From the Tambolian Book of Deeds
Ψ
The Bodhicariyan Paradox
Authors Note
From the Tambolian Book of Deeds
“It is easy to accept the inevitable.”
From the Tambolian Book of Deeds
If you want more of this please e-mail me at;
tambolianmap@gmail.com
The Greek letter Psi was added to the Phoenician alphabet by about 800 BC but I intend to use the pictogram symbolically. It includes an I (as a one) represents unity of awareness. A (Y) as an acronym for the question WHY?, and a chalice that represents the feminism quality, our only hope to save humanity from itself, and finally a stylized trident a Tantric symbol for mystical insight. The Bodhicariya ware it hidden somewhere on their bodies, possibly as a talisman but mostly as an inspiration.
From the Sanskrit Bodhi meaning enlightened wisdom and Kariya meaning reasonable action the Bodhicariyan understand that in times of absolute despotism those that posses the ability to act have the responsibility to act regardless of the consequences. Unfortunately, the patriarchal delusions, we are currently suffering from, mandates the deluded to kill anyone who might disagree with them. So, how do you explain to a delusional person they are delusional - without being martyred; a serious paradox.
All of the Yoga and meditational practices described are authentic and have linage from traditional Buddhist Masters. The application of these practices is also traditional, although, there are numerous ways to utilize these practices, some more controversial than others. If you think you can be taught these practices in contemporary meditation centers you will be mostly disappointed. If you think you can do these practices without getting into at least as much trouble as the people in this book - good luck! All of the people portrayed in this narrative are mythical, as we all are to some extent. Some of the information in these biographies makes consummate good sense. Also, speaking mind to mind is mentioned. The Lamas called this upstairs telephone. It is easy to do and mysteriously enough, once you figure it out, sadly a challenge to avoid. What you figure out first is, what is you, and then anything extra is someone else’s busy noise mind. Roger Sorenson has often been quoted as saying - Reading minds is a problem of stupidity management.
Most people wonder if Tambolia actually exist. It might be better to think that - given all the time that the universe has had to establish something like a Galactic Library; why wouldn’t it exist?
“Tambolia is where dreams live and forgotten things go. It is also, where socks, pins and keys go unless you are paying particularly close attention to them when you put them down. Occasionally people stumble into Tambolia, more than you might think, but it’s those that come back that are the interesting ones.”
Chapter 1
A Gift from the Ocean
I remember the moment clearly with “hindsight insight,” when my journey started. I can slip through the rainbow doorway into the distant past. It feels just like slipping over the horizon on a comfortable cushion. The day was bright and fresh with early summer warmth. My excitement about the day was just beginning. I could feel it whispering from shadows, bubbling up into my bones, and creeping into my mind, like the ocean fog probing around the local islands. But right then my attention was not on the hilltops and the treetops of our local island but rather it was on the dingy far out in the sound, watching a seaman’s silent rowing, dipping, and pulling into the water. I could almost feel the oars pushing on deep mysteries that the oceans hide in their ocean dreams. I could feel it in the mist that a compelling mystery was about to enter my life.
As I watched the distant rower coming closer to the marina, I looked down and saw my own hands. They were small and smooth, and a little dirty. They held onto the tricycle handlebars with confidence and control. I was the town warrior and explorer. We, as in me and my hands and feet and all the rest of me, knew this fishing village of Palmer-by-the-Sea as well as most kids know their own refrigerator. I was born here. Every street and bump, every hiding place and viewing place were mine, free for the taking. Even though I was only seven, the streets were my yard, and every house was a place to wheedle someone out of a cookie, or to play with a cat or dog, or just to sit under a tree. The town was my family and my family was my friend.
In fact most of the town was related to me in one-way or another, because my great, great grandfather founded this little fishing village. His name wasn’t Palmer, it was Vladimir Illich Corsky. He left Mother Russia about the same time as the California gold rush, but never made it that far. He wound up in the San Juan Islands in the straight of Juan de Fuca, which is about as close to Vancouver Island, Canada as you can get and still be a yank.
