The Mauve Blister
The Beryl Stairs ©ped
2e
The Fissures
Alison and Drew were already up. He heard the singing laughter and the dull ringing of objects in the kitchen below. He heard a wooden spoon rap against a mixing bowl. Water was running. Peach waffles and pineapple juice awaited him. With any luck she’d sprinkle coconut shavings over the top of the waffles, maybe use the rest of the bag of shavings to bake a tray of macaroons for later in the day. Ali only cooked on road trip days. They were taking the car to Port Townsend to visit her family, again. It must be Sunday. He was glad to be home this weekend. He searched his mind and discovered he had no assignments to finish on this day. He was hungry and ready to drive. He was ready to make his family weary with his bad jokes and unnatural exuberance. He was ready to pull himself from sleep, dance down the staircase, nuzzle his wife on the back of her neck and kick his boy in the seat of his pants.
____He sat up on the edge of the bed and his eyes bruised against the bright light of midday. The smooth ridges of the Caceres in the east were bathed in dull olive. There was a noise in the kitchen below his room, but the noise hadn’t come from his family. Rinn had an assignment for the day, he realized, and his family—the only gear in his forward movement—would be absent from all things until he could find them again in another dream.
____He found Brandon clearing the dining hall of brunch plates and a coffee service. “What’d I miss?” he said to the boy.
____“Just fruit and hot cereal for a few. The rest packed in lunches and went hiking. They’ll be back for your two o’clock in the Blister.”
____Rinn reflected on his will for the day. “Do we have any peaches?”
____“Sure. Dad brought in a crate from the Feed. Go nuts.”
____In the kitchen Rinn fixed himself a bowl of Colorado peach slices and smothered them under vanilla ice cream, washing down the peach waffle surrogate with coffee (still hot) from the group pump pot. Standing with his waist against the kitchen sink he stared into the light of the emerging afternoon. Out the west window he beheld the rueful figure of his friend and neighbor, Tenorio, as the man walked slowly with Skunk in tow behind him. It looked to Rinn like his neighbor had awakened under a shroud of brandy sugar and that his friend was still contending with the consequences.
____ “Are you ready to shatter some countenances?” said Tenorio as he entered the kitchen, shoving shut the warped screen door. Lyle could be heard yapping across the mesa in an approach to welcome his mule friend home for a day of fence checking.
____Rinn handed his neighbor a cup of coffee and nodded. “If they could use some shattering, I suppose.” he said. “It’s the one who’s already shattered that I’m looking for.”
____“And who do you think is dyed into that wool?”
____“I think his name starts with a D and rhymes with spaniel.”
____“Ah, the kept man from Frisco.” Tenorio offered a grin of accordance. “What do you suppose will be his triggers?”
____“Well, his wife’s an influential trade lawyer, they have no kids, they live in Sea Cliff where his idea of breaking away is a round of ultimate frisbee with strangers in the park or a pottery class twice a week. He’s a teetotaler, but he likes his grass. He’s a pretty standard domestic Madame Bovary type, as in, horny for exoticism and attention.”
____“What do you think his qualifiers are?”
____Rinn paused and took in the last of his coffee. “This could be his pay dirt,” he said. “He told Sweetbriar during the interview that he was a latchkey boy.”
____“That’s nothing new,” grumbled Tenorio.
____“Sure, but Daniel had no siblings or pets. And, admittedly, no friends, either. He told Sweet he endured deep retreats into his imagination, both dark and light.”
____ “So…he was more catatonic than rebellious?”
____ “Right. And I think as a kid he must’ve rescued himself from more than one dark night.”
____“That should grease the skids.”
____ “That, and Daniel’s wife gave Sweet and Brandon a handsome donation for their consideration and trouble.”
____“Understood.” Tenorio rinsed out his cup and slapped Rinn on the shoulder. “Are you confident in the comportment of the others?”
____“Ha!” Rinn shook his head. “Waivers,” he laughed. “They’ve signed their lives away. No cameras, no phones. I’m not confident in anything outside of a person’s innate hunger for discovery and need for healing. To be honest, I’m surprised none of our previous guests have disclosed the nature of our nature.”
