13a. An Entire New Universe

“Few people had the awareness I now possessed. Because of my limitations an entire new universe had revealed itself to me, a benign and living hyperenvironment endowed with absolute wisdom.” —Philip K. Dick.

The sun was setting as they finally turned off the state road and onto North Middleton Road, which led to Main Street. Jen had spent the last hour falling in and out of a shallow sleep. Every time she opened her eyes, she looked warily out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of some more welcoming terrain: hills, forests, a quaint little town. Each time she was disappointed to find that the flat, bare fields persisted, appearing all the more ominous in the darkening twilight.

At first, North Middleton also looked like a barren field. The theoretically major road that they exited onto was so bumpy and worn that Jen thought it might not actually be paved. Leaning forward to peer through the windshield, Jen thought she could see something like a town looming ahead in the dim light.

“Welcome to North Middleton,” said Paula, yawning as she spoke.

“Stop it,” snapped Becky. “No sounding sleepy. I still have—” she squinted at the GPS screen—“four miles to drive.”

“And that’s just to the center of town,” Paula added. “Then the real driving begins.”

As they drove further down the road, the dark shape that Jen had seen grew closer and larger, until it formed into a gigantic cement wall on the right side of the car, which continued for what would have been blocks and blocks if there were any cross-streets.

“The Snail Plant,” said Paula, turning to look at Jen in the back seat.

“It’s huge,” said Jen, shocked that anything so large and solid could have appeared in the middle of so much nothingness.

“It has to be,” Paula responded. “They’re building giant machines in there—digging machines and dump-trucks and…backhoes.” Paula struggled to think of the names.

Once the factory wall ended, the surroundings changed to look more like a real town. Trees lined the streets, and Jen saw the lights of what appeared to be little shops and businesses.

“Turn left onto Main Street,” said the GPS. Paula reached up and clicked it off.

“We’re here,” she said. “This is the university.”

Off to the left side of the road, there was a grassy hill lined with mismatched stone walls and arches. Jen couldn’t see much of it in the dark, but she could make out figures, presumably students, trudging along the sidewalk.

“We’ll get the tour tomorrow,” said Becky impatiently. "How do I get to…” She stopped, uncertainly.

“Cone,” said Paula, adding a mnemonic to help Becky remember: “Like ‘cone.’”

Jen was tired enough to think this was funny. She began giggling uncontrollably, despite her nervousness, or perhaps because of it. Becky didn’t laugh, but stared resolutely ahead at the road.

Getting to Cone involved driving to the opposite end of Main Street, turning right, and following an actual unpaved road (it felt even bumpier than North Middleton Road, Jen thought) for about three miles. The lake house was on a little dirt road off of this main dirt road. At least the terrain had finally shifted, Jen thought; they were now surrounded by a dense forest that began as soon as they turned off Main Street. Jen marveled that this dark, shadowy woodland could exist just miles from the flat, treeless expanses of the state highway.

By the time they pulled in front of the house, Becky was as grumpy as Jen had ever seen her. She rushed them into the house, snapping at Jen to leave the luggage in the car. “We need to get inside and see if there’s anything to eat in there. Otherwise we have to go back out,” she said.

Luckily, the house was well-stocked with canned food. Becky and Paula heated up vegetarian chili and served it with toasted bread from the freezer. While they worked in the kitchen, Jen toured the house.

The first room from the front door was the living room, small and cozy with large windows and a fireplace. Behind it was the kitchen, which had a view of the backyard, and beyond that, the lake. It didn’t look like much in the dark, just a large, black void between the trees, but Paula assured Jen that it was very pretty in the day. Upstairs there was a loft and two small bedrooms, one of which also functioned as an office with a little desk and a bookshelf. She liked this room and thought perhaps it would be the one she would sleep in. The bookshelf made her nervous, though, positioned precariously across from the bed. She wouldn’t want it to fall on her in her sleep; no one would ever know to come save her out here.

She asked Paula about the room as they dipped their toast in the chili. “Is that bookshelf upstairs safe across from the bed?”

