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CALLASSA

Invicta Veritate

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I AM ZA

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I am returned to our perfumed bed of delight

To the mansion in the woods, with the ivy, the ferns that dance among the trees

There is a lapse of time

In this replay the events that proceed are hugely distorted

CALLASSA

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“I am the She-Bird. I am the song. I am Za. Therefore you may call me by my substance.”

   With great trepidation affecting my voice, I asked her, “What . . . what are you?”

   “I am the song you cannot hear. I am all things. I am everywhere. I am for you.”

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   It was the path that winds itself through Ingpen Beacon. I was exact same place I had been before. It was the same situation, I mean when I had been thinking how the moors were differing shades of green and marked by the odd line of white, the stone walls and such. I had thought the very same things, that Callassa’s house is the only one for miles upon miles and that I didn’t think she’d be too impressed by a housing estate springing up behind her, if it ever happened. There would be people gawking at her every move and wondering why she markedly looked different than they. Not to mention nicking her stuff. My thoughts were repeating.

   I was returned to the past. I allowed those same thoughts to continue. I should avoid having a dim view of people. Speaking of which, while walking, I was thinking of Callassa, as per usual and as I said, specifically how before I met her I was super in love with her. She would send me mental messages and dream sequences. I had been made to think of her as a woman of the occult. I never had another girlfriend, nor wanted one, though I did have the chance. I had Smoot. My being unfaithful was never in the equation. It was unthinkable actually. No one else would fulfill me quite so much. She is the Cosmicalla, a space traveler. Even disregarding of that considerable addition, I could write a book on what it’s like to love one woman to the most direst extreme. The feelings involved. How I am with it through every moment into hours, weeks and on. I am gazing at the sky as I walk and my mind is filled with her. I am forever preoccupied by her. The usual conception of ‘things’ invariably holds man as central, in control and woman, as subservient, lesser status, even during the most intimate union. Men are the ‘givers’. Ha! All I could say in response is they don’t know the Cosmicalla. It’s not that I am a sop either. To say that I lose myself in her power is understatement of epic proportion. My own attitude and expectation be whatever, would make no difference. The place of woman as subservient is bound with all that is wrong. It is bound up with the infiltration by cosmic forces. These, aliens to humans, use men as hosts much more often than they do women because men are easier to inspire towards war, turning the smile of the garden into metaphorical Hell on Earth. Enough.

   The approaching walker I had spotted was almost within shouting range, I say this because it’s a tradition here for people distant to shout to each other. It’s unlikely I’ll know the person because I don’t know many people. I used to while I was boxing. I knew lots of people then. Callassa frightens most people away because she’s an awkward personality, argumentative, patronizing. I don’t mind, but others putting up with those traits is a great deal to ask, I guess.

   How different the moors make me feel. I’m thinking of cities. I like cities too, because I enjoy exploring with her. I like exploring their more worldly associations, I might add and especially those that appear in certain stores, jewelers and boutiques. The list is not endless. To walk. To covet. To consummate. It goes without saying I adore her music, her every sound.

   I enjoy the buzz (if that’s the best description) while being in a crowd with a very beautiful woman. Callassa attracts attention. I guess for many reasons. I am not referring to the unapparent aspects of her either, more the gynecological assessments that certain passers-by appear to make of her. She’s as sexy as they come and her mystery exaggerates this outward facet. Even though she’s fifty years old she doesn’t typify any kind of age-related limitation. Her tight, black outfits, accentuated with a few small jewels worth millions, her hair made a couturistic dream, that sort of thing. Hells Angels always pay her due regard but not exclusively because most do, as I said. Why? A good question!

   Once, while we were sitting in a London museum, I asked her if she ever played with people’s minds such that they saw her as the Cosmicalla? That she made them see her very, very differently, that she made them see her doing ‘things’ that quite literally were out of this world? She admitted to messing with people this way just for the sake of it. For instance, she’d made people see her naked and with winged feet, moving in and out of visibility and in a world dominated by endearing, whispering winds, other times in fierce and bloody battle with multi-headed flying beasts. It’s not the normal thing to imagine while looking at a woman who appears to be sitting and minding her own business and while holding her coffee cup the way she does, perhaps trying to avoid smudging her lipstick.

