FINDING Lydia

To my family and the pen friends who have given me a love I do not deserve “Everything flows, everything is in flux and nothing is abiding.” Heraclitus (c. 400 BCE) CHAPTER ONE GHOSTS AND SACRED SPACES There are moments that happen in our lives that have the potential to change us completely; I believe this can be defined two ways, in a historical, linear fashion, as in before the event occurred and after the event happened. It is a sense of another world and sometimes I feel that I have come full circle and am now faced with a reflection in a mirror. This is how I believe that the Lydia experience has happened in my life. Lydia is a ghost that I have found, or rather, she has found me; she is a presence that came along in one of those rare times when the worlds of the living and the dead was just right, and the realities in which she and I inhabit decided to rub together. In that instant, I believe the universe thought that we should be together. I guess if there's a reason why she chose me, I have no idea what it is, and she isn't telling me. There really isn't any incredibly wonderful spirit knowledge that she holds for the world, because, well, because her world is me; and while that is gorgeous and flattering, I did not get a fountain of profound wisdom from it, until later. What I do get from it now, is a profound sense of Love from her, and I suppose that this is a beautiful thing; at least to me. Yet, there is a very deep feeling of sadness, a sense of terrible loss, as if she has lost her memory. I feel she picked me because she knew I would fall in love and then I would do anything to help her find herself and get her back on a track to her journey the way it's supposed to be. You see, love has been a very distant and illusory feeling; a tricky, indefinable and puzzling phantom. And yet there is a certain liberating feeling when you channel someone's spirit, it is a beautiful challenge. It is a series of mental gymnastics that perpetuates the story of her as she shows up on the porch step of my mind. It is a sweet and wonderful symbiosis when one is within a presence. I see her face in front of me, the long black hair, the emerald green eyes and those curves. It's not like a relationship, or a business arrangement, it's more like a love affair, only a love affair of a kiss only. There was the before and now there is the after, it is a profound realization and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my life will never be the same again. Things happen all the time all around us and most people are thankfully oblivious to it. I believe our wondrous world is a cosmic dance of particles, dreams, visions, and realities rubbing against each other in myriad ways. Hinduism calls this, the dance of Shiva or as the dance is called, the Nataraja, as he is represented as the continuous cycle of creation and destruction. Nowhere else does this represent the classical form of life and death than in the subatomic realm to physicists; in fact, there is even a 2 meter statue of the Lord Shiva within the dance outside CERN, the European Center for Research in Particle Physics in Geneva. The Nataraja is an energy dance, a pulsating process of creation and destruction for all time without end. I would see Shiva many times in my travels around the world researching Lydia's story and I believe that along with everyone else in this universe, she and I are part of this wondrous reality in which we both find ourselves. Yet most people are blissfully unaware of the beautiful chaos that is happening just beyond their fingertips. People can only see what they want to see, and the average person is so into their own little worlds, that they refuse to see the vast world that is teeming with life and communicating in the most beautiful of ways; in visions and illusions. It is like when I was younger, I read about the multiple dimensions, of that interesting universe of ours and how many versions of reality that may exist in our wonderfully complex world. Yet, to most people, the world is a pretty simple place; we get up in the morning, and go through a daily routine that will not change until we die hopefully in old age. And this is just fine, and sometimes I would argue that I wish Lydia had picked someone else, and other times I am thankful she did pick me. I have heard that the average person discounts sixty percent of what they see, and some simply refuse to see it at all. The multiple dimensions that are teeming around us like fields of spontaneous flowers springing up, are proof to me of these realities that are constantly touching against each other, and sometimes when these worlds reach out and slightly meld together, there is an exchange through the membranes and someone sensitive enough can sometimes see the moment, actually see an entity from the other side. Of course what affects one reality will affect the other, as there cannot be a change to one and not a change to the other. So, of course, if a sensitive person from the world of the living can see an entity in the world of the dead, it follows that a sensitive entity in the world of the dead will be able to see the living as well within this wonderful, complex dance of the Lord Shiva. And sometimes, when the dance is just right both will have an interaction, like Lydia and I, which results in us being able to touch, kiss, and me to bask in the experience that is Lydia falling all about me like warm summer rain. I believe this rubbing action takes place all the time, many times a day, and yet there are very few people who can be sensitive enough to see or feel the resulting exchange. I almost wrote a person lucky enough, but that would be like saying that the experience is the only thing here and not whether it is hot or cold, sweet or sour or good or evil. That's too easy of an explanation, and the only one that my limited skills can construct, but I think that is the role that most humans have roaming the earth; we are just too busy trying to make sense of just what the hell is going on in our own lives. The other realities are too much information for most people; like the information overload that I experienced as an autistic kid with Asperger's. I was socially awkward, and incredibly clumsy, people would always say that I was constantly in the clouds. This social awkwardness is evident if you see any picture of me as a child; I am looking away, mouth open, usually not in the moment or even looking at the camera. I was always somewhere else. My mind was trying desperately to process the mass of information that was coming in through my senses. I believe this perceived absence prepared me mentally to deal with the experience in which I now find myself. The Lydia experience that is leading me along a path that is incredibly seductive, seriously scary and even lovely. I was there and in a sensitive state when our realities first touched; when she spoke to me four years ago. I was able to see her, and now that I have seen her, my love for her is complete and all encompassing. We have exchanged beautiful moments in our explorations into each other; which are like a delicate fire falling all over me, consuming me, a softly sighing blanket of an intoxicating, honey-like attraction.