My distant grandfather seemed to me to be a marvelous character. He crewed on a steamer out of Vladivostok, but jumped ship in Vancouver. He built a boat and started fishing, got lost in the fog and came ashore in this little bay. He actually thought he was still in Canada. He had some time on his hands so he built a cabin. He lived there until the end of his days. After the family had grown up some, they asked him to name the place. He thought that Corskyville was nice or that even St. Corsky would be good, expecting that there was probably some kind of an Eastern Orthodox Saint by that name, but no one else thought either name would work. In a full-blown huff, he finally offered, “Why don’t you call it after Palmer!” She was a scrawny mongrel pup that almost fit in the palm of his hand. He had found her wandering the marina in Friday Harbor one nasty winter day. Somehow the name got stretched a bit to Palmer-by-the-Sea. It caught on.
As I watched the man rowing the boat come into the marina, I could see he was a seaman of the ancient traditions. He never looked back. It was as if he had memorized everywhere he had ever been. He was maneuvering around the islands and harbor in a waking vision, where his eyes could see in all directions. The outcropping and currents seemed to be in constant communication with him. He rowed straight to the dock, rested the oars on a cleat and climbed out easily. He tied up fore and aft as casually as if he were tying his shoes. I could see the planks under his boots give away slightly, enduring the weight of his resolve to end his journey here.
By the sound of his steps I knew, with some ancient part of my mind, that his journey was no ordinary one. He was full of mindfulness that only the people who live near the deep ocean or in distant mountains have. They seem to have misplaced their ordinary selves. He was as fresh and alert as a sea captain who guides his ship by smells and shifting currents. Yet he was also steady as the west wind that blows the ship to ancient mysterious islands where dreams have no ending. He was silent and clear and as solid as the breakwater wall. He was completely present. At the time, I didn’t know what that meant. What he mostly looked like were mysteries that came to life.
Some of the old duffers, Boris, Ivan and old Egor were on the dock watching him too. I could see that they had stopped talking to one another until old Egor pulled his “home made” cigarette out of his mouth, because it burned his lip. He always cussed when that happened, which was often enough. It was almost like someone had thrown the switch that kept them all turned off. That was until old Egor started cussing.
The seaman turned around and looked at the duffers until their faces started to wag around, and old Egor started to burn a hole in his pants with what was left of his cigarette. The seaman didn’t say a word.
Finally Boris managed to stammer, “You look just like Misha Corsky!”
The seaman just stood there and kept looking at them as if something was mildly humorous.
Ivan added, “Yep, you do! Older though. Are ya Misha?”
He nodded with a fisherman’s ‘yes’ which looks more like a shrug to the tourist, and he replied in a clear and lazy way, “Ivan, I think you’ve been sit’en in the sun too long.”
Old Egor, clearly not wanting to believe what he was seeing, added pensively, “We buried you, oh, I’d say fifteen years ago or so. Nice funeral. Lots of flowers.”
Boris didn’t like being left out of the conversation so he thought to add, “You were lost at sea in that bad storm in the winter of ‘31. At least I think that’s when it was.”
“Nineteen-thirty,” said Ivan interrupting, “You were never good with numbers.”
“We looked fer ya for days. Didn’t find even a loose knot,” added old Egor putting out his smoking pants.
Misha just stood there listening; the humor of it all finally seemed to get to a word. I suspect that the old duffers would have gone on talking to themselves, trying to figure something out that was as far beyond them as the beginning of time, when Misha just said, “Yep.”
“Yep. What? Are you really Misha?” asked Ivan.
“Yep, I’m as him as I can be.” Misha stated softly.
Now it might seem strange that I should know what was taking place so clearly at the age of seven. It will become obvious by the time you get to the end of my story. The town was a little one, the day was quiet, I was a warrior and it was my job to notice what was going on around Palmer-by-the-Sea. I spent long summer days looking for secret tunnels and hidden pathways, where pirates could sneak into town for plunder. I suspected that there was a secret landing place for flying saucers. This is scary to those who didn’t know about UFO’s. I was never quick enough to catch one. Everyone seemed to think it was pretty bad to lure people into their space ships.