   It was the same walker.

   “Good day,” was the elderly man’s greeting. He really was who I had seen before. He’d been a visitor at the mansion, a town councilor if I recall and who I assumed had left her the book by the late American poet, Ezra Pound. “Hello, sir,” I said and offered him a passing smile.

   “It’s a wonderful day for walking,” he’d announced while passing me.

   “Yes, it is,” I said.

   “And please, give my regards to the Signora.”

   “Yes, sir, I will. Thank you.”

   I’d turned just as I had previously when the man carried on the conversation but didn’t stop. He hadn’t made any reference to an imminent war this time. I thought about it because as one can expect, and when doing so prior the talk of war had affected my thinking. I knew why I was in the past. The war was not going to take place. I was certain. I watched him for a few moments before carrying on.

   I was elated, yes, but also beginning to feel very bewildered. This was because images and emotions associated with where I had been were crashing in on me. I was also moving through the very same thoughts I’d had previously while walking along this path. I could jump ahead of these too. I knew Callassa would be in the plant house at the rear. She would be sitting and reading, barefoot and in a black tracksuit. Her hair would be loose because she’d been doing her exercises. She would be irritable as per her norm. I was thinking what it would be like to live a life that was just like everyone else’s? I’d often asked this question, though really there was no point …

   I wanted to stop walking and focus wholly on my experience, but I couldn’t. I was compelled to move on. The thoughts associated with the here and now were dominating.

   As before, I began telling myself that I couldn’t imagine not being aware of the things that I certainly am aware. That while I walk upon this hardened, iodine-coloured English soil, there were the countless and the incomprehensible aspects of reality impinging. There were events inspired by ‘alien forces’ very few can even guess at knowing their truth. I was seeing the distance and my vision of the world was not in accord with that of other people. Perception from here was made within a sealed container. It wouldn’t do to be aware, to see more than the container’s limitation dictates, but I had, I had seen much, much more. I had also been ‘there’.

   The man who I’d passed had been correct by saying that it was a nice day for walking. In fact it was a very beautiful day. Doubtlessly this beauty held great significance.

 

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   As before, I arrived back at the mansion and recalled an atmosphere that was different than usual. I recalled thinking previously that it was related to her dark moods, because things changed when she was more affected. I wanted to see her so much that I was beside myself. There was so very much to tell her, which is understatement really.

   I was also asking myself why, if she had returned, her moodiness would not have changed for the better? Like me, she would be overflowing with cheer at being back. At least I hoped so.

   I hurried to the greenhouse that overlooked the garden at the rear, the abode of exotic plants constructed from Victorian wrought iron and glass and where a certain moist fragrance connected to the plants dances the air. I expected to see her sitting barefoot on the sofa, positioned beneath the giant aspidistras. This was where she’d been previously. She had to be here, wearing her track suit and reading the magazine, Harper’s Bazaar. She would greet me in her native Italian and then carry on her reading. I couldn’t speak Italian and her doing so would annoy me, second time round.

   As soon as I stepped into the greenhouse I could see that she wasn’t there. How could this possibly be? Everything had to be of the same sequence, didn’t it? I was at the sofa. I was staring into the space where she’d been. Could it be that she was elsewhere? My eyes were darting here and there. The telephone was ringing. It had rung previously and I recalled her telling me to leave it. Where was she? Was she in another room? She couldn’t be, because that wasn’t how it had been. I was beginning to panic.

   Rather than go rushing like a mad person through the rooms of the mansion, I sat on the sofa in the lounge. The very same thoughts were replaying themselves. So much so that I was held within their overwhelming reality and pulled along. There had been an intriguing picture on the cover of the Harper’s Bazaar she’d been reading and I recalled it, of a woman with creepy, black eyes. The model had been dressed in black and there had been a gold band holding back her hair. I remembered this well.

   As before, I began thinking that this was a wonderful place to sit because of the view of the garden. There was the fountain and the Roman statuary arranged on and around the lawn, the multi-coloured plant beds neatly laid, the roses and daffodils. It was nature’s smile. I recalled her asking me where I’d been and my answer had been, ‘walking.’

