Traffic was moving at a steady pace; I was in the fast lane leading the pack; and so it made little sense when I found myself cutting across 5 lanes of freeway to dive onto the offramp leading to The Past.  The road to Ixtlan, the trail that goes toward a destination that exists in memory, the path of shadows skirting the edges of recapitulations long finished.  The road to where I was living at the time I first met Orlando in manifestation.

Not surprisingly, the hillsides which had once bloomed vibrant yellow with so many wildflowers were now covered with a different kind of transplant - the urban virus which continues to spread like an out-of-control cancer on the face of the land, houses so close together the rooftops must certainly rub paint in a stong wind, with yards barely big enough for a single bush and a small dog to pee on it.  Not the way man was "meant" to live, certainly, but this is no longer the world in which I grew up, so I have come to accept that in all likelihood, this is no longer the same species of human, either.  No matter.

Heat pressed against the window of the Suburbn as I looked around, catching brief glimpses of some past self darting here and there in a car I once owned.  The karate studio is still where I left it, but expanded into 3 suites now, instead of only one.  The real estate office where I used to work has become a chic health food botique, and the house where I used to live has been stripped bare of its vegetation to make room for a cement driveway.

It occurs to me that I am not particularly interested in my own past.  Instead, I am headed toward the location where I first met Orlando and where I last had contact with him while he was in manifestation.  For a moment, as I glance out across the hillsides which are too steep to build upon, I see a ghostly figure of a young woman riding a pale horse through the vast expanse of tall green wildgrass.  But when I look again, it is only a mirage, though the voice of gnosis whispers, unbidden, "She's still out there somewhere."  Perhaps she is.  That phantom self of my phantom past - always searching for something alone in those hills at dusk, never satisfied, always restless.  Several years ago, shortly after embarking on this journey, I had reason to pass through this shadow past again - and as I drove through the same area in perhaps 1995, that same voice of gnosis had informed me, "You are no longer the same girl who once rode her horse through these hills."  We move on, it seems, but we leave tracings behind, images painted on the surface of water, shimmering in the hologram of our personal history.  Sometimes, if we are sorcerers, we may be able to reach out and touch them, guide them, or at least whisper in their ear from the future past.

As I approach the corner where Orlando's house once stood, I wonder what I will find now that time has moved on past those crazy and inexplicable events frozen in memory.  Though I have known for several years that the house itself had been torn down, it had been rumored that the city intended to build offices on the land.  But instead there is only a vacant lot which has been transformed into a small park - actually an extension of a much larger park across the street.  Decorative black gravel covers all traces of where the foundation once lay, and all that remains of the original landscaping are two California pepper trees - which have grown far taller and stronger than the last time I saw them.  What I immediately notice is that each of the trees has four primary trunks, and for a split second, it's as if I am looking at two double beings, standing side by side.  A chill passes through my body, and a vision whispers delicately across the mind's eye.  Each tree is a nagual, one on either side of the black gravel path.  And though each is whole unto itself, there is strength in their unity, each lending shade to the other's roots, roots themselves entangling in an eternal embrace of the earth, stretching deeper and deeper into the black soil of the unknown, searching for sustenance.

For a moment, I stop the car and just sit there at the edge of the park, looking into a past that is far behind, and yet ever-present in the hologram of the Now.  The voice of gnosis asks, "What are the trees telling you?"

Impossible to say, really.  The layers of meaning stretch decades into my personal yesterdays, and may have relevance only to myself.  And yet, there was something there I needed to see.  It would be easy enough to say the trees are Orlando and myself, yet it was more than that.  Each was whole unto itself, yet each had four trunks - rather like the four compartments of a nagual's energy body as it appears to a Seer.  So I decided for awhile then that the trees were Wendy and myself, and that love is the reason for any of it and all of it - each being whole unto herself, yet each supporting & augmenting the other's foundation, sharing in the other's journey.  That was part of it, too, I knew, yet there was still something more.

 Traffic streamed by on a road that was barely traveled when I lived in the area, and for a split second, I was transported 3,000 miles distant, back to the property where I grew up in central Florida.  As those of you who have been on the forum for awhile may recall, I was able to visit that old place about 2 years ago, and could barely recognize the property where I had spent the first 17 years of my life.  The land had been reclaimed by nature - creeping vines and a sinkhole that had filled with water to make the land unbuildable.  I had made the same observation before - that both my old stomping ground and Orlando's had come to be vacant spaces in the middle of otherwise thriving cities, but somehow today that realization struck me with renewed strength.  A sense of syncoronicity that was eerie in its intensity settled around me.

The voice of gnosis murmured through the crack between the worlds, "There are parallel lines that cross at infinity."  Sometimes we get a preview, it seems.  But even that does not adequately convey what I am attempting to capture.

Before I drove away, I watched the heat monkeys dancing on the black gravel path, energy in motion that swirled and wriggled on the canvas of the hologram, uncatachable, but not invisible.  And for a single moment, I was looking into the otherworld where past and future collide, where the little white house is still standing at the edge of the nagual, with its front door open and its cracked front step adorned with fallen leaves and tiny puddles of rain.

There are parallel lines that cross at infinity.  Knowing this, the double leaves the door ajar and beckons us to find our way home.

*****

(addendum)

...as I was standing in the kitchen thinking about the events of the morning, the observations, and what it might all mean, I became aware of a presence at my back.  Familiar, warm, but with an edge of danger, it leaned close and there was a sensation of arms being wrapped around me from behind, just a hint of breath against my shoulder.  It occurred to me to panic, wondering briefly if someone had broken into the house, but it seemed far too much of a bother.

So I just stood there, took a cautious breath, and waited.

"There are parallel lives that cross at infinity," Orlando whispered with no small amount of amusement.

Oh.  Now I see.

In fact... opens up a whole other world of worlds.

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