ON A LINE OF LIGHT

Chapter Two

I had long been beholdent to the opinion that we live a lonely life, that as individuals we are responsible for and to only ourselves. This is not to say I hold a creed of selfishness for often it is our own bidden duty to put ourself out for others. That said, however, we are alone really especially assuming the theology of a subjective universe. The way I had arrived at that belief was quite reasoned and the deductive process still seems to hold. The first notion I had detached myself from was that of an omnipotent God. The problem with this theorem is simply that if God be so aware of humanity that he sees fit to predestine all our actions (as he must if he omnipotent and all powerful) any sin we commit must be written into the script so to speak. If this be so we have no will in the matter and therefore sin - and thus evil - is unavoidable but excusable as it must be God's will. This clearly makes a mockery of the concept of good and evil but there is also another fundamental problem with good and evil with which to contend: The view of opposite forces in constant struggle leads to the inevitable conclusion that a state of equilibrium, albeit dynamic, has been achieved. In the unambiguous absence of a balancing factor we can see that the two must be exactly equal since the equilibrium point observably never changes and this of cause blows the gaff on the Christian theology that good is a superior force to evil. it had not really taken me long to reach such conclusions, particularly since my instinct reaction was that such theology could only be hogwash by virtue of the gullibility of its exponents. Thus, in the absence so far of a better alternate theology (though I was beginning to work upon just such) I had accorded myself the privilege of treating considerations other than my own true will with disdain and deliberate ignorance. It would later become clear to me that this was in error but not until I had discovered and explored the significance of the phrase "True Will" which was not to be for many miles and months. It was difficult to explain my cold rationality to others around me, particularly to my parents both of whom held my wellbeing in high regard however unfounded their conceptions of it were and my independence demanded that I ignore in all practical ways their care and love of me. This was, of course, a necessary hardship for us all to suffer that I might later realise the error but in the meantime it offered to me a rationale for my behaviour though I have always supposed they saw it as my psychological mechanism for making our parting easier to bear. The truth was that I was in such great accord with my understanding that it made the parting harder on my emotions knowing that it was, to use the word in an especially unique context, sinful to express regret at leaving them. All this seethed within me as I waited in the airport for my departure. I had made them both promise not to throw emotion into the crucible having talked late into the previous night with them in an effort to explain my reasons for the journey - I felt no desire to do this nor any sense of duty in so doing but I reasoned that it would serve no purpose the other way and simply walk off without a word. With all this explained and agreed it was to my annoyance that my father reached rather awkwardly to embrace me as I stepped onto the moving floor leading me out of their lives. I did not look back, as I had said I would not but, despite my height of resolution, I felt something regretful about the way I would not even allow him his chance to express his own will. The plane itself, I had determined, was to be an adventure alone. I had flown before but there is a peculiarly delicious anticipation before takeoff which soon turns to trepidacious exhilaration as one begins to realise that the whole machine will not pinwheel across the runway and explode but will lift gently into the air and climb gently away from the ever diminishing landmarks on the ground below. The notion of such a huge lump of metal proudly defiant of the earth's gravitational persuasion seems a very satisfying one. Even if its whole basis is founded in science it still seems to be sticking its metaphorical fingers up at the paternal authoritarianism of established thinking. I found myself in the company of experienced flyers, mainly businessmen bored with the routine of six hour jags between Heathrow and JFK airports. I fell, naturally enough into conversation with my immediate neighbour who explained how he had flown from Edinburgh that morning to a meeting in London and now on to New York. The psychology of communication between people who are forced to endure each others company for extended periods can sometimes be interesting if rather negative. The usual reaction is to avoid speaking for as long as is possible for fear that the other has manners or conversation that one does not wish to have to suffer, the result being that when a conversation is, inevitably, struck one feels elation that a like minded or interesting person has been engaged and disappointment that time is now too short to fully enjoy the liaison. Determined that I should not fall into such an instinctive negativity I chatted amiably with the man who must have been in his early thirties and discovered that we shared a similar background and education. Always on the look out for coincidence I stumbled across one which I felt, much later, was significant in that although it seems mundane the intersection of the populous who could lay claim to such a thing must be relatively minute not to mention the additional unlikelihood of discovering it through the course of normal conversation. It turned out, though I could not now say how we came to discover it, that we had both been taught by the same English teacher during our respective schooling in Edinburgh and Nottingham. The teacher in question must have moved south in order for such a possibility to arise. As I say it is hardly proof of a unified existence or providence akin to mana from heaven to scholars of the bizzare but nevertheless it is mentionable in view of its extraordinary unliklihood of both occurrence and detection. Perhaps the incident underlies the theory that coincidence is the cosmic