mumbai feeling miraculous and free, perhaps because he’d gone cold turkey and had left his drugs behind him, committing himself instead to a strict yogi regimen. He’d wanted to ascend for a long time, but like me he discovered that enlightenment doesn’t happen until you’ve dealt with the mess you’ve made here on earth. Paying off creditors was the least of it. And at seventeen, he’d had few bills to pay since he lived primarily off of his parents. Like the rest of us, he had to deal with those behaviors that keep us fixed in our physical bodies. He suffered from jealousy and vanity, and practiced a good deal of condemnation and self-sabotage. He described the bulk of his life as a car accident. It just so happened that instead of him getting nailed, the real-life victim in his homemade electric car wreck turned out to be a second cousin.

Although I’d grown up in New Zealand I was proud of my acquired American accent. My family moved there when I was fifteen. My mother was half Maori, half American and she complained about the Southern Hemisphere for as long as I could remember. My father was the type of gentle man who would make huge sacrifices in order to keep her happy. But he knew he’d never meet her needs if we kept replaying our summers in December. So every few months or so he would sit us down to map out “the big move”. This went on for a number of years.

I suppose I got my wanderlust from both of my parents. They were both thinkers and doers, although one could argue that it took too long to make it to the States. By the time we arrived my mother was already suffering from deep depression and my father from incurable guilt. As their only child, I inherited a combination of their troubles.

When I told Jensen that I was originally from Auckland he looked at me knowingly. “I can see the forest in your eyes.”

We took facing window seats on the train and for its entire duration we decided to forego acquaintance conversation for the reddish brown landscape. India demanded due time and observation. It was not a place you could come to know by accident or by being absent-minded. This was particularly true for Westerners who came by the busload for a quick spiritual fix. Jensen understood that one could not simply scoop up wisdom by the handful, use it like conditioner, and then return home a wholly transformed being. Likewise, once he saw the forest in my eyes he knew he’d glimpsed more than an impression. He was going to have to walk through it.

We arrived in Andhra Pradesh with our canteens half emptied. We both looked parched. Watching the road travel by through the train window had been draining. As we walked the first leg toward the ashram, the panoply of organic fabrics flapping in the breeze filled our minds with gentle flavors. Scarves, headdresses, and saris made a mixture of orange, red, and indigo that bled into the twilight sky. The whole place seemed to pulse with spirit, life, and colors. Brown skin tones swirled and the air smelled like something I’d never inhaled before — something warm and dank, sensual, and unplanned. But Jensen explained right away that he could not linger. He would settle in later. First he was going to take a quick trip to Mars via teleport.

We never spoke at length before his trips and I became accustomed to the unceremonious departures. They usually occurred midday when we were both ravenous. He wore his white gauze headdress and tunic, and generally brought along his small green knapsack. He never waved goodbye. Often he would walk off into the distance, traveling slowly in plain sight, until the horizon would swallow him like the proverbial camel in the Sahara. The mercury that day always seemed to be soaring or setting a new record. An acrid waft would hit the air as if a row of firecrackers had just gone off. Instantly I would know that he had traveled. I kept steady and never looked up though I longed to make the journey myself one day. But I wasn’t ready.

Within two months we were vegan. My hunger was never satiated during his trips. I ate legumes and grains, vegetables and rice, masticating unfamiliar textures I’d hoped would somehow fool my brain into thinking I was enjoying a side of New Zealand beef, but these sparse and unusual meals always ended the same. I cried for an hour or longer. There was nothing specific about the tears. I cried because I was still a human being.

He always bathed after a return. The ashram had two main outdoor showers that smelled of herbs and serenity. Showering was that first moment in the day when the body felt translucent. But he rarely did it with the sun. He would return in the late evenings several days later when the sun was just turning the sky into a kaleidoscope of burnt hues. The sky was spectacular, displaying the kind of grandeur that makes most of us feel fleeting and miniscule. Nature was that powerful. I would close my eyes, ever so humbled, before I would feel the embrace of the whispery breeze that always followed. And then, when I opened my eyes, he would be standing in front of me, sculpted, naked and tanned, perfectly proportioned muscles a testament to his inner strength. The second I took him in, he would turn away and head to the shower.

