Painted Ceiling from Tomb at Thebes, Egypt. The ancient Egyptians believed the stars to be the sacred celestial home of the dead.
Lost, he searches stars
And stares at love.
Can’t you see
the light beyond
the window pane
the hulking frame
Orion in disguise
Can’t you feel
The darkness of her eyes
The softness of her palms
The sweetness of her words
Hera still in chains
Can’t you hear
The blazing sun
The rising moon
The breaking soul of man
Prometheus bound on rocks
Lost, he seeks out love
And stares at stars.
Scott, Poem, Early ’80’s
From the vantage point of the spirit, as in a dream, the physical world and its manifestations slumber in the realm of metaphor. Assume, for a moment, that our truest identities are souls that have chosen to incarnate in this realm, thus taking physical form and consenting to abide by its harsh rules, perhaps again and again. If that is fact, everything we find here has a reason, serves a purpose, and we may have some creative participation in the reality that surrounds us. If so, a deeper order and mystery might underlie apparent chaos, and it might greatly benefit us to increase our awareness of those truths. Perhaps we might usefully view life and the events here as we would a dream or a poem, discerning meanings where possible, seeking out larger rhythms, and above all opening up to the intensity of the experience.
According to several belief systems around the world, it is we rather than the departed who dwell in the realm of dream. In shedding their bodies, it is believed, people have awakened from the dream of life here and returned home. If we do indeed “take off and resume our flesh as travelers their cloaks,” what are the implications facing us in the here and now? How do those on the other side perceive our reality, and what difference might that make? As I continued to feel Scott’s ongoing involvement in my life in the months following his transition, and began to appreciate the power of the invisible, huge unanswerable questions became immediately relevant. What did he mean when he had told me I am proud of how close you have come to me and you will have the power this is my gift to you of knowing while you are in the waking dream that is life what is really going on on the spiritual real level?
What spiritual purpose was being served by our ongoing relationship? What was mine to know? Though many of these questions remained a mystery, I came to realize that the door that had opened up for me through Dee had forever changed my perception. Those images and insights that had slipped through the crack had quietly transformed me, leaving a sense of poetry and lyricism where only dark hopelessness had once festered. Pain is indeed real, pain is important, but it is only part of the picture. Might not magic also play a role? In the first session, for example, Dee had asked if Scott wrote a poem about a train, because he was showing her a train. It was not until months later that I understood the substance of the message, but it didn’t matter. Every time I saw or heard a train on its journey, wherever I was, I thought warmly of Scott’s presence and my life was thus enriched. That’s still true.
But now, in this second phone conversation with Dee, I received yet another gift of the spirit, another helping of magic. “He’s saying, were you looking at the stars the other night? Were you looking up?” Nothing immediately came to mind. I had walked outside of the house a few nights before and looked at the moon, I told her, and was probably thinking of Scott. A safe bet, since that was usually the case. The answer did not feel right to Dee; this was not what he was getting at. “No, he says you were looking at the stars. I don’t know. He said he saw you and he was looking down, whatever that would mean to you. He was looking down from above and he saw you looking up, and he wants you to know that. Yeah,” she laughed, “he’s in a position to look down now. But, he wants me to tell you that he loves you very much.”
It wasn’t until the next evening that I finally understood the meaning of Scott’s message. I had been doing research at the University of Miami law school library, and finally left around twilight. As I walked through the parking lot that Friday, my mind occupied as usual, I thought of a couple of friends who were going up to Orlando that weekend and had asked me to join them. With the word “Orlando,” my mind suddenly flashed back to Dee’s words and understanding dawned on me. At just that moment, one of the tall lights in the parking lot flickered on high above, and a deep chill of confirmation ran through me.
I thought back to the early morning hours of Saturday, April 6, back to a moment of pure magic. In the days since Scott’s death I had for the most part struggled to survive, periodically emerging from a cloud of numbness only to feel the sword in my heart thrust in yet deeper or twist a new way. The idea of just getting in a car and driving somewhere, anywhere other than here, the scene of the disaster, deeply appealed to me. Perhaps traveling the ribbon of highway across Florida’s flat and vast landscape, big blue sky above, might make me feel more alive as the miles passed. The destination of my journey mattered less than that I was making one.
