I found myself hovering over Times Square.  I was intently looking at a hotel in Times Square – the one that has the large oxidised globe on it.  I thought – this may be the Drake Hotel.

The building, at its upper storeys, had aspects of a pyramid or a ziggurat to it.  This was one of those monolithic sandstone buildings that were built in the 1930s – a decade when there was a real architectural renaissance in Manhattan.

It had a very large base that culminated in a stepped formation near the top.  The building sat on the west side of Eight Avenue, if I correctly remember.

Perhaps, it is not even a hotel – I thought, maybe, it is the headquarters for one of the city’s newspapers – with the globe at its zenith.  So, perhaps, it formerly housed or still does The New York Times.  After all, it is in Times Square – hence the name of the square.

After having hovered for awhile, I began to move very slowly; I was high up – several storeys high up.  I watched as the ubiquitous yellow vehicles of the city’s taxi fleet, way below, negotiated the congested traffic.  I was able to see beyond the usual as well.

I saw Carl Leroiderien† going to pick up tickets for a Broadway show.  He was walking past the stage door; he was going towards the front of house.

There was something about this man which I found rather sagely.  Soon, he passed out of view; he went off to see someone.  He stood out like a sore thumb.

I knew well enough not to come down.  Carl has never had any interest in me, save to be aggressive and socially hostile, so why bother?  He was off to be in his element because basking in the glow of the klieg lights was what his soul craved at the moment.

However, when Carl was leaving his Chelsea apartment, I saw him talking to Merlin.  I still hovered in the air outside a front window that faced Carl’s fire-escape.

“No, no.  I sent those manuscripts for you and you can just go over them,” he was saying to Merlin as he returned some of Merlin’s writings.

Carl, arrogant prick that he is, was insensitively dismissing Merlin’s writing by returning it.  Of course, he did so under the guise of being too occupied to read the manuscripts.

I could tell from Merlin’s tone that he was really hurt for having his creativity dismissed.  Merlin felt rejected.  Carl was a disingenuous schmuck.

Carl’s offhandedness with Merlin was obnoxious.  Clearly, he did not think that Merlin’s writing was worth his time but – platinum-tongued palaverist that he is – he also did not give an opinion of what he thought.

Carl had cleverly placed the writing into a small trunk, which had languished in the Bourbon Street basement of his tiny cottage, abandoned there for over a decade.  The manuscripts were water-damaged.

In presenting Merlin with the trunk, he would minimise the rejection by making it look like he had been intent on returning the trunk and its damaged contents.  The snub was not lost on either Merlin or me.

I was, at the time, just down the hall; it was a short distance from where Carl had been talking to Merlin.  Wounded as he was, Merlin never did come out from the apartment.

Whilst standing by two apartment doors, I kept watch.  People were coming and someone said,

“I think that there is someone by the door; I can just tell…”

Since I did not want Carl or Merlin to know that I was about, I hid in back of both doors to the landing.  In that way, I avoided being seen by Carl’s neighbours; I averted the kind of trouble that I did not need.

I then went down the hall.  The door on the right was the apartment where Merlin had been.  I went to the door and knocked.

On opening the door to answer, Merlin looked totally different.  Though the eyes were unmistakably Merlin’s, he was considerably taller.

Merlin was very light-skinned and unmistakably Black.  He had off-blond hair that was naturally curly which he wore in a loose, soft Afro hairdo.  He was casually dressed.

He pleasantly smiled, on recognising me, though he was wearing a different body.  He familiarly, warmly said,

“Come in…”

Oh to hear his voice embrace me.  Such sweet, sustained magic!

I entered.  It was obvious that he was making one of his spectacular meals.  I, almost immediately, noticed that he had bought a cake.  It was a wonderful loaf.  Obviously, from the look of things, he had spent a great deal of time working on the other dishes.

There was a baked squash dish which was flavoured with a sweet liqueur.  A veal loaf was surrounded by a sea of sliced onions.  It presently was atop the stove, though, it was supposed to be returned to the oven.

There were marvellous vegetables that were all at various stages of preparation.  He stood at a sturdy, wooden-topped, central cutting board table.  He was cutting up an assortment of the vegetables.

My mind relaxed, as the pungent aroma of all the different herbs and spices being liberally used proved satiating and filled me up.

It was wonderful to again be in Merlin’s presence.  I had the impression that he was Straight or, perhaps, Bisexual.

At the entrance of the apartment, on the left, there was a little alcove.  The kitchen began there but it also opened up into a larger room.  This actually was part of the living room; it was L-shaped and hugged the kitchen area.

There, in the apartment, was a young woman with Merlin.  There was also a woman who seemed infirmed; she was lying on a cot.  She was close to the kitchen area where Merlin was.  They kept each other company whilst Merlin chopped up the vegetables.

