Chapter 19: The Magician

19

“So, I was just reading something online, on some IMDB message board – it’s amazing the debates that bubble up out of nowhere and become just vitriolic on there sometimes – and anyway this Canadian guy and this American guy started out talking about healthcare in some way in reference to a movie or whatever, and the conversation turned to Nine-Eleven.
“It’s amazing, by the way, the transparency of character, at least at a certain level, that one’s internet-message-board typing reveals. People type the way they think even more than they speak the way they think, I think.
“Anyway, so the Canadian guy was coming from this very liberal, fairly conspiracy-focused perspective. He talked about various reasons why he suspected that Flight 93 – the one that crashed in Pennsylvania – was actually shot down by another plane, and how our government was clearly in on the whole ordeal in some shadowy way, like you’ve said before.”
“Awesome,” Lee says with a grin, sipping her coffee. A woman who is in line beside the two of them as they wait for their sandwiches to be made gives Lee a suspicious look up and down. Norman notices and grins at Lee, who shrugs and remarks, “Whatever. Go on.”
“Of course the United 93 being shot down thing sounds ridiculous, but, you know, the conspiracy as a whole doesn’t necessarily. So anyway, the American guy was having a generally reasonable discussion with the Canadian guy at first, when it was just about healthcare, even though the American guy was very pro-freedom, which he defined as being anti-government (and thusly anti-socialism in any manner). But when it turned to Nine-Eleven, the American guy just fell apart logically and was, like, ‘If you think that Bush was behind Nine-Eleven then you are just a conspiracy nut. Suggesting these things is like spitting on the three thousand dead.’ He actually finished with something like that. And this discussion thread had begun as this very reasonable, fairly interesting discussion about universal healthcare and the very real issues involved in its enaction, and then when things turned to being about Nine-Eleven it just fell apart and this guy’s powerful, acerbic message was the last one on that thread. It was crazy. His spelling fell apart and it looked like he was typing really fast and angrily. Like, you could see the anger in his message.
“Now, first of all, I think it is incredible to read these internet message boards. It’s such an interesting cross-section of people’s voices, people’s opinions. It’s amazing. So real. So weird. So many people with different ideas and yet most of their ideas seem to fall into one of two general camps. What is with that?”
“It’s the duality, the dialectic,” Lee proposes. “Because every one of those individual people does in fact have different opinions, different thoughts, but when it comes to their place in society it seems like people fall into one of three camps – the third being the true enlightened individuals who realize that the whole thing is just an illusion and that the only barriers to true freedom and the pursuit of happiness are really within the self.”
Norman raises an eyebrow. “Nice,” he says, “right on. What it made me think about, though, which is why I brought this up…”
He trails off as he and Lee are handed their sandwiches by the heavily blushed young girl behind the counter.
“Thank you,” he says. “Do you want to sit there, by the window?”
“Sure.”
Lee and Norman take their sandwiches and coffees to a small table by the windows of the sandwich shop, looking out across a parking lot upon the Maine Mall.
“Mm, this is fucking delicious. But so anyway, what really intrigued me about this whole American reaction to the Canadian guy’s conspiracy theories was the absolute instant rejection of anything except the official version. The way he specifically said that suggesting such things was tantamount to spitting on the three thousand dead. Since when is suggesting a different possibility for the manner in which these people were murdered disrespecting their deaths? That’s fucking asinine. Clearly, the truth ought to be revealed – who would ever fight on the side of anti-truth? Only the fucking douches of the world, that’s who, people like Osama Bin Laden and Bush and Blair and dickheads like the guy on this thread.
“It made it seem to me as if there really is some kind of vicious force of anti-intellectualism, misinformation, obfuscation, fear and despair that has some kind of subtle yet powerful sway over weak minds. People somehow feel more comfortable in the protective arms of this monster than in standing up on their own legs and having to develop a rational set of thoughts, a true individual identity.
“The universe remembers the real people,” Norman says mysteriously, almost to himself.
“What do you mean by that?” Lee asks him.
It takes a moment for him to snap out of his thought process and look up at her. He shakes his head and says, “Yeah, I’m not entirely sure.”
“Hmm,” she thinks, eyeing him with a smile on her face. “Well, we’ll get back to that thought. But I wanted to talk about that book I was telling you about on the phone the other day.”
“Oh, right. The Twenty-twelve book?”
“Yeah, the Pinchbeck book. It’s really, really interesting, and I am going to have to get a copy for you, because I’m still reading mine, but you need to be reading it too. Do you know anything about the Maya, and the Mayan calendar?”
“Some. I remember something about how the Mayan calendar ends soon. In Twenty-twelve, right?”
“Exactly. This book – you need to read it. I almost can’t describe it, but it’s all about this guy, this pseudo-journalist’s exploration of shamanism and mystic realms through psychedelics and it makes me think a lot about you and what it is you’re doing. He went down to South America and took ayahuasca – that drug I was telling you about that that one guy took and had those visions of the lizard people?” She laughs at herself as she says the words, but Norman knows she’s serious.
He laughs with her, and says, “I vaguely remember. It sounds very interesting.”
“Tell you what,” she says, putting her hand on his hand. “I’ve got my copy in the car. You can just take that one and I’ll get a new one for myself.” She stops him from protesting by continuing, “I was going to buy a copy for you anyway. This way I can just buy myself one instead. It’s the same thing. Don’t worry about it. I’ll stop by Border’s after I drop you off.”
“Thank you, Lee.”
“No problem. You know; I want you to be informed. If you’re going to be on the cutting edge of the mystic defense of Love, you’re going to need to know what else is going on out there, what other book-heroes there are fighting beside you.”