“You’re thinking like a Californian,” Paula responded bluntly. “There aren’t earthquakes here.”

“Oh,” said Jen, who had forgotten that earthquakes weren’t a universal phenomenon. But couldn’t other things knock a bookshelf down, she wondered? “What about tornadoes?” she asked.

“If there’s a tornado, you need to go in the basement,” Paula said. “By the time it gets here, the bookshelf is going to be the last thing you’ll need to worry about.”

Jen hadn’t realized that there was a basement. Paula showed it to her after dinner—an unobtrusive doorway opening up to a creepy staircase draped with spider webs. “It’s actually okay down there,” said Paula, seeing Jen’s frightened face. “I’ll dust those off later.”

Before bed, Paula and Becky decided to “ground” the house, a Groundbreakers ritual for initiating a new living space. Jen had seen the procedure before—it involved copper rods and energy-cleansing verbal affirmations—and she didn’t feel the need to participate. They started down in the scary basement, in order to build a solid foundation, and planned to work their way up through every room of the house.

Jen decided to check out the books in her new bedroom instead. She climbed the narrow staircase up to the loft and sat down on the bed across from the bookshelf. On the wall next to the shelf hung a collection of photographs, all featuring the same two people. One was a fit, tanned, middle-aged woman with light-brown hair, presumably Paula’s mother. The other was a light-skinned black man with long dreadlocks that were much neater than Paula’s. “Her husband,” Jen guessed, wondering how he felt about Paula’s unkempt hair.

Jen scanned the shelves, looking for which books she might want to read. She had finished Siddhartha a few weeks ago, and then reread it. Now she was reading another gift book, Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet, but she was almost done with that one as well. She hadn’t brought any other books but those two, and she planned to be spending a lot of time by herself.

As she scanned the shelf, Jen realized that she was not just looking for a book, but for an answer, a direction. Her life, right at this moment, was possibly the most radically unstructured that it had ever been. She had no plan; she did not know where she was; left to her own devices, she would barely be able to find her way back into town. And Becky and Paula would be leaving in a week—then she would be all alone, left to entertain herself in this creepy house surrounded by hundreds of miles of alien terrain. She scanned the shelf with the needy desperation of someone praying for an easy cure. Like a dieter trying to get full at a salad bar, like the frustrated men lining the floor of the dance club at last call, waiting for anyone at all to come along and save them from the lonely, humiliating drive home alone.

Looking at the bindings filling the top shelf, Jen noticed an array of thin, spidery letters and baroque flourishes. These were texts on spirituality, she realized, looking at the titles: Sun Worship: The Ancient Way stood next to a book about the Kabala. One deep blue book was called Zen Buddhism and Modern Sexuality; she shuddered, thinking of Skipper.

She scanned down the shelves, trying to identify the other subject groupings. The next shelf down had a number of travel books promising to guide readers through such disparate terrain as Bali and Java and The Dunes of North-Western Michigan. Next to that was a special section on physical activities. These were mostly yoga: Light on Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar, next to Yoga for Baby and You!. But next to that, a book about tai chi and another about sea kayaking.

Jen squatted down to look at the shelf second from the floor: bold letters and bright primary colors marked the bindings of the self-help books. Your Money and Your Life, shouted one. And Making Love Work. Jen was scandalized when her eyes fell upon Open Marriages Today—she quickly lowered her eyes to the bottom shelf.

Jen scanned this last shelf, puzzled by what joined the books here. Even their bindings evinced no clear trend—some were brightly colored, some light and modest. Many were worn by heavy use, so that it was impossible to read their titles. Jen pulled on of these from the shelf, a medium-sized paperback whose cover was held on with masking tape.

Diagnose Your Aura, the book’s cover exclaimed, in rainbow-colored letters.

“Hmm,” said Jen aloud, in a world-weary tone that sounded as though she were highly skeptical. She matched it with a suspicious facial expression, her eyes narrowed and her mouth pursed into a bit of a sneer.