My host in Orlando, a close friend of Scott’s and mine, had casually invited me up the weekend before my planned trip to Washington, DC just for a change of scene and to have a good time. And we had, meeting up in a bar with a huge happy hour crowd celebrating the weekend’s arrival, then on to a Chinese dinner with friends, and then back to the bar to meet up with some others. By that time the crowd had generally moved on and it was much quieter there, offering a comfortable setting for the drink, banter, and conversation that followed. That evening I found the ritual of “having a drink with the guys” somehow reassuring. It reminded me of how simple life had once seemed to be.
But this was a group of gay men, and I had not been the only one whose life had been turned upside down by the epidemic. Amidst the jovial chatter the man sitting next to me, his brown eyes piercing and kind, seemed to look deep within me and quietly asked if there was something on my mind. I told him yes, that I had buried the love of my life the month before and that I myself was HIV-positive. It felt surreal to me, I told him, just sitting there having a drink as if my old life, my previous self, had not been forever lost just a few weeks before. Suddenly a door flung open wide between us, and he understood. He had only recently buried his best friend, and had taken him into his small apartment during the last months, a hospital bed filling the small living room, to see him through his final, awful illnesses. In an unfortunately frequent scenario, his friend had been abandoned by his family during his illness and had no place else to go.
Holding his beer, his voice choking a little as he looked down, he said “I still miss him every day. It’s like something happens and I want to go pick up a phone and call him, and I pick up the phone…and then I remember.” He was quiet for a moment, deep in thought. “I hate it when that happens.” Then a silent pause, nothing can really be said. “I can relate to that,” I told him, and we talked, comparing notes, helping lighten each other’s load just a bit. When he invited me to join him for dinner, to go out dancing, to spend some time, I hesitated. It’s only been a month, I thought, visualizing myself in widow’s black; maybe I shouldn’t have so much fun. My friend, however, quickly set me straight. “Just look at him,” he said, gazing toward the tall, handsome man. “What are you, nuts? I gave you a key, now go!” So I had.
Later that evening, feeling tired and happy, somewhat delirious, I found myself walking down the long, tree-lined block toward my friend’s apartment. Minutes before I had sat in my stopped car, thinking of Scott, waiting for a long train to pass back into the night. Now I stood for a moment underneath the huge old oaks, their twisted limbs reaching heavenward and laden with Spanish moss, and surveyed a vast reach of starry sky. As I looked up into the inky blackness, the cold stars burning in the distance, I felt a palpable sense of magic surround me. In infinite silence, infinite peace, the stars shone as if there were a reason, celestial lanterns appearing to decorate the tree’s highest reaches. The night was suddenly alive with paradox. The stars were close enough to touch, but yet so very far away. Though I was standing still, I suddenly felt myself in motion, part of a cosmic dance beyond my awareness. In that moment of enchantment, that slice of eternity, I felt alive. Breathing deep the air scented of starlight, a chill passed through me.
There, on my way home to sleep, I captured a breathtaking glimpse of larger rhythms, a greater harmony. Though the thought was not voiced then, even to myself, the ancient trees and the ageless stars quietly reminded me of the possibility of a deeper order in the Universe, and my place in it. Just as the stars have reason to shine and the trees to grow, I might have thought, there is reason for my love for Scott. And maybe even a reason for him to die, leaving me still here. Freed of his battered body, he now shines among the stars, making the heavens burn brighter. And I, Earthbound still, can gaze up in awe and wonder and be comforted.
That night I fell into bed and slept deep, as if snuggling under a blanket of stars. Yet the circuit had not been fully completed until this conversation with Dee, until the dawning of my realization that Scott had shared the experience with me. In that knowledge the stars shown suddenly brighter, lighting the way home for the weary traveler making his way through the darkness.
To Chapter 19
Stumble It!