“Wow,” Norman smiles. “You’re the greatest. I love you, Lee.”
“Aw, I love you too, Norman,” Lee says shyly. “So are you excited about your meeting this afternoon?”
“My meeting?” he asks, taking a big bite of sandwich.
“With the shamanic healers I told you about. I sent you an email about it yesterday, reminding you.”
“No, yeah, I totally forgot about that. What’s today? Oh, man – I’m going to go talk to those people who think I’m a white mage this afternoon? I am not ready.”
“Oh come on, you were born ready,” Lee jokes.
“I don’t know, Lee,” Norman admits, sensing the Heisenburglar hanging just outside the periphery of his thoughts. “I’ve been in strange territory lately. Norman and I – and of course by Norman I mean italicized Norman, Norman from my book – we’re twin comrades in some very overgrown wilderness of thought. My paragraphs, when I’m alone, are scattered, Aronofsky-ishly edited, assaulted by images and lines of poetry that seem almost to be beyond my control. I’m beginning to feel less like a person and more like an oracle, a puppet.”
“You need to be very careful, Norman,” Lee says with a fresh gravity to her voice, “because with everything you’re doing right now you are making yourself very susceptible, I would imagine, to certain forces that you are trying to expose – this Heisenburglar of yours in particular and all in the real world that he represents. Keep your spirit about you, and keep your eyes and your mind open.”
“Thanks,” Norman nods, “I know. I do. I am. There’s no need to really worry. I’m just a little concerned that I’m not in the most collected of states for meeting these people.”
“Are you stoned?” she asks.
Norman at first frowns at the question, but then shrugs and says, “Well…”
“It’ll be fine,” Lee assures him. “They’re very cool, very mellow women. I think they’ll like you however you are, so long as you act like yourself.”
“What if I act like someone else trying to play the role of me?” he jokes, and she laughs a little. He tries to imagine the actor in the movie scene of this moment having a really hard time figuring out just how to deliver that line. He feels like that actor for a moment.
“Either way,” she says. “Anyway, you’re only there for your own informational purposes, right? Just relax. Think of it as research. You know, I want you to think about what I said about channeling, too. Automatic writing. I think you’re ready. Maybe you can talk to the women about it today.”
“I’ve been thinking about it, too. This book almost feels like automatic writing anyway. It’s a bizarre experience. I’ve been feeling voices knocking.”
“I think you’d be okay,” she says in a soothing voice, “because you know there’s nothing to fear.”
“There’s never anything to fear,” Norman says almost automatically, his gaze intensely focused into his mind, where he is thinking about something else (a memory [or precognition, for all he knows] of the Mediterranean on an overcast day in Barcelona, the whole scene bathed in a deep electric blue).

the Magician

As Norman rides in Lee’s BMW, his back and legs warmed against the cold autumn air by electrically heated leather seats, he considers the archetype of the magician and what it means in the zeitgeist. When Imogen used to read his tarot, she always seemed intuitively to connect the Magician with him. In Norman’s brief flirtation with alchemical natural philosophies, the images of the magician and of the hanging man were the ones to which he most intuitively was attracted.
“Tell me more about what these people said about me being a white mage,” Norman asks Lee, turning to face her.
“What do you want to know? I just told them about some of the stuff that you told me, about what you do, and some of your ideas.”
“Like which of my ideas?”
“I don’t remember exactly,” Lee sighs, flipping through the CDs in her door. “I think they mostly were referring to the way you can astrally project at will, and induce your own trance in almost any circumstances, and how you taught yourself how to do it. You can do it intuitively, and people like that I guess are called white mages.”
“It’s just so badass. But really, it seems silly. Like, I could say that people who can’t think of this arbitrary series of numbers I’m thinking of are called cocklords, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”
“Do you not want to do this?”
“No, I totally want to do this.” He shakes his head and looks away, nervously exhaling toward the window. “I’m just coming to terms with it, that’s all.”
“I don’t think it will be a big deal,” Lee says calmly. “They’re really just people who think like we do, and who want to talk to you. It’s not like it’s some kind of human sacrifice or something. They’re not going to be wearing rat skulls.”
“Okay,” Norman agrees with a smile as Lee pulls the car past a strip mall and into a small parking lot behind a pale house that looks like a dentist’s or veterinarian’s office, with a tiny yard and a covered porch. A blue sign in the middle of a small patch of wood chips reads in white, Theosophical Society of New England. A six-sided star containing an ankh seems to have been spray-painted on above the words. “If you promise no rat skulls,” Norman says with a smile.
“We’re a little early,” Lee notes as she pulls into a parking spot next to a blue Volvo. “Do you have any cigarettes?”
“Oh yeah.” Norman pulls them out from his coat pocket.
“I know it’s a little chilly, but if I turn the heat up would you be willing to lend me a cigarette and have a cigarette with me before going in?” Norman has already lit her cigarette before she can finish her question, and is lighting his own.
“That word sounds very familiar – theosophical. Is that a word Philip K. Dick uses?” Norman asks his sister.
She shakes her head, eyeing the sign. “I’m not quite sure. It does look like a Phil Dick word, doesn’t it? Well, it’s clearly from Greek. Theo meaning divine, and soph presumably being as in philosophy or sophism, which is, what…” She looks to Norman, grasping for words.
“Knowledge, I think,” Norman interjects. “Wisdom.”
“Yes, knowledge. Saint Sophia. Of course. So, knowledge of the divine? Something like that? They do mostly shamanic healing stuff, to the best of my knowledge, but I think they’re kind of like the Unity church, sort of into and open to everything.”
