Heart Island

4          Heart Island

             Wasting away in my Barahona jail cell after a week behind bars in the DR, I’m starting to piece together how things went so terribly wrong for me. Too upset to even think about doing my lifelong habit of yoga poses, five sun salutes and a lengthy stay up in headstand with twists and turns and upside-down leg-lunges. At least I’m able to write, since slipping a few coins out my cell window that the policía left in my tote bag when they busted us. I’d handed them to enterprising young boys who ran to town and brought me back cigarettes and a school notebook. My tiny chicken scratch-handwriting makes the sheets of paper last longer.

As I write I remember always being a believer of it. Familiar to me since the early gate-opening-dream, when the door was shown to me by my mother, I’ve known from that same heart-swelling feeling I get whenever the gateway opens, even a little, that something magical is going on, that something much bigger than anyone ever talks about is happening: that things in life are different from what they appear to be. There’s a current of charged expectancy in every moment of existence. Since forever I’ve been looking for “God,” another of its names, and I find Him, Her, and It everywhere. In rocks, clouds, deep within storms, in all of Nature in fact, within other people, even nicely manmade things; from every song that titillates me to a gentle breeze whispering on my cheek. Even before I knew what to call it, I wanted to get blitzed on it. Nothing filled my mind as a child except wanting to marry it, to walk hand in hand with this indefinable power that fills my veins with unspeakable passion, forcing me to stop and pay attention, to laugh and smile, and always—always—want more-more-more of it! Call it whatever you like—God or Spirit, Cosmic, Divine, the Mystery, the One. From my earliest recollection I wanted it as much as I could, in whatever shape, version, religious persuasion or lack thereof, I could fill myself up with.

By the time I was seven I was regularly having episodes. Often I found myself completely transported from where I was supposed to be. Tranced out, spun to another time, another place, among other surroundings, with other beings: some familiar some not; some alive; some, surely ghosts. I never felt afraid, not after having gone through that childhood portal when my mother—purposefully or not—showed me that all states of being—whether now or later, before-birth or after-death—are one and the same. On the contrary I was fearless, because the more I searched for God the more I found it, hear its myriad names repeated on humankind’s tongues and upon Nature’s breath. I sought and found countless means by which I could feel connected to it, especially when I got old enough to meet others on the same path.

This obsession of mine to know it as intimately as we know our mothers and fathers, has been explained away by others, written about by one author as having the mark of Damien, being under the veil by another, having a lightning bolt inscribed on one’s forehead, or possessing some other telltale sign. I have no such marking. But that didn’t stop be from wanting to be immersed in the Light that emanates from it, what is called being en-Lightened, or at least aspiring to that state of mind.

I’d do things to be as much a part of it, a servant of it, a doer of it as I possibly could. I’d run home from school and make myself faint, forcing my unwilling sister Sophie to catch me—until she screwed up and I landed with broken, bloody nose on a hard chest one day. As I write in my jail cell I’m not bothered to ask Why. From my earliest memory, my only goal was to get as close to the magic of life as I could. I only wonder, now, what happened to get me here, behind bars?

So, I ask myself: is it this seeking of mine that’s resulted in being persecuted?

Even I doubt that.

My religious period, however fervent and filled with scriptural comeuppance, was short-lived. Starting with begging my parents to allow me to become Catholic so I could float among wafting frankincense and wear a white frilly thing to get First Communion in, followed by a phase of knee-hurtful emulation of saints and martyrs, praying for hours until sore and weak, begging to become Catholic because I was attracted to the pomp and circumstance, attending daily Mass at times when no one in their right mind had to.

At eight I should have known better, I suppose, offering my neighbors moldy, discarded Easter Seal Stamps I found in the trash, but convinced myself my scheming antics would better mankind, not just my piggy bank. Old Man Herkimer ratted me out when I innocently came to his door to sell the year-old charity stamps for a penny apiece. A caper I hadn’t thought anything but good honest fun, but after being severely punished for it, for what surprisingly turned out to be my dishonesty, I inadvertently discovered a way to intimately touch the little pinky of God.

By embarking on the Search and experiencing the thrill of seeking it.