I thought that I might have been picked up and had my brain worked on, because I could actually see into people’s minds quite clearly, as I suspected the Venusians were able to do. I knew what most folks were thinking and what they were hiding. It seemed that everybody kept quiet about such things, so I did too. This was one of those times when I looked into the seaman’s mind and saw him looking at the duffers as if they were rusty bolts on a broken pylon, too useless to even tie a crab pot onto. He just kept smiling, and wondering. He mostly felt glad to be back.
“Well I’ll be darned,” stammered old Egor.
“I wonder who’s going to have to scratch the date of’en that stone we planted on ya,” said Boris.
“Maybe we have been sitting in the sun too long,” said Ivan, thinking more than was probably good for him.
“Yep,” said Misha thinking the statement wasn’t supposed to be taken literally, rather expecting the sun had probably roasted something important in these people’s brains. Smiling at himself he turned and wandered up the marina.
He was coming straight for me and I could see him walking in an easy, familiar stride. He was tall, although that wasn’t saying much because at my age, everyone was tall. His face was clean looking and kind, in a distant sort of way. His face looked as if he focused at the horizon between here and there where nothing was hidden. It was a face you wanted to be happy around. As he passed me by he gave me a wink and nodded his head. It was a hello that said, ‘This is a pretty funny place, don’t you agree?’ I followed him up the street into Sally’s Restaurant. I stood by the door to watch him.
After a while the duffers managed to break their hold on the bench, and eventually followed Misha to Sally’s famous greasy spoon.
“Gracious be to Golly,” yelled Sally from behind the counter. She was about the size of the counter and her voice could shatter glass. As far as I was concerned she was the best cook in the universe and as kind as summer.
Everyone first looked at her, and then looked at who she was looking at, and I knew that anyone who had food in his mouth was going to have trouble getting it down.
“It’s Misha! By the Gods in heaven you’re back. Come over here and sit down.” Sally hustled over and picked up a glass of water and the silverware of an island visitor who was sitting in Misha’s usual place and said, “Hey, move over there if you would. This is Misha’s favorite spot, thank you. Hot dang it’s good to see you. Some coffee and a waffle with two eggs over medium. It’s good to see you back.”
“No coffee,” said Misha. “But the waffle and eggs will do just fine. Been thinking about your waffles since, well maybe forever.”
“I can’t believe it’s you. You haven’t changed a bit. You’d charm a girl out of her pig tails,” she said laughing with a kind of high-volume cackle that was known from here to downtown Vancouver. She turned and headed for the kitchen, and looked at him like she missed him more than most. The waffles came soon enough. I don’t think anyone had had a bite except for the few tourists who hadn’t a clue about what was going on.
The word got out right fast, because Sally’s filled up with relatives and friends quicker than Sunday after church. There were all sorts of questions. Misha just sat there eating his waffle like he was in the middle of a desert, and this was his last meal before he was sent off to the next world. Since they could get nothing out of him, they started asking questions to each other. The duffers added what little they thought they knew.
“He just came in, in that old skiff of his, smooth as silk, and silent as a shadow. It was as though the fog just spit him out, except there was no fog as far as I could see,” said old Egor building on the story.
“He looks older, but that skiff of his looks like it just came out of the show room, like it always did,” said Boris in awe and a little concerned. I think that moment was as close as Boris got to really wondering about anything in his whole life.
“You would think that he just rowed out this morning for a little ‘look see,’ came back and thought nothing about being gone for fifteen years or so,” said Ivan, getting more attention than he had for years and liking it.
About this time Marcus Corsky, Misha’s son, came in still wiping the grease off his hands from working on his boat, which he had to do most days. He saw his father and tears came to his eyes out of pure happiness. He didn’t say anything. He just came over and sat next to Misha and watched him while he finished his waffle. They were a lot alike.
