I returned home the next day around four. I had done some groceries. The sunlight was glorious, and I could see the dust shimmering through the beams. Large windows surrounded the front of the penthouse and the view overlooked the Wellington harbour. The ocean winked at me. I put on a pot of soup; barley and vegetable was my go-to. I rolled myself a J while cooking. Creamy plumes mingled with the incense and the soupy aromas. The atmosphere bellowed and I inhaled into myself.
We had a stickered-up coffee table we found outside someone’s house. We arranged it in front of the couch which sat against the half-wall. I would normally sit here for dinner and pull up some cartoons on my laptop. I placed my bowl on the table to cool out a little, sunk into the cushions and pressed play.
And suddenly, I realised that a profound anxiety had snuck up on me. There was something in the apartment. Watching from over the half-wall, it pulsed behind me, beside the fridge. I turned to face the presence and saw nothing. But I felt a tremendous electricity coursing through the room, as if a great surge had ruptured the fabric of time and space in my humble kitchen.
My heart quickened. I tried to focus on my cartoon downtime. [Panic]. They seemed sillier than usual. My concentration elsewhere. The entity was moving. The asteroid was coming. No more shadowmen meteorites. This was much bigger.
From bursting through the portal behind me, I felt It travel around the half-wall to my left side. I could no longer deny its presence; forceful and frazzling. It had completed a semi-circle in front of me and resounded there, unseen. The frequency was deafening.
Never alone in the overlaps
That grow and are continuous
In movement, both surpassing
And unfurling the universe.
Worlds tumble from the pockets
Of empty space, bringing spirits.
In the hidden, they are revealed.
In the silence, they proclaim themselves.
Immediately, I felt a pressure weigh down on my chest. My breath became long and drawn, my body pushed tight into the couch. So dizzy, I sat paralysed and hoped It would soon pass. Exhaling and gazing ahead, trying to keep my breathing steady, my apartment pixelated past its walls yet strangely, remained intact. The world flashed black and white to vibrant pink to all the colours; my vision was digital oil on water.
At first, a severe smile filled my view. Tyrannosaurus teeth like jagged ice and zigzags. Horns and tusks like that of a wild boar spiralled out from behind a snub snout and two gaping eyeholes. I was confronted with hollowed black pupils that held the energy of a sinister trickster, twisting like cobras in a dark pit. The irises wound round like clockwork medallions, patterned with impossibly old, extra-terrestrial designs. These circular borders seemed to lock in the restless darkness yet equally, I felt invited to peer over the edge of them.
Suid Cheshire cat smiling like a Chinese dragon. Something I recognised as an incubus from paintings and Daemonologie. Are you?
3,1:
O! Great and powerful Noumenon that feeds off my fear!
I demand your origins, demon!
A place where past, present and future are one,
Time is wholly felt.
What is your wish with me?
*
3,2: (Greetings (Kia Ora (Nĭ Hăo (Salam)))
3,3: The manifestation of Fear and the unveiling of your Splendour!
3,4: All Worry is but a desperate flame from the losing battles that fester in the heart’s core. Bestow them your Time and attention so the earth may bear fruits, grown in the gentle incubation of a healing soul.
3,5: Over many deaths you will offer many gifts.
3,6: Let Uncertainty take Fate’s wheel recklessly and teach you Trust/Love/God. May you be granted Strategy and Courage. May you trace the wounds that ripple with blood across your life and let it lead you to Truth! I see the end before you start.
3,7: All Space and Time is farce for I live beyond the stars, bodiless and eternal.
3,8: Witness my many forms and heed my many names as you walk the slow path. Fall into the pit of my eyes and be changed. Know from my smile, I can devour you. Feel my weight crushing your body the longer you let me suppress you. Admire my dragon scales and see your desires reflected in the challenge of my presence.
3,9: My gift is Terror. Through me, your gift is known.
3,10: Every spirit is equal, as are you and I!
3,11: All that inhabit this dimension come to know my excellence. I shower them with meteorites of Rage/Jealousy/Pain/Ennui, and they suffer to surrender unto themselves.
3,12: What is your wish with me?
*
3,13: Strange ancient friend, I will not die like this, sitting on the couch in front of cartoons; There are pearls of Love all around.
I managed to close my eyes. I thought of my family, who try so hard to make me feel like I have a home, even when it has become so splintered. I thought of my friends who want to meet up with me and hear what’s on my mind, although I have been avoiding human contact and the real intimacy that friendship brings for years. I thought of all my lovers who gave so much of their time and energy towards making me a better person, albeit unwittingly. Such slight, subtle light in the face of this overwhelming experience. I stretched toward it, clinging to their goodness. Like that, It released.
It dissolved into the backdrop and I felt It return, back through the portal the same way It came. I jumped up in gratitude and shock, pausing.
I knew that It would one day contact me again but that I would always have a choice. And this choice would always be marked by observing the beauty of Love as it unfolded in each happening.
🎨/📷 by David Bacon, The Third Dragon from the Left, Nine-Dragon Wall, Datong, 2012