Jumping Page 19

  I made provisions with Marla and Kelly that if I don't come back after six months, or they haven't heard from me, they're to come and collect my stuff, such as it is, and do what they want with it. They're the only people in the world it might mean anything to. I just don't want it left for my landlord to deal with. Kelly can have my music and books and anything else she wants. With that taken care of, my affairs are settled.

  As I watch them drive off in their rental car, I feel a little melancholy. I wonder if that's what makes me also feel apprehensive, as if the good luck the Void has brought into my life, which I think it has, has to be followed by bad luck. Why do we want the gods not to notice our good fortune? Why do we think the other shoe has to fall? What about the Law of Attraction? Good calls good. Can I get that through my head? We're more afraid of good luck than bad luck. We're unaccustomed to good—it makes us feel prickly in our own skin. We're used to bad. I shake my head.

  But, even though I worry, I just can't feel bad about the Void. I think my apprehension is really because I so seldom choose, really choose, to act on my own behalf. It can't possibly feel comfortable to me. And when I'm choosing to do something so far outside the usual range of choices, well, I'm probably feeling in better shape than I have a right to!

  I'm glad Marla and Kelly came. It has been great—like a ceremony of preparation for my trip to the Void. I can't deny that I'm hoping the Void will connect me to something more—as it did Duncan Robert—and it feels right to have gotten to embrace these earthly connections before I go.

  I go in to call Miles. I pause a minute at the door. That doesn't mean he's my boyfriend.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Babe —Tandem Jumping

  WE ARE JUMPING IN the early morning, like Duncan Robert did. It's May, and the temperatures are New England moderate. We're taking nothing with us. I've got a pocket notebook and pen, but I always have those with me. We've kept who we told to a small circle of family, to avoid creating a sensation with the people we work with or with any of our friends. We didn't want to be delayed or stopped, and we didn't want to generate unnecessary worry. All preparations have been made—and after all, we believe we'll only be gone one day in Earth time.

  I've been visiting the Void in the daytime, when no one is likely to be there. It was a kind of rehearsal—I wanted to feel easier around it, not just show up the day we jump. I wanted it to feel more everyday than that. Sometimes I took my lunch or a book and stretched out there in the sunlight next to the Void, listening to the forest noises, of which there are many once you get quiet. Chirpings, rustlings, scratchings, whistlings, cawing, wind in the trees, something dropping from a tree. I saw the occasional small animal—meditating rabbits, once a black fox that was startled to see me and ran right up a tree, little curious chipmunks who venture close, once a couple of hesitant deer. None of them seemed afraid of the Void in the slightest. They hardly seemed to notice it. They were more afraid of me, even as still as I tried to be. The Void was part of the whole scene, not something separate and malevolent at all. I couldn't help but take comfort in the natural instincts of animals.

  When I told Miles, he laughed. He said, “Maybe that's part of the Void's lure. It can seem normal, like the big bad wolf in Granny's clothing.”

  “That's not what Duncan Robert would say,” I scolded him, shaking a finger at him. “He knows better, and so do you. Stop trying to scare me.”

  He grabbed my finger and held it. “I hardly think of you as someone who can be scared so easily.”

  I wondered how I had given him that impression, but I wasn't going to disavow him of it. “Why'd you try, then?”

  “I guess I still miss Duncan Robert, my old sparring partner,” he said. “We helped each other keep our fears at bay.”

  “Let's just both admit we're afraid. Is there something so wrong in that? When we're about to jump into a Void?”

  “Only if you plan on not coming back.”

  Whatever his fears, he is going to do this. He's known that longer than I have. He says he feels as if he's been preparing for it since long before Duncan Robert's jump even. Part of him still feels he should have jumped first. Duncan Robert's jump was so hard on him, much harder than he had expected. He hurt—ached—for a long time after. I think he lived outside of himself for a while, until he could manage the compressed pain of living inside. He knew he loved the boy, but he hadn't known how deep that love ran. He had taken it all for granted. And then the jump measured the depth and breadth of it for him.

