STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN.

Chapter Six                                                                                                Part Seven



                     I live on an island in the Aegean sea.  I live on its shores with the sand and the wind.  I have not counted the suns and the moons that have crossed the sky since the boat that brought me here sailed away.  I live as a hermit who waits for the world to unweave itself and lie passively at his feet in one long thread, from horizon to horizon, so that he can stand at its centre and look one way to the past and the other way to the future.  I want to see clearly.  I want to look through mystery and see simplicity.  So I must write.
                    I was in Switzerland when the shadow came.  I was walking in mountains.  It was spring, the air was clean, the emerald grass was filled with flowers of many colours.  My heart carried no burdens.  I was a traveller.  I was free.  The mountains were mine.  The climbing, winding road was mine.  It was while my heart was wild and smiling that the shadow came.
                   I heard the quiet murmur of an engine.  I looked behind me and the nose of a car rounded the bend and its murmur grew to an angry roar.  The long black car drew up and stopped at my side.  Its flanks were sleek and gleaming, its spokes and grill were of silver and its glass lamps shone like jewels.  A chauffer in black coat and cap jumped out from behind the wheel.  He was a small, dark man with thick eyebrows and a grim, unopened mouth. He opened the car door behind the driver's seat and stood aside like an obedient racoon.  I looked inside and saw the Contessa.  A woman of elegance, a woman dressed in black. Diamond rings on her black gloved fingers, black feathers in her black hat and over her face was a veil of black spidery lace.
                    The Contessa bade me ride with her in the car.  My freedom was in the wind that blew me and I let the wind blow me into her darkness, a deceiving darkness that shone a deceiving light so that I thought that I could see when I could not.  My heart was not looking for shadows so how could I see the harm.         
                    I got in beside her, the racoon closed the door and then nothing was mine, not even my soul. She laughed at my rags.  We drove down the dark side of the mountain to her fairy tale castle on the shores of a glittering  lake and there I let her clothe me in finery and still I did not see the harm.  I saw only by the light of deception shining on each outfit she dressed me in, each place of fashion and importance that she took me to on her arm, each cold act of her bizarre egotistic love.  I could not see the harm.  Even as my mind, soul, heart and strength receded from me and began to fade like distant stars, I still could not see the harm.
                   I accompanied the Contessa from castle to villa to palace to grand hotel, from European capitals to country retreats.  We paraded and postured at operas and balls, high societies soulless worlds and battlefields of viscous charm.  The Contessa hung her bird like body on my arm and made a great pretence of my being her mainstay, her constant companion, her rod and her staff when I was nothing but her puppet.  The Contessa had put the strings deep inside my psyche and tied them to fear, negation, repression and self-doubt and she held and pulled them tight so that my pose was tall and manly at her side, afraid to show or see its own worthlessness or loss of pride.
                              The Contessa believed that my past was empty, that she had taken me from my rags and been my unselfish creator and benefactor who had bestowed upon me her selfless generosity, her guidance and her care.  She insisted that every word I had ever spoken and every thought I had ever thought had not been  of my own making, but inspired by her.  Her mania was powerful.  I weakened to her will.  I began to believe in my non-existence and I fell ill.
                              I saw nothing of the countries we visited.  I saw nothing of the cities of culture and art.  My eyes would look on scenes of great beauty and see nothing, because I no longer had a heart to see by.  The Contessa was the light of deception that shone in her own darkness, it was the only light I could see by and it had no heart.
                              Maybe deep inside I did see the harm, but my mind had been enslaved and would admit to nothing and in the Contessa's world of untold riches and lavish gifts my spirit was securely imprisoned in the darkness of denial.  I had not the strength to question my life.  All that I had been had indeed receded and faded and all that was left was a body that suffered fits and fevers , emptied of everything but a crying soul.
                             The Contessa thrived through my illness.  She wrapped me in warm smiles and soothing kisses and she took me back to her castle to watch me die.
                             I lay on my deathbed and looked out at the lifeless, land trapped waters of the spurious glittering lake.  I was after all the unicorn.  I had failed in my quest for life and lain fallow in the arms of wealth.  I was lost too far inland and too close to death for my soul to ever be freed in the waters of the ocean.  So I clung to the vision of the girl in the woods I would no longer find and the words of the book I would no longer write.  They were the my only secrets, the only treasure I had left and although both of them were unresolved their existence made me peaceful.       
                            The Contessa appeared in the doorway.  My peace disturbed her.  It was not the way she wanted it to be.  So she filled the room with a fiery passion of premature bereavement and violent weeping.  She spoke of love and happiness never before felt.  Her words like her love were empty and oh, how her kindness was so cruel.