  “Where?” she’d asked and my reply had been that I’d been over the moors and to the circle. Then I saw the Harper’s Bazaar magazine on the stand beside the sofa. I’d asked her what was wrong and she hadn’t answered. Her eyes had never shifted from the pages of the magazine. I had to continue with this replaying of my thoughts. I had absolutely no choice, even though the other actor was absent. I spoke to her as though she were here.

   “Someone has painted the stones bright orange. There’s a few been loaded on to a truck for use as building materials, bricks and stuff. Public toilets, is what someone said. “

   I’d seized her attention by saying this. She knew I hadn’t meant it and was only trying to draw her away from her magazine.

   “I can buy you a new ball if you’ve lost it,” she’d said with caustic tone, so to make her response more stinging.

   “It’s all right.” I told her and while looking toward the plants. I’d never been able to sit in here for long. Ezra, Callassa’s male maid, liked to sit for a complete afternoon, because there was much of nature’s dominant presence abounding.

   I asked her, “Have you been working out?” I knew she had because I’d been able to tell. Her face devoid of her usual cosmetics adornment.

   “I’ve done something I ought not to have,” was what she said and while disregarding of my question about working out.

   “What?”

   I’d expected her to say that she’d bought something ridiculously expensive. This being what she usually meant, but not always.

   It hadn’t looked as though she was going to tell me. What could there be in the magazine more worthy of her attention?

   I’d become used to this juxtaposing of worlds and the potential to switch. Where there is the sublime role, with her as the cosmic traveler, and this one, here, in the languorous, energy depleted, human state. It was an odd dynamic made exaggerated by her because there could be an instantaneous change and I, be taken to a different reality. Ordinarily, I was merely aware that something magical was possible. I couldn’t effect it myself because I was merely an accompaniment. With her, the potential was always there and ready to begin. She, the magic-maker, if magic be the right word.

   “What have you done that you ought not to have?” had been my next question to her. I’d hoped that she would tell me.

   Having poured her gaze onto me, I’d met her eyes, their infinite possibility. What devastation was she capable of?

   “Just that I shouldn’t have taken you to the future,” had been her answer.

   “Why?” I asked, though already suspecting the reason to be that we’d been followed back.

   “You’ve got it,” was her reply, having read my mind.

   “But … But … There was nothing there.”

   “Not exactly.”

   “What are you not telling me?” I’d asked her.

   She hadn’t liked my quizzing her, but I’d wanted to know. If what I’d been suspecting was the case, then it was off the scale serious. But there’d been no one there in the future.

   “They came with us through the entry,” she’d said. “Now they are here.”

   “You what? Callassa, are you serious?” (I decided not to hold back as I had been doing from the replay of the conversation, this dialogue post-mortem, but with the other party in abstentia. My holding back had made no difference whatsoever. I was having difficulty because I knew certain elements of the conversation were not going to appear. For instance; references to hostilities, my seeing fighter jets and the mobilising of forces, her returning to the future, and so forth).

   “There can’t be a phase where they occupy the past and the future,” was what she’d said to elaborate.”

   “Give me a break … I mean … I don’t know what I mean …”

   “I don’t know what you mean either. But what I told you is true.”

   “But … Is there not something we can do?”

   “Something that ‘I’ can do, you mean?”

   “Yes.”

   “There is.”

   “Well … What?”

   “It’s too late. Let them all die. I don’t give a damn.”

   “Callassa! You can’t say that. You can’t.”

   “I was just teasing you. Of course I have to do something. I have no choice. I am not the only interlocutor, there are many travelers.”

   “So … What … And what’s happening now? I saw Councilor Urquart, by the way. He sends his regards.”

   “Does he?”

   “Yes.”

   “Go make me a cup of coffee and bring me my tissues. They’re on the sideboard in the hall.”

   “Anything to please the Cosmicalla.”

   “What does that mean?”

   “Nothing.”

   The conversation replaying itself had abruptly come to an end, as though now I had become released from its preordained sequence. What was I to do now? I could recall important parts of what had transpired later on between her and I. She’d become the cosmic traveler, the ‘astronaut’. She wasn’t here to enable that to take place. There was not going to be a war, so there would be no reason to return to the future.

