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might become! I don't know any other way to describe how well
realized were the petals and the centers and the colors. The colors
themselves were so distinct and so finely delineated that I was unsure
suddenly that our spectrum was even involved.
I mean, I don't think our spectrum of color was the limit! I think
there was some other set of rules. Or it was merely an expansion, a
gift of being able to see combinations of color which are not visible
chemically on earth.
The waves of laughter, of singing, of conversation, became so
loud as to overwhelm my other senses; I felt blinded by sound
suddenly; and yet the light was laying bare every precious detail.
"Sapphirine!" I cried out suddenly, trying to identify the greenish
blue of the great leaves surrounding us and gently waving to and fro,
and Memnoch smiled and nodded as if in approval, reaching again to
stop me from touching Heaven, from trying to grab some of the
magnificence I saw.
"But I can't hurt it if I touch, can I?" It seemed unthinkable suddenly
that anyone could bruise anything here, from the walls of
quartz and crystal with their ever-rising spires and belfries, to the
sweet, soft vines twining upwards in the branches of trees dripping
with magnificent fruits and flowers. "No, no, I wouldn't want to hurt
it!" I said.
My own voice was distinct to me, though the voices of all those
around me seemed to overpower it.
"Look!" said Memnoch. "Look at them. Look!" And he turned
my head as if to force me not to cower against his chest but to stare
right into the multitudes. And I perceived that these were alliances I
was witnessing, clans that were gathering, families, groups of kindred,
or true friends, beings whose knowledge of each other was
profound, creatures who shared similar physical and material
manifestations! And for one brave moment, one brave instant, I saw that
all these beings from one end of this limitless place to the other were
connected, by hand or fingertip or arm or the touch of a foot. That,
indeed, clan slipped within the womb of clan, and tribe spread out to
intersperse amongst countless families, and families joined to form
nations, and that the entire congregation was in fact a palpable and
visible and interconnected configuration! Everyone impinged upon
everyone else. Everyone drew, in his or her separateness, upon the
separateness of everyone else!
I blinked, dizzy, near to collapsing. Memnoch held me.
"Look again!" he whispered, holding me up.
But I covered my eyes; because I knew that if I saw the
interconnections again, I would collapse! I would perish inside my own sense
of separateness! Yet each and every being I saw was separate.
"They are all themselves!" I cried. My hands were clapped on my
eyes. I could hear the raging and soaring songs more intensely; the
long riffs and cascades of voices. And beneath all there came such a
sequence of flowing rhythms, lapping one over the other, that I
began to sing.
I sang with everyone! I stood still, free of Memnoch for a moment,
opened my eyes, and heard my voice come out of me and rise
as if into the universe itself.
I sang and I sang; but my song was full of longing and immense
curiosity and frustration as well as celebration. And it came home to
me, thudded into me, that nowhere around me was there anyone who
was unsafe or unsatisfied, was there anything approximating stasis or
boredom; yet the word "frenzy" was in no way applicable to the
constant movement and shifting of faces and forms that I saw.
My song was the only sad note in Heaven, and yet the sadness was
transfigured immediately into harmony, into a form of psalm or
canticle, into a hymn of praise and wonder and gratitude.
I cried out. I think I cried the single word "God." This was not a
prayer or an admission, or a plea, but simply a great exclamation.
We stood in a doorway. Beyond appeared vista upon vista, and I
was vaguely sensible suddenly that over the nearby balustrade there
lay below the world.
The world as I had never seen it in all its ages, with all its secrets
of the past revealed. I had only to rush to the railing and I could peer
down into the time of Eden or Ancient Mesopotamia, or a moment
when Roman legions had marched through the woods of my earthly
home. I would see the great eruption of Vesuvius spill its horrid
, deadly ash down upon the ancient living city of Pompeii.
Everything there to be known and finally comprehended, all
questions settled, the smell of another time, the taste of it
I ran towards the balustrade, which seemed to be farther and
farther away. Faster and faster I headed towards it. Yet still the distance
was impossible, and suddenly I became intensely aware that this
vision of Earth would be mingled with smoke and fire and suffering,
and that it might utterly demolish in me the overflowing sense of joy.
I had to see, however. I was not dead. I was not here to stay.
Memnoch reached out for me. But I ran faster than he could.
An immense light rose suddenly, a direct source infinitely hotter
and more illuminating than the splendid light that already fell
without prejudice on everything I could see. This great gathering
magnetic light grew larger and larger until the world down below, the
great dim landscape of smoke and horror and suffering, was turned
white by this light, and rendered like an abstraction of itself, on the
verge of combusting.
Memnoch pulled me back, throwing up his arms to cover my eyes.
I did the same. I realized he had bowed his head and was hiding his
own eyes behind me.
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