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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781491870211 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 03/24/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 168 |
| File size: | 252 KB |
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Black Witch
By Steve Scott
AuthorHouse LLC
Copyright © 2014 Steve ScottAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4918-7019-8
CHAPTER 1
In The Light Of Better Days
"God not only plays dice, he throws them where they can't be seen."
Stephen Hawking
Do you like words? Words are like a mistress. She can enchant you, enrage you, seduce you. Make you feel like a man, or leave you wanting in the morning. It goes without saying that she will deceive you. I guess the word that best described me during the days of the Black Witch is anchorite. A hermit, recluse who has withdrawn from the world for religious reasons without joining an order.
This day, I sat high on a ridge overlooking a wide open vista pondering the words anchorite and religion and I laughed at the irony. In front of me stretching to the horizon was an immensity of possibilities. Behind me the same. The Ray Mountains in front of me were an unending wave of blue, stretched horizon to horizon. That wave was capped with the dazzling white foam of a snowy crown. Between those mountains and me was the fertile valley of anything possible. Behind me, the rocky crag of the barren peak where I now sat was like the sight on a rifle. It aimed at a layering of ridges that dropped in shelves all the way down to the Yukon River. The great river stretched away forever. My head was filled with the beauty of it all. It had not always been this way. But then, the search for something of value within me had been conducted on a field strewn with dead people and the infertile ideas of others. One of those dead people had told me all about it. Three hundred years ago, nearly four hundred. The spirit of a dead man now resided comfortably in my head. "For if salvation were ready to hand and could be discovered without great toil, how could it be that it is almost universally neglected? All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare."
I was on a mission of love. I was trying to capture what was left to me in my remaining days. I was on a mission to save what had once been mine. I was on a mission to regain a friendship that was so important to me. And I was on a mission to find out if any of it was possible. What was key, was the fact that I was on a mission. That was more important than the success of the mission. I was alive and kicking once again.
The mission was to drive across a couple hundred miles of Alaskan wilderness in the wintertime on snow machines with some friends and rescue an airplane that I had crashed in the river valley that lay between the ridge where I now sat and those far away Ray Mountains. And though my planning may have been half-assed, that was only part of my nature. The effort I was about to expend to get that airplane would be the best I had to offer. And as always, I was blessed with good luck and good companionship. I was laying it all out and would accept the result that I achieved. I was trying again. I was me again, and for whatever that was worth, I was now trying to accomplish something that was very important to me. I was trying to resurrect an airplane and the long dormant man that had flown that airplane. Sidetracked for almost fifteen years by life in America, I was in search of what ever value lay inside me.
I had wondered lately about what makes a person as unique as a snowflake? A person's character. A person's character is nothing more than the sum total of his experiences, forged and tempered by the spirit that resides within, a soul if you will. I have come to believe that a person's soul is the single thing that is his alone. Whatever this soul thing is, this spirit thing, it does exist and it is the defining uniqueness that separates all human beings. I have a friend, Jody, who is an artist with a welder and torch. On a recent visit to his house he showed me a piece of art he had constructed from common workshop items. Bolts, bearings, nuts and a sheet of tin. A fragment from his mind, a street scene from a rainy Seattle day of years ago had lain in his memory like a child in a coma, for twenty years. One day he had just began. He rescued that lonely child of his memory and breathed life into that mental synapse. That charged particle from his brain became an almost animate, three dimensional figure of substance.... but more than that.
The scene is a lonely back alley entrance to a bar. It is complete with street lamp, street signs, parking meter, two garbage cans and a mailbox. An old motorcycle is parked in the rain. There is no physical evidence of rain, but you know it's raining, just as well as you know that James Dean parked that motorcycle there and is inside that bar drinking. The ability to imbue a sense of time, place and actual life into an inanimate object is, in my way of thinking, Jody's spirit transcending his physical body and inhabiting that piece of art. It is said that the Navaho have a similar belief. It is said that those people of visions believe that if a person puts himself entirely into his work, does the best he can, with skill and patience, his soul will inhabit a thing as mundane as a hand-woven basket or a Seattle street scene on a rainy day. I can imagine a time two hundred years from now when that object resides in a place of prominence on a mantel somewhere. Jody's spirit will live as long as that piece of art exists. Jody's ghost will be sitting at that bar waiting for the rain to stop so he ran remount that motorcycle and ride off into eternity.