  I know he's glad to know me. He thinks I'm interesting and I make him laugh. Not that he tells me that, but I know it in the ways he seeks me out, asks my opinion, and watches my face as I speak. I know he values our friendship, as I do, and wouldn't want to lose it. What we're doing feels bigger than both of us, and we can use a friend more than a lover to get us through it, even if my heart is occasionally unruly in his presence. We're both glad to not be jumping alone.

  So the time is here, and soon we'll be walking through that clearing. The horizon is light and I can hear a few solitary bird chirps. We spent the night at his place—in separate rooms—and neither of us slept much. I got up to make a cup of chamomile tea around two and saw the light under his door. We were up before our alarms went off and are having more tea, sitting out on his porch, watching the shift from dark to impending light. Our stomachs are empty, to be on the safe side. I watch him in the opposite corner of the swing, cradling his mug, staring into the trees. I feel as close to him as I have to just about anybody. Sharing this life-changing purpose has made our relationship into something I can't define, only feel.

  We've said our good byes, our final preparations are long done, and I think we've arrived at yet another new point of readiness. We exchange hardly a word. We've achieved a kind of self-aware peace, coupled with only a little apprehension for the jump, not for anything else. We think only of the jump. Silvia pulls up out front in her old Subaru Forester, and we take our mugs inside and rinse them at the sink. I follow him out the front door, waiting as he locks it. We walk down the porch steps, and I almost laugh out loud. Everything feels so significant, on the way to this significant act!

  “Morning,” Silvia says quietly. She doesn't look directly at us, but I think she has tears in her eyes. I'm in the back seat, and I reach to touch her shoulder.

  “Tough duty,” Miles says to her.

  “It is,” she says honestly, looking at him, and a tear slides down her cheek. “But it beats sitting at home thinking about it, like last time.” She wipes her cheek and turns the car back into the street. “And, damn it, it's exciting!” She laughs. “Watch me end up jumping next time!”

  We're the only car on the road, and the Void is only a few minutes away. At the edge of the clearing, Silvia pulls to the side of the road and turns off the engine.

  “I'm so proud of you two!” she says. “But I still don't think I can stay to watch. I don't have that much courage. I'm going to go pick up a paper and some coffee and then come back here to wait for you.” She smiles. “We'll see if I can manage that.”

  She doesn't get out to hug us. We get out and start to cross the clearing. I stop to turn and blow her a kiss. Miles and I smile at each other, and he takes my hand. I look at him and feel as if I've known him forever.

  We stand at the edge of the Void a moment before we turn and take some steps back, to give ourselves a little running start, as we've rehearsed. We turn to each other, wordless, and then just do it. It's the most peaceful thing. We run a few steps through the damp grass and then make a little jump. I feel more excitement than actual fear. We're synchronized, and it feels like one jump, not two. Having seen into his eyes the moment before the jump sustains me. Holding his hand helps, too.

  We have no moments of panic, as Duncan Robert had at the beginning of his fall, maybe because we're together, maybe because Duncan Robert prepared us for those first disorienting, stomach-swallowing moments. After the first catch of our breath, we jus
t let ourselves fall, without resisting. We expect to be falling for a while, as he did.

  Then we begin to separate. The force of the fall pulls us apart, pulls our hands apart. He falls first, ahead of me. I feel panic. Wait! This shouldn't be happening! We should fall and land at the same rate, according to the laws of gravity. I researched it! There must be something different at work here. How different?

  I see him moving away from me, down. I'm feeling as if I'm being pulled out of myself, down, with him—it's as if I'm looking into his eyes, but from outside my own body. I wrench my eyes away, knowing I have to keep hold of myself, or I might really panic, in addition to losing him. I know he is below me, but I can no longer see him. He is leading the way, I tell myself, and that's a small comfort.

