Journeys into the bright world

Marcia. While we're waiting for the medicine to work I want to say that this is like riding a skittish horse when you're used to a placid pony. I have to be much more careful about the way I handle my energies. I deliberately invoked more psychic force for the sake of writing this book. Then the energy came through and I was wakeful at night. But I was too lazy to leave our warm waterbed and use the energy when it was given. So then I got all out of sync and now I feel a little freaked out… I'm going under very fast now. It took just a bit more than one circuit of the second hand to feel it.

Howard. It has to do with circulation time. You know what circulation time is? It's the time it takes the blood to flow around the body and back to the heart. An older person has a slower circulation time so it takes longer for the drug to act.

Marcia. Now it sounds like the spokes of a wheel going round and round. It's as though someone were pressing a stick against a bicycle wheel. And that wheel is turning faster and faster. It's all awhir.

Howard. Do you hear the crickets?

Marcia. Yes, the crickets are enormously loud.

Howard. Are you going to try to direct it this time? Are you going to try to answer questions?

Marcia. I can't direct it. I'm thinking of Isabel and me and our bicycle wheels spinning by Lake Casitas. (All at once I felt intensely nostalgic remembering how Isabel Buell and I would ride our bicycles around Lake Casitas in Ojai.) We used to take bike trips. It's amazing! Like when I was thinking of Japan. Getting into the archetypes. Now I'm doing my Lake Casitas archetype. I'm looking down on the water and seeing the essence of all those memories… (Pause.) I'm there again. Back to that place. Home again. Oh, I can't believe it. Howard…(Mumbling, followed by fifteen minutes of silence.)

Howard. Where are you?

Marcia. That was the most. There's no way I can communicate…no way.

Howard. It's now about six o'clock.

Marcia. (Whispering.) I've blown my mind. This time I've done it.

I've really blown my mind. Why is there this duality?

Howard. No dear, you haven't really blown your mind.

Marcia. Oh, these two worlds are so different. (At that time I saw myself rising up through the four elements of earth, water, air and fire. I was becoming a bearer of flame, like a channel through which molten metal is poured.) I am fire; I am the flame. Why am I the fire? Why must I sacrifice?

(At this time images of sacrificial rites were pouring through my mind and I was oppressed by the thought that human sacrifices, the most loathsome practices in the history of mankind, were perpetrated for the sake of the highest ideals. I also thought of Howard's two open heart operations necessitated by a serious automobile accident. Because he had had to have a rib removed one can actually see his heart beating against his chest. This outward sign of vulnerability bothered me. I feared that if we continued this work we would both have our hearts torn out, that we would be immolated like sacrificial victims. Yet there seemed no alternative.)

Marcia. There are four elements and I, I am the flame. Earth, water, air and fire. Ah, now I'm coming back through the portal. I am the fire.

Howard. Fire lady! (Fire lady was his oft-repeated name for me. The term was originally inspired by the fact that my horoscope has five planets in fire signs and five in cardinal signs; hence it adds up to Aries, sign of cardinal fire.)

Marcia. You say it but you can't see it. But I can see it. Right now I'm seeing fire streaming through the cosmic arteries and veins…(sigh)…and then there's that grub. The small "m" Marcia Moore. She's got to be the densest thing God ever created. She's so dense. Super dense. She's like the cosmic grub, grub grubbing along. I'm not pure any more. Coming back. The vestal virgin is being defiled. The fire, I can hardly see it now. There's so much wax you hardly know there's a fire inside. But I tell you, Howard, I am the fire lady.

Howard. I know that.

Marcia. The cosmic grub. I don't like her. She's awful.

Howard. No, I'm making her into the cosmic butterfly. I can rejuvenate you into the butterfly.

Marcia. Poor little Sunny. He thought he caught a cosmic butterfly. And he got a cosmic grub instead. And then Sunny looks at his cosmic grub. Ugh!

Howard. (Laughing). That was a funny story.

Marcia. I always see melting gold, but I never saw fire like that. Never again in my life will I ever judge anyone who has delusions of grandeur. You can go into any insane asylum and find people with delusions of being Christ or Caesar or Cleopatra, or whatever. But they're just people who have been burned by that fire. Darling, if you ever wanted to leave me you wouldn't have any problems. You can get me into the looney bin overnight. All you have to do is play one of these tapes and you can prove it's my voice. There's not a psychiatrist in the country who will not tell you you have an insane wife.