mind's condition most akin to humour. Thus the plane journey passed off in a most pleasant way as our conversation had been overheard by a young woman sitting behind us who presumably judged it worthy of her joining in on account of its interest. The quality of hospitality on the American Airlines flight added to the general good humour and was, I was later to realise, typical of corporate American attitude which sits somewhere between informal courtesy and obsequious obiesence. The rest of the flight, while I was not in conversation with the Scottish gentleman or the specimen of American womanhood behind me I spent in silent contemplation of the journey and tasks ahead of me. I had so much to achieve and so many questions that begged answers and thus, as became a habit (and the most sublime and perfect one at that), I escaped the necessities of the immediate and shifted my consciousness into the realms of the true nature of being. So it was that when we landed at 10 pm local time in New York I was as unprepared for my life on the road as ever I could have been. The airport was perhaps the most stressful experience I have ever undergone. In physical terms this was to be the initiation in fire that in spiritual terms my emotional and subsequently intellectual madness had been. I admonished myself most wholeheartedly for the foolish notion of arriving in New York with no pre-arranged place to stay. I found out first hand that the city can be every bit the nest of viperous inhumanity it has often been labelled, the streets full to bursting with those lost and unscrupulous souls that pray on just such wretched creatures as myself in those circumstances. I had no currency in coinage and none of the airport amenities were able to supply me with such which rendered my vague plan to locate a cheap hotel or hostel impossible as it was unlikely. Of course I was not so naive as to have travelled three thousand miles without some guide having purchased in the long weeks of preparation a book detailing all the essentials of travel in every major American city for those on, as I was, a budget. After some twenty minutes, during which time I regretted bitterly the capacity to which I had packed my luggage with my supposed necessities (including a tent, several books I could not bear to be parted from and my guitar), I was marooned in the arrivals lounge with the crowd thinning out around me and the desolation of finding myself alone, tired and most complete a stranger in a foreign land as is possible to be. Panic rose in me like a bile and I began to exhibit physical symptoms such as shivering and incontrollable limb shakes. It is an interesting point to note that though my psychology permitted me to crumble under the weight of such absolute fear and imbecility in setting forth so unprepared on the journey, at no point in the airport - where it would have been the easiest place in the world to accomplish - did I consider using the considerable power of my credit card or the call collect facility of the telephone system to get myself on the next available flight back home. As these thoughts occurred to me at other times during my travels it became natural to consider such options and annihilate them forthwith, this time however it never, even in my depth of despair, crossed my mind to do such a thing. Then things took a turn for the worst, I was in the outer part of the terminal unprotected from the public and the most blatantly flightless sitting duck for the rapacious hunters of my possessions and security who now seemed to converge on the remnants of travellers who had the misfortune of not arranging to exit the airport environs by the swiftest of methods. I was offered watches, jewellery, alcohol, drugs and even, perversely, accommodation by the ragged assortment of what New Yorkers (and American urbanites in general) refer to as "Street People". In my panic I became a character in a play I had once played in at school being a retelling of the prodigal son parable with a cast of extras who washed over then engulfed the central actor in a wild and violently malevolent dance exactly as I was now being engulfed by the Street People who seemed almost to smell my helplessness. I do not know how I escaped back into the terminal corridors where the evil horde of prospective muggers et al feared to go (nor why they feared to do so) but I found myself alone again a few minutes later and once more the panic set in, not only was I lost so far from home with no knowledge of where to go but I was now denied the means to escape even if I did have some destination. Then from around a corner of the passage (like that of a hospital) came a young (I guessed in his early twenties) man carrying a huge rucksack across his rather thin and weedy frame. He was tanned and looked dishevelled and tired as if (as was the case I soon discovered) from a long flight. As he saw me he made a beeline in my direction and I braced myself for what I felt was inevitably another onslaught from someone determined to exploit my all too obvious panic to his own enrichment. He had a fixed and manic grin that marked him out, even in this city of insanity, as a dangerous and untrustworthy individual and his opening speech, though desperately accurate, did nothing to relieve me of my instinctive recoil, he simply marched up to me and said "You need to chill out!" with an accent that placed him from a good deal further away from home than even I was. It took me a second to recall where I had heard such a voice before I realised and replied haltingly "Are you German?". This remark, coming as it did caused his face which I now perceived at rather closer quarters than I would have wished to be covered in a thin sheen of sweat to break into open laughter. "Fuck, do you look scared, man" he laughed again and in an ill-advised breakdown at the tremulous European bond I felt I blurted out my entire predicament before I realised that, had Michael (we had now introduced ourselves) really been the immediate maniac he appeared, I was committing virtual suicide. Despite his awkwardly insensitive manner, his habitual invasion of personal space I recovered my senses enough to realise that his sweat did not carry the characteristically sweet odour of schizophrenia and