“Theosophical,” Norman says aloud, seeing if the sound of the word in his voice triggers any clearer impressions. “Theosophy. It’s very close to theodicy, which is the name of one of the chapters of Under the Undertow.”
“Oh yeah. What does theodicy mean again?”
“It’s something like a proof of God’s love of Man, or an example of such, or something like that, I think.”
The radio comes on suddenly, with no external stimulus, just as the radio station it happens to be on starts playing the Coldplay song Don’t Panic. Norman and Lee both instantly recognize the song from its opening chords and smile at each other in simultaneous recognition.
Lee laughs outloud joyously and squints with disbelief as she says, “I didn’t touch anything, Norman, and neither did you, right?”
“Yeah, no, that happened spontaneously.”
They sit and smoke and listen to the song together for a minute or so, both grinning shamelessly, enjoying the mysterious magic of the moment,
Norman takes one last drag from his cigarette, then drops it in the Coke can ashtray between the seats. “I think this is the curious stroke of esoteric potency in the air that we need to enter on. You ready?” he asks. Lee nods with a smile, putting out her cigarette on the top of the Coke can. “Let’s rock,” Norman jokes, and they both open their car doors at the same time.
The inside of the Theosophical Society of New England looks like something that has just traveled a century forward in time, all in dark wood and deep reds. There is a large waiting room with red-padded chairs of ornate design between tall bookshelves sparsely populated with paperbacks that span the breadth of the New Age genre. At one end of the room is a dark desk with a green desk lamp and a computer, from which a large young woman in a white silk blouse looks up and smiles. “Hello there,” she says pleasantly. “Are you Norman Newman?”
Norman smiles, enchanted at being welcomed by name. “I am,” he replies.
“I’m Lee Ingman,” Lee says to the woman. “I made an appointment for Norman for today. Do you know if it would be alright if I sat in on his meeting with Sarah and Leah?”
“I’ll let them know you’re here, and I’ll ask them about that, ma’am,” the young woman says. She gets up and exits the room through a door behind her desk.
Norman can feel his underarms getting sweaty with nervousness. He tries to picture Laura in Puerto Rico, and as soon as he does he can feel her love for him fill his heart and his for hers color every bit of input he takes in. Everything becomes easier.
“This girl must be new; I haven’t seen her before. You nervous?” Lee asks him as they both sit down. But though he heard her question, Norman does not answer. Inwardly, he is preparing himself to be full-on, to be his most righteous self. As he considers what such an inner process might require, the process seems to occur on its own, and as he begins to grow stronger, more stable and spiritually defragged, Sam the Demon becomes faintly visible between himself and Lee, floating in the air. He winks a big black demon eye and then flits off like Tinkerbell toward the door through which the young woman exited.
Mere moments after Sam disappeared through the door, it opens and the receptionist steps out in front of an older, much thinner woman with graying black hair and magnetic, graying-blue eyes. Her gaze fixes onto Norman instantly though calmly. As the receptionist sits back down at her computer and Lee stands, the older woman says to Norman, “Norman Newman, I presume?”
Norman stands, unable not to smile. He extends a hand to be shaken, but the woman just bows slightly and swirls one hand, the other clutching her long, purple cloak together in front. “Lovely to meet you,” Norman says to her, coolly retracting his hand.
The woman gently touches Lee’s arm and says, “How are you, Lee?”
“I’m doing great, Sarah,” Lee says with a grin. “Norman, this is Sarah.”
Sarah’s chin staggers upward as she turns to face Norman again, until her head is tilted up slightly more than necessary to look into his eyes (she is about a foot shorter than the very tall Norman). She attempts a smile, but it makes one of her eyes close, so she does not keep it for long. “I am very pleased you decided to come and speak with us,” Sarah says to him with a nod. “Ever since Lee first mentioned you, we’ve been eager to meet you.”
Norman wonders if he is blushing (he can never tell when he is). “It’s my pleasure,” he says.
“Come.” Sarah leads the way into a small office lined with dark bookshelves. In a space on the wall between two tall shelves and above a short one hangs a strange painting of two zebras hugging with their necks. Sarah sits down behind a large, wooden desk, behind which also sits another woman, much older than Sarah, with hair as white as a cloud at noon and two closed, wrinkly eyes dripping big tears. “Madame Leah,” Sarah says to her, and touches her shoulder as Norman sits down in the chair across the desk from the two women and Lee takes a chair in the back corner of the room.
“He is here,” Madame Leah says in a wrinkled voice. “Welcome, Mr. Newman.” Her eyes do not open, but tears continue to occasionally fall down her face. Norman can’t keep his eye on her without tearing up slightly himself, so he looks instead at Sarah, who is gazing placidly at him, a slight smile on her face.
“Hi,” Norman says in response to Madame Leah’s greeting.
“And Lee,” Madame Leah chirps. “How are you, dear?”
“I’m okay,” Lee replies. “Thanks.”
Norman and Sarah keep their eyes on each other for some time as a taut quiet settles upon the room. Lee watches back and forth between the sides of the desk. Madame Leah’s neck twitches her head back and forth a little, but Sarah and Norman both remain perfectly still, gazing into each other’s eyes. Norman wonders what these women can see and hear, if clairvoyance of any kind might actually be possible.
Then the words, Are you not going to say anything? come distinctly into his mind as if from outside of it, and the thought corresponds almost perfectly with a slight lowering of Sarah’s chin forward and to the side, her eyes still fixed on his.
Norman can’t help but grin a little, though he quickly regains his composure and his focus on whatever is behind Sarah’s eyes. His heart is filled with warmth at the idea that he might be about to engage in his very first genuinely psychic conversation.