   I was trying to recall the precise sequence of my steps from here, where to and in what order I’d done things. Unlike hitherto, I could only vaguely remember. I wanted to go and search the mansion’s rooms, to see if she could just possibly be elsewhere. Something was telling me to hold off from doing this. I didn’t know what that brake on my compulsion was. Whatever, it was very powerful. I remained seated.

   What was this selective replay? I began asking myself whether I was understanding it correctly, whether I was understanding it at all? That because all references to war were excluded, then there wasn’t going to be one? There wasn’t the need to visit the future again so to try putting things right? Now I was able to begin thinking about where I’d been and what had happened to me. I was also despairing at the possibility that Callassa had been excluded from this world altogether because she’d caused things to happen that wouldn’t have otherwise. I refer to her taking me to the future and enabling the hostile phenomena to enter and affect human thoughts en-masse. Other cosmic forces were at work as had been demonstrated in my being returned here and courses of events made different than they had been. Most notably and as I said, there not being any references to an imminent world war.

   I began thinking of the beach, the three, huge planets, the extraordinary beings that I’d encountered. The fact that I had to focus on my body (as I recalled its significance) for it to appear, the destruction of the ‘connection’. What kind of reality had that been? What were those beings really and I include my dear friends; Moot and Smoot? Were they various manifestations of … of … what?

   I had been terrified and more so than ever I had been before, because I’d been stranded in that different, absurd state. I had witnessed memories of my life as they were appearing to me throughout the sky, along with all of the creatures of this world. Why? How? I had met my parents. Had I? Really? Had I been there with them close to the helix? There was no way to relate to their ethereal presence, just as there wasn’t to anything else. Mother ... Father … Moot and Smoot. They had scooped my thoughts from from … from … where? And brought them to that strange world to reassemble them for me? That was what they’d ‘said’. Were they the more significant aspects of my thoughts, there among others, in eternal realm, able to emerge and bring all my other ‘possessions’ together? Was there ‘something else’, quite literally indescribable that had retrieved my thoughts? Was the space traveling that Callassa had made possible somehow problematic even given her extraordinary powers? The fact that she’d abused her powers by doing what was forbade (visiting the future) resulted in her banishment and my becoming lost? Where was she now? Where were the others, the hostile forces? This was far more complex than I had faculty to reason. The answers were versed in a different paradigm. I was thinking about the spacecraft that I had been aboard. I hadn’t really been aboard it in the way I’d been allowed to experience. There was no human way of experiencing that. Did this apply to where I’d been, to that strange state or part of it? The whole of it? What of now? Yes, what? It was difficult to step in and out of this retrospective questioning so I focused on the terror I’d felt while watching the bizarre looking beings. That terror bound with the fact that I was stranded in … in …Then, something occurred to me. Perhaps Callassa was waiting for me to connect with her from here? We usually slept while visiting other worlds. I would have to attempt what I could only assume was the right course of action. I decided to go upstairs to our  bedroom. Might she be there and sleeping? I wondered. Why hadn’t I been to see if she was before now? Why that compulsion not to go looking? I got up from the sofa with eagerness to go take a look. 

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   Quite literally I sprinted at full tilt through the mansion’s downstairs rooms and up the stairs. I had dearly hoped that Callassa would be in the bedroom. She was not. I felt terrible anguish for the dismal discovery. I was also at a loss as to how to even begin explaining where she had gone to those who didn’t already know the truth. Anything I would say could only be to these people because said to anyone else, would guarantee me being regarded as crazy. That I was covering something up. There were always telephone messages for her to deal with. If she didn’t respond there would be problems. Not to forget  my missing her. I sat on the edge of the bed. I had neither shoes nor socks on my feet. I hadn’t had these in that other reality during my walk on the beach. I had worn shoes while out walking. I was certain, wasn’t I? Well? I bent over to inspect my feet for traces of sand. There were none. I couldn’t remember whether I had begun my recent ‘journey’ without my shoes. What to do? What to do?

   There were certain of Callassa’s colleagues who also shared the secret, in that they were extraordinary, were space travelers (aliens among humans). Such was the situation upon the Earth and this civilisation. I could try and contact certain of these ‘associates’ because they were close by, but were they actually here? Perhaps the hostile forces had … had … eradicated them all?

   I felt ill. I was dehydrated and very hungry. Still, I remained where I was. There were significances in this room that were nowhere else, in this our place of intimacies. It wasn’t a room I could ever walk into and out of. And now … now love had flown away.

