"Now, imagine you are standing at the top of a large stone stairwell. As I count backwards from 10 to 1, you begin to slowly descend the staircase. 10...9...8...7...6"
...Without the slightest precognitive heads-up, the bottom half of the stone staircase unanimously decides to rebel against the monotonous, piss-ant role imposed upon them in this rather unimaginative meditative drama. At least ten renegade steps flee with giddish delight into the dark and foggy recesses of the subconscious night, denying you the graceful descent you expect and more importantly, believe you deserve as a paying customer.
Surveying the scene into which you have abruptly fallen, you quickly forgive that one treacherous flight, deciding they must represent nothing more than a freak glitch in an otherwise normal subconscious. What a relief! The temperature is perfectly tepid and the sky perfectly blue. As you sit up, the cushion of grass undulates beneath you like a vat of emerald green Jell-O. Only softer. And much less sticky. Come to think of it, it really isn't like Jell-O at all. As you pronounce this insight aloud ["I say, it really isn't like Jell-O at all."], the billowing green beneath your naked buttocks becomes much more like an oversized waterbed. Yes...yes, that's much more appropriate. Blanketed with...
a thousand squirming kittens
. You leap to your feet as you detect a few vagrant fur follicles squirm between the cheeks that belong to your unclad bottom. You are equally disturbed both by the purposefulness with which the furs in question seemed to probe the posterior in question and by the fact that there are so many orifices exposed for the probing. You quickly make your way to more stable ground.
As you carefully extract the last of the few brave souls to reach their destination, you cannot help but begin to doubt the wisdom of your own strange journey. You are assaulted by the fear that at the end of this brave and noble quest for some morsel of personal truth upon which to rebuild your disjointed self, you will find only a perverted old man in offensively lime green pants and a wicked, wicked smile.
You slump back onto this rather disconcerting impersonation of a lush green meadow, and attempt to excuse yourself from the pity party in progress long enough to regroup. "Wait for your guide..." you hear a voice in your head say. That's right...that's right.
I've just got to wait
, you reassure yourself. Wait for my guide. There's always a guide, you know. All the self-help books say so. You begin to speculate on what form your unconscious might choose to embody on this momentous occasion. The moment in which your inner guru makes a long overdue debut. Perhaps a monk of Asian descent. Those seem popular these days. Or perhaps a Native American wise woman, her untamed mane flailing defiantly against the wind. Or maybe...
You wait eagerly for what seems like eternity, in dreamtime that is. Eventually, a guttural tune begins to creep into your auditory ambit, clawing rudely at the mellow melody now struggling to play back-up to your cosmic groove. You try to will this unpleasantness away, focusing all the ethereal energy you can muster onto beckoning your belated Buddha. But the more you beckon, the louder
it
creeps until...
the gruff growl of a baritone in heat belts out a line that, were it not performing for such a sparse (not to mention unwilling) audience, could very well have shaken the cornerstones of musical foundations.
"I got hair on my chest! I look gOOOOd without a shirt!!"
The Improbable Pan
What this songster lacks in subtlety he doesn't seem to make up for in pitch, you silently note with an air of snootiness intended to mask increasing uneasiness. Oh, but Sela, you
do
feel uneasy