Norman breathes slowly in and out, then begins to think aloud in the direction of Sarah’s mind. Arthur C. Clarke once said that behind each person alive stand thirty ghosts, because that is the ratio of people alive today to the number of people that have ever lived, or something to that effect, he thinks very specifically in those words (in an attempt, if he is indeed in his first actual psychic conversation, to speak clearly in his own personal manner and voice). For me, it’s like three hundred billion ghosts stand in front of me, staring me down, but they’re not ghosts of people whose lives have been lived; they’re ghosts of potential characters or stories or images or songs that do not yet exist – really just lives lost in unexplored dimensions – and that I have to go through the carrying-water-chopping-wood process of actually physically creating, be that writing or painting or filming or recording or whatever, for them ever to exist at all, ever not to be ghosts, ever to stop haunting me. Does that make sense?
“Why don’t we speak aloud, Norman,” Sarah says aloud, jarring Norman’s intense inwardness, “for the others in the room, and for the recording devices you’ve brought.”
“Okay.” Norman reaches into his coat pocket and turns on his digital recorder. “What do you want to know?” he asks the woman, their eye contact penetratingly fixed. In his peripheral vision Norman can see Lee sitting forward, watching him intently from a chair to his left.
“I can see that you have come with many questions. How much do you know about shamanism?”
Norman shakes his head slightly, retaining the eye contact. “I’ve studied all kinds of spheres of knowledge; I wouldn’t know where your definition of shamanism ends and alchemy, spiritualism, New Age bullshit, et cetera begin. What do you know about me?”
“Why are there new angels, Norman?” Sarah asks cryptically.
Norman is puzzled by the fact that his instinctive reaction to this question is not something to the effect of, “What does that mean?” or “How should I know?” He knows he knows. New angels. What could that mean?
“What do you mean?” he finally asks.
“There is a powerful field surrounding you,” Leah interjects, gesturing descriptively with her thin hands.
“I’m protecting myself from you,” Norman admits hesitantly.
“Do you see us as a potential threat to you?”
“Hey, girl, I don’t know you.”
Leah smiles, and the flow of tears streaming from her closed eyes quickens for a second.
Sarah looks hard into Norman’s glass eye. “How did you lose your eye?” she asks.
“I slipped while I was scratching it.”
She doesn’t miss a beat; “Tell me about your teacher entity.”
Despite her insistent energy, Norman takes his time responding. “Well, I started astrally projecting in the fall of … what, Two-thousand-three? And, at Lee’s suggestion, I started to ask, though more like wish, really, for a teacher when I was astral. And then I started having these meetings with this gray-haired old man teacher entity in my dreams, where he would show me how to project a protective psychic shield or infuse objects with power, or whatever.”
“You can enchant objects?”
“Mmm, sort of,” Norman says, not sure how to explain and not wanting to overstate his abilities. “It’s a little more subtle than you might be imagining, and I have no real proof that it actually works, except with thought items, and maybe art. In my mindspace they all work, but as far as the enchantment of actual items I can only claim intuitive or quote-‘aesthetic’ feelings of success.”
“What physical items have you attempted to enchant?”
Norman looks over at Lee, who is grinning brightly. “Well,” he says, unable to keep from smiling in the presence of Lee’s smile but struggling to keep it from trivializing his words, “I experimented with creating a familiar a couple of years ago, and I kept it in this ring I had. The physical thing ends up really just being a sort of focus for the mental activity, though, I think. It probably isn’t necessary at all.”
The old woman looks at Norman’s hands. “Where is that ring now?”
“I lost it,” he reluctantly admits. “I think I left it in Indiana when I moved quite suddenly a few months ago. Also, I’m an artist, so I create/imbue things like CDs and canvasses and pages of paper with … well you know, with art.” He laughs slightly to himself. “I mean, you know. I’ve been exploring the possibilities of being whatever it is that I am, and in the process I seem to have found that it’s possible to do way more than just stuff with your body. There’s some sort of subtle mental/ethereal space, or something, and so I have figured out how to, like, cast little mental spells and things like that…”
“Well,” Sarah interjects, “you’ll be happy to hear that Theosophy recognizes the occult sciences, and so I think I know what you mean when you talk about casting mental spells. Though I should say that Theosophy is not the end of our research here. We embrace a number of theories as well. Tell me, though: what are the physical components to these spells, if any? Do you connect yourself to any specific ritual tradition?”
“I suppose a lot of my symbolism, I have to admit, comes from medieval alchemy and the long history of natural sciences, but also from pulp science fiction literature, specifically Philip K. Dick and Neal Stephenson, and also from Hollywood screenwriting terminology and story structure elements and Joseph Campbell and Jung and such, but, I mean,” he groans a little with frustration, trying with difficulty to make sure that he is being fully honest with these people, “my physical components are, like, two mix-tapes and a half-assed vision quest during masturbation or whatever. I’m not, like, stirring toads into soups; I’m doing things in my mind, and I’m putting energy into real-world objects that hold meaning for me. The powers will just be in my mind, but that’s where all of this is anyway, for me at least. A mix tape, just a sequence of songs perhaps but also a Great Work of potential meaning, a glowing ball of energy that, if you want to give it a little of yourself and make a connection to it, can put out everlasting soul power, everlasting newness of meaning and insight, and from these things I gain power. By creating art, and enjoying it. Or dancing along the curb. Or taking a flower from a tree and placing it between the bricks of a building three blocks down because my intuition somehow tells me that doing so might end up being somehow weirdly beautiful. Or whatever. And what do I know? Maybe someone will find it there the next day and be mystified, be struck by beauty and intrigued as to its origin and who put it there, and the beautiful mystery is moved forward in ways that I may never even know. But it builds up my karma or my mana or whatever you want to call it and this seems to allow me the strength of will and reason to lead a temperate, peaceful life of happiness and beauty, and excess energy to put into what I hope will be great works of art, and compassion and patience. That’s all I do. I’m an artist, and in my mind that is the same as being a magician.” He is quiet for a moment, then adds, finally (and quixotically), “I have no master but beauty.” Nervous, he wiggles his fingers at each other and keeps talking after a moment’s pause. “I mean, you know, all I can claim as my ritual tradition is all the random human shit I’ve happened to learn. Like, I am a sum of the information I’ve got. It’s just that I happen to have a huge array of knowledge about all kinds of shit, and so what I’ve been trying to do is just to reconcile it all. Because it seems to me that the truth can only be the sum of all truths, right? Every perspective, every angle, every possibility. And so the truth is really all things everywhere, like – nothing is not the truth. So, what the fuck?” He holds up his hands and looks left and right at Lee and Madame Leah as if it was not a rhetorical question.
