The Greatest Mystery
Easter Island – October 2016
Remember who you are.
Who you were before the world got ahold of you.
This is why you are here.
It is said that ancient minds expressed their immense knowledge of the cosmos through myth. Their brains worked with symbol and metaphor. A fusion of conscious and subconscious. A slow, relentless divergence occurred over the ages. Hard logic became more valued and imagination became irrelevant.
My mind does not grasp formulas, equations, hard facts, dates. But I understand. A deep knowing that fills my atoms. My reality is fluid, kaleidoscopic, limitless. I am awake in a dream without end. Beliefs are not held, but carried for a while and then set free as new evidence comes to light. But never do I forget that we humans know nothing. And no one is in control.
Wild horses roam the desolate landscape of Rapa Nui. They are almost as captivating to me as the moai. They converge in the road ahead. I trail behind their majestic parade. Your mind is more of a wild horse than most people's, a psychic once told me. A mixture of admiration and pity in her eyes. Even as a child, especially as a child, my mind was rebellious. I dreamed of being an archaeologist and having rainbow-colored hair. My favorite color was clear. Not a color of the spectrum but the prism itself.
The exasperation and hostility it provoked: that color doesn't exist!
But I can see it. It's all around us.
Nothing can be done with you. You are hopeless!
I wasn't trying to be difficult. I couldn't restrain myself from imagining possibilities. I've never expected, or even wanted, others to see the world as I do. I peer out the dusty windshield. The beasts advance down the road. A wayward kind of grace. They toss their manes, haughty and jubilant. A devilish smile spreads across my face. An evil giggle escapes. I never stood a chance.
In the field, two males are locked a violent pirouette. Teeth tear flesh. Long, thick ropes of blood and saliva fly through the air. An image from this morning flashes through my mind. A dead horse by the side of the road. The bloated, contorted carcass. Its eyes were frozen in a fierce gaze heavenward. Even in death untamed.
Moai are strewn across the outer slopes of Rano Raraku like discarded game pieces from a divine hand. The soil in the crater is the color of dried blood. Here, the moai were extracted from the flesh of the Earth.
One must bleed until there's no poison left. The wounds scab over, and it seems we are done with the bleeding. But then they burst open again. And again.
Deep within the abyss of the past, I believed everything I was told. This innocence was not lost, but purposely rejected. Exiled to this mysterious, magical land. I have come here to reclaim it.
When we experience pain, pieces of the personality shatter, disperse, and become lodged in hidden corners of the psyche.This is done as a means of survival, so the pain doesn't reoccur. Those who search for answers find that, eventually, the sanctuaries become prisons. The bandages no longer shelter the wounds. The search must go deeper. Clues are unearthed and examined. Shards and tiny splinters. It is painstaking work. Some discoveries raise more questions than answers. Sometimes the revelations are catastrophic. They invalidate all previous work. If only we could bury it all again. But there is no going back.
Was it carelessness or rat infestation that caused the fatal deforestation? Who constructed the moai? Why do all sites face inland, but one? Certain moai are lined up with the astronomical year. Why? Is Easter Island part of the legacy of a lost civilization that existed millennia before recorded history? The survivors of a cataclysm were ancient mariners who journeyed to the far reaches of the planet, transporting their knowledge of the universe.
So many questions. So much energy is invested in trying to decipher the enigma of our collective past.
The greatest mystery one can solve is that of the self.
Hanga Roa. The only town on this remotest of islands. I drift into a tiny shop. Ocean blue walls close in on me. On display: a dismal selection of tinned food, crackers, cookies, and chips. The Pacific islands are a fussy eater's worst nightmare. Tourists mill about. Languages intertwine. I get in line behind three young women. Words emerge from their obscure speech. Numbers. It's Hungarian. Words from each of the languages I've taught myself over the years tumble through my mind. I've taught myself almost everything I know: how to write, how to navigate the planet, how to unlearn everything I was told I ought to be. How to interpret the secret, personal language that each of us carry into existence. The hieroglyphics scrawled on the walls of my soul.
A tingle to my left. Heat. I glance in that direction. A man stands in front of the cooler. Wiry, small-boned, Polynesian. Stately and youthful. He could be twenty-five or forty-five. His hair falls past his shoulders in inky blue-black waves. His gaze captures mine. Blazing black nuggets. I see you, missy.
I catch my breath and turn away. I pay for my water and stumble into the midday sunlight, head spinning. I get into the Jeep and place my hands on the steering wheel. Breathe, breathe. I stare into the rearview mirror. No one has ever looked at me like that before. Except me. I see you. Missy.
Long ago, I tried to been seen below my surface. The late 1980s. My last year as a teenager. Palm Springs, LA. The don't-you-know-who-I-am crowd. So many offers of conditional generosity. Do you know who you are? was my reply. The best pickup line annihilator ever. Then, one eternal night club evening, eyes peered into mine. Orbs obscured by the grimy glaze of age. The gaze of a long-dead soul. No man will ever be interested in what goes on in that pretty little head, doll. A sneer. Your deep thoughts. If you're really smart, you'll keep your mouth shut and use the real gifts you were given. You'll be set for life.
My beautiful defiance: take your BMW and shove it up your flabby, wrinkled ass, old man! Just because you've been alive since the beginning of time doesn't mean you know everything!
But even the most determined scientist abandons a theory after finding no evidence to support it.
No one will ever understand me. A realization that can cause such devastation. Or empowerment.
Te Pito Kura. Navel of Light. The place of the magic spheres. Mana, spirit power, was harnessed here. Easter Island is also known as Rapa Nui, but its original name was Te Pito O Te Henua. Navel of the World. We are, each of us, the center. The quantum observers of our lives.
We did not come into existence to be educated into submission. To be herded into a corral of listless uniformity. We are here to observe, to experience, to formulate our own realities. To enter the labyrinth of our spirit, get gloriously lost, find our way to the center of light and back again.
And so the time of the moai came to an end and the Birdman became the mythical ideal. Like the Earth, our personal histories consist of eras. Each one more intricate than the last.
The cold wind tangles my hair into knots. I stand on the precipice and peer into the fog. The percussive hiss of ocean waves crashing into the cliffs rises from far below. A decision looms: sink into the safe and familiar forever or take that step into the unknown. I need my innocence – trust, hope, and belief – more than ever now. The fog dissipates, and, in the distance, the prize becomes visible.
The Rano Kau crater towers over the very edge of the island. A gray minivan pulls up next to me in the parking lot. Tourists spill out, identical blonde males and females. Their language is vague, strangled. Some form of Scandinavian. I follow them up the trail to the lookout. They veer to the left. A figure sits at the very edge, cross-legged and immobile. A monolith of flesh and blood. My heart stops.
Him, again. The wind stirs his hair. Raven wings taking flight and coming to rest again. The tourists cluster around him, oblivious to his presence. Squawks and exclamations engulf him. He does not move.
I walk up the path to the right and sit on a boulder. The crater gapes before me. A most ancient wound. An unsettling, post-cataclysmic stillness rises from within. A void that can never be filled. Some things you never get back. But with the passing of time, scars take on an exquisite beauty. If you let them.
The tingle again. I take a deep breath and reach out. We merge into a soft embrace of resonances. Warm and platonic and steady. I bow my head and smile. I see you, too.
Sadness and wonder coalesce. I close my eyes. Could it be that I'm not alone after all? I sweep my eyes in his direction, but he has vanished. A lone cackle breaks free from the cluster of tourists. It wafts across the crater, hovering for an instant before it's swept away in the wind. Swallowed up by the emptiness of forever.
“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others.” - Timothy Leary
Dear Readers: Thank you for being my Others.❤️