Mystical Tarot Realms
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The Couple
ROOTS AND CURRENTS
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In a place that dreams, ten trunks
rise from a low throne, the breath
of vanished tribes whispering
that we have stepped
into another life. A trail leads
past roots through the domain
of the buckeye and the wildcat.
I see a god of the hunt
in my mind's eye as deer
crash through the brush,
the tribes pulled into quiet currents
as we wake to a vast ocean
of breath. The sprouts
of horse chestnuts plunge
into dark earth. I suddenly feel
like I could flow through all things.
ROOTS AND CURRENTS
My watercolor of two buckeye trees joined at the roots was my wife's favorite. We discovered that sometimes two or more tree trunks grow from one seed, and since my wife and I considered their union symbolic of our love for each other, we vowed that when one of us died, the surviving spouse would spread the ashes of the other on the roots of those trees. We affectionately called the trees "the couple," and we would slow down to gaze at them every time we drove through Watt's Valley, where we would sometimes trespass in the oak woodlands on private property in the evenings. Thanks to the couple, we discovered that buckeyes change dramatically, so much so that each buckeye seems like a different tree from one season to the next.
When we were traveling together in the car, my wife and I would often read each other's mind. Our thoughts would often concern people or events that had nothing to do with where we were or where we were going or what had recently happened, yet somehow we would think of the same things. It didn't just happen because we knew each other so well: Often a topic would occur out of the blue, and we both would be thinking about it. Sometimes we would try to figure out who had first experienced the thought and who was being telepathic. Sometimes I realized that I had experienced a mental image or a phrase, and my wife would then bring up the subject. Other times my wife would have the thought and I would bring up the subject. Eventually we realized that we were both telepathic when "mingling auras," which is what we ended up calling the phenomenon. Whenever we described the phenomenon to other people, no one seemed to believe us.
When my wife and I broke up after thirty years of marriage, one member of the couple keeled over and began rotting on the ground next to the other.
Buckeye Tree near Native American Village Site
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Once, as I explored the Sycamore Creek watershed, I followed a trail that led to a ridge with the most majestic buckeye tree that I've ever encountered. Ten large trunks rose up from its root system out of what looked like a low throne. As I approached it, I almost tripped over a small pounding stone with two mortars. I continued on the trail and found myself standing in the middle of a house pit. As I stood in the house pit with my eyes closed, I suddenly had a vision of a god with antlers on his head and a spear in his hand. A few seconds later I heard a deer crashing through the brush on the hill above me. I have experienced visions of gods and goddesses at other Native American sites before, and I began to suspect that shamans had created god forms for cooperative nature spirits to ensoul, and those god-forms remain even though the tribe disappeared long ago.
I suspected that other pounding stones were in the area, so I explored the ridge a little more and discovered another pounding stone with four mortars brimming with dirt and humus. Not far from the pounding stone, I found a collapsed mine and an indentation in the ground--probably where the miners had set up their encampment. I wasn't surprised to find evidence of mining at this Native American village site because I had found other Native American sites in the area with collapsed mines. Some miners during the gold rush had exploited the labor of the Native Americans.
No one had dynamited this mine to keep unsuspecting explorers from falling into a deep hole and disappearing without a trace. I was afraid for a moment that the mine had collapsed on the miners and their Native American workers. The mine, still containing a small hole on one side, had been conquered by poison oak. I imagined that a mountain lion used it as its den.
One day, after my wife and I broke up, I returned to the majestic buckeye and experienced a rejuvenating freshness that I've rarely ever encountered. Though one of the largest and oldest buckeyes in the woodland forest, it was emanating its fresh breath into the ocean of air--carried by currents of wind throughout the forest. Each fallen buckeye seed was sprouting one root that was plunging into the earth. The tree and its progeny were pulling water and nutrients from all the tribes of trees and flowers and animals and people that had come before them, then breathing their energy back into the woodland forest.
The buckeye on another level was startling because it was so different from the other buckeyes in the area. When I took my wife to see it one day when we were still together, she literally did not believe that it was a buckeye. The majestic tree has always reminded me that nature is another order of existence full of mysterious creatures and unexpected spiritual vibrations, and you never know when you're going to encounter them--like in any relationship, you just need to remain open.
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All stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
Buckeye Trees near Native American Village Site
EPISTLE
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A year ago, I lay ensconced
in stale clothes, unwashed plates, week-old
newspaper, dinnerless and exhausted.
Another time opened the dark bedroom door:
An evening with a child digging tunnels
entered, so clearly,
and riddled every level of my senses.
I began to bless
the detritus of each blank moment
even as someone fled and a searchlight
slid across the walls.
My mind would not disbelieve or dim
and even the bed
lost the misery that had clung to it.
__________
When I glanced at a window, a face
behind mine suddenly surfaced,
like memory or the soul
or the person you are becoming.
I write now in order to find you--
some fragment of you
that wishes me well. Some kind of time,
a child, like wind, opening a door.
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Porchlight edges through the curtains.
The melanges of the year mingle,
and the menages of memory mingle.
One note of your voice overlaps
silence or speech when I least expect it.
Your voice must change as you move
from one time to another,
or perhaps its range
ends here, in the certain
path that shines across this table.