“Your sister tells us you are a shaman,” Madame Leah groans hoarsely. The old woman’s head leans up a bit and her eyes slowly open, her lids shuddering. A dozen thick tears begin a race down her cheeks. She makes only a moment of brown-eyed eye contact with Norman before her eyelids stagger closed again, but the moment is smiting, and Norman keeps his eye on her afterwards as he speaks, feeling weirdly certain that she can see him nevertheless.
“Well, think about it,” Norman says, leaning forward in his chair with a series of emphatic, almost pleading, hand gestures. “Artists are the modern shamans. We spiritually guide the residents of this zeitgeist community through their various inner tribulations; we answer the questions they are asking themselves because they’re our questions too, our most personal ones, and we show them other worlds very much like the one that they are living in but made fantastic just enough to reveal in enlightening detail some tiny corner of this great madness, some miraculous moccasins. We create the modern mythspace. Our films and novels and paintings and bands with awesome band names – we have our fingers in the noosphere feeling around; we’re attached to everyone else and we feed them back the dreams they fill us with, twisted into mysterious wisdom. Imagine our modern world without all of its art. It is the most spiritually unwell, unhealthy people who are the ones, you may notice, who suckle at the sweet, numbing teat of mainstream indoctrination entertainment. They’re the victims of the Heisenburglar.”
“The what?” Madame Leah asks.
“The Heisenburglar,” Norman repeats with a smile.
“That is an interesting idea,” Sarah notes with a nod. “Talk more about this Heisenburglar.”
“The Heisenburglar is a name I made up for a being that I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of before. It’s the one who has all those things that aren’t being perceived right now, you know? You get it? Like the Hamburglar mixed with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle? Wherever we’re not looking, wherever we can’t be sure. But, sometimes it seems like that’s everything. All I can know is that I can’t really know anything, sayeth whomever, some Greek fellow or other. But, really, of course, that’s a fallacy, and I know that I can be certain of my present perceptions simply because they’re happening at all – because there’s got to be something; there’s obviously not nothing. But it turns out everything exists somewhere. Sorry, I’m rambling. Anyway, the Heisenburglar is the vague villain in the novel I’m working on. He’s sort of the god of all of Norman’s uncertainty, at once his enemy and his muse.”
“Sounds like Lucifer,” Leah says in her creaking voice that sounds like a shouted whisper. “By a different name.”
“You know, that’s interesting,” Norman says with a smile, “because I have wondered about making such a connection between the Heisenburglar and the Devil, but it doesn’t seem appropriate to me. Because the Devil is, what, pure evil? Or, at least, some kind of essential revolutionary force?”
“Lucifer is the real creator,” Leah croaks to Norman, attempting to lean forward but instead just shuddering in her chair, her neck limply letting her head lilt. “His first act was to build the Prison.” (Norman can actually feel the capitalization on that P.)
“The Prison?” he asks, and eyes Lee, who shrugs and holds back a little laugh.
“You know, you may find a lot to help you along in our teachings,” Sarah says with a soft smile. “We, too, are scientists of the spirit. We don’t believe in an absolute God, such being a logical absurdity as form of any kind requires finiteness. We are synthesizing modern physics into our system as well. Have you seen the film What the Bleep Do We Know?” Norman sees Lee grin and nod excitedly (she seems to be thoroughly enjoying herself).
“Yeah, I’ve seen it,” Norman acknowledges. “It’s interesting. Certainly kind of sillily made, but it presents some pretty interesting facets of modern physics and spirituality, yeah.”
“What interested me most of all in that movie,” Lee adds, leaning forward for a moment, “was the whole idea that we are the creators of all of this, simply by observing one way or another. That the observer has power – a simple sort of perceptual power – over the observed.”
“Indeed,” Sarah smiles. “That, we feel, is key. What we believe, Norman,” she explains, “is that all awareness in this universe is at its heart one fundamental godhead which takes the form of each of us. This godhead is the ultimate essential self of the universe. There is, however, a reverse of this entity, a counter…”
“The Heisenburglar,” Norman says with a nod.
Sarah nods along with him as he says it. “Perhaps. In our system of understanding, we call it the demiurge – Yaldabaoth, the insane creator. What Leah called Lucifer. It is the dark twin of the duality, the damaged one.”
“That is straight out of Valis,” Lee ejaculates incredulously, glancing over at Norman.
“Yeah,” Norman agrees, having noticed the same thing, his eye contact with Sarah unfailing.
“It is the one who created the universe,” Sarah continues, “to confuse its twin, us.”
