The Spur Ch. 02

(Sorry--no sex in this chapter--just character development.)

"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all of ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lives on the other side of silence."

George Eliot, Middlemarch

JILL

Steve had driven us out to the Brandywine Museum, but before we went to look at all the Wyeths, he surprised me by steering us toward the gift shop first. From one of the bins he drew a print of one of Andrew Wyeth's Chester County farmland paintings.

"So--what colors do you see?" he asked. It sounded like an easy question to answer, but it wasn't.

"Well...I see brown, and gray, and dull green, and black, and off-white...I think that's about it." With a flourish he turned the print upside-down.

"Wow!" I marveled; orange and violet and red and indigo and yellow were all over the picture, hiding in plain sight.

"The eye gets seduced by the representational form of the picture," he began;

"So you ignore the colors you don't expect to see!" I finished.

"Exactly! But all those colors add to the total effect whether you're aware of them or not." He replaced the print in the bin and we began walking down a long, glassed-in corridor that gave a beautiful view of the Brandywine River. I watched some damselflies flit in and out among the cattails, then said.

"I can do that to people, sometimes," I said.

"What, turn them upside-down?"

"See their true colors--what's really there under the surface representation."

"Tell me more," he said.

"Actually," I hedged, "I shouldn't say this is something I can do; it's more like something that happens to me. There's no pattern or triggering event; it just seems to come upon me when it wants to."

"Are these people you know?"

"Never," I said. "They've all been total strangers so far."

"What sorts of things do you see?" he pursued.

"Well, just yesterday, I was standing in the drugstore checkout line, looking sort of absently at the magazine rack, and when I looked up, everyone in the store--customers, cashiers, everybody--had a beam of bright light passing through their bodies; it went up forever out of the crowns of their heads, and down forever through the soles of their feet. It moved with them, bent when they bent, turned when they turned; but it never left them."

"How long did it last?"

"I can't be sure; not more than five minutes or so."

"How often does it happen?"

"Randomly; sometimes once every couple of days for a week, then weeks, even months with nothing.

"What do you suppose it means?"

"You're the shrink; you tell me!"

"Hmm..." He sat in silence for some time. "Well, that it reminds me of a story about Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu, before the universe was created. Shiva turned himself into a column of light, infinitely long in both directions., and challenged the other two to find either end of him. Vishnu followed the light up, and Brahma followed it down. When they met together again, Shiva asked if either of them had found his end, above or below. When Brahma lied that he had found the bottom of the column of light. Shiva called him out on his deception. Ashamed, Brahma hid himself for a long time."

"So you think my vision meant that people are infinite?"

"Could be. Is that story familiar?"

"No; I've never heard it before."

"Fascinating!"

"What would you say," I ventured, "If one of your patients described an experience like that?"

"Well," he replied, "I would want to rule out certain things. Do you hear voices?"

"Never."

"Have you seen this sort of thing before?"

"Not exactly, but other things like it."

"What sorts of things?"

"Unpredictable. Like, one day I saw a man walking down Spruce Street. I looked away, and when I looked up again he had all these wings everywhere, and more eyes that I could count. I knew he was terrifying, that I should be afraid of him--scream, or run, or something--but I didn't. I just watched him walk by. That was the most dramatic thing I've seen. It's like, for a moment, I can see the essence, the real nature of people that others can't see. Do you think that's weird?"

"Not at all," Steve replied. "The first thing angels always say when they appear to humans is 'Do not be afraid.' What you saw met the biblical description of angels better

than I've ever seen them depicted in art."

"So what would you tell a patient who said she'd seen an angel?" I asked.

"Have you ever had migraines, or migraine auras?"

"Nope."

"Any history of epilepsy or stroke in your family?"

"Not that I know of."

"No psychosis or schizo-affective disorder, or anything like that?"

"If there is, the family hid it really well. But I don't think so."

"Then I'd say you saw an angel," he said with a smile. "Is there anything common to all these visions, such that you could sum them all up by saying, 'This is what I see'?"

"I think I see the inner person, made visible on the outside. They're always beautiful, always full of light--even the disturbing ones, like the angel. It's like I see the people they were meant to be."

"That's beautiful, Grasshopper!", he said warmly. "But you can't see these things on purpose by looking?"

"No; they always come by surprise." After a long pause, he asked,

"What was your religious upbringing?"

"My family is sorta-kinda culturally Jewish on my dad's side, but I didn't have any religious training growing up."

"Ever study yoga?"

"Only at the gym."

"And you're definitely a woo-woo-free zone."

"I am where woo goes to die." I proclaimed. After a moment, he resumed.

"You practice mindfulness meditation, right?"

"Yeah; if I have any 'spiritual practice,' I guess that would be it.

"Right," Steve said decisively. "That absolutely fits. So I would tell this hypothetical patient that she had visions of the spiritual reality behind the physical world."

"And that doesn't translate as 'crazy'?"

"Not at all! I don't think any therapist--especially a Jungian therapist like myself--would assume there was something 'wrong' with you because of these experiences. Many would scribble notes about psycho-somatic visual manifestations or what-not, but I think 'visions' and 'psycho-somatic visual manifestations' is a distinction without a difference." He was silent for a time, lost in thought.

"I think these visions are all of a piece with your pep-squad effervescence and your submissiveness," he continued. "You pay attention to people. You want to see the essential good in everyone, so you can serve it. You're always on the lookout--on the job, with me, in company--for how to make sure everyone is happy, getting their needs met, and having a good time. Does that ring true?" I thought about it for a minute.

"Nothing like that had ever occurred to me," I said slowly, "but now that you put it that way, it seems absolutely right." He smiled.

"You are bigger on the inside, Grasshopper," he said, planting a kiss on the top of my head.

I took his arm, and we soon found ourselves in the gallery featuring N.C. Wyeth's book illustrations. Caught up in the action-packed images from all those boy-books like Treasure Island (yes, books have genders--Neil Gaiman said so; hell, one of them was even called The Boy's King Arthur), Steve was immersed in excitement and memories, and my little quirk was forgotten for the time being.

STEVE'S JOURNAL

Physical therapy is such a racket; they just throw it at everything and see what it sticks to.

Also: I really like this girl.