EPISTLE
My wife loved this song, or at least pretended to, even though the main event described in the first section of the song borders on the unbelievable. At the time of the event, I was overworked, undernourished and miserable, and I was trying to rest in a dark, messy bedroom. Suddenly I found myself inside a three-dimensional, holographic memory: I was watching my son digging tunnels in the dirt of the daycare center next to my apartment. The memory was far more intense than the experience itself, during which I had felt merely bored and anxious: In the memory, I experienced an indescribable bliss--it seemed as if my consciousness had ballooned far beyond "normal." In that dim, stale bedroom, I was reliving a simple, mundane experience in super-consciousness, and I remained in a state of ecstasy until I finally fell asleep.
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Indian Pinks
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I suspected after I experienced the holographic memory that every moment, no matter how seemingly insignificant, can be relived in joyful super-consciousness. Trying to rekindle memory with that kind of intensity is easier said than done, however. The experience has since placed other memories in stark contrast: I have become keenly aware of the fragmented, shifting nature of memory and the self. I tend to dwell on what I have lost as relationships change and memories seemingly vanish, but I have always believed since the three-dimensional memory that despite inevitable feelings of discontinuity and loss, there remains a glory from moment to moment that the mind can somehow access, given the right conditions. I have never quite figured out what those conditions are, however.
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All stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
Foundation of a House in the River Bottom
THE GLITTERING WEB
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When I was young, I nearly stepped
into a glittering web large enough
to capture me. I stared, transfixed,
until I glimpsed a jewel with many legs
in the corner of the web. I galloped away
as though I'd witnessed the terrible weaver
of our fate. Soon I found oak trees growing
within the foundation of a house next
to the river. Alone, I inched along
the top of the foundation wall until
a disembodied voice stated, "You will
be back in thirty-five years." I dashed
in terror along the path until I found
the web torn apart, fluttering in the breeze,
the spider gone. I returned unexpectedly
thirty-five years later.
I did not attempt to grasp the water
as I pondered the river. I did not mourn
all the torn webs. I sat quietly, waiting
to hear the voice again,
but all I heard were warblers,
my soul drenched with peace.
THE GLITTERING WEB
A number of my experiences suggest that we each have a destiny. When I was young, on several occasions I heard voices that predicted the future. One day, for instance, as my father was fishing, my brother and I discovered the foundation of a house in the floodplain of the Kings River. Tall oak trees were growing inside the foundation where the house used to be. As I was playing on the foundation wall, a voice suddenly predicted that I would be back in thirty-five years.
Thirty-five years later I returned unexpectedly. I had no idea where I was most of the time when my family went fishing or took a long road trip, so I had no memory of where the foundation was located. One day, I was simply driving down the one-lane road next to the Kings River and happened to look down at the floodplain at just the right moment. If I had looked down a second or two later, I would not have seen the foundation.
Other predictions and powerful intuitions about the future have also come true, usually many years later, one notable prediction being about how I would search for the remnants of Native American cultures. Perhaps every moment in one's life is predetermined, or perhaps all of time exists at once but humans can only experience time as if in a tunnel. If that is the case, then the recent upheaval in my life was always part of my fate. Perhaps my wife was destined to leave me after thirty years of marriage.
If our marriage is like a torn-apart web, perhaps I simply need to learn how to let go. Perhaps I just need to remember the webs for what they were without even attempting to understand why they fell apart. My fate is to find the village sites of a people who had lived in the region for thousands of years, not to find the people themselves--they are long gone. My fate is to find the foundation of a house in the floodplain of a river with trees growing inside of it, not to find a family in a mansion by the river. My fate is to find peace even while finding the remains of what has been lost.
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All stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
The San Joaquin River Gorge
FARTHER
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Once we walked on many paths
and found the pounding stones,
and we knew that each path
goes farther back into the past
than we could ever hope to go.
Once we held each other close
and waited out the storm.
When we looked into each other's eyes
we knew that they were deeper
than we could ever hope to plunge.
Once we climbed higher
than we had ever hoped to go,
but the cliffs all around us
showed that we could not hope
to ever go any higher.
Now you've left, and I wonder
if you went farther
than I could ever hope to go,
or if you just could go no farther.
FARTHER
I had thought my relationship with my wife was strong, but my wife left me after thirty years of marriage to rekindle an adolescent romance with a man she had known almost a half century ago. When they were teenagers, their relationship had ended when he fled to Canada to dodge the draft (which I find laudable since I have always believed that the Vietnam War was an abomination). He is an artist who paints murals of undersea and forest environments. (Since I am also an artist, I can appreciate his work.) He lives in Florida and has a sister in North Carolina. That's all I know about him.
My wife found him again on Facebook at a time when she was reconnecting with a lot of old high school friends. A few months ago, after I discovered his name on her phone, I went to his website, which shows some of his murals, and I discovered that my wife had lavished praise on his work three years before.
My wife is usually a responsible person, which makes it hard for me to completely understand her choices. I have my theories, but they are sometimes colored by negative feelings. I am striving to be as objective as I can, but often the more dispassionate I become, the less I understand it. She loves her children and grandchildren, all of whom live in California, so pulling up roots and moving to Florida was a dramatic move for her.
My wife's father had died about a year before, at a time when I appeared to be going down the tubes due to atrial fibrillation caused by celiac disease. Her elderly mother was also suffering from a long-term illness. I sometimes wonder if, unbeknownst to me, we no longer had anything in common, or if she was simply fleeing from disease and death. I understand that motivation since my father and grandparents died when I was young, and I occasionally had the urge to flee from my home in Fresno, CA.
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All stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.