“Good to see you son. You look like you’ve done well,” said Misha.
“Yep, pretty good I guess,” said Marcus, about as happy as he had been for a long time.
Now maybe small fishing towns are different from most places. All the local people just stood there tiered up and gave a sigh of relief. You might have thought that everyone was sharing the same breakfast. Even though Sally’s was full of relatives and friends, they all stayed respectful and patient. Maybe being fishing families, working on the ocean, and the uncertainty that goes along with it, does that to folks.
“How ya been?” Marcus finally asked.
“Good,” said Misha, his answer came from far away.
I felt Misha’s answer go deeply into my heart or soul or whatever it is that understands what is inherently right. Although it wasn’t enough for most of the folks there. When they finally got a chance, questions and comments started to come from everywhere.
“Where ya been?” came from someone near the door.
“Good to see you back,” came from someone by the counter.
“You still owe me twenty bucks.” This got everyone laughing and things got pretty silly.
“Your kids have been behaving better since you’d been gone,” someone else yelled.
“Fishing’s been better too,” and so on…
After a while Marcus said, a little concerned, “Well, maybe we had better take you back up to the house. You can see Edna, but I don’t know where we’re going to put you.”
Ψ
“It is easy to accept the inevitable.”
From the Tambolian Book of Deeds
Chapter 2
New Friends
I decided to make my move and scramble between some legs of the folks standing around Misha to get a better look. All of a sudden Misha was looking at me and I couldn’t get away. Seemed like the talking died down too.
“Who’s my new friend?” asked Misha.
“This is Shiloh, Janet’s boy. He’s your grandson,” said Marcus with a kind of backdoor sound in his voice.
Misha squatted down and looked me straight in my eyes. “Just the person I came to see,” he said, and I felt like my world shifted around some hidden corner. No one seemed to have heard him except me. It seemed such a curious statement and everyone just kept going on like nothing had been said.
“You might as well come along with us now that you’re here,” said Marcus, looking at me, as he started out the door. Misha took my hand like it always fit there and we followed Marcus into the street. All the folks just stood back and let us go without a mumble. As we left, their talk picked up kind of fast. They sounded as if they had just found out there was a Santa Clause after all.
As we walked up to Marcus’s house, I got to thinking how things were. I know I said that I was a warrior and explorer, but mostly I was a kid who grew up alone. There were several kids five or six years older than me, who didn’t think much of me, and there were some new ones coming along four or five years back. Mainly I was in the middle and left alone, which seemed just right as rain to me. However, I didn’t have anyone to talk to. My mom mostly seemed gone; even when she was around, she wasn’t. I don’t think Palmer-by-the-Sea was the place she thought she belonged.
She married my dad while on a vacation one summer. She thought it was a good place to run away to. “Gett’n away from my stupid family,” she said. My father died fishing before I was born and my mom just got left here. She seemed to keep busy being some place else. Folks here didn’t talk to her much either. Someone said she liked men, whatever that meant. I never saw any of them. When she was nice to me I liked it a lot. She wasn’t much of a cook. Marcus once said that flies wouldn’t land on her spaghetti sauce, and I thought the same. Occasionally, when she put her mind to it, she could make some great cinnamon rolls.
I never thought how she worked to put food on the table, which she usually didn’t. I often kept myself fed at various stop-off points along a very well traveled root that took me to all the most interesting places in this little village. Sally’s was good for a milk shake a couple of times a week. I hit up Aunt Edna for breakfast most mornings, because mom slept in.
Coming up the path I saw Marcus’s wife, Aunt Edna, standing on the porch with a smile on her face, that would have melted a block of ice, a block away. She was hugging and crying over Misha until I thought they were going to fall on the ground.” Come along in. You look so good I hardly know what to do,” said Aunt Edna as she wiped her clean hands on her apron and started up the porch stairs into the house. Everyone wound up in the kitchen sitting around the table, with me sitting in a corner by the stove. It was warm and something was cooking in it. There was a living room in the place, but I’d never been in it. “What happened to you all these years?” blurted out Marcus, his concern about his father finally overcoming his patience.
