Chapter 36
All black tents and black chairs.
Rain.
While the list of attendees was large in size and scope, it was a complete secret to anyone not invited. There was no media coverage whatsoever. The founders of every major publishing platform on the planet came in droves in total silence. The forest surrounding the estate was ghostlike, veiled in a hissing mist.
This was changing the world and the world didn’t even know it.
No matter the status of a person in this World, there are always opportunities where you act in a way that says, “I recognize that you are just a human. As am I. I acknowledge your pain.”
And while all our pain was not nearly as deep as the one Hans was experiencing, we all carried a little bit. Little pebble-sized pieces of the pain, which was enough to allow our imagination to truly wonder to places, mentally putting someone you love in her place, and the access to that fear and pain is all we feel. An insalubrious amount of grief that could not be rationalized.
But perhaps the delusion is that they’re really gone.
Maybe Morgen is right here.
In my body.
I get that minty-tingly feeling.
There was no meal or reception afterwards. The families ritually approached and placed one hand on Hans’ left shoulder and leaned in and whispered something of comfort. Rare verbal phrases passed down orally generation to generation never to be immortalized on paper or stone.
A few hours later, as the chairs were being folded and the tent taken down the rain subsided, Hans asked, “Walk with me?”
I said yes with my voice.
Walking with Hans is like walking with Buddha. A one-on-one session with Jesus. A beautiful relationship. But he was very inside his head. His skin was glowing. He’d been bouncing from island to island in Greece when he heard the news. Weirdly he already had a flight booked back here the day before Morgen’s private wake.
Hans led me beside a pond lined with bamboo. And pointed at every crack in a bamboo trunk. And breeze rolled against the bamboo. He says, “Do you hear that?” The splitting of microscopic fibers happening on a level you could not see with the human eye. And though I do not know our precise location on the map, there is no doubt that I am in my forest.
We arrive at a Japanese teahouse in the woods miles away from any landmark familiar to me, but I do feel safe and complete. And though I do not know our precise location on the map, there is no doubt that I am in my forest.
He asks me to sit and points at the two pillows on the floor. I didn’t even know I could do the full lotus position. As if my knees and ankles had melted to butter. Not in an out-of-body way but this-doesn’t-feel-like-my-body way. Like I’m in a new body. I don’t have to worry about making sure I’m relaxed anymore. That tension that felt so natural.
“So. How has it been?” Hans says.
“How’s what been?”
He smiles and sets his steaming tea down in front of him and throws invisible confetti in front of him. Tingling his fingers with his mouth totally open. He says, “Everything.”
Then shrugs.
It took me a while to convince myself that Hans wasn’t seducing me with his voice. He talks how I imagine God talks.
He says, “Listen.”
And he puts his hand on my wrist. I close my eyes. And my ears become enormous. Like I am nothing but my ears.
We painfully listen to air mixed with sirens.
There’re bells going off everywhere.
Microscopic ringing in your router.
Your fridge.
Ceiling fan.
All devices.
But here there is nothing except trees, and a sweet-but-deep twinkle of light through the leaves, like a diamond in a mirror.
“Confidence is controlling the pace of your breathing when you’re talking,” Hans says. He pats his sternum lightly and nods his head. In a way he is telling me to try it so he can observe I’m doing it exactly right.
Inhale.
Exhale.
“Slower.” He says.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Exhale.
“You feel it. You will be pushed out of this state of mind. The kind you have at the teahouse. What do you think you need to do to come back to this place?”
I knew not to speak or open my eyes. I listened to the way air brushed against my nostrils.
Hans says, “Slow, deep, breaths.”
In a non-perceptive state of bliss I speak, “Slow, deep, breaths.”
Slow, deep, breaths.
Slow, deep, breaths.
And it feels like I’ve returned from some far away place.
I knew before he stood that we had more walking to do. Hans led me down a path where the bamboo trees form a tunnel to the next pasture. He points over at the trees.
He says, “Listen.” And it was glittering, ringing the strands of air blowing into my ear.
We cross to the opposite of a twenty-mile open field. Hanging from the trees there are windchimes for leaves. He points up to a high branch and says, “That’s my spot.”
“A different branch for each person?” I ask.
“Because your death is as unique to you as your life is.” He keeps his arm outstretched but lowers his finger slightly to the only windchime without any rust. He says, “And that’s Morgen’s.” He looks at me, saw my face, didn’t move, he pats my back and smiles, “Look at her! Listen! She wants you to hear nature is celebrating you.”
I didn’t feel like he was trying to implant anything negative through coded phrases. I wish I didn’t assume he was. This would be much more pleasurable. But what I wonder is if Morgen’s now living inside of me. Are my eyes all hers? Was that sense of disconnection I felt when I saw the symbol on Everhet’s napkin, that logo idea, was that the beginning of my soul evacuation? This whole time I’ve been a vessel for Morgen to assume so she can finally be with Joselyn?
I was a cuck. I’m not even mad about it. Who I was is dead. Who I am now is all that matters.
He turns to me. He says, “And you will be up on that tree too. And one day we will all be singing the same song.” Then he told me the lyrics to the song. He said how it was sung didn’t matter. Just the words mattered. That it was sung at all. And to this day I know the words as if they were engraved on my heart, but I lack any faculties that would allow me to share them.
And I no longer felt like death was a challenge I wasn’t ready for, but one I wanted to abstain from for a very long time. And now Joselyn is pregnant. And we got this fool to provide what we needed for it.
Walking back. He explained someone must maintain the environment for the cycle to continue. To be the caretaker of the plain of existence. He explained that if the planet dies all will be lost and our learnings from sacrifices will have been for nothing. We are documenting the patterns in nature but if there is no nature to document then our purpose is lost. And if we don’t have a purpose now, we cannot find a new purpose in the future. And that was the sad tale of this poor vessel I now occupy.
But I have no tension in my body anymore. No karma to attend to.
Until the cool of the day there were countless miracles Hans performed in front of my very eyes. And some of the things he said disrupted my reality and cannot be repeated.
That night. He revealed the most important thing to me that I always knew but was never shown. Spirituality has a little bit of calculus to it. Humans are placeholders or variables in a mystical equation. Their limits do not exist.
“You are not a problem to solve.” Hans says, “You are part of the problem to solve.”
The same way money doesn’t buy happiness. But it does help while you try to find it.
Windchimes all dance at once when the wind blows by. And I finally knew what I heard was true. Different branches playing the same song. And I thought More of the same creates more of the same.
And I say, “Thank you, Hans.”
Hans says, “Thank God.”
James Jacob Hatfield is a displaced engineer, a painter, and many other contradictions. His work has appeared in X-R-A-Y, Maudlin House, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Barely South Review, Chaleur Magazine, Havik, and others. His ekphrasis poem “torrents of lahar, No. 36” was anthologized by the North Carolina Museum of Art. He is a Sterling Fellow and a Weymouth Fellow. He is the creator and curator of the Gemini Sessions Substack. He lives in Durham, NC.
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