On my return from a giddy trip to both Washington D.C. and New York City – which Merlin ever referred to as Babylon, I would dream this most exquisite of flying dreams. Too, this dream of bucolic splendour occurred on the eve of that truly rhapsodic adage – previously shared herein – entitled: Won’t Take the A Train.
At the time, I had decamped to Babylon – after having cut short a trip to Washington D.C. and having secured part of my art collection from a roué Russian boor who, after having attempted to con me out of my art with the offer of setting up a home together, then crawled into my ear, calling me the N-word and let me know that it simply wasn’t going to work between us; this on my return to Toronto from the latest trip down to be with him.
Naturally, for good measure, he thanked me for the art… as he hissed his racially predatory bile in my fucking ear, my nostrils drew on a few quickened breaths as raptor-like this shrewd intellect of yours truly began rapaciously charming my way back for just one more visit. Of course, he could have the art but we had after all planned on going to Kennedy Center and the wedding of a friend of his.
He acquiesced… the damn fool. Returned to Washington D.C., thank goodness he was into S&M because his neighbours were little bothered as tied and gagged, I took to him with leather strap wrapped tightly about my black custom gauntlet as opera blared through his 5ksqf condo. After having riotously owned his ploughed under arse, I dragged him to the living room where whilst he remained crumpled, bound and gagged, I patiently removed my art from his previously naked walls, left the god awful gold frames on one, rather than both hooks, as previously, carefully wrapped the prints and placed them in the containers in which they had been transported from Toronto weeks earlier.
As the music soared, I moved his bound body to the bathtub, slumped him inside, relieved my bladder in his face as he ever loved during regular play… this, though, was anything but regular play. Truly enraged, as is the custom at such times, I said nothing whilst my eyes remained illegible beyond my shades. After I was done fucking with him for having fucked with me – I deal with karma here and now; besides, who would want to meet this boor in any future life – I called a cab and went to Union Station. Took another cab to the airport, changed my flight itinerary and made it to that glorious island like none that I knew whilst growing up in the Caribbean.
As for the roué, I called his best friend and told him that he, perhaps, ought to go check in on him as I had been out in Dupont Circle and my amour fou – and his best friend – was not answering the phone. Of course, we both knew that apart from S&M our drunken Russian regularly engaged in auto-erotic asphyxiation. Since I had met someone at a bar in Dupont Circle, I shared that I intended to go home with him and, perhaps, he ought to go and look in on his best friend. As expected, he readily agreed and hurried me off the line – to say nothing of permanently out of my life.
That done, I hung up the payphone at the American Airlines lounge at the airport, boarded my flight and as the plane roared down the runway, the one music I always listen to on takeoff, Jessye Norman gloriously roared whilst singing Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs.
Lids languorously collapsed shut as the memory and thought of what should never have progressed beyond a one-night stand drifted away. Seriously, where would have been the fun of having to pass my life time-wasting with an ill-equipped man of less than five inches… quelle fuck-all joie ça!
So there was I returned to Babylon having secured MY art. I then had to prevail on one of Merlin’s oldest friends – a Toronto WASP Brahmin with a penchant for being a classist boor – to say nothing of bore… god who on Avenue Foch knows or cares about these people? At the time, my other lover, Manhattan cabaret singer, Frans Bloem was out of town and working at his bread-and-butter gig.
As I was not prepared to pass an evening with Carl Leroiderien, Merlin’s friend, being socially snide and all that transparent silliness, I got up in a pair of high heels, hot pants and tied my shoulder length permed hair in a ponytail and went crawling further south into the Village and ended up dancing at the Stonewall Inn which was recently made a national monument by President Barack H. Obama.
Of course, whilst I shook arse in my high heels, I had some big-handed, intensely beautiful-eyed Canadian lawyer from Montréal end up bump and grinding against me. Soon enough, back at his hotel, I discovered there was reward in having recovered my art and not having settled for trifling fare – my Italian stallion proved a girthsome ten inches of delightfulness.
More than all that, the tree you see accompanying this exquisite flying dream, I planted after having returned to Nevis for my 7th birthday on August 2, 1967. My mother, Harella da Braga, knew that seven was my favourite number and asked what I would like for my birthday. As I had relocated from Nevis to St. Kitts at all of 7 months old, there simply was no other gift that could do it for me. The day trip to Nevis was the most lucidly awakened dream this side of the dreamtime had – at least to that point in my young exciting life.
The following summer, my mother who was as cold and emotionally remote as can be imaged, came to the door in that photo of the house we then lived in – after having been unceremoniously excommunicated from the Pilgrim Church down the street – and presented me with a lone large mango. Naturally, as the lastborn of six children, getting a whole of anything – let alone a mango – was simply unheard of.