Misha sat back in his chair, put his arms behind his head and looked around the kitchen. “This is one great kitchen. See you changed the cabinets around some, put a paint job on her and changed the wood burner into propane gas. Probably a good idea. Looks like you do good work Marcus.” Marcus and Edna were being kind, yet a bit anxious. I liked the way Misha was just enjoying where he was and taking things slowly. I even found myself looking around the kitchen and thinking what a nice place it was too. Especially when Edna put out some food.
“Well, you deserve an answer,” started Misha and then he stopped for quite awhile. Seemed like he was trying to organize what had happened. “I know when I went out, the weather was getting bad, yet I kept needing to go. Seemed like something was calling me, or maybe something else was pushing me. Anyway, I went out and sure enough the weather got pretty bad. The boat was doing fine and I was liking the storm in lots of different ways. There’s a way a huge storm has of getting your attention. I wasn’t trying to get back in. In fact, I was thinking storms were like big angry idea’s that blew you about and rained in your face. Maybe it was nature’s way of reminding us we were not alone. When, all of a sudden there was a calm place on the water where the sun was shinning. I rowed over and settled down right in the middle of it.
Now comes the really strange part. It seemed that I was somewhere else; it was a different ocean in a different place, maybe even in a different time. What was the interesting part was how excited I was about being there. For a moment I thought I had died, yet that didn’t seem right. Then I thought that maybe this is why I had come out into the storm. So I waited to see what would happen next. And mostly nothing happened. After a while I seemed to come back. The storm had passed and the water calmed. I suspected I had, somehow, been gone for quite some time. On the way back I recalled a dream that was like a story.”
As if placing the needle to a well-warn phonograph record, the story began,
“There was once a man who forgot about himself. It didn’t seem to bother him much, but it bothered his friends, and family. They kept after him to ‘get better,’ but he didn’t know what they meant. So he climbed into his boat, and rowed out into the sea. ‘This is better,’ was all that he could think. He stayed in the sea, and eventually came to the end. He smiled and felt a deep, ‘Thank you.’ He held that vision and a message was shared with him mind to mind: “You came from someplace – It’s still there.”
When he came back to his friends, and family he was very happy to see them, although they didn’t think he was much better.”
As I was listening to Misha tell his story I was watching him. To me he was the only person in the world. There was more to the story than what he told, and I will get to it soon enough. Nevertheless, when we got to the water part, I thought the house and the kitchen became a little slouchy. The house started to ripple and shimmer. Marcus and Edna listened too, but I don’t think they understood the story in the same way I did. I saw their heads nod up and down, yet it seemed they just couldn’t figure out what he was telling them. Personally, I thought the story made all sorts of sense, especially the mind-to-mind part. At that moment Misha looked at me and smiled. In that smile was another story. He didn’t lie to his son and his wife. He just didn’t tell them everything he knew about his experiences either.
“That’s a strange tale all right,” said Marcus wondering what to think about his father. “I have heard of many strange things happening to sailors who go out onto the sea. I never thought something like this would actually happen to us.”
“What difference does it make anyway,” said Edna getting up and coming over to the stove. She took out some cornbread muffins and set them on the top to cool. “You are back safe and sound. That’s all that matters. You look good and healthy. Maybe the angels took you to heaven for a look see.”
Marcus smiled and said, rather concerned, “Do you remember anything like that?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“I think things are going to be difficult enough around here with you just popping out of the sea without me having to introduce you as my dad who went to heaven, and you had to come back because you didn’t pass the – heaven test – or something,” and he started to laugh.
Edna had been sitting and listening. I don’t think she thought the idea of failing the heaven test was funny and I was not so sure she was very easy with it either. She came back to the stove and unloaded the cornbread into a basket with a towel in it, to keep the muffins warm, except the one she handed to me. She looked concerned, and said to Marcus, “Where are we going to put Misha?”