“Are you sure that’s what the Theosophical Society believes?” He looks around himself at his surroundings, overcome by an eerie feeling (more potent than this familiar feeling has ever been before) that all of this is an illusion. He gestures very slightly with his right hand (while raising it to scratch his chin) in a manner that he has developed internally to fire illusion-shattering thought darts, but nothing happens. He scratches his chin.
Sarah smiles at him and indicates with her eyes that she noticed his gesture. Norman shakes his head slightly and waves the notion out of her mind (a sort of psychic/gestural ‘it was nothing’). It would seem that this second spell works, as Sarah looks back down at her desk and does not answer his question.
But then Madame Leah leans her neck up and creaks, eyes closed and weeping, “I see that you have too many teeth.” Norman licks his crooked bottom front incisors instinctively at their mention. “You let your wisdom teeth grow in,” she continues correctly. Norman is mystified, near certain now that the old woman must have some sort of clairvoyant ability.
“How did you know that?” he asks her.
“Elementary, my darling,” the old woman says with a smile that Norman can’t help but smile back at.
“Interesting,” he notes.
“Do you mind our asking so many questions?” Sarah asks, looking up again from her desk. “I don’t want to overwhelm you, but we’re very interested in getting an idea of what it is that you’re doing.”
“Sure, go ahead,” Norman says.
“If I can jump in for a second,” Lee says with a shy smile, raising her hand slightly toward Sarah, “I’d just like to say that at some point I’d be really interested to see what you know about the plant ayahuasca and its shamanic uses. I’ve been reading this incredible book by this guy named Daniel Pinchbeck…”
“Certainly,” Sarah agrees with a smile, stopping Lee’s sentence with a hand, and Lee sits back with an appreciative nod. She smiles at Norman, who then looks back at Sarah as she asks him, “Norman, have you had any kind of contact with the Heisenburglar? Has he ever spoken to you?” Beside Sarah, Leah lifts a tissue to her eyes, and Norman’s eyes well up empathically.
He summons his vague visual memory of the Heisenburglar’s black eyes against a curtain of white, staring into him, knowing every part of him that he didn’t, leeching his very awareness in some way that he just can’t quite wrap his mind around right now. He tries to recall the specific words that he shared with the Heisenburglar as he replies with a dramatic subtle nod, “I have; he has.”
Both Sarah and Lee seem taken aback and cock their heads at the same time.
Norman grins. “I suppose. As much as I had my shamanic experience with the whale and Ishmael and all that, I suppose I can say I had an experience with the Heisenburglar.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about that?” Lee asks.
“It wasn’t long ago, honestly. It was right when I began the novel. Well, when I wrote a part of it that I feel like might become the beginning. Or, really I was just mutating something I had written before, but – nevertheless, it felt, somehow, to me, very much like I was officially beginning the novel, the real writing process, the living-in-it part where it’s just me and the words. And I had written this one part and then deleted a lot of it, and I was pacing through this area of darkness in the middle of Laura’s apartment and in my mind, I guess, I was suddenly confronted with the huge white face of the Heisenburglar, with black eyes. It’s weirdly hard to recall, though. Funny.”
“The Heisenburglar is white?” Sarah asks, at which Norman laughs loudly.
“Well, not, like, Caucasian-white, but like an infinite background of white, like an unseeable space that reflects everything, and then just sort of suspended in that were these two great solid-black eyes. And I remember they blinked, the eyes. And I found that strange, as if it gave away some un-divine nature.”
“I see,” Lee remarks.
“Could you see your surroundings? Did you note anything about where you were?”
“It was just sort of a curtain of pure white in all directions,” Norman tries to explain, gesticulating in front of himself. “But, really, more like just, as if it were on a green-screen and then the green part was just filled with pure white. There are some scenes in THX, George Lucas’ first film, not unlike what I mean.”
After a moment of silence, Norman laughs at himself.
“Anyway, it just made some disparaging remarks, if I recall, and injected me with a potent kind of uncertainty that lingered a while and then it let me go.”
“He had you incapacitated in some manner?” Madame Leah asks very slowly, shakily.
“Yes,” Norman replies after a moment’s consideration. “Almost like a web or something. Like a spiritual web or something. And I haven’t genderized it with a he yet, per se.”
Norman can see the old woman touch Sarah’s leg beneath the desk, and Sarah looks over at her for a moment, then back to Norman, nodding slightly. “I know just what you’re thinking,” she says (directed at the old woman, it would seem, though she is looking at Norman), “and I agree. We’re a bit concerned by your descriptions of the way this entity interacted with you. Have you considered the possibility that you may have summoned something very real with your … astral probing?” For some reason Sarah grins as she says these last few words, then the grin disappears.
“In a What-the-Bleep-ish sort of it-happened-because-he-perceived-it way?” Lee asks.
“Like a demon or something?” Norman asks.
Sarah nod-shrugs.
Norman instantly thinks about Sam, the little demon he imagined coaxing from Ben’s heart. “I hadn’t really, no,” he admits. “That would be interesting, huh? I mean, I doubt it’s anything like that. I have wondered if what I interacted with was perhaps some sort of agent of the Heisenburglar, or, like, an avatar of sorts, because the full entity that is everything I imagine this entity to be would … like, it existing in our paradigm I almost couldn’t even imagine. Let alone interacting with me specifically. Like, it would be so hugely beyond our little eleven-D brane.”
“This could be a very serious problem,” Sarah assures him with a grave, low-chinned look. “You do seem to be … you know, special somehow.”
