by  Saṃsāran

I have written before that years ago I suffered a serious brain injury and that during my recuperation I was very detached from everyday reality. I often did not speak for days at a time.  I was staying at a rehabilitation facility which happened to be located in a pretty rough neighborhood. 

This was a locked facility but I liked to walk, especially at night, so I would use a wad of paper to keep the door from locking  and go on long meandering strolls, not thinking just, well, being present in the world.

One night I was walking through this neighborhood and turned down an alleyway behind some low rent apartments. Three young men stepped out of the shadows and one had what looked like a kitchen carving knife. Don’t jump to racial conclusions because they were a mixed-race group; however, the leader was a slightly built Hispanic male. 

They asked me what I was doing in that neighborhood and didn’t I know that this was their territory.  They expected me to be terrified. However, I was so detached, that I was not concerned in the slightest.  They demanded my wallet and my vintage 1969 Omega Speedmaster watch. I just stood there smiling at them. I said “no, I think I’ll keep them” and put my hands in the pockets of my flight jacket. 

I must have seemed so incongruous, so out of place. A middle-aged white man in khakis, a polo shirt, and a flight jacket in the ghetto in the middle of the night with a partially shaved head and a jagged Frankenstein incision. Who the hell was I? A detective? Some kind of vigilante? An escaped mental patient? Bingo!   I was about as out of place as a hot girl at a high school chess club’s weekly D&D night.

The leader of the group said, “ain’t you afraid white boy?” Again, I just smiled. Keep in mind I wasn’t being brave. I truly had no sense of danger.  I had no sense of even being a participant in the exchange. It was as if I were hovering safely above watching the scene unfold with almost complete indifference.

by  Saṃsāran

After my open-heart surgery, which had been fraught with complications and a long period in the post-surgical ICU the doctors did not want to release me to my wife right away without some rehabilitation regaining some strength learning some new ways of doing things.

They placed me in a very fine facility which had the look of a garden. My room had a picture window with a sliding door which, get this, opened directly on to a courtyard open to the street. Very nice if not overly safe. I was going home. Most of the rest of the patients were not. They were either on their way to hospice care or were in such condition as they might be expected to expire. Something which did occur while I was there.  I was young at 56. Most of the patients were a generation older.

One such patient was Mrs. Ambrose. She was in her late eighties. I met her on one of my evening strolls and she asked me if I could play Cribbage. I played in college but I barely remembered the rules. She pulled out a beautifully carved cribbage board and a pad and dealt the cards. She said “the first few hands will be practice and since you are still refreshing your memory we’ll keep it simple say, a penny a point?”

I had no idea what the sweet old lady was on about but I agreed. So we played. Now for those of you who have never played the game it involves making some strategic choices and like all good games from chess to nuclear war the rules are simple but the strategies complex. At first she went easy on me. I lost but not by much. I would get perturbed when the therapists would come for me to lift weights or ride the stationary bike.

Ms. Ambrose would be there. Waiting. Gradually, I began to slowly lose more and more money until by the end of my ten day stay I owed her $47.00! I asked my wife to bring the money on check out day and when I handed a fifty to her she said “oh no dear. I can’t touch CASH”. You MUST write a check.” So, I did. She still hasn’t cashed it but she does call me from time to time. My cell phone number was on the check.

by Samsaran

In July of 2032, the long anticipated plague finally came. It struck first in Northern China in an agricultural zone. It moved swiftly both east and west. It swept the world and nobody escaped. The symptoms were a cough, fever, swellings behind the neck and under the arms. The symptoms lasted only a week or so. Nobody died.

It was of little concern until about two years after it first struck. It seems that while the disease did not kill it rendered one hundred percent of the men affected and ninety-five percent of the women sterile. Permanently and irreversibly sterile.

Within ten years every continent on the planet had negative population growth. Some of the fertile women were artificially inseminated with existing stocks of frozen semen but soon those supplies dwindled. By 2060 the world population had dwindled to 2 billion. By 2080 only 750 million. Cities were emptied as people gathered together in urban centers for mutual support. Anybody could have a beach front home for the taking but there was no water or power outside of the remaining cities.

In 2100 the population was only 100 million and there were no more nations, no more races as mankind blended culturally. The world entered a dark age. There was but one language a mix of Mandarin Chinese and English. It appeared that our species was going to wink out like a candle flame.