Marcus looked at Misha, maybe more concerned than Edna. “I know Dad, that this is your house and we have filled it up with ourselves. You don’t know about the twins, Peter and Natasha, they’re fourteen. Gilbert was fifteen when you disappeared. Gilbert married Janet in the summer of ‘36. She’s Shiloh mother. He died a couple of years later caught in a storm. We could move out if you want?”
“No, said Misha quickly. “This is your house now. I’m sure I can find something.”
“Gilbert and Janet bought Martin’s old house,” said Marcus with a furrowed brow between his eyes. “He started to renovate it right away. He loved that girl, maybe a little too much. Couldn’t do enough for her. It was a pretty big job renovating that house, and I suspect he wanted a large family. His insurance paid it off, but that left them little else. I try to keep it up some, but there’s plenty to do. Maybe you could stay there.”
“I don’t think Janet’s going to like the idea much,” said Edna. “She has a mind of her own and she don’t think much about the people round here.”
“What do you think Shiloh?” asked Marcus.
I was mostly working on my muffin and the question caught me off guard. Couldn’t think of a thing to say. My heart jumped into my throat with hope and excitement. I managed to spit out, “Sounds good to me,” with an assortment of cornbread crumbs.
“She is probably up by now,” said Edna, not very nicely. “You can go down and talk to her. Maybe you had better take some muffins as an offering. You haven’t been doing any fixing-up over there for quite awhile.”
“Misha, why don’t you stay here for a little while? said Marcus. “Three of us might be a little too much. Shiloh and me will try to introduce the idea to her, gentle-like.”
“Sounds good,” said Misha settling back into his chair, as if he had been sitting in it his whole life.
If I remember correctly, it wasn’t an easy sell for Marcus to talk my mom into letting Misha into her house. Wish I could remember more, but I was spending too much time thinking about how nice it would be to have a friend to talk to. Having someone else in the house seemed as right as kicking a rock down a path. I was figuring out how I was going to be as good as I could be, whatever that was, and started cleaning up Misha’s new room as soon as I got back from telling him he had a place to stay. As far as I know Janet never asked me what I thought we might do.
Where was an extra bedroom that was filled with stuff we picked up along the way. I started to clear everything out into the shed when Janet went off to do whatever she did when she was away.
Misha eventually came down and helped me finish the job. He seemed to want the room about the same way I figured to set it up except for the bookcases, which I didn’t know anything about. Seems that Marcus had kept all of Misha’s books, said they had been lonely since he had been gone and he had better take the books with him. I though we moved a whole library into his room. There were large leather-bound books and several editions of what looked like encyclopedias, but weren’t. There must have been a mile of textbooks with University-sounding titles. There were the classics, which I recognized, yet had not read. I was looking at The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with greedy fingers and he gave it to me with a smile. By the time Janet got back, we had the room setup, and kitchen all spic and span with dinner on the table.
“Looks like you two are getting along like a sock in a shoe,” she said moving into her seat and settling down to supper. I recall her trying to be kind and even helpful, and even a little bit caring. It was one of the few times I remember being really proud of her for knowing just the right thing to do. After that she seemed comfortable to leave us mainly to ourselves.
I spent all of the next three days showing Misha around the town making sure everyone knew where he was living and how to get a hold of him. Everyone seemed happy to see him back. They also seemed a little uncomfortable with his distant quiet. That’s how it seemed to me, anyway. For me, Misha being around and living with us was like sunshine on the beach.
It never occurred to me that he had lived his whole life here, except for the last fifteen years. We went to my favorite place last. There was a tree that hung over the water. To get there you had to scramble down a rather steep rock face. The kids of Palmer-by-the-Sea were always told not to come here because the tide could be treacherous, and it had killed some kids years before. It would have been better if our parents never told us about it, since then the cliff became a magnet to any kid that heard the story. I never thought of Misha as an old guy either. As I went down the rock face he was right beside me grinning like this was a summer vacation for him, and this little scramble was icing on a cake.
“What do you think?” I asked hopefully.