was more than likely due to his own discomfort at finding himself in New York at 10.30 pm with nowhere to go. He had at least some US coinage and after several unsuccessful attempts we were able to contact a hostel from my guidebook that catered to students travelling on a budget though (in the words of the book) was in an "inhospitable district" of downtown Manhattan. I knew desperately little of the geography of New York but realised that Manhattan was distinguished in my mind as being not as notorious as other regions of the city like The Bronx and Brooklyn. Together Michael and I made our way back out to the front of the terminal and followed signs and a small stream of people towards the JFK subway station. For some reason, later I discovered it was because we were two together and purposeful in our movements, the Street People outside the terminal left us alone and trained their instincts to rob and brutalise the innocent upon some more worthy (and unluckier) souls and we soon left them behind. The subway system in New York is an experience un-negotiable by explanation and my own meagre fayre in this respect can do but little to invoke in a mere reader the tension and indignation one feels about what is supposed to be a public service. The ticket attendants reside in highly fortified booths from which they dispense scorn, derision, abuse and, occasionally, tickets. Information is an absolute taboo. This is, by the way, no exaggeration or literary licence, these creatures take the greatest delight in the discomfort of those who are obliged to use the subway which, since the city is nearly 40 miles across, is a mandatory requirement for getting about. The squalor of the passageways and platforms is unrivalled and littering, despoiling, vandalising and defac(at)ing are all pastimes treated as necessary evils to be endured by the helpless user of the system. Thus, to avoid the annoyance of interminal police vigilance and, probably, the inconvenience of corpse removal all the supposedly public toilets in the system are eternally locked and chained up which, considering the vileness of the open public spaces, is a positive boon. One soon learns to develop what I came to term the New York Face when travelling the subway which is one's primary means of survival during the hours before about 10.30 pm - after that there is no recourse to which one can turn to ensure even a sporting chance of completing one's journey without unwanted and usually violent interference. The New York Face is an expression one must acquire which says (in the native language of the street) "I won't fuck with you unless you fuck with me first in which case I'll fuck you up". Needless to say this dialectic use of the word "fuck" implies absolutely no relation to it's dictionary definition, it's connotations being on the whole an almost opposite of any form of congress or union. My own first trip on the subway yielded me the opportunity of discovering first hand what happens to those who do not project the New York Face and as a consequence I made my adoption of the charming custom very rapidly. Having assumed the NYF for several minutes and rid myself of the malevolent advances of my more sinister co-passengers I attracted the amused attention of one of the more sedate denizens, a young black man in what appeared to be full basketball uniform who offered us popcorn from his enormous cardboard carton and the benefit of his insightful observation that we'd not been in New York long. We acquiesced and he provided us with some useful advice that we must heed or come to grief: Firstly, learn the face (as described above), secondly never stand near the edge of the platform when a train is approaching (it is considered the height of amusement among some New Yorkers to push unsuspecting customers into the path of the oncoming train, a practise which leads to the questionably high incidence of subway suicide, the inevitable verdict of the disinterested justice system). Thirdly one is advised never to make the mistake of having the wrong change for not only are the ticket dispensing staff ever vigilant for a chance to abuse you, the pickpockets and muggers are equally anxious to encounter individuals who either display the extent of their funds or the whereabouts on the person such funds are kept and though loose change of the order of a subway fare is an uncommon motive for violence any amount of cash beyond that is considered an open invite. The final rule of the subway is don't use it unless you cannot avoid doing so and if it is after 11 at night do not under any, no matter how extreme, circumstances be tempted to venture into it's bowels. All that said I never once encountered trouble on the subway when I applied the above rules and, travelling about a lot as I was to do during my time in New York, I used the system frequently. There is a curious quality to the air in New York on warm nights, absolutely accurate to the way one imagines it from viewing the immense number of films and television programs, so much so that the point is worthy of comment. Downtown Manhattan obeys every role and stereotype of TV and movie convention right down to the steaming manholes in the streets though obviously with fewer dramatic car chases going on. The streets are broad and not entirely unpleasant though one does feel somewhat under the shadow of the endlessly tall and imposing buildings that line all the avenues and streets the former which are named after trees and run East/West and the latter which run North/South and are merely numbered hence the common address nomenclature of, for example, "34th and Elm" meaning the corner of 34th Street and Elm Avenue. The hostel we were now booked into was relatively easy to locate being a mere 2 blocks from the nearest subway station, a block being something in the region of 80 - 100 yards, but at a temperature of around 80 degrees and in 80% humidity the walk was less exhilarating than torturous. The discomfort was compounded by the re-appearance of street people who, unlike the discreet beggars of modern Britain or the clamouring hordes of Indian children were neither polite or over numerous. The method seems to be to annoy a prospective donor into paying to simply get rid of the recipient . . . unless he