                            Suddenly I could see.  In a time-locked moment of horrific enlightenment I saw that she was the harm I could not see. I saw that her coming into my room was how she had come into my life.  I had lain in the room peacefully so she took my peace away.  I had walked in the mountains freely so she took my freedom away.  All my failure and sadness that I had thought to have come from within me, had come from her.  The black widow had devoured.  The back widow had destroyed.  The Contessa was the sergeant and the sergeant was the Contessa.  I had killed and claimed the sergeant so the Contessa was killing and claiming me.  Again Satan had come to me and shown me lowliness and humiliation, but now that I saw it to be Satan I would again escape.
                           I looked back at the Contessa with a strong heart and eyes that showed thunder held back by calm.  I said nothing.  My wall of silence was both a weapon and a shield.  Her venom could not cross it and by denying the black widow her need to kill she would in turn be defeated and destroyed.
                           She saw that she had failed.  Her display had not hidden her deception.  White powder flaked from her ageing face, her eyes smouldered like black coals and her mouth was bitter.  Looked inside her madness and saw her belief that as my creator she had the power to choose the moment of my death. I rose from my bed to show her that I would not die.  She panicked, she screamed in the pain of her own venom.  Her screaming was high pitched and vile, it echoed the frenzied fears of the poisoned and the insane.             
                          I took back my rags and I walked back into the mountains.
                          I was alive and free but the stain of her venom was still within me.  My soul was embittered and my blood ran sour.  My strength writhed and fretted, I clung to the reins but I had no control. I travelled, tormented over land and sea until I came to this island.  And here I rest.  My solitude quietens my confusion. My heart has grown again and my eyes can see.
                         I am alone with sky, sand and sea.  We are all of us pale and uncoloured but for the sun god who taints us in the morning with a smiling pink and makes us warm and golden in the day and in the evening he leaves us sitting peacefully in the light of dusk and we watch his red fire fill the horizon and sink through the ocean to behind the world where we cannot see.  Then night comes to us but we do not sleep.  I sit on the silky coolness of the sand and listen to the sea.  I listen to its whispering as it rushes forward and I listen to its silence as it draws away.  The white light of the moon touches the crests of the waves and turns the black night deep blue.  The tide moves with the moon and the moon moves with the tide.  Neither one rules the other.  Like distant lovers their worlds touch , yet remain apart.
                        I am still haunted by the horror of spurious love and when these nightmares taunt me I let the ocean take my anger away.  I look out at the water and my imagination watches the Contessa's thin, black body being carried like a dead insect over the swell of each wave and with the vision my bitterness and my shame drift away and I am soothed again and calm.
                       Like the moon and the tide, love draws on love, love has no ruler.  If one is ruler then the other is ruled.  If one is destroyer then the other is destroyed and there is no love.  I was ruled.  I was destroyed.  I must accept that I am weak in order to be strong.  I must forgive those who have shown me my weakness and thus made me stronger and my shoulders broader to carry both weakness and strength, humility and courage.    
                     I look up and see a million stars in the sky and there are a million stars in the ocean.  They are reflections of each other.  That is the love I seek.  They are joined in the spirit, the ghost that will journey far, from ocean bed to furthest star.
                    Tomorrow I will swim out, far from the shore and I will dive to find the most beautiful shells.  They will be gifts from the Ocean to the Starshine.
                    Then I will leave this island and soon I will know her name.  She is Starshine, she guided me through my journey.  I am not the unicorn.  I am the Ocean and my anger is drowned.
                   I have been ruled.  I have been destroyed.  I am weak.  I am strong.  I am free.  I am found.  My search is at an end.



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                           I am in Italy.  I have walked many miles through its summer.  In the night I came to this place.  I felt the bird of sleep swoop down and touch me with its gentle wings.  So I lay down.  My weariness paid no heed to the stones and the roots on the hard, uneven ground.  I looked up at the sky and I understood why long ago, from my tower, I had seen clouds pass the moon .  They had foreboded the shadows that would pass over my heart, then clear and pass again.  But now the night was clear and the perfect fullness of the moon was undisturbed by clouds.  The bird of sleep flew over me and took away the tiredness in my body and the wanderings of my mind.
                         I awoke in an olive grove.  I sit with my back against the grey bark of an ancient tree.  Its branches encircle me in great arcs of kindness and concern, like the gnarled and twisted arms of an old man, and the tree looks down on me from above like a father blessing a child in the last embrace of boyhood before the child is sent forth into the world as a man.  The ancient smiles on me and encourages me and a light breeze whispers through the tree's tiny leaves of silver green.
                         The cool mists of morning rise and I see that I am on the outskirts of a red city.  Her love is near.  I have her shells wrapped in muslin.  My book has reached its end.  I have no more words and no more pages.