This began a series of wildly exciting times when I’d invent ways of seeing and knowing various magical states—how I prefer to call it rather than the highly-charged, politico-religio one of God, or the Divine, one of which has cultural and gender, while the other, airy-fairy overtones—I now began to discern that creating thrilling experiences was as beneficial as actually achieving a profound connection. Because, after having felt it so accessible, all around me all the time, the next natural step was for me to discover ways to increase that powerful connection. I knew there were unlimited amounts of it, rippling everywhere. I could literally feel its Power! If there was any way I could connect with this invisible force, I determined, then I ought to seek it out and use its force, its magnitude—in my life, and thereby, influence everyone else’s in the entire world. Echoes of my original plan of saving the world with the Army of Love.

And so I began to devise ways to tap into this exciting arousal of my heart chamber, my heart island—the center of my existence. I set out to chase the Thrill.

As I grew from childhood into adolescence, my methods of uncovering the Thrill in any possible situation became more daring, and I dare say, more dangerous.

Having discovered it as the source of inner Light, a lame way, actually, of describing and naming the psychic phenomenon of altered perceptions that being in the state of a linked-up, open-heartedness induces—I began to take more chances. From that moment on, I made the conscious decision that I wanted the Ultimate Experience I could get out of Life. I wanted to carry the essence of it in my veins, and if that meant injecting it right into them myself, by gum! that kind of searching is where I was dang-gone headed for, if I had to. I wanted it more than anything. And the Thrill of Finding it became as much a part of my ordinary day-to-day life as my jeans’ handy front zipper helped make getting undressed so quick and easy. I created for myself the constant state of possibility. Trembling with excitement about the possibility of flying through the air with outstretched wings, even though, of course, I knew this wasn’t humanly possible. So instead of flying, which I did a lot in my dreams, I made a secret pact to go crazy wild following it, to do anything, go anywhere, with anyone brave enough to come along with me.

This pact of mine occurred around the time something happened that so shattered my developing little psyche that I shudder to mention it. Won’t, in fact. Not here, not yet. Why and how do terrible things have to happen to ten year olds? To any kid? Why can’t they wait till later, when we’re more equipped to survive their impact? When we’re better able to understand there is evil in the world? Nobody ever knew about my terrible awful thing but me and my drunken perpetrator. I was too traumatized to communicate. Suffice to say, for now, that it was the definitive breach of trust—human or divine. And you guessed it, I’m talking about a loved, trusted adult, about the awfulness of forced sex upon a little kid. Sex, that all-powerful agent of madness and bliss, equal only to the pursuit of it. Predictably, the event of which I can’t speak, yet which singularly ruined my sure footing with everything in life up to then, everything I’d thought fun, trustworthy, or meaningful, was a vile molestation of paramount consequences. All injustices, especially to children and those incapable of defending themselves are always catastrophic.

I stopped believing in anything but my search for it. The whole going to church bit, believing in Jesus as the real live Christian God, praying on my knees for hours each night, waiting for the day when I could be His bride, so in love with Him was I—wham!—instantly, all that fairytale of mine was over. As was any hope of finding some lasting meaning in relationships, starting with my own family and extending to friends not as obsessed as I with touching it, holding it, believing in it—all this came to a screeching halt. Seeking the Thrill, following the trail that might lead to a supersonic connection with that spectacular Oneness I’d stumbled upon, pushing through any closed portal that barred me from it, became the one and only thing I believed in.

That’s when I started to walk the tightrope, venture to the very edge of the precipice, let myself hang precariously onto the edge of the cliff if I had to, to do whatever I had to in order to have as many ultra-charged moments, minutes, hours even, of being immersed in it as I could. From the instant I was sexually abused I swore to live for the Thrill.

Gone was my innocence. Gone were the long hours of kneeling and praying, twirling in circles till dizzy with euphoria, making myself pass out, and all the other childish, preliminary means I’d previously used to contact it.

Determinedly I set out to get the most from my search. At the beginning, I didn’t know there’d be a mighty price to pay, because I never suspected life could be so vulnerable as for me to fall from Thrill’s tightrope upon which I loved to dance on tiptoe, out there on the edge. I just assumed I’d be surrounded by protection, strength, stamina—there where I felt most comfortable, bathed in the blinding illumination pulsating from it. Dancing to the rhythm of its many forms. Soon enough though, I’d find out how much it hurt to tumble off the path of seeking the Light, when over and over, I’d slip and fall into the abyss of the dangerously alluring Darkness below.