“Always liked this spot when I was your age,” he remarked as he was settling down into a niche in the rock someone had tried to carve out to make a hermit cave. They stopped about where it made a great seat to look at the bay.
“There was suppose to have been some kids killed here,” I offered, pushing the extent of my wisdom about the place.
“Yep, supposed to have been, but I believe that any kids that might have been missing from this place were probably missing for reasons other than this place,” said Misha starting to get into a talking mood.
It took me a moment to digest this last message. I just supposed that every place needed a missing kid story just to keep the rest of us on our toes. I hadn’t the foggiest clue that I might be the next missing kid story. I was thinking, listening, and slowly falling behind as Misha kept on talking.
“There was once a swinging rope tied to that high branch up there,” he kept on. “It was quite a ride out over the water, but if you didn’t get off soon enough the swing got slower and you just kept straying farther and farther out over the water. Mostly we kept a long stick over by that rock, and a friend you could trust to haul you in if you got stuck. Once Sally, the one that has the restaurant, got stuck out there when she was just a youngster. Boy, did she yell. You could have heard her all the way to town. George Martin and I were on the cliff up yonder and came a running. We thought an Orca Whale was trying to swallow her, which would have been quite a trick even then. We hauled her in and tried to settle her down. She was crying and I suspect she felt pretty foolish. We told her this was no place to be without a friend. She said that she didn’t have one that would come here with her. I felt sad about that. We helped her out over the rock. Don’t think either one of us ever said anything about it to anyone, till now.”
What happened to the rope?”
“Don’t know, but it’s a nervy climb to put another one up there.”
“Yep, there’s better climbing trees. Any more stories about this place?”
“Yeah, I guess there is another little one. Happened when I was just a little older then you are now.”
I know I said that he was in a talking mood, but that didn’t mean he was in a hurry. I watched him just sit back into that step in the rock and look out onto the water. I liked watching him watch things. His face just seemed to get involved with what he was seeing. When I turned around to look where he was looking I never felt I could see things in the same way he did. It didn’t make me feel the same way. After a while he came back from looking out at the bay and started the story.
“I was climbing down that same rock and I slipped. I could feel myself going and couldn’t seem to do much about it. Then I hit my elbow on something. You know how you can hit a nerve and it can hurt like it was broken. I can remember the feeling in my arm even now. Well, I flipped over and I must have hit my head on something, because the pain in my arm went away and things didn’t seem to matter much, yet I never seemed to loose consciousness in the way you might expect. I landed over there on my butt and got lodged in that little split. I was looking at the tree with the bay stretched out behind like a screen. It must have been foggy, because I don’t remember seeing Goat Island over there. What was strange was the tree had taken on a different color and brightness. It was as if it had turned into a golden tree, and it spoke to me something like this, ‘That’s about the hardest way to get here as you can find.’
“I thought that was probably true, yet couldn’t do much about it. I just sat there and looked at the tree. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I felt a big lump in my heart; such as I thought it was going to burst. I guess they would call it emotions or love or something else now. It still felt like my heart was going to break. I can think back now imaging that this might have been a good time to ask a question, magical trees aren’t something that just pop up everywhere, but I couldn’t think of one at the time. Couldn’t think of anything except how beautiful it was. Eventually, my arm started to hurt again and the tree was just the same tree it used to be. I always liked to come here, always felt good to be here. Seemed like a place to be good in.”
“This has always been my favorite place,” I said. “But I never had anything like that happen to me.”
“Maybe things seem unusual after they are experienced. Or possibly it’s how you tell the story or even how you live the story. Could be lots of things.”
“Grandpa!” I guess the way I said it caused him to turn around and take special notice of me, expecting me to bring up some important subject I’d been working on, which was true enough. “When I first saw you, you said that – ‘I was just the person you came to see.’ It didn’t seem that anyone had heard you except for me, or thought it was unusually anyway. What did you mean by it?”
“I said it to get your attention.”
“Well. I guess you did,” I said. “Can’t seem to get it out of my mind.”