____“They have,” confessed Tenorio. “And they’ve been flatly dismissed as loons.”
____“I suppose.”
____“Listen, Mr. Finn,” Tenorio’s face curled into friendly exasperation. “Astonishing news is nothing but a business decision. It’s interference. Moses could return with an extra tablet and he’d only get a ticket from cops for not applying for a demonstration permit. What people take home from here merges with their will to live—they won’t hand that over wholesale for the brief sensation of a spectacle. Sweet’s old Navy Intelligence. He’s no stranger to weeding out the clown fish through his vetting. Besides, I don’t think any of us here can retell our individual experiences to anyone’s satisfaction unless that anyone has been here too, and if that anyone’s been here, he or she ain’t gonna play ball with the nonsense outside of us. The people who’ve shared this land and her offerings with us have honored the sanctity of the reprieve it’s offered. They can’t betray her grace. It would be…unnatural.”
____“Ay, Tenorio. You frame reactionary comfort with a gilt wood, my man.”
____“We’re assuming a charge, Rinn. ‘To do and die’ is the last road home.”
____Rinn smiled and raised his hand in acceptance, although the road home for him was a map of blurred out arterials and bodies of black water. The acceptance was everything, but the tedium of repeat rituals and ceremony dimmed every sensitive being since the dawn of finite consciousness. At least his autonomic nerve center was there to insist he couldn’t escape his charge. He had to keep his feet forward and his lungs filled.
There were others who wanted into the quiet.
*
The Mauve Blister stood on the northwest of the mesa, a quarter mile past the horse paddock. It was a broad, round earthship built to rise above a circle of land in a low dome, its center topped with a lens panel that could be removed on special (illegal) occasions to vent as a kiva. The floor was an arduously installed feat in Italian marble and the enveloping, singular wall was hand polished in a plaster finish. It had even been equipped with two cutouts on the west for a toilet and a utility closet. It was primarily a meditation room, especially in the winter months, and a classroom and yoga palace for scheduled events and gatherings at whim. When Rinn first arrived, he spent months in the space in the endeavor of separating his physical self from the racking on his life, and he found a resounding stasis of support and expansion, as if the space inflected and carried itself beyond its limit. All sound swirled and carried, and the light in the womb glowed in pink with edges of crimson.
____At two, the field of souls entered to discover not only what remained of their lives, but also to immerse themselves inside the properties of the propellant that would inherently guide them forward.
____“This voyage is all about patience,” issued Tenorio with a rare affection. “We’re not the space program or an endowed conservatory, so keep in mind that your behavior and decisions here and forward will be a product of your trust in our intentions and our trust in your actions. Rinn’s orientation will be brief,” he paused and pressed his hands downward several times, “but please attune yourselves to his words, and the spaces between his words. You don’t want this expedition to end before it begins.”
____Rinn took a step toward his guests. “I want to tell you about the fissures in a way that is simple and kind to both yourselves and them,” he said. “What we’re sitting atop is a delicate biophysical and geophysical mystery, one which was not sought out, but, in fact, accidentally discovered by Sweet and Tenorio and their families years before our get together, today. These features are found in sets, spread out below the west and east wings of the mesa like gills on a cosmic fish, and they are just as their name implies. They’re deep, narrow slits beneath the surface of the land. Three on the west, here, and four in the east canyon.”
____“There was an eighth,” said Tenorio. “An unpleasantness.”
____“Yes, there was. And that’s something we’ll have to revisit.”
____“Biophysical?” scoffed Hazel, the physician. “Organic?”
____“That’s you,” answered Rinn. “It doesn’t only involve the earthen features. You’re part of the mystery, as well.”
____“One of you will be taking an immersion into the feature very shortly.” said Tenorio.
____“And that’s why we’re keeping this introduction within the confines of three important steps,” said Rinn. “Breathing, voyaging, and gentleness.”
____Tenorio took a step forward. “The breathing is simple. In, deeply and steadily through the nose, pulling out the belly and the diaphragm, out, like whistling through pursed lips, but without the whistling. You shouldn’t have to think about it, but exhaling through the mouth helps prevent you from either falling asleep or passing out during the voyage.”