appears overly eager to pay which is taken as a sign of latent wealth and therefore worth further pursuit; hence one must strike a balance of paying up an amount and in a certain time calculated so that neither can be construed as too much, to little, too fast or too slow. There is one alternative to paying and that is to be so aggressive that one cows the beggar into a fearful retreat but one had better be sure one's bravado is matched by one's abilities in combat and one had better also be sure that the would be victim has no friends in the immediate vicinity as there are unwritten rules of the street that belie a comradeship one would be most surprised (and unfortunate) to discover in the event of being too aggressive with the beggars. I found the depth of the poverty to be most disturbing in New York, the more so for the gulf between rich and poor in comparison to Britain is a veritable void, the rich seeming so much richer and the poor so much desperately poorer. The conventions and customs of New York life are geared, paradoxically to both bridging this gap and enlarging it by the national characteristic of free enterprise. Hence it is polite when disposing of litter to empty all into the bins except the aluminium cans (in such heat and humidity constant liquid intake is essential) which are deposited next to the bin making it easy for the beggars and bag ladies to collect which invariably happens within a few seconds of deposit. The cans are collected and "sold" the city recycling unit for 1c each thus one frequently sees collectors arguing over the spoils. Since the city recycling unit is often a long journey away the cans have become the underground currency of the homeless and helpless and can, in themselves, be exchanged for blankets, food, shelter etc. among the poor and needy. My first glimpse of the homeless and the street people of New York disturbed me greatly as I have said though the individual cases I saw and which made my own plight seem so much the more secure are lost to my memory bar one. As we approached the hostel address one black youngster lurched up to me with wild staring eyes, clearly the symptom of a wildly hallucinogenic dose of some narcotic (crack being the current favour at the time) and exclaimed "You are the one man, you are the one" when I stopped, taken aback he continued "You're the weasel, man, the weasel, pop goes the weasel, pop goes the weasel, you're the one". I have to this day wondered if this were some forerunner to my mystic realisations later on my journey but confess I have thus far only ever concluded that there was nothing more in it than another sad, juiced up junkie so far beyond my help as to reserve a heightened position in my psychic awareness and a sympathetic place in my memory. The hostel itself resembled a sweat house and I felt that $20 per night was steep, I was allowed a shower (4 minutes maximum) and I was shown to a bed which was no more than a mattress on the floor of the large studio along with maybe twenty others. The people running the place were all students themselves and, as it was late, it was hard to see what specimens of humanity made up the rest of the "guests". Sitting in a smaller room to one side were several Australians who were extremely friendly and I was tired by now of the awkwardness of Michael the German so, despite being almost dead on my feet I could not help but accept the offer of going for a beer with the Aussies. Now this was more like it, civilisation, in my opinion, demands a society where one is not subject to archaic and primitive drinking laws. It was past midnight but we rolled out and found a boisterous bar about three blocks away. I found myself thinking that I hadn't done so badly at all, an hour ago I was literally scared for my life, now I was drinking an ice cold beer at a fraction of the cost I was used to in perhaps the world's most exciting city. Time was on my side, I reflected, the whole journey lay before me and I had made a start. The company was good and the bar crowded, I was taking in so much of the flavour of the place, so many things to observe that I hardly noticed the beers going down. American beer is, even in brand bottles, significantly weaker than it's English counterparts and thus one is able to consume greater quantities before achieving a state of intoxication that leaves one light headed and not at all heavily bloated as one is after several pints of English bitter. The short walk back to the hostel yields an opportunity to sample some local food, it is true that most New Yorkers subsist on chille dogs, hamburgers and bagels. The former are revolting, in the dictionary under "junk food" it says "see chille dogs", hamburgers are, well, hamburgers but bagels . . . there is surely nothing finer than a bagel fresh out of the oven and filled with cream cheese. On this wonderful note I leave "Al's All Nite Bagel Store" and return to the hostel, fed and beered and feeling appallingly tired but almost sated. It has been a day for overloading my senses, so much to take in and with my head buzzing I lay down in the stiflingly hot hostel to mull over the past twenty four hours, before I can get beyond the events at Heathrow airport that morning I am fast and soundly asleep, oblivious to the city around me that really does, as the tales all tell, never sleep. He came to me in the early half light of that first New York morning as he was often to do in the future. He looked like me as we faced each other but I had the strangest sensation that he was facing with me, looking out through my own eyes. I knew instinctively that this was no dream of the ordinary kind but I had no understanding at that moment of what was happening to me. I suppose I could have felt fear but it simply never occurred to me to do so as I saw a pale golden light bathe the spectral figure before me. We didn't speak as such that first time, words would have melted our communication, but he reached out his arm from the white robe he was wearing and touched me lightly on the shoulder. I felt a warm glow and I'm sure I smiled as the vision before me became diffused in the golden glow surrounding it and this in turn gave way to an awareness of warm sunshine on my face and the sounds of traffic, car horns, people, music.