I believe that spirits live in the creations of those who are gone. I believe that while a person inhabits this physical, this real world, that person's spirit is like a dipped, poised pen or a wet brush. It has the power to impose it's presence on other things and other people, and live there, forever. I think a person's character has been painted by the spirits of many dead men and varnished by its experience. A person's spirit, its soul, inspired by the sum of that person's character is the Dynamic Creative Force, a fragment of God. A person's character is the reservoir of whatever talent that it is endowed with by that great unknown force. A person's destiny is to use the media best suited to its talent. Once this media for a person's spirit to thrive in, is learned or revealed, it is then up to the content of a person's character to loose that spirit, set it free and let it fly. Only then can that person make a unique contribution to the world. Only then, will that person's spirit be released to join others of its kind, in that place commonly referred to as heaven.
As I sat high on that ridge in a place of such spectacular beauty, the awe that heaven must inspire was easily summoned on this day. So now that we're talking about heaven, I guess we might as well touch on the door to get in. God. There was a point in my life that I never believed. But then I came to understand it really wasn't a matter of disbelieving or believing, only a matter of perception. And there are many, many perceptions. I've only really had time to look at a few. Here is one man's perception. In the novel 'Solaris' by Stansilaw Lem, you find two scientists on a faraway planet. The sanity and will of each has just been tested. The conclusion one of them came too?
God is an evolving being not a static pre-formed one. In Abraham's time, God was a baby, the cosmos, his crib. He demanded sacrifices and total submission because like all babies, the only universe was his own elemental needs. As history unfolded, so grew our God. And like us mortals, trapped in our finite, insignificant lives, God is trapped in the role of the Omniscient One, but his life is infinite. And he is learning as he goes. Now maybe he is stumbling through his adolescence, his power outweighing his knowledge, his ambition outweighing his power. He's created this eternity thing which he hoped to use as a vehicle to measure that power, but all He did was set in motion an entity that he has no control over. A Frankenstein top set spinning. Now as he sees his top spinning away, he's upset at the loss of control. An Angry God. So just what is this heaven thing that we are so intent on finding? But of course this version of God is only the perception of a fictional character. There are many, many other perceptions.
I'm an average guy of average intelligence. I have had my sanity and will tested. I have come to some conclusions. I have discovered that God does exist. I have discovered that the mind is an imperfect computer that is littered with mines and viruses. God did not plant those mines in your mind. Those mines were planted there by genetics. God did not plant those viruses in there. Those viruses were planted there by another force or forces. And that force must be the antithesis of God. Maybe one of the antithesis of God. I don't believe in the devil. And I am only on a face to face basis with one of those viruses. I call that virus the Black Witch. God took a survey of the virus and mines each of us possess and then he planted a single thing into us, our soul. And with that soul, we must map out our journey and we must do the best we can with what we have in the face of all these viruses and mines. God matches his souls with their travails and he watches.... and maybe he learns.
I believe that God planted a single spark of divinity in each of us. That spark is there to deal with all the mines and viruses but more than that. That spark is there to allow each individual a small measure of impact. And that small impact is our tether to the mind of God and to his infinity. God knows this all ahead of time of course and there you have the great mystery. God knows of our impact, expects it, demands it but is somehow influenced by it. In the way of great actors, we bring life to the script of God through our small performances.
The mind is an intricate and incredibly complex.... thing. It has evolved over millennia. During that time I believe that the blight of the ages has been stamped into it. Like dormant seeds, these blight-like viruses remain buried in the sterile ground of our intelligence. When stress, crises and melancholia rain down misery on our lives, those viruses are given nourishment. Those dormant seeds spring into life, real life, not imagined. Centuries old viruses, not genetic disorders, but viruses passed on by genetics are then given free rein in a the venue of modern day life, to raise havoc. And they use tools that we don't understand nor have any rational device to deal with. Enter the soul.
God has provided the antidote for all the viruses. We call that the antidote the soul. The genetic psychic-mines are another matter. The viruses, when they bloom, immediately become aware of these psychicmines and use them to advantage. Who prevails in the battle that ensues is either the virus or God. The containment vessel whom houses both the soul and the virus never wins. For him the battle never ends, and he eventually dies. What follows is the story of one such battle.
