Epiphany At Ralph Stover Park

EPIPHANY AT RALPH STOVER PARK
P.S.

Strategically perched atop the ledge that ran around the waist
of the cabin's interior, Philip Small surveyed the room full of bodies
strewn upon the wooden floor below him. Everything he needed in
consumables was within easy grasp. The entire room of twenty or more young
people was positioned for a final landing; anyone at anytime could 'fall
out' safely with a minimum of beer spillage. Glazed eyes, transfixed by
roaring flames in the huge fireplace, sought meaning in the morphing,
orange tongues held prisoner by the surrounding brick and iron.
Their dance was choreographed to words softly floating over everyone's
head. A voice with a mesmerizing lilt was transporting its listeners to
altered states. Hadji, in full turbaned regalia, was the only person not
on his back, but sitting up lotus-style, directly in front of the
fireplace about twenty-five feet away from the mouth of the hearth. He was
expounding on his discoveries in the realms of the ethereal. The blaze,
like music, played to his narrative, a summer solstice operetta done in
combustion and monologue. It was the close of the evening and the party
was crashing. All eyes were locked on the inferno as it acted and reacted
to the telling of his tale.
It wasn't very long ago, to hear it told on the streets, that
Bud Rice had become the victim of an LSD trip gone terribly awry. One day
he was like any member of the gang, a teenage party animal and goodtime
Charley, the next he was showing up in his turban, correcting us for
calling him by his first name and insisting that we refer to him as Hadji
Kaseem. But in person, he was another story altogether. There was a
presence about him that commanded your attention that you could not pass
off as a joke. And you wondered if the stories were true or just
mean-spirited rumors. He was exerting that personality over the entire
room this night. Even Phil, always the cynic, observer, and archivist of
events, was being sucked in, lulled into this adjacent reality, one that
had fabric of a more pliable nature, more malleable to the touch of
perception and (due to the evening's heavy intake) was currently a
swirling myriad of colors. The hues of this spectrum seemed caught up in
the flux and carried by the flow of words coming from this avatar sitting
cross-legged in the center of the room.
"It is ours to control..........this reality. We are not its
victims, pushed around by its currents. ..........you prophesy where life
will take you, YOU speak reality into existence..........not the other way
around. What?......is life some huge ocean we doggie-paddle around in,
waiting for the next moment to come along and present us with
opportunity?!......not at all. This dimension is our stage and we craft
it's scenes, it's acts, it's orchestrations, we say EXACTLY when the
curtain should rise or fall....................I am not going to be a
spectator.......I AM the stage manager!! We have been given that authority
by God. He created all this splendor for our use and enjoyment......not we
for it........take charge of your surroundings in the spirit. All events
in this life are predicated by actions we take in the
spirit............not just good karma, bad karma, live good, good things
will come to you or visa-versa.......but actually going onto the spirit
plane and DICTATING the outcome...........this is what was meant for man
when God created the garden and gave him authority and dominion over
it.......take dominion!"
....and again a barrage of questions would assail him from every
corner of the darkened cabin. These burning questions the young could
never ask their parents for fear of being scorned or laughed at, the
wonderings of innocents when cast against the backdrop of a world as big
and nefarious as this one. This was the primal, innate question stamped
into the very cells of every human being at birth: "What is the answer to
this life?!" This kid with the turban was answering that question and it
was making sense - to the entire room! Over and over again Hadji fielded
questions, making the most complicated preponderance appear simple. Some
tried to trip him up, laying riddles like snares before him, which he
easily overstepped. Philip had a sense of being drawn along by a powerful
undercurrent, a unifying psychic hook-up to everyone in the room. At that
moment in time, he felt as though every question that was asked would find
its answer.
.........that was when it all came crashing down.
Without warning, the structure of the logs in the raging fire
collapsed in a cloud of thunderous sparks. The largest timber slid out of
the fireplace onto the wooden floor and was rolling forward at an alarming
speed. The huge cinder had glowing gray and purple scales and flames
licked over its entire surface like some hellish serpent with an
incendiary tongue and smoke for breath. It was headed right for the center
of that sea of dreaming humanity. Like the flick of a light switch,
immediately the room was galvanized in fear and panic. The gossamer
curtain that had gently partitioned the metaphysical from the earthly was
suddenly rent in two and thrown to the ground. Bleary eyes shot open in a
desperate search for a place of safe haven. This new congregation of fresh
converts to the truth who had, but moments ago, been lounging languidly
about the floor enveloped in the sweet spirit of brother and sisterhood, were, in an
instant, hysterically breaking ranks and clawing at the door. The cabin
was filled with the loud sound of confused shouting and clanking bottles,
a scene not unlike the mad scramble for lifeboats in the final minutes
onboard the Titanic, as benevolent brothers trampled their eternal sisters
in a crazed attempt to find higher ground. There was nowhere to run, the
place was packed, so the youths turned to see where the searing hell-brand
was going. Imaginations ran wild with visions of charred skin and bubbling
flesh, prompting cries from the onlookers of:
"BUD, LOOK OUT!”
“GET OUTTA THE WAY, MAN!”
“ITS HEADED RIGHT FOR YOU!"
Bud Rice never flinched.
His gaze was riveted to the molten spectre baring down on him. A
battle of wills, sentient against the insentient, was raging somewhere
unseen in the netherworld. As it got closer it slowed. The confused
caterwauling dimmed. The embered beast continued to lose momentum. Sounds
of movement and shouting stilled as the room full of kids watched in
amazement. Philip had been studying Bud the whole time, undistracted
by any threat from below. Creeping along it came, smoking and sputtering
in the center of a room now totally hushed, stopping a mere foot in front
of the turbaned Hadji who had never taken his eyes from the fiery log, as
he gently cooed,
"There........there now..........that'll do, that'll do."

THE END