My first memory is one not of my own. Yet, it has stayed with me all of my life and became a little understood, but dominant riddle that has sometimes plagued, sometimes comforted me on my life’s journey. On a warm summer evening, sometime in the months preceding the autumn and my coming third birthday, I was put to bed by my mother shortly after supper. As I lay on my back under the light covers, she read me a tale, although I no longer remember which, and kissed me goodnight. I have no idea how much time passed, for time wasn’t an issue back then. As I lay there, gazing towards the remaining light that passed through the curtains, my eyes gently closed. Yet the world did not disappear, neither into darkness nor the swirling colored visuals of retinal afterglow. Instead, I found myself in the thinning light of an early summer evening with forest all around and the smell of smoke from an unseen fire tainting the air. I was barefoot and dressed, but in the lightest of clothing, and entered a tent of hide – opening the flap with my left hand and sliding sideways onto a woven mat using my right. I lay there on my back feeling well-fed from a meal I do not remember eating and had no thoughts that I can recall – just the feeling of being spent from deeds of the day. As I was about to close my eyes, the flap gently opened, adding to the light that there was, and a figure entered the tent. Bending slowly and blacking out what little could be seen through the mix of shade and darkness and light of sunset, the figure knelt down next to me. Intuitively, I knew the figure to be a woman – young with a slender body, dark hair, and tanned skin – like all the other young women of the group I belonged to, the group I had helped watch over for years. Facing me, she straddled my prone body and gently lifted up the skirt that swathed her hips. She lowered herself onto me and in an act of no certain understanding (at least in my limited awareness at the time), pulled me hard and slid me inside of her. As we rocked in the silence of our copulation I could not make out her face. Till this day it draws a blank. We continued on until at some point I opened my eyes once again and found myself back lying in bed in my home on Long Island. Never again was I to have that, nor any other vision in the normal state of awareness.
I have no idea why I was meant to see that – a vision of another’s life, lived long ago – in times that lacked the comforts and conveniences of today or, perhaps, even those of recent centuries past. I do not remember speaking to the young woman, nor do I remember why the man – this man – felt so tired of life, as I had clearly sensed. Perhaps, he was spent after years of responsibilities and duties of tribal life, for that is what it appeared to be. Perhaps, he was old though I believe not very, nor was he diseased in any obvious way. No, perhaps he had just seen too much, been through too much – although what, I could not tell. Frozen winters without food to eat, hot summers filled with biting bugs and forest fires that torched the ground grey to black, and perhaps just the endless hell of a life without purpose beyond survival to the next day. For many years following I never really understood what that vision meant, if anything at all. In 1961, I had no exposure to, or experience with, native Americans – and sex? That easily took another decade for me to understand. What they did and why she wanted to. So, you see – it was and remains but a brief moment in time that belonged to another’s life long-faded. It jumped into my head and has resided there ever since.
In the time I have been on-planet I have asked myself again and again – why this vision? Did I need to see what a life in ground-state was like? A life driven by the needs of survival, in comparison to my comfortable though not particularly happy childhood in the suburban heartland of America. What kind of cosmic joke was that – to see what life without love or comfort was like? And why? It has taken me decades to begin to understand this riddle, but now I know. And if you read further, you will too. Let me remind you that this was no dream nor hallucination – for I was not myself in this vision revealed. Rather it was I that dwelt in the body of that warrior/hunter/tribesman. In a dream I am myself, but in a vision I am not who I am.
I do not know who was the nameless, faceless woman that entered my tent and mated with me in the twilight of summer’s eve. I was haunted by that shadow of a life for quite some many years, never fully understanding the what and then, the why? It never occupied my mind much, as it just was – how was that relevant to childhood play, with wandering in the garden or the woods beyond? Yet, as I became older it resonated with my consciousness. Why did I experience that vision of anothers’ life lost – and how? To see that his life, like mine, wasn’t miraculous either? To show that I am alone in lives both come and gone? There was no answer to that and, thus, coupled with growing up in a nuclear family lacking in bonding and neighbor children lacking in kindness, it set within me a deep feeling of emptiness in my young soul. Over the years following and despite the myriad of fulfilling experiences I’ve had in this long-short life (e.g. the relationships lived, the children raised, the career path followed, etc.) and my best attempts to fill in the sinkhole it never stayed filled for long. I had not succeeded to raise myself from that man’s ground-state and continued to live out that childhood paradigm of spiritual loneliness. I still felt that I was dwelling alone in a forest, until nighttime would allow me to rest my weary body and soul on a threadbare mat. And I grew to know nothing, but alone in the forest. I have lived a full life of amazing experiences, two long marriages to women that unconsciously played roles as spiritual teachers along the path, and three sensitive and loving children – yet much of the time I still felt alone. But not anymore…