As I sat high on the ridge that day, my mind was like the still heated brain of a just recovered malaria victim. It was living with the residue of that fever, the delusions. But the fever was down now and the mind was starting to make sense again. My recent battle had changed me somehow, back towards that recognizable person of twenty years ago. What scars that battle had left on me would be known in the days to come. So armed with a brain that was returning to normal and with a body that I had toned up somewhat, I was blasting off on a journey of undetermined length into the heart of a wilderness as complete as any I ever hoped to explore. While my companions took care of most of the decisions, I was going to let the pure air and vivid images of perfection in this wilderness do what it would to enhance the process of healing still going on in my head. My brain was being released to relive those black days, put them to rest and come to some conclusions. My friends, some old, some recent, would write the whole process off to my drifty nature and let me tag along. I touched the starter, pulled my helmet on and followed in the wake of a blue exhaust mist and headed down into the valley toward the far away mountains of blue. I took out my scalpel and went looking for that Black witch in the days that followed. Days of a boreal beauty, breathtaking in its stark purity as well as the soul cleansing of pure air and physical exertion. And I thought about those dark days.
My battle began long before I ever recognized it. I suppose it began when the woman I had lived with for five years left me. She took her son, who I had claimed as my own with her. She took our daughter with her too. She moved two thousand miles away and left me alone.
It wasn't until much later that I knew that there was even a battle going on. It was later still that I was able to summon any defenses. Those defenses became evident only when I was able to review the battle from the immaculate edifice of God's back porch. On a snow machine ride on a picture perfect day, one given to me by God, was I able to begin to understand the nature of the battle and the nature of my defenses. For those of you who do not know, there is a salve for the soul for each of us. My salve is the unfettered world of wide open vistas. Backwoods Alaska.
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I was being forced by the United States government to plan and execute a snow machine ride across two weeks of time and a couple hundred miles of Alaskan wilderness. The purpose of this snow machine ride was to rescue an airplane I had crashed there many years ago. When I was about two days into that journey a strange thing happened. The hassles of everyday life dropped from my life like snow falling from a tree when you shake it. My days were filled with physical activity. My nights with good companionship. My senses were on a joy ride of pure air and spectacular scenery. My mind opened up and unrefined, unblemished thoughts started pouring out like water through the spillway of a great dam. I became aware for the first time in many years. And other thoughts that had been penned up in the reservoir behind the dam of dead end thinking were brought to the table of inquisition and dissected there. Most of the decisions made pertinent to the success of my airplane rescue were made by other people. I was surrounded by the competence and good company of some precious friends and left alone to my own thoughts.
It turned out that God was real and so were a few friends. In the pure cold air of backwoods Alaska I was first able to start to make sense of the many words I had read over the years. Everybody, it seems, has an idea of what spirituality is but no one has been really able to nail it down. That's because you can't. It is not supposed to happen.
And if you don't believe in God, how can you believe in nature? I was sitting on my snow machine looking out over a wilderness so pure that these thoughts actually popped into my head. God and nature. But the demands of the trail interrupted all of that. We had twenty more miles to go and were on a timetable. So I touched the starter, my iron dog growled into life and I set off towards those blue and white mountains. We were going to slice our way through this beautiful vision until we came upon that place where my airplane lay buried beneath it. Along the way I intended to let my mind wander. I was determined to make some sense out of the roadblocks that prevented pure reason from wedding with spirituality.
As always, a good place to start was with a book that had stirred something in me. A voice that had spoken from armies of words that had marched before me over the years.
One of the many voices I had read over the years belonged to Howard Bahr. He writes about the Civil war. There is a philosophy that resounds in one of his books, 'The Black Flower'. That philosophy is that every man lives in the exact center of a personal universe bound by laws that apply to him alone. Every person lives in a universe created by manifestations generated by his God. Maybe his God is the Universal God of Christianity, maybe not. Regardless, His universe is as unique as an individual snowflake. There are as many universes as souls that inhabit the earth, or at least that is how it feels. Each soul is beholding to the tenets that form the truths of his particular universe. But everybody is caught up in the maelstrom of daily life.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Black Witch by Steve Scott. Copyright © 2014 Steve Scott. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse LLC.
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