Chapter 9, section 5: Ana El-Haqq

Smudges of warmth crept into his dizzy vision. Yellows, reds and oranges chased lightly with gold. Reds with little bangles of gold whirling like his beloved when they met again after being apart so long. Whirling together, she wore a flowing red dress and gold bangles on her wrists. Her eyes were black as a moonless jungle canopy, yet love poured out from them like wine. Kisses that unlocked his joints and sent them both into a rapture of whirling.

Beloved.

Life, beyond this black and white underworld riverbank.

Life stretched out in all directions farther than he could see through the whirling shapes and colors flowing by. Reds and yellows, joined by greens and blues, purples and browns. Colorforms danced before him in wild, random trajectories. Air stroked his face and arms, and it had substance. Light struck his eyes and he felt heat. Scents wafted into his nasal passages, massaging frozen brain cells back into their normal state of frenzied relaxation.

Memory flooded back. He wasn’t Nothing. No, not Nothing at all. In fact, he was so far from Nothing that he was full to brimming. He spun and spun and spun, beside himself, in ecstasy. He was ecstasy. He was the God of Ecstasy, of falling apart and leaving the shell of little self behind. Into the brilliant luminous sun with you! Tear yourself apart, little Nothing! Thrust yourself into the immeasurable space of emptiness! In luminosity, giant bubbles were filled with brightly colored illusion and he was the god of dancing in and around and with illusion, who was himself illusion. Burst the bubble of who you think you are and there he was, waiting: an illusion within an illusion within an illusion.

Dionysos, that was him. He may have spent a few centuries sinking into himself and away from his basic nature, but that didn’t change his basic nature. He was still the possession, as that pilot had said. He was still the bringer of wine and madness. He had simply stopped believing it.

When he arrived in a town, he still brought the Dionysia and the Bacchanalia with him. He still cavorted with Satyrs and Silenoi, and he still loved with the fullness of his terribly shredded heart. Maybe when he arrived in a town it was for a jungle break-beat road show, but it was still his show. The madness hadn’t changed, only the method. He still drove mortals to break out of what they thought of as their selves and dance wildly with the direct sensory experience of raw phenomena.

And now Coyote was gone. Dionysos whirled through a warmly lit space. The random bursts of color and light resolved themselves into regularly repeating shapes. There were large white shapes that seemed to be whirling much like he was, and one black shape that seemed to remain still, or was spinning in the opposite direction. All around them was a riot of colorforms, and everything was set in a warm luminous field. The black form was a still point, and the white forms were companions. They all spun and spun and spun beside themselves like white planets around a black sun. They all had shucked their small selves, their Nothings, and left them far behind. They were all basking in the glow of blessings, their robes soaked with ecstasy.

A flute pierced the air with longing, and his companions sang, “Ana el-Haqq, Ana el-Haqq” over and over in a melody that sometimes soared and sometimes flirted with the earth, then came to rest on her ample breast before leaping to soar again. Yes, this was a place where he could be at home.

He picked up the melody and sang, “Ana el-Haqq, Ana el-Haqq,” “I am God, I am God.” It was heresy, it was beautiful, and it was true.

As he gained his bearings in the whirling constellation of supplicants, more details began to resolve themselves. The white figures spun both on their own axes and around the black form in intricate arabesque patterns. They spun so swiftly that the fact they never collided testified to both intense discipline and true freedom. He could not recall seeing such a promise fulfilled in mortals since he returned to civilization. He had no idea where he was or who they were, but he plunged into their supplications as if he were one of them. He let his mind stay loose in the space of beloved and illusion while his body whirled in intricate arabesques that were familiar, but that he had never trained in, nor even seen.

This was letting go into godhood. Letting ecstasy lead him around and around and around so far beside himself that there was only this wide open space, and in the wide open space danced twelve mystics dressed in flowing white robes that flared at the bottom and hats on their heads that looked like tubular loaves of bread. Along with the mystics whirled their uninvited guest, who kept pace and speed and pattern, but who wore only simple trousers, oddly faded and torn in places. Shoes and shirt had been carried away by the river, along with his memory and any rush to get anywhere or do anything.

His memory was coming back, but there was still only the now. Past and future were only figments of a demented mortal’s imagination, desperate attempts to capture the intangible, make something solid so that they could feel solid themselves, and feel as if they mattered. But the truth that creeps unsuspected underneath plans and memories sings: there is nothing other than now.