  The sensations of the fall are taking my attention, anyway. Now it becomes my fall. Your fall is your fall, just as Duncan Robert said.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Babe's Jump

  I WANT TO SAVOR IT, compartmentalize it, treasure all the details. I'm a writer at heart, so I have to capture it to sort for understanding later. I can't help watching myself have this experience. But part of me wants to just let go and fall. How else does the truth happen? How can it happen if I'm always on guard against it?

  For some of the time, despite my vigilance, I do lose track of myself and time, just closing my eyes and going mindless. I feel myself lose size and shape and substance and morph into a nameless, faceless falling. I'm falling with the air around me, one with it. I have no more being than that. Yet my own presence, my own awareness, never leaves me, remaining undiminished, strong, purposeful. This is beyond understanding, because I feel miniscule at the same time, tinier than tiny. I laugh. Then I laugh at my laughing. How can I be laughing? I'm still falling. I'm giddy. I haven't even stopped to notice my surroundings. I'm not much of an Alice in Wonderland.

  This situation calls for my awareness to be at the forefront. I'm falling pretty fast, but I can see there are some sort of hieroglyphics on the walls. Pictographs, sort of, some maybe of people. I try to study them but can only hold onto glimpses. I might be able to reproduce some of them later on paper. I close my eyes and can't be sure I don't doze or even dream.

  I feel a bump and instantly open my eyes. I have landed, right side up, almost sitting. I feel all in one piece, not bruised or broken. Quite the opposite—I couldn't be more excited. I know from Duncan Robert that this is how his adventure in the Void began. I stand up and look around. I see that I have landed on a flat rocky surface, a few feet back from the reach of the Void, and I can't help going to the edge to look over. To see the Void from this angle is mind blowing. I'm in it! Finally. I hold on to the rocky wall to my right as I look up and then down. It's dark, and a little windy. There is a dim glow, as if light emanates from the rocks themselves. When I look up again, I don't see even a pinprick of light to mark the opening where Miles and I jumped. I wonder how many miles I have fallen. I look down again, glad to have something to hold on to, and feel the bottomlessness, a vast openness that goes on and on. I don't want to stand here too long because, crazily, I can feel the urge to jump rising in me. It's stronger down here than at the edge of the meadow. I'm not ready for another jump! I have to see where I've landed first. I look around my rocky room. I've been buffeted into a side cave that's bigger than my whole studio apartment. Higher ceilings, too.

  After a few minutes of wandering around, I can see that it has a back opening. I go into it, figuring that if anyone was going to come out and meet me, they already would have. I'm a little disappointed. I find myself in a winding tunnel with a faint light at the end, which gets brighter and brighter as I walk. All of a sudden, as I round a curve in the tunnel it opens out onto a large, beautiful beach, on a stunning day. The beach extends into the distance in front of me to the edge of the water, which is clear turquoise-blue and gently rippled with small waves. The beach is strewn with gigantic rocks, some grouped, some separate. They're as big as buildings, and they have all kinds of interesting crevices and formations where the wind and the water have been at them in artful ways. Gulls wheel in the sky, calling, and some are scattered on the beach in the far distance.

  It's a moment before I realize those are people in the distance, not gulls! People! I start to run. “Who are they?” I'm wondering. “And why am I running?” But I can't stop myself. I'm so happy to be running to these strangers on the beach! I feel as if my heart is pulling me and will leave me behind if I resist. I'm glad I've been exercising, because I don't think I've ever run this fast. I can't seem to run fast enough!

  The people ahead of me haven't noticed me coming, so I have a chance to try to look at them as I get closer. But as I approach the group I realize it's only one person I'm really looking at and running towards—a tall, thin man in long, flowing white robes.

  “It's Philip!” I think, wondering who Philip is. I run through the small gatherings of other people, not even looking at them, until I'm only a short distance away. Suddenly, I'm so overwhelmed at seeing him that I drop to my knees, unable to go further, and I sob with the abandon of a broken-hearted child. I can't seem to understand or control my own behavior. I've never felt so vulnerable and without defense. I know how Duncan Robert felt about the people he met in the Void and how hard it had been to leave them, but what I'm feeling seems beyond that. This man is my heart. The feelings I'm having for him transcend any I've ever felt for anyone on Earth. They transcend any notion of love or soul mate I've ever had, making any other connection seem paltry, stingy, limited, fearful. I couldn't hold this back if I tried.