Then in 2107, a miracle occurred in one of the isolated villages outside the grid on what was once the great Navajo reservation several males were born and they were fertile! Word spread as more of these babies were born and grew to manhood. By 2140 populations were again on the rise and the race was saved. Now, all human beings shared the same few genes. They were all the same color and spoke the same language.

by  Saṃsāran

The ancient legends tell of a civilization, a doomed civilization on a doomed planet. Eons ago when the Earth was a molten ball and Mars still as warm as the tropics with vast seas of liquid water and an atmosphere of carbon dioxide still devoid of life.

There was a planet between Jupiter and Mars where the asteroid belt now circles the sun as an immense ring of rocky debris. This civilization rose over countless eons and reached self awareness. They were unlike us neither plant nor animal but a different being of crystals. These beings did not kill or eat for food they took their energy directly from the still hot sun. They built great cities of gold which was plentiful there and glass thrown out from the ancient volcanoes. Their communication was in the form of songs and their songs contained the mathematics which underlay the universe. Songs of such beauty as never heard anyplace in this galaxy and the next. Without war their culture flourished. Yet theirs was a culture without machines.

After many ages of consciousness they became energy contained within the matrix of the crystal of their bodies. They were lovely to gaze upon like stained glass windows of dancing light and warmth. Then the people of this fifth planet sensed that the sun was cooling. The planet began to cool and they knew that life was doomed on this beautiful planet. They accepted their fate as they had no machines to transport them off the planet. Instead they created spiral seeds and encoded the basic information necessary to begin life anew. In these seeds within the helix they encoded the wisdom of their civilization. They spun these crystals until they reached escape velocity and directed them toward Mars and Earth.

They sang their songs as their planet flew apart and then there was silence.

These seeds took many millions of years to arrive on the red planet. Yet although some took root Mars soon grew too cold and the water scarce and the oxygen even more scarce. These new beings retreated into the center of the planet where water was still present and there was protection from the harsh radiation of the sun.

The seeds traveled for another half a billion years until they alighted upon the still smoking Earth. They found the necessary amino acids and began to build themselves as they were designed to do. They transformed the toxic atmosphere into oxygen and made it possible for liquid water to form. The new atmosphere shielded the planet from radiation and life began to emerge. One celled animals and plants at first then colonies of cells. Soon there were more complex forms according to the code in the helix. Another half billion years passed and the Earth was ready. Then one celled creatures became multicelled. There was a great dying as the Earth readied for the next phase. Sexual reproduction allowed for faster mutation and evolution. This went on for another several million years until on a plain in the continent we call Africa an ape looked to the sky and said “I am.”

So, the long climb upward begins again…

by Saṃsāran

It was dusk when the traveler was spotted riding a small donkey led by a boy. The man was old. His hair was long after the style of the Greeks and he wore a long gray beard. His robes were also of gray. His face wrinkled from a lifetime in the sun and the backs of his hands were as brown parchment. He wore a broad hat of wool of a style unfamiliar in this land.

The children of the house of Eli the stonemason were the first to see the man approach and they ran shouting "grandfather, grandfather you have come! What have you brought us?". Eli's wife Sarah upon seeing the man ducked into the house and started the bread cooking upon the hearthstone. Eli emerged and stretched his back and lifted two of the children into his powerful arms. He said "grandfather, welcome, we have been expecting you".

The man was not the grandfather of any of those present. Grandfather was a title given to any wise elder. This man, whose name was Beltron was a magi, a magician, scholar and astrologer in residence in the great library of Alexandria. His powers were legendary. Every year at the time of the winter solstice he paid a visit to the small village of Bethlehem in Judea. 

Beltron entered the humble home of the stone mason with several bundles under his arms. His young apprentice likewise was burdened with bundles, gifts for the children. He sat in a place of honor as supper was served. Roast lamb and bread with wine. A feast. After the meal Beltron distributed the gifts, dolls, a singing mechanical bird, a flute made of dragon bone and many other such wonders. The children gathered at his feet and asked " tell us a story grandfather, the story of the star".

Beltron laid back and tugged on his beard and began:

"Many years ago when I was an apprentice in the great library in Alexandria in Egypt a star appeared overhead. It was different from other stars because it glowed purple and did not move as the stars moved but remained in one place just above the library and was visible even in daytime.My master was Balthasar, known as the wisest king in all of the world. He gazed at the star and later said this star signifies the birth of a king.