Norman laughs. “There’s no problem, I assure you. See, that’s kind of the thing. This whole idea of good and bad, better and worse … I mean, it gives a certain sacredness to one thing as opposed to another, but what really could possibly be behind such a characteristic of a thing? Good. Bad. This could be a problem. That would be great! You know? Like, it’s so obviously contextual, relative. And so, like, you say, ‘This could be a serious problem,’ but from the Heisenburglar’s perspective maybe this is great, and what makes our experience more important that its? What makes mine more important than the cow whose meat I’m eating? You know?
“But I feel my theory of awesomeness reconciles all that. Because obviously there is no sacred good characteristic or direction, but at the same time, an aware universe such as we are has got to make decisions. And so all you really have is that very vague sense of what you want and what you don’t. We’re humans, so obviously we want to be warm and to eat food and be healthy and all that, but we’re also sentient minds, so we need to be entertained and challenged mentally and to explore dark corners of space and thought.
“We have only what we have heard has happened so far to guide us. What people have already done. And thus the slow build of technology (in which I include thoughts) throughout the past several millennia. I think a lot of people forget about that. It is summation! Like modern physics documentaries that talk about how Newton ended up being wrong. There’s a big difference between being wrong and being mostly right. He just, you know, he had only what had come before to work with, and that included none of Newtonian physics.” Norman laughs, though none of the women in the room laugh with him. He wishes in this moment that Lou were here, as he feels he would be laughing with him. He continues, “Now is always the cutting edge of history. And so we just stand up on the past and reach up into the future with our awesomeness. And you’ll never be able to see a world that you’re not in, a world that could have been or is better or worse or whatever than what is, so why fucking judge it? You know? You just do what you can.
“Relativity is very true, but the thing is, so is freewill. Freewill is real. You can do, be, feel, think whatever. Anything. That’s just true; it seems obvious by being, by thinking and choosing. I feel like the necessary paradox that allows a dynamic universe of any kind requires freewill, requires uncertainty and incompleteness, perhaps even paradox itself. An inert universe is empty, static, purposeless … not present. There is no evidence of such a universe. This universe we experience is in constant flux, and at our whim. We’re just at the beginning of realizing how much we can do, but it should be obvious by this point that we can do it. We can change shit, build shit, go places, do whatever we like. A universe that was completely deterministic and mathematically perfect has no point of existing, couldn’t exist, I’d say. Like, what, is there some kind of ideal state that people want to get to where they can just sit?” Norman comically sits heavily in his chair.
For a moment Sarah’s face is still, then she laughs, looking down at her lap. It takes her a while to regain her serious face. Her intermittent smile makes her right eye twitch.
“What is it exactly that you’re trying to do, then, with your powers?” Madame Leah asks.
“Powers,” Norman laughs to himself. “I’m trying to help everyone else out, because the enlightenments I seem to have achieved have changed the way that I interact with the world in every way for the better. I mean, it’s just logic and rationality, but… I look around and I see all of these other humans acting a lot like I do so I have to imagine that they are something like me, and yet they live these lives often fraught with fear and worry and confusion and insecurity and loss and things like this that, from my perspective, one need feel none of, really, at least not in a debilitating way. Because, of course, I’ve been there and am still right there with them, really. I mean, it takes constant diligence to remain enlightened, and I’m by no means claiming I always am. But I feel I usually am. And I’m also not trying to say, obviously, that I am some kind of ultimate perfection or whatever. I’ve just transcended, to a certain extent, the tough bullshit of being a human on earth, and I’m just trying to find a way to communicate this to people, with the hope that this might help along our human race toward some kind of hip next-level thing. I’m trying to help the World level up.”
Norman smiles to himself, wondering where Lou is right now, what he is doing. He tries to psychically send Lou a little webcam-ish thought link to the moment he is experiencing.
“And so, like,” he continues, “I feel like maybe everything in the universe that we think of as a law, like physical laws of gravity and all that even, might just be something more like tendencies. Because obviously quantum mechanics shows that particles or strings or whatever don’t have to do any specific thing. They can actually do what they like. But there are probabilities that they will do a certain thing, and often the probability of one specific thing is near one hundred percent. But it never is one-hundred percent. Makes me think of sociology. As-above-so-below-style. Anyway. The probability of a thing being one hundred percent sort of existentially cancels that thing out in a weird way, it seems like. It’s like everything that we would ever consider real, in which I include all of the unreal things that we interact with daily, has to be strung between existence and non-existence, strung in the web of uncertainty, in order to matter, to be matter, at all. Does that make sense? It’s like, the physical laws may be the absolutely most revered or most popular of the laws and all the particles do that sort of thing most of the time despite their true freedom, maybe partly because without those laws there wouldn’t be this complex universe, and maybe partly just out of routine. And also I’m sure awareness must be something extraordinarily different, extraordinarily less for a particle or a string or whatever than what we experience as complex organisms. Less distraction, perhaps. But who knows, maybe more. Either way, particles don’t have to do a damn thing that they’re told, but it is their doing that most of the time, their reverence to the Law (though perhaps something more like a tradition) that allows all these complex metaphors of things and stuff. Because really, it’s all strings or particles at the very least, and all this complex shit is just … names, really. It’s Adam naming the animals. It’s patterns within patterns.
“I’m sorry,” Norman says suddenly, cutting himself off. “I feel like I’ve gotten off track somehow. Because the point, of course, at least of my life, is not only to help others figure out this whole meaning and trouble thing but also just to live in the resulting enlightenment and enjoy it, and the teaching has to include that. To be the change, to weigh the universe that direction for real at least that little bit.”
He shakes his head, feeling somewhat intellectually deflated. It is almost as if he’s been channeling some reservoir of spirits all queued up to rant. It makes him wonder about the nature of identity and what it might mean to inhabit someone else, to experience their existence, to push yourself through it and exercise your own will there, the nature of inspiration and thought and such things.