____“Has anyone died during these visits?” said Donovan.
____“Like Rinn said,” offered Tenorio, “we’ll ‘revisit’ that in a minute.”
____Rinn began walking in a semicircle, following the north wall of the blister. “The reason we’ve stressed the importance of the interconnectedness between childhood pain and childhood wonder is for our purposes, now. It’s not only about understanding and healing the bereavements of painful young experiences, but it’s also about bridging them with moments of wonder and love, both for your necessary outlook and for the set and setting of your mind in the face of spectacular discovery. You’re here to heal and travel, and the step of ‘voyaging’ is obviously the keystone of our yearning.”
____“Where are we going with this inner child?” said Rockwood.
____“You either get space travel or a painful childhood memory,” said Tenorio.
____The great room became a pretzel of dumbfounded dialogue.
____“Now, yes, we admit,” said Rinn, “we admit that this can appear as a gauntlet for some of you, a prickling challenge, but it’s essential that you understand the purpose of our introductory instruction, here. The experiences we’ve chronicled follow this arc without fail. What happens at the outset is that the space envelops you in a shroud of youthful shock or shame, a memory is triggered, and it is vivid. It practically absolves you from your own creation if you don’t guard your creation and self. What you need to concentrate on to bridge the void is a feeling of loving separation, as if your life is the pure product of theater. Once you release your consciousness into the spectacle, once you understand that your youngest pains were not about you or your character, but, moreover, about your ingression into a natural hail of chaos and pain, then your mind and body will and must release into a state of charm, and a loving separation takes place.”
____“This separation clears you for your voyage,” added Tenorio.
____“Now, wait,” said Ingrid. “For some of us, the idea of separating pain from our experience is blasphemous. We are constituted from pain. Are you instructing us to fall into delusion?”
____Rinn smiled. “No. We’re instructing you to lucidly celebrate your emergence into a broader consciousness despite pain. In some rare cases, ‘delusion’ can be a state of widened awareness. Even love itself.”
____“This is one of those rare cases,” said Tenorio.
____“You’re individuals,” said Rinn. “You’ll experience what you’ll experience. But from the groundwork we’ve chronicled, we can say your time in the fissures will invariably feature early crises in your life. And, if you can overcome them, you may earn a glimpse beyond our atmosphere. Pain and wonder are two sides of the same green leaf. Your unconscious love for the whole of it, the binding knot of your life, is the genesis of discovery.”
____“And the gentleness?” asked Alda.
____“Right,” answered Rinn. “It’s important that you don’t demonstrate any actions of violence or frantic behavior likely to injure the rock walls. If you’re scared, dizzy, sick, you mustn’t act out against the rock. For the initial visits, and indefinitely for some, we’ll have a guideline grappled to your waists to assist in any prompt extractions. This is due to the event regarding the now missing eighth fissure.”
____“An old amateur geologist found his way into it thirty years ago and began drilling for samples,” said Tenorio. “My cousin and I were watching. The opening throbbed, it seemed. It shut up like a clean cut. In seconds, there was nothing there but a running scar.”
____Rinn’s expression brightened. “We’ve decided that Daniel will be the first in, today,” he announced.
*
Anvilheads gathered around the western fringe. A cool wind ran through the gully and goosed the mettle of the group. Ernest and Joni braced themselves at the rim of the far west fissure and delicately lowered Daniel into the languid space beneath. Daniel was anesthetized with anticipation and relished the descent; he had invested so much in this trip that he was at the deathwish threshold of the bargain. Soon, however, as the light above disappeared, he was beset by the apparitional parting kiss of his wife, her face as cool as the rock, her touch as smooth as jade. Nearing the bottom, he found his feet gently scrubbing the ground for purchase. He discovered the bottom split into two concave openings resembling the wings of a star. The walls blushed the deepest of indigo. There was a full minute—during his breathing transition—when his feet released conscious contact with the earth. His brainstem flickered like a spring-loaded shade being snapped back above the glass. Space and time expanded before him in an apparition of blue.
Soon, a disturbing vision took hold.