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   I had been wondering whether the future had been cleared of the all hostile phenomena? Whether such were only infecting the present time? Now I was assured that I had seen them, as they had appeared to me. I’d seen them as a kind of sphinx that could fly. I’d seen them as strange, ethereal objects, mingling, moving, as bright red lines that shifted from planets. Also as a silver coloured craft.

   There was no doubting that I had been delivered back safely, but there was a time difference of about a fifteen minutes. If I’d been returned to exactly the time I’d left, might she be here? I didn’t know because asking the question did not pre-suppose there was a rationale. All I could hope was that what I had seen in that weird world yonder hadn’t destroyed her, my darling. Extra-terrestrial casualties of war were not as humans being killed. Those such as the Cosmicalla (and all phenomena) cannot pass from existence. They can only change. Therefore I was asking myself that perhaps … just perhaps, if she’d been changed, I could go into the past and collect her from there? Thus avoiding the impending catastrophe of her disappearance? But how? How? I had no special powers. I was the Cosmicalla’s lover, her transported babe, nothing more. My reasoning with regard to where she was had also, I was again aware, begun with suppositions I could not verify. Therefore I really had not a single clue where, in the literal myriad realms, she was, nor whether my idea had feasibility. Even if it did have feasibility, I had not a single clue how to put it into action, to retrieve her from the past.

   I began to feel extremely tired. I needed to sleep. My eyes were closing. My last thoughts began to focus on what were more a desperate hope that the immortal bond she and I shared would be the way to reunite us. She would use the bond to communicate with me and hopefully guide me to her, or her to me. My life in the context of eternity was not even a flicker. What if it were not possible or that she missed me by thousands, or even millions upon millions of human years? The latter thought, though disturbing, wasn’t likely because  I’d got back, give or take ten minutes or so. Hadn’t I? I had in that bizarre world also witnessed the connection being severed.

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   Still exhausted because of everything and incapable of reconciling my inability to concentrate, I had taken a much needed drink of water. While lying on the bed, I had quickly fallen asleep. It was not a sleep as I’d expected, it being the usual sort. I wanted her to somehow send me a message. Just as I knew she was capable and had before. However, I was experiencing a terrible nightmare, the content of which was no different to what greeted me upon waking. It was very dark in the room. I hadn’t left a light switched on. There was something hitting the windows. It sounded like the branch of a tree. Though disconcerted by this, I reached for the switch that lit the chandelier. The room was made bright. I looked to the window and there were tree branches pushing against the glass, as I had assumed and as I’d just dreamed. This shouldn’t have been possible because the trees were at least one hundred feet away from the house and if there had been anything different in any respect I would have noticed on returning from my walk. The trees would have to have grown during the hours I’d been sleeping. So what was it? Aware that more of the counter-intuitive would likely greet me, I warily got up from the bed. I hadn’t undressed. I jumped backwards when I thought I saw the face of a woman in the leaves and pressing against the glass. No, not a face, I assured myself, it was my imagination. Had she been holding a tiny bird in her hand? I walked with trepidation toward the window. Would you believe I had been dreaming about strange, leaf-like’ creatures inhabiting the woods around the mansion. That they had emerged from the trees and been attracted to its rooms. There had also been a woman, who wasn’t really a woman at all, approaching me. She’d been made of darkness and I could put my hands through her. Her limbs were as tree branches, spider-like in their effect.

   I could barely see the outside. I didn’t venture to open a window. What were these? Though green, I could see they were not leaves at all. What were these perfect circles? Could they get into the house? I jumped forwards because I thought I heard a sound close behind me. Yes, close to me. It had been akin to someone breathing warmly onto my neck. A rapidly aggressive tingling sensation spread through every part of my body. The speed by which I turned had caused my neck to hurt. I was raising my fists in readiness for a fight. Would you believe that? Though this had been a natural reaction for me. If there had been an assailant I would have let fly a volley of blows. I was certain there was something in the room, but I couldn’t see anything. Were these ‘things’ beckoned from the beyond, their intention malevolent? I didn’t know. I was searching the space for whatever might have been hiding and then I caught a glimpse of the window again. It was clear of the strange looking circles that had previously been there and seemed to have had a life of their own. I didn’t see the woman either.

