last paragraphs of Excerpt 5
 

I first met the angels three summers before that. I had completed postgraduate studies in electrical engineering and molecular biology, with related studies in other engineering fields, as well as in chemistry, physics, philosophy, and literature. In the course of those studies, my curiosity had led me in many directions, which I had pursued voraciously.

When I graduated, however, I suffered a letdown. I lacked goals and ambition. I hadn’t looked for a job, or thought much about it. I didn’t want to think about it. My mind held too much baggage, to no purpose. I felt restless, unable to move forward, becalmed without peace of mind.

*

Water pours
into a pool without end
—no journey ahead.
— H.A.

*

I spent the summer alone. I loved to fish. Often in those years, I drove deep into the Maine woods to fly-fish for brook trout. Day after day, I forced my beat-up car down a half-mile of overgrown logging road, then lugged my canoe and fishing gear over several hundred yards of tangled game trail, to the shore of my favorite pond.

The best time to fish was late afternoon and evening, when hatching insects attracted trout to the surface. I usually went in midafternoon, however, to arrive early. At the shore, I would put down my load, and make my way to a ridge that rose a few hundred feet above the north side. At the top, I sat on a moss-covered promontory I had found, leaned back on my hands, stretched my legs in front of me, and for an hour or two looked out over the pond and the miles of forest beyond it. Most days, clouds drifted across the sky, their shadows playing on the treetops below me. Waves marched across the pond’s surface, and lapped the shore. Gusts of wind rippled the water, and breezes twirled. Fish ducks, mergansers, fished in the coves. Often, a beaver would be swimming near the marshes.

In the shallows, great blue herons fished among the aquatic grasses. Sometimes, a mink darted from the shore to pull mussels and crawfish from the rocks and mud on the bottom. A white-tailed deer might stroll from the forest to drink. Often, a moose stood shoulder deep, feeding on underwater plants. Some days, a fox trotted along, hunting for squirrels, snakes, frogs, toads, grasshoppers, and the like. Almost always, a kingfisher or two dove from overhanging trees, and emerged clutching minnows in their beaks. Small birds and larger—warblers, nuthatches, chickadees, jays, woodpeckers, thrushes—fluttered through the bushes and trees. Crows and ravens flew above. Gulls—herring gulls and big, bullying black-backs—circled higher, scavenging. Red-tailed hawks, osprey, and sometimes a bald eagle, soared highest. The birds’ songs and cries (ravens can sound human), accompanied by breezes purring through the trees, spoke to my reverie.

Excerpt 6

In prior summers, observing all of that had been sublime pleasure for me. As that summer began, however, it no longer was. My aimlessness possessed me. I couldn’t enjoy anything. I wanted to be elsewhere, doing something else, but I didn’t know where or what. My discontent pained me, angered me, and depressed me. I couldn’t resolve it, couldn’t moderate, escape, or avoid it. I suffered it, and had no patience for my suffering.

On the afternoon when I first saw the angels, I was sitting on the ridge, waggling my foot, fidgeting. Behind me a red squirrel chattered, scolding me for being there. A jay swooped to a tree branch a few feet above me, screeched at me, and flew off. In the woods behind me, a vireo sung its exultant song—cheerful little bastard. A few yards to the side, a pair of beady-eyed chickadees chittered and buzzed, exhibiting purpose such as I did not possess. A small spider climbed onto my jeans and scurried halfway across before I flicked it away.

I looked at the sky. It was cloudless, a dome of blue. To the west, the sun shone above distant hills, where in a few hours it would set. I should return to the pond and get ready to fish. I was about to stand up and do that when something about the sky caught my eye. At first it was raw perception, something before you know it. Then I saw that the entire sky shone with golden light. The light was soft, otherworldly. It shone as if nothing else existed. Its radiance filled my vision, my mind, and my spirit.

Something else caught my eye. To my left, eastward, a cloud was drifting into view. It was as luminous as the sky, tinged with the same gold. And upon it, I suddenly realized, reclined a large being. It emanated the same light as the cloud and the sky, as if it was part of its surroundings. It seemed to be made of that light, without other substance; I could see through it to the sky beyond. But its appearance was more defined than the cloud's. It was human in form, but bulbous, like a child's toy, as if you could squeeze it and make it squeak. It had a pudgy torso, arms, and legs, and a round head with two eyes and maybe a nose and mouth. It was larger than human, however, much larger, large enough for me to see on the distant cloud. It lay there at a slight incline, its feet forward and head and shoulders raised, and gazed in the direction of the cloud’s drift. I sensed that it was alive and aware, but I could determine no more than that. It didn’t move. It just lay there, riding the cloud, emanating the golden light. I had never seen anything like it. I was stunned. It’s an angel, I thought. It is gigantic and pudgy, and has no feathered wings, but…it’s an angel!