However, the enigmatic Harella shared – after I had scrambled down from the genip tree where I daily retreated to take naps, dream and imagine myself on fantastic voyages and sometimes, though, rarely read – that the mango was from Nevis and she knew how much Nevis meant to me. I was floored by the gesture.
So whilst I sat making love to the ‘Nevis’ mango, my adorable sister, Pandora edged down onto third to last step to quietly sit – just one behind me – and asked for a bite or two. Ever precocious, without missing a beat, I assured her that she could have as many mangoes as she wished of the tree that, in time, the half-exposed seed of the fruit that I thoroughly relished would yet bare.
Always a man of my word, I then promptly planted the seed and – never, of course, having afforded my sister a single bite – erected a flower garden about it. I made sure to plant it outside my bedroom window so that each day, I would be greeted by its burgeoning beauty on throwing open the bedroom window.
Life is about giving – giving of self. I have never tasted a mango from that tree. The last time that I returned to St. Kitts – 1993 at least whilst the tree yet lived; it was gone in 2002, I am simply too eccentric and too much an off-islander to ever return there – the tree was promptly felled on my departure. The locals, as human society can ever be expected to react to anything remotely outré, decided that my being long-haired, a ballet dancer, in riding boots and multiple bracelets on each arm was too gross an affront.
Pandora did have many mangoes from that tree and I was always proud on my first return to St. Kitts in 1989 when Nicole McHugh (6th mature sage) said that she made sure that the tree was protected as it had been planted by myself and she always hoped that I would return one day and see what I had accomplished… indeed.
There comes a point where high heels, riding boots, long hair and all that run their course. More than that, I will damn well not go putting myself in harm’s way amongst persons who would just as readily dispense with the threat of my outréness as they did a perfectly beautiful and innocent mango tree.
That aside, this dream and the corona experienced therein could never have been perceived and experienced had I never planted the seed of that Nevis mango. This photograph remains my most prized possession… and with good reason.
The dream was dreamt on Thursday, July 8, 1993 whilst the Moon then grooved its benign waning beauteousness through Pisces and conversely my tenth house, conjunct the cusp of which is my retrograde Chiron which opposes Pluto in the fourth and simultaneously squares both Luna in the seventh and Mars in the first conjunct the ascendant… yes, I can be operatically combative when provoked, though, I have much mellowed of late – fuck it, life’s too short to be doing battle chaque fois… partout…
Goodness, it’s been awhile since I have taken the time to express my gratitude at your continued patronage. Too, it gives me no end of pleasure to be of inspiration and wish that you will ever take the time to push off, start flying and make as sweet as that Nevis mango your every dream. I love you more!
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At night, in this the first dream, I walked towards Cleverly Hill, Sandy Point, St. Kitts in the streets of The Alley. There were some guys sitting along the roadside who seemed, perhaps, Italian, Lebanese or Syrian.
They might well have been light-skinned Blacks. Four of them in all, they wore white t-shirts with different-coloured shorts.
One wore red shorts, another black, one white and the other a blue pair. I was more connected to the one wearing the red shorts.
They were excitable guys who drew my attention to the large screen, high definition TV that sat just inside the window of Rosita Gould’s old green house. I could hardly make things out but the action seemed to be occurring in liquid slow-motion.
A young couple were very intimately making love; there were lots of extreme close-ups here. The guys were very excited by all this, of course, as they sat across the street from the house.
As they hung out liming away, they were closer towards the large drain that dissects the main road. There was a crumbling wall; the foundation was the remnants of an old house which was long-ago abandoned.
They were commenting on the fact that Hesketh Gould Jr., whilst fucking a woman, was in the house looking at porno. I couldn’t quite figure out who the woman was supposed to have been.
Going over towards them, I began checking out the guys and found them rather attractive. They all had rather light-coloured alluring eyes.
Certainly, there in Sandy Point, it was unusual to see such light-coloured eyes. The one in the red shorts was the definite ringleader.
I approached him and openly groped him. So bold and uncompromising was I, he could have done nothing but surrender to my forthrightness.
Of course, he was sporting a rock solid hard-on. Relaxing him further, I then began caressing him gently on his right shoulder.
I looked at him rather lovingly and sweetly. He surrendered; sweet smiling eyes complemented his colouring as he blushed.
Though these were not energies that he was accustomed to experiencing, I telepathically told him not to be afraid whilst the others remained perfectly arrested by our interactions. I casually suggested that, perhaps, we could go off somewhere and be alone.
He replied that he and the guys were actually about to head off somewhere. After having looked at his buddies for a bit, he then offered me to join them.
We ended up in the lobby of what seemed a cinema. In order to check out the movies, down a flight of stairs we had to go.
Naturally, since being in the dark side-by-side could only lead to greater intimacy, I was all for the experience. Whilst in the lobby, it was quite busy with lots of Blacks everywhere.