   Still, there was something in the room. Yes, there was. My goose pimples were telling me this was so. My not being able to see it made no difference.

   I had been dreaming about a strange looking woman. With a suddenness and as though appearing from nowhere, the fact that I was now facing a woman who fit that dream-profile, brought my terror to its apogee. I almost fainted. Unthinking of how she could have got in or what she was after, I ran like Hell from the room. I didn’t know where I was going. I just ran and ran. I was heading for the front doors, but was this wise? To go out ‘there’? I felt that I was being pursued by a spook that was close, touching. When I reached the doors I fumbled with the lock. Almost instantaneously I was outside, at the top of the stone steps. I went no further even though I was intending to because what was there made going any further impossible. What was covering the outside space was utterly bizarre. It was as though the trees had gone crazy and somehow caused the leaves to be circular discs. There were millions upon millions of circular discs and these held by spider-like branches. This wasn’t the world I had known. It was something else. It was a parallel reality and the contents askew, I knew it so now.

   I turned quickly because I knew I had to defend myself. There was the pursuer and the close proximity.

   “Philip.”

   While hearing my name spoken I’d almost jumped from my skin. The voice was not familiar and neither was who it belonged to.

   I was petrified. This woman really was like the one in my dream. She was standing about three strides from me. She was attired in strange, ethereal, black clothes. The rings of her eyes were black, her hair the same colour and held by a golden band. I stepped away and her eyes reacted. I was held by her otherworldly beauty and I was overpowered by its influence. It came to me that she was not only the woman from my dream, but also from the magazine.

   “My … beautiful human boy … You are made afraid.”

   I was more than afraid of her. Her speech was very peculiar, as though she were far, far away. She was not, she was close to me.

   “I have to do as you do. I am here because you are.”

   I took another step back and she moved toward me. I moved my left arm and so did she.

   If I ran outside there would be more of the unnatural. Was it that I was a visitor here? Just as I had been in that other reality? This, made to merely appear like home? She began speaking to me and her voice did not reflect the same distance about it now.

   “I made myself from your thoughts. I have you in my entirety. I can speak as you, beautiful human boy.”

   I tried to look away from her, but she was holding me by an powerful invisible force. Her eyes were the blackest black, yet their beauty surpassed all other effect.

   “I am only what you are. I was following you throughout eons and I brought you here. I made this abode, because it was yours. I made this world, because it was yours. I only wanted you. Not the other.”

   “Where is she?” I managed to ask because she was referring to Callassa.

   She reacted to the question with a pained expression, as though deeply offended at the asking. Was she of blood and bone? I doubted it and now I was questioning whether I was either.

   She said, “I am the She-Bird. I am the song. I am Za. Therefore you may call me by my substance.”

   With great trepidation affecting my voice, I asked her, “What . . . what are you?”

   “I am Za. I am the song you cannot hear. I am all things. I am everywhere. I am for you.”

   I had no understanding by which to relate nor inclination to converse with her, but what alternative was there? She had already told me that this was her reality and I’d been carried to here. I had not returned to my precious home after all. It meant Callassa was likely . . . where?

  “Do not think of that one, the traveler for war. I want you to be the Earth-called being with me. I can be a ‘woman’ as woman is what you knew. I can be anything that was inside you. I can be her too, the other. Would you like me to be? Her?”

   “NO!”

   I was staring aghast at Callassa. It was her. Yes, it was. Beautiful darling was smiling in her indubitable manner. It really was the woman I deeply, deeply loved. I took a step forward but when I grasped for her hands she wasn’t there in the way that I was. She was fading away. Then very suddenly, the ‘woman’ (questionable) reappeared.

   “There is no leaving what I am in singularity,” she said to me. “I found you. I own you. There can be no other. Do not desire as a human, to exlude. I can be the space traveler lost, if you wish. I can be all than can be conceived in a form as you . . . you . . . were.”

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Back to PART I of Baby Darling

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Back to PART II of Baby Darling

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Back to PART III of Baby Darling

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Return to the Honey Pot (INDEX)

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CALLASSA

Invicta Veritate

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Supplement : Alternative Imagery

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I AM ZA

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