Merlin and I were affectionate but there wasn’t any physicality to it.  We did not hug each other when the door opened even though we recognised the revealing, shockingly displacing sight of each other.

Merlin had immediately recognised my eyes, on opening the door, just as I had his.  However, there was now a dimensional void between us.  Merlin was a ghost from the future for me whilst I was a, vaguely familiar, ghost from the past for him.  He was warm towards me.

Merlin was a very decent human being, I must say.

He was, now, easily 6 feet 3 inches tall.  Though not mesomorphic, he was also not the classic ectomorph that he had been in his immediate past life.

He was angular but not in the same way as I remembered him.  Merlin here did not wear glasses.  His eyes were large and even more soulful than they had been in his last incarnation.

It was so beautiful to see him.

The seasoning was so… spot-on.  It actually made my mouth water.

The woman then asked him, from the cot where she reclined, if he had put onions with the veal loaf.  When he said that he had, she told him that this was not right.

“Let me show you how to do the onion rings,” she called to him in a familiar, intimate tone.

Merlin then asked me to give him a hand and help him carry the things to her, just inside the larger room, on the cot.  I helped him get the veal loaf onto a large tray with some other things.  For whatever reason, at the last minute, I got some bananas and also put them on the tray.

We then came out, into the other room, where the younger woman was.  She seemed like a nurse or a caretaker for the older woman.  She was sitting there very silently observing us.

The older infirmed woman was very detailed with her directions for the preparation of the dishes and the garnishes.  Some party umbrella garnishes, which are often used to decorate foods and cocktails, were also on the tray with the food.

Merlin had sliced the bananas – actually, they were plantains.  The older woman had her arms clasped at her chest like an Egyptian mummy’s.  Merlin then bound her body with blue-striped gauze.  The blue stripes were like those of the Israeli flag.

She laid there immobile with her head raised on a cushion which had been strategically placed beneath the cot’s mattress.  She looked at Merlin and wearily said,

“Please, will you give me my last rites?  I want to hear you say that prayer.”

At that, Merlin began saying the Lord’s Prayer except that it was not at all the traditional Christian prayer of Christ.  Instead, this prayer seemed to hearken back to Egyptian times.  When he was finished the prayer, she uttered a soulful breath; it was the equivalent of Amen.

“Avuum…”

It is simply impossible to convey the sound she made.  It sounded like a three-syllable word.  Quite simply, the breath went out of her when she intoned the arcane breath.  Perhaps, at the end of each lifetime, this was the call the soul made when exiting the body.

Together, Merlin and I had said the word with her but not as she had soulfully done.  It was the chant of the dying which only a departing soul, accepting of the inevitable, could properly invoke.

When Merlin and I said it, in my mind’s eye, I instantaneously saw the word written out in bold letters of blue light.

Merlin got up and slowly, silently, walked away.  I got up after him and thought about the potency of the word.  I looked into Merlin’s face and saw that he was no longer the youthful man who had greeted me at the door.

Instead, he truly looked drained as though he had been channelling for too many hours.  He was truly exhausted for having performed the rite on her.

Merlin returned to the kitchen area.  I followed after him.  I began eyeing the cake thinking that it would make a nice snack.

‘Hmmm, doesn’t that look nice,’ I thought, although, it needed to be warmed up.

It was a wonderful, fat lumpy cake with sweets in it – rather pleasing to look at.

“My, my, won’t I be glad to get some of this come dessert time.” I said in a quiet whisper. 

On Tuesday, March 24, 1992 as the Moon transited Sagittarius and my seventh house, whilst in dream flight, I projected myself into the future.

Whilst there, I dreamt the preceding dreams which proved the most sublime encounter with Merlin.  It was not just a glimpse into the future but proved to be illuminating, inspiring even.

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Ran into an old dancer friend from eons past…  we sat about chewing the fat – and god was there much to chew at…  I riotously laughed out loud when he said, “My god who knew you had this rich inner life going down back when I knew you… you just seemed so removed, remote even, from it all…”  Indeed, sometimes it seems – at least back then – it is best to just keep quiet and not engage in the Maya.  As there are never lies in dreams, it seemed an utter waste of time to bother engaging far too many persons met along the way back there. It was a surprise to me in late teens when I discovered that not everyone dreamt with the same élan as do I.  Then again, who wants to be burnt at the stake – at least socially.  Too, persons can be so terribly insensitive and quick to judge…  Either way, it was good to hang out and meet up with an old friend.  Funny though how things turned out for many, ultimately it proved no surprise.  Then again who gives a rat’s arse and as Sweet Brown so succinctly stated, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”

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Photo: Merlin in Montréal opening night play he directed at Centaur Theatre, late 1970s.  

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