Different group settings of tables were scattered about one section of the lobby. There were several concession stands about the place.
The usher, a teenaged Black guy, wanted to know where my ticket was. I told him that my party had the tickets and had gone ahead and that I had come out to get something from the concession stands.
They had actually gone ahead of me and at no time had I seen them show any tickets. Not that I didn’t have the ticket stub to show but I really didn’t feel like being messed with by anybody.
Showing my legendary impatience, through and through, I got confrontational with him. He wore a company suit as part of his uniform.
The confrontation occurred at the half-flight down’s landing. One had had to turn to the right to go down another semi-flight and to the cinemas.
He stubbornly refused to let me go any further or, for that matter, to go call the guys. Finally, I got pissed off so headed back up the stairs to the lobby and stormed out of there.
When I left the theatre, I became aware of a group of guys close by who were intent on chasing me. There was no way that I intended to be party to any such scenario.
Looking at them, I said, “No, no, no. You are not going to.”
With that, I chose to rise above all this and decided to start flying. Pushing off, I began flying quite slowly.
Nice and peaceful, I thoroughly enjoyed myself whilst in flight. Rising higher, I grew dissatisfied with my speed and so willed myself to progress much faster.
Going alongside the road, however, I did keep close to the trees. I always seemed to have problems willing myself to fly higher or lower.
At certain times, it proved problematic when trying to negotiate the branches. There were times, when it seemed that I would even crash into some of the branches.
Then I reasoned, “Hey there, now Arvin. Wait a minute now.
“This is a dream and you can do more than fly. You can make your body even more malleable.”
With that, I upped my vibration and began progressing ahead. When I came to the next thicket of branches, I effortlessly moved through the branches and leaves without being obstructed by their solidity.
In short, to the point where I became light itself, I had intensified my vibration. This enabled me to pass through everything without the slightest discomfiture to my body.
In order to have to negotiate safe passage, through the unobstructed air, no longer did I have to go up or down. Regardless its vibrational density, I had become at one with the light which permeated everything.
I intuitively knew that everything’s vibration is imbued with light, as per the subject’s light properties, which allows it to be a perceived entity. Becoming pure light enables one to pass unhindered through the filter of all matter.
Therefore, to get through denser matter, one would simply have to will one’s light body at a faster speed so as to continue progressing at undiminished accelerated speeds. To have attained this degree of focus afforded me even greater expansiveness of spirit than for being in flight.
Next to the weighty confines of being bipedal and earthbound, flight itself had already proven fairly limitless. Thus, being focussed in the light body proved quite a wonderful experience.
Pushing ahead, I willed myself to fly even faster… soar even higher. At this point, even if others were on the ground, they would not have been able to see me.
Still following the road, I saw way below a six or seven-year-old White boy playing in the streets. He did see me, much to my surprise, and came running down the road after me.
He was so excited at the sight of me. Certainly, it was not as if I was dangerous for being Black and in flight.
The road had at one point veered off to the left, then down a steep incline, into an open expansive valley. At times, the road was earthen but on the whole it was a paved affair.
Where the road fell down into the valley, I began having problems because I kept on looking down below me to get my bearings. Part of my problem was experiencing fears, for being that high up, whilst in flight.
There was this sudden apprehension that left me feeling that there ought to have been branches close by; so that, if need be, I could readily grab ahold. Fears of losing focus and falling from the sky began taking form and assuming a life of their own.
I think that much of the reason for experiencing problems was the fact that I had been of the impression that for making myself light, vibrationally, I could not be perceived. So that when the young White guy in the road below had seen me, this left my confidence as to what I had been up to understandably shaken.
Before becoming fearful, there had been a point when I had soared high above the treetops. At those heights, it was fairly obvious that there was a corona of energy that towered up semi-spherically above the collective crowns of the treetops.
Though not perceived, it was raw pure energy which was distinctive. Energy it was which fed my own light body’s energies.
The really beautiful part of all this is that, in the process of becoming light-energied, I was able to leave tendrils of my light energies whilst moving through space. Everything, with which I came in contact, also left a residue of its light energies mixed with my own light energies.
In the true sense of the word, this was about becoming one with everything. Beingness, that state of total acceptance – wherein one is at complete oneness with all nature… all life – I had clearly achieved.
A thoroughly uplifting experience this was. Becoming infused with aspects of the trees’ collective life-force was akin to the experience on Boxing Day 1972III.
All in all, it was a healing experience. What alas could be more rejuvenating and uplifting than, my trusted familiars, arboreals?
A very energising experience this proved. In the final analysis, I was able to recover and not become weighed down in negative vortices of fear based – fear it was which was based on the notion that I couldn’t will myself to stay aloft.
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