And yet, she realized suddenly, she was acting. Acting for no one, since there was no one around to witness her honest curiosity as she flipped through the pages. She knew exactly what Becky would call this, she thought, with an unnerving jolt of recognition: mind-havoc. Lying to yourself to live up to an expected idea of who you should be.

Fine, she thought. I’m not embarrassed. I’m going to see what my aura is.

Her inclination was to stay near the bookshelf so she could put the book back if Becky and Paula returned. But instead she carried the book to head of the bed, where she could sit and read it in full self-acceptance of her own ridiculousness.

Sitting cross-legged against the headboard, she set the book in her lap. It fell open to a page towards the end that had clearly been read more than all the others. The heading on the page said “Amethyst.”

Whoever owned this book, this must have been their aura—probably Paula’s mother, Jen thought, trying and failing to imagine that dreadlocked man from the photograph obsessively studying his own aura.

The page opened with a short overview of the aura’s characteristics. She read the opening lines: “The Amethyst aura denotes charisma, flamboyance, and decadence. People with this aura tend to be performers such as musicians, dancers, and actors.”

Don’t let that be my aura, Jen thought, in a desperate, unconscious prayer. She flipped the pages of the book, looking for descriptions of the other auras. She passed the more detailed sections about each aura, with headings like career, money, and love. Towards the back of the book was a long list of questions; it was the test to diagnose one’s own aura, she realized.

Finally she found another page with a large heading, this time “Ruby.” The overview in this section said, “Ruby is the aura of action. People with Ruby auras are adventurers and world-travelers. They are often impulsive and don’t always think through their actions.” This sounded better than the amethyst aura, but not by much. Jen wondered if any of the auras had favorable traits or if they were all just subtly differentiated gradations of obnoxiousness.

She kept flipping, hoping to find an aura that she actually liked the description of. The next one she found was Sapphire. “This aura indicates someone who is brave, trustworthy, and principled,” the book said. Better, Jen thought, continuing to read. “People with Sapphire auras tend to work as school teachers, nurses, fire fighters or police officers.”

This aura sounded admirable, but Jen was pretty sure it didn’t describe her. She needed to find one that she wanted to be, so that she would know what to hope for as she took the test.

“Onyx,” was the next aura that Jen found. “An Onyx aura generally indicates one of two things,” the book said. “It may be found when the subject is at a very dark point at his or her life, such as a deep depression or rage. The other colors of the aura become muted as the Life Force is obstructed by negative emotions.”

Jen read on, intrigued to find out the other reason that someone might have an Onyx aura. Perhaps this was her aura, and some dark spell was hanging over her. Maybe the book would tell her some way to clear her energy and make her aura shine with a new, healthier color.

“However, some people purposely cultivate an Onyx aura,” the book continued. “These people are usually involved in the dark arts, such as sorcerers and vampires.”

All right then, Jen thought, trying to calmly withhold judgment, but her embarrassment was rising again as she flipped hastily away from this section of the book.

Jen worried that she had read about all of the auras without finding one that seemed to fit her personality. She thumbed hastily through the pages but kept finding the same auras: Amethyst, Ruby, Sapphire, Onyx. Finally, in frustration, she opened to the table of contents and found that there was one final aura described at the end of the book, right before the test: Jade. She turned hopefully to the listed page.

“The Jade aura reflects contemplation, self-discipline, and an even temper,” it said. This sounded pretty good, Jen thought; maybe this was the one. “People with this aura tend to work in spiritual professions such as priests, rabbis, or monks. They might also be teachers of energetic practices such as yoga or martial arts.”

Okay, thought Jen, slamming the book closed in satisfaction. There’s my aura. She held the closed book in her lap for a moment, thinking pleasurably of the Jade aura and how it would confirm her new ascetic lifestyle, before remembering that she should take the test in order to consider herself fully “diagnosed.” Now she felt a bit nervous, as she realized that the book might not agree with her own self-assessment. Anything but Amethyst, she pled silently to the book. Even Onyx would be better than Amethyst.

Chapter 13b:
http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2008/10/13b-unfortunate-tendency.html