  I sit there collapsed on the beach and cry without will, without desire, feeling as if I've always cried, that crying is my natural state, like breathing. I can't imagine stopping. Yet I've never been happier. His presence surrounds me and the essence of me moves in and out of it. I don't know how else to express it. He is not man, I am not woman, we are filaments of the same strand of soul. I feel him move closer, and I look up. He bends down and takes my hands in his, and I stand, feeling weak as a kitten. We embrace, and I can hardly breathe. Every question I have ever had has been answered, every need tended to, every prayer acknowledged. I'm complete. I'm home.

  He laughs. He knows what I'm thinking and feeling. He tells me that this is how we all feel about each other, all of the time, when we're not Earth bound. And we always forget that when we leave here.

  “A great thing to return to, yes?” he says, with a slight British accent. I'm still incapable of stringing two coherent words together. I want to ask where I am, why I am, but it's hard to care in his presence. It doesn't matter.

  I feel so vulnerable, but I know, at the same time, we're meant to be living vulnerable—that's our natural state. How else can we change and grow and progress? It's the only attitude that makes real learning possible. You have to be open. A plant doesn't grow clenched, protected; it hurtles itself into growing. It may seem slow to us, but it has the plant's utmost commitment and attention. “It has no fear,” he says to me, hearing my careening thoughts. This stops me in my tracks. It so resonates with the feelings I had on jumping with Miles into the Void. I just hadn't known what having no fear felt like.

  Now, in this moment, in this place, I know it's the most natural thing in the world for me to love Miles. And I do. I'm filled with an absolute certainty and an absolute happiness. At the same time, I can't help but realize we love so much bigger than that, so much bigger than the love of one person. Here with Philip, I can understand how we do it—how it's possible for us to hold so much love.

  Philip shares my thoughts as I have them. He tells me this is the meaning and purpose of life for everyone, all of the time—to be open in love. When I feel drawn to another, like Miles, it is to build structure with him—routines, habits, patterns—to ensure time and place for our spirits to co-exist, to learn from and work with each other, as well as sustain each other. I know we are together due to a pre-contract or agreement to do this, in this place
and time. In between lives, we agreed to help each other, and we've probably done it before, in different roles in other lives. We do it until we don't have to do it anymore.

  As I look up into his face, I know Phillip's energy lifts mine to a level beyond what I can ever achieve on my own, on Earth. You can't be in a bad mood here, I realize. You can't not like yourself or anyone else.

  He takes my hand and says, “Let's meet the others, shall we? They've been waiting.”

  I look around. The others are focused on us, though it hadn't looked like that initially.

  “Who are they?” I ask, though I instantly know what he's going to say.

  “They're your cohort, along with members of a few other cohorts who have shared lives with you. They want to celebrate your being here. It's a huge step, you understand. They've not seen anyone else do it.”

  “What exactly have I done?”

  Philip looks at me with seriousness. “You have bet your life, my dear. By jumping, you have bet your life that you can make change for yourself. It's why you jumped. It takes such courage because everything in your lives is so programmed to prevent change, to maintain the status quo at all costs.” He smiles now.

  “You're their hero,” he says.

  I have to laugh.

  “Well, I've never been accused of that before!” He laughs, too, and I wonder if I have.

  I turn to meet my cohort—the parts of my original entity who are all living lives on Earth now, too, when not between lives. Some of them are on the beach, and I meet them face to face, maybe a dozen of them. Young, old, men, women—not like Duncan Robert's group, who seemed all to be around his age. I can tell from their faces they have had different kinds of experiences and have different kinds of knowing. Or maybe that's just part of the telepathy that seems always in operation here.