The cloud and the angel continued their drift. Soon they passed in front of me, halfway across the sky. The angel hadn’t moved. Then, abruptly, it did move. It turned its head toward me and looked right at me—at me and into me, to greater depths than I had ever known or imagined. The look lasted only a moment, a glance, but that was enough, for it conveyed a message. 

The message electrified me, and changed my life. As well as I can translate it from angelic radiance into words, it was this: “Relax, Vassal. Everything is fine.” The angel’s look embodied that message, and evoked it from everything around and within me. It struck me body and soul, rang me like a bell, sang to and from every fiber of my being. And it transformed me, putting an end to my unhappiness. I had been a typically overwrought young adult. Now, the burdens that I had been bearing—my torpor, confusion, and the rest of my plagued inwit—disappeared. My anxious interior chatter ceased, replaced by a blessed silence.

Its message delivered, the angel turned away and resumed facing forward, continuing its journey. The radiance of the sky, cloud, and angel held deeper meaning for me now. It pervaded everything. Everything emanated it, including the pond below me, the forest near and far, the creatures of the woods and water, and I myself. Its source was everything everywhere, and it shone upon everything everywhere, at once cause and effect. It brought everything to life and it was everything’s life. The universe, every universe, was made of nothing else. All things were one and the same, identical, while at the same time lacking none of the differences by which we distinguish one from another. 

The radiance illuminated for me a reality that I believe all people sense, but that usually abides beyond our consciousness. I began to think of it as "the more real than real", a truth of truths, than which there is no other. On that afternoon, as I sat on my ridgetop perch and watched the angel and cloud drift toward the western horizon, that reality was tangible to me. I basked in it. My every thought thought it, and every feeling felt it. I felt fortunate to be experiencing it so directly. 

When the angel and the cloud passed out of sight beyond the hills, I turned my head and looked the other way, toward the east. More angels were approaching, a host of them, each on a separate cloud. They sailed in front of me in ragged parade, some higher in the sky, some lower, some ahead or behind. Like the first angel, they seemed alive and aware, but this time none looked at me or acknowledged me. There was no need for that. By their nature, by all nature, they saw and acknowledged everything at once, including me and my bit of light. I watched them until they drifted out of sight.

Afterward, alone again, I felt boundless bliss. The angels were gone, but they were with me, too. And so they have remained. Despite difficulties that I, like anyone, have encountered, they and their universal light have remained present to me. Whenever and wherever I look for them, I see them and am strengthened by them. Always, seeing them puts a kind of end to any unease, discomfort, want, or suffering I might be experiencing. On that day by the pond, when they showed themselves to me for the first time and gave their light to me, they changed me, saved me, with saving grace.

* * *

At my seat on the floor of the Stone Age cave, the angels were with me and not, as usual. I struggled to my feet, feeling stiff in my knees. I wanted to make my way in darkness, so I left my flashlight turned off. I crouched again to avoid the stone ceiling, and shuffled back the way I had come, guided by my memory of the passageway, the feel of the walls beside me, and the sound of open space ahead of me. A few minutes later I came to the entrance. I paused just inside. Outside it was dark; the sun had set. I felt a breeze on my face, coming from the sea, and I heard the slow rhythm of waves pushing onto the shore. I turned on my flashlight and aimed it ahead. In its beam I saw the dirt path leading away. I leaned forward to step out. As I did, I felt a heavy blow on the top of my head. I staggered, almost knocked over. My legs quivered. I fell to my knees.

The pain subsided. I pointed my flashlight upward. The stone across the top of the entrance was set lower than the others. I had not bowed low enough to pass beneath it. Had the ancient builders placed it lower for structural reasons? Or to serve as a threshold whose purpose was to encourage humility—to beat unwary heads like mine against it, to clobber anyone foolish enough to walk too tall?

I knelt there, angry and sorry for myself. My injury cast doubt on my belief that I had insight into this place or, angels or not, into anything. I imagined some of the ancient people, my forebears, grinning at me across the centuries, their faces as creviced as the worn stones around me. Their grins twisted into me, provoking demons within me that I could not escape.

Shriveled, dizzy, my head aching, I reached to the stone above me to steady myself, and rose again to a crouch. My legs resumed shaking. I bent as low as I could and stepped outside. Clear of the entry, I stood up, took off my hat, and looked inside it with my flashlight. A blot of my blood
and hair stuck to the crown. The sea breeze made the gash on my head feel cold. I touched the spot and stared at the red smear on my fingertip. I shuddered. My teeth chattered. I took my hat in both hands, raised it over my head, and lowered it gently.

END of CHAPTER