“We’ve got a journey to make together, although there is plenty of time and this is not the time to hurry things along.”
“A journey? Wow!” I actually was very excited and right away started to imagine where we might go. “Are we going back to where you disappeared too?”
Misha seemed to sit there even more quiet-like than even the moss on the rocks. “What makes you think that?” he said finally.
I wasn’t sure why I thought that. It just seemed like a special place that might be good to visit. What I said after working on it a bit was, “Some places have to be visited rather than talked about. Like this tree. Talking about it isn’t the same as sit’en here under it. There is a lot you aren’t saying about where you’ve been, so it may be something special like that?”
“Well, you’re right of course about the place I went to. Talking about it would only make it worse. It’s better that people think what they will and organize it in their minds as something weird and unexplainable. If I described what happened to me, then everyone would feel compelled to explain it in some formal or scientific way. It would not only make it more incomprehensible, but even worse – wrong. Don’t worry, we are still going to have plenty of trouble with what people think.”
“I know what you said to Uncle Marcus and Aunt Edna wasn’t all you knew about what happened out in the middle of Puget Sound. I suspect they know it too. Seems, they are easier about letting it go. I saw something change in you when you were talking about it. You looked like Christmas morning or like you were at a real surprise party on your birthday. Would you tell me what you saw?”
Misha hadn’t moved, and was still looking out into the sound or ever further than the sound. I couldn’t tell just then which it was. I was hoping I might learn something nobody else knew. Then he finally came to a decision and some kind of commitment to that decision.
“As I said earlier that we are eventually going on an adventure together probably to Tambolia one way or another. Where we go will depend on many different things that we have very little control over. But some things I can share with you before we leave that might help you understand a little bit more about the universe we live in, starting with Tambolia which is very much like a riddle, that I still havn’t figured out. It goes like this:
First there is a quiet place you must find in your memory. It is located at a time right after you have grown up some and just before you notice you’re someplace. You’re maybe four or five years old. It is one of the few times in your life when you see forever. I was able to recapture this moment and open the door and step through, this is what I saw; I was riding the crest of a gigantic rolling wave looking at a vast range of snow capped mountain peaks surrounding oceans upon oceans in every direction. There were gray clouds crouching in the valleys and storm clouds everywhere. There was lightening and thunder. My heart froze with the immensity of it all. I was tossed about, bewildered and dazed. There were vast continents with immense wilderness lands supporting and nurturing large rivers and small rivers and quiet ponds hidden in inaccessible forests. Large things did not diminish small things, but add to the grandeur with subtle caring. I traveled through this vision for an age and a day until I came to an oasis. Within the oasis was a doorway and on the other side of that doorway was a Garden. I knew I only perceived a small fraction of what there was. In my bewilderment I could not see the beginning because it was shrouded in darkness and mystery.”
Then he just went quiet.
I don’t mind telling you that what Grandpa was telling me was both amazing and mysterious, and of course I hadn’t a clue about what the riddle might mean or where the beginning might be. I loved every moment of it. I wished the story would have gone on much longer. Then I thought about it for a moment and decided that this was just the beginning of what could be a very long and mysterious adventure after all. Telling anyone else about what I had just heard from Grandpa was out of the question, because huge parts of me didn’t believe it myself.
“Well, what do you think about the adventure now?” Misha asked with an insightful, humorous grin.
I wasn’t actually watching the grin. I was busy working on how small I was and how small Palmer-by-the-Sea was and how I wasn’t warrior enough to plunder anything more threatening than Aunt Edna’s cornbread basket. I wasn’t actually ready to go, just yet, and that it might be just as well if he would help me with my spelling lists, and maybe help with dinner from time to time. What I said after a while was, “The world’s a pretty big place, maybe we should rest up a bit before we set out?”
Misha huffed a long lingering laugh, which seemed like a good beginning, and what he said was pure music to my ears, “I suspect we will be more than tired of resting by the time we set out.”
Ψ
If you want more of this please e-mail me at;
tambolianmap@gmail.com