He had done a day trip to Tibet on his way back and for whatever reason he was not able to reconnect. This happened infrequently. He placed both hands on my wrists. We were back in our tent. His hands were still moist from the bath water and they tingled slightly. I wanted to ask questions but he was never one to talk. But something had changed and I could feel it in his hands. He wondered if this was a sign that he would no longer be able to reintegrate. The cycle completed, he would remain in Mars never to return. He withdrew his hands momentarily and then stared down at his palms. We watched them turn crimson and then suddenly swell to three times their size. He looked stricken and tense, and before I could rise to fetch him a damp cloth, he let out a tremendous yell that I was sure could be heard all around the ashram. Then he collapsed.

No one came that night, perhaps because they’d cautiously presumed it was a private matter and not a health concern. In the morning I worried that I would be questioned. Jensen was still unconscious and I’d been too frightened to touch him. For nearly six hours I’d slept slumped over our small wooden table, my hair matted against my face, my underarms filled with perspiration as if I was the one who’d had an attack of some kind, while he lay unattended. My bare feet made a sound against the dirt floor. My eyes opened slowly and with little focus. Before I could really make out the contours of his face, I heard a noise coming from outside. People had gathered. We had an official story that I’d rehearsed many times because I was afraid that he would be sequestered one day and we would be questioned separately; I would be forced to explain where he kept going and why he’d kept abandoning me and why I’d allowed myself to suffer and cry interminably and repeatedly for nearly a year. But now we were dealing with another matter altogether. It appeared that Jensen had died and that I’d done nothing about it.

There must have been three or four people huddled in front of our door. I could hear them breathing. I kneeled down and lay my hand over Jensen’s forehead and he spoke instantly. I responded in full voice and soon the small crowd dispersed.

He said the trip was amazing. He almost sounded glib. But his heart was still beating fast, his face much too flushed.

“You don’t look well,” he said to me.

“No?” I wondered. “No,” he said. He sat upright and seemed to scan my body with his discerning eyes, searching my face with an anxious look.

“Did you follow me there?” he asked me.

“Where?” I asked him.

“To Mars,” he replied.

“No,” I told him.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“I don’t know how to get there.”

He didn’t believe me. He seemed to spring onto his feet; he covered his mouth and chin with his hand, his eyebrows fixed in a burrow. For whatever reason, at that moment in time, he became convinced that I had not only followed him to Mars, but that I’d been following him for many months.

It was amazing we’d gone that long without a confrontation. I’d gotten good at tears and acceptance. I’d questioned nothing, not even his sanity. The peacefulness of the place seemed to demand it.

"What do you want?"

he asked me. I said nothing. “What are you waiting for?” he asked. The question was too important and too defining. I was also amazed that he had not been able to guess. Or if he had guessed, I saw no reason why he was pretending not to know the answer. Mars, I thought to myself. I rubbed my eyes. I was actually exhausted, having managed only a partial sleep at the table.

“Ask me and I’ll take you,” he said. He looked at me deliberately. His eyes seemed to spark and for the first time I noticed the small beauty mark above his left collarbone. I could hardly look at him. The request seemed unthinkable. It could shatter our times here. I could no longer long for him when he left; I could no longer imagine him doing his mystical time travel; I could no longer picture the big beautiful planet bathing him with its mysterious air that explained all of his peculiarities; I could no longer dream of visiting the place myself.

He waited a while longer but eventually, as had happened a few times in the past, he sighed very deeply and then smiled. Night had fallen and we could hear the murmur of a hundred voices. As the smell of simmering cardamom filled the air, the thought of hunger and having to pay attention to it came as a tremendous relief. That episode was over. He understood, as I did, that neither one of us had traveled to India to learn that no one could make me ready. His smile was for hope. One day, he believed, I would join him. NewsSip

Photo Credits: Rohit Gowaikar

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