“I don’t think people take life seriously enough,” Norman says with a sigh, trying to gesturally evoke the full extent of his frustration. “And not that you need to be all gravitas about life, just that people need to realize that this is all really going on and what they do actually affects things, it affects everything, and maybe they might want to sit back and think for a while about what we all actually ought to be doing, and learn how to fucking control themselves.”
“You can’t try to make everyone be like you,” Lee tells him.
“I don’t want everyone to be like me. A world full of me’s would not survive. I know that. That’s obvious. But a body made entirely of eyes wouldn’t be able to survive. That doesn’t mean the eye can’t guide the body.”
“Where is it exactly you want to guide us, Norman?”
“Nowhere specific,” Norman sighs with frustration. He doesn’t feel he’s being understood, even by Lee, and he can’t understand why he can’t seem to express himself the way he wants to. “Just – toward a priority for beauty. Toward exponential awesomeness. Out of the blindness of instinct and purposelessness. Damn it!”
“Calm down,” Lee coos, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“All I can say is that I have my eye open for the constant truth of beauty. Or, perhaps, the beauty of truth. And other people’s issues, if you want, can be on them. That’s on them. You know? I can only do so much. In the end, you can only truly heal thy damned self.”
“What purpose could there be, though, Norman,” Sarah demands, leaning forward, “if you are not working for the betterment of those who don’t understand? Those who are unenlightened, those who have not achieved the understandings that we have – they are in Hell. And I mean that with a capital H. Like, the real Hell is life on this Earth for those who don’t have peace in their hearts. It must be our purpose to spread this knowledge – because it really is just knowledge, just an understanding. It does not need to be a secret.”
“I agree with you,” Norman says, “but I also hold freewill in great regard, and I will not overpower another person’s will. And yet, it seems to me that we’re all doomed to a certain very serious spiritual sort of extinction if someone doesn’t come down and remind people about the real-life, omnipotent power of actual compassion and reason, of true control over one’s demeanor and existence.” He growls and swats his hand in the air with frustration. “Bah.”
“Don’t lose hope that your light can be seen. What are you afraid of? Is it rejection? Rejection of your vision, of your words?”
“Well it’s like, I don’t want to say some shit as an author that makes me end up sounding like some speech-giving Deepak Chopra-masked jerk off, not that he’s a jerk off or anything, but, you know what I mean? The Mainstream Man demonizes such words and tars and feathers the seers so they look like chickens and, you know? Like, I don’t want my concepts as an artist to get poisoned. But also, yeah, I guess I’m a little concerned that maybe no one will be interested in this shit in my mind and I’ll never actually be able to make a living from writing, and my work will not spread throughout the zeitgeist. But of course that’s just pessimism, and I understand that whether I ever achieve ‘success’ as perhaps a news anchor might feel comfortable using the word is something that I could give or take. But the work getting proliferated out into the world is very important to me. And I know that it’s something that will happen naturally and should happen organically.” He sighs heavily to catch his breath. “What am I afraid of? I’m afraid that if we don’t grow wings soon, we’re going to reach the apogee of our ascent.”
A sudden realization crosses Norman’s mind and it must show on his face because Sarah asks him, “What did you just realize?”
“That this is all real,” Norman says with an inner grin, looking around. “That this is not a fiction. And, from that, that sometimes I guess I say things before I really understand what they mean. Know what I mean?”
Norman laughs softly to himself, feeling very placidly proud of himself and pleased with the mental progress he feels he’s made this afternoon. The women around him all watch his moderate ecstasy in silence, and he wonders what they think might be happening inside him as he sits there quietly.
“Wow,” he laughs at last. “Coming here has been extremely helpful. But it’s funny, because it’s not like – no offense, but it’s not like it was you ladies who helped me. Well, to a certain extent, perhaps … it’s more like it was this place, this room and all this great turn-of-the-century shit. Theosophy. You make me feel reputable somehow. And you just let me talk it out, knowing you knew my terms. And it allowed me to see my terms in sort of a new context. So, thank you.”
“Well,” Sarah sighs, smiling politely. “You’ve been very generous with your voice.”
“That’s an interesting thing to say,” Norman replies, only partially even in this scene anymore as his mind has already rushed off toward the book, to Norman’s version of this scene that he will write when he gets home.
Quite abruptly Norman says, standing from his chair, “No offense. But I need to go write.” He reaches across the desk and shakes hands with both women.
Lee stands and asks Norman quietly, “You okay?” with a concerned look on her face.
“Oh no, yeah,” Norman replies, smiling.
“It was a real pleasure getting to talk to you, Mr. Newman,” Madame Leah says as Sarah gets up to follow Lee and Norman to the door. “Do stay in touch.”
“Thank you,” Norman replies, “it was my pleasure.”
“Have a great evening, Madame Leah,” Lee says. “And thank you so much for talking to us, Sarah. It was very generous of you. You know a meeting like this usually would cost money, Norman.” Lee punches Norman’s arm. The comment and gesture make Norman feel awkward, as if it was somehow uncouth to have mentioned, and finally the timer runs out on a response.
Norman pauses at the door and turns back to Sarah for a moment. “Did we,” he begins, but then pauses for a long time, searching for the right words. It makes him laugh to himself briefly, the difficulty he is having at finding the words to express this of all ideas. “Did we,” he begins again, looking up into Sarah’s eyes with an attempt at diplomatic genuineness, “actually … have a conversation … before we started speaking aloud? The conversation I think we did?”
Sarah’s face is still for a few beats, then she smiles with perfect knowingness and says, “Of course we did.”