Illusions (9 page)
Authors: Richard Bach
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Modern fiction, #General & Literary Fiction
He sighed again and turned back to the sky. " I'll try. Now, which one?"
I looked, and the cloud, the monster with its million tons of rain, was gone; just an ungainly blue-sky hole where it had been.
"Yike," I said quietly.
"A job worth doing . . ." he quoted. "No, much as I would like to accept the praise which you heap upon me, I must in all honesty tell you this: it's easy."
He pointed to a little puff of a cloud overhead. "There. Your turn. Ready? Go."
I looked at the wisp of a thing, and it looked back at me. I thought it gone, thought an empty place where it was, poured visions of heat-rays up at it, asked it to reappear somewhere else, and slowly, slowly, in one minute, in five, in seven, the cloud at last was gone. Other clouds got bigger, mine went away.
"You're not very fast, are you:" he said.
"That was my first time! I'm just beginning! Up against the impossible . . . well, the improbable, and all you can think to say is I'm not very fast. That was brilliant and you know it!"
"Amazing. You were so attached to it, and still it disappeared for you."
"Attached! I was whocking that cloud with everything I had! Fireballs, laser beams, vacuum cleaner a block high. . ."
"Negative attachments, Richard. If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That's all there it to it. "
A cloud does not know
why it moves in just such a
direction and at such
a speed,
was what the handbook had to say.
It feels an impulsion. . . this is
the place to go now. But the sky knows the reasons and the patterns
behind all clouds,
and you will know, too, when
you lift yourself high enough
to see beyond
horizons.
11
You are
never given a wish
without also being given the
power to make it true.
You may
have to work for it,
however
We had landed in a huge grazing place next to a three acre horse-pond, away from towns, somewhere along the line between
"Listen, he said. "Don't listen. Just stay there quiet and watch. What you are going to see is not a miracle. read your atomic-physics book. ..a child can walk on water."
He told me this, and as though he didn't notice the water was even there, he turned and walked out some yards from shore, on the surface of the horse-pond. What it looked like, was that the pond was a hot-summer mirage over a lake of stone. He stood firm on the surface, not a wave or ripple splashed over his flying boots.
"Here," he said. "Come do it."
I saw it with my eyes. It was possible, obviously, because there he stood, so I walked out to join him. It felt like walking on clear blue linoleum, and I laughed.
"Donald, what are you doing to me?"
"I am merely showing you what everybody learns, sooner or later," he said, "and you're handy now."
"But I'm . . ."
"Look. The water can be solid," he stamped his foot and the sound was leather on rock, "or not."
He stamped again and water splashed over us both. "Got the feel of that? Try it."
How quickly we get used to miracles! In less than a minute I began to think that walking on water is possible, is natural, is . . . well, so what?
"But if the water is solid now, how can we drink it?"
"Same way we walk on it, Richard. It isn't solid, and it isn't liquid. You and I decide what it's going to be for us. If you want water to be liquid, think it liquid, act as if it's liquid, drink it. If you want it to be air, act as if it's air, breathe it. Try."
Maybe it's something about the presence of an advanced soul, I thought. Maybe these things are allowed to happen in a certain radius, fifty feet in a circle around them . . .
I knelt on the surface and dipped my hand into the pond. Liquid. Then I lay down and put my face into the blue of it and breathed, trusting. It breathed like warm liquid oxygen, no choking or gasping. I sat up and looked a question at him, expecting him to know what was in my mind.
"Speak," he said.
"Why do I have to speak?"
"For what you have to say, it's more precise to talk in words. Speak."
"If we can walk on water, and breathe it and drink it, why can't we do the same to land?"
"Yes. Good. You will notice . . . "
He walked to the shore easily as walking a painted lake. But when his feet touched the ground, the sand and grass at the edge, he began to sink, until with a few slow steps he was up to his shoulders in earth and grass. It was as though the pond had suddenly become an island, and the land about had turned to sea. He swam for a moment in the pasture, splashing it about him in dark loam drops, then floated on top of it, then rose and walked on it. It was suddenly miraculous to see a man walking on the ground!
I stood on the pond and applauded his performance. He bowed, and applauded mine.
I walked to the edge of the pond, thought the earth to liquid and touched it with my toe. Ripples spread into the grass in rings. How deep is the ground ? I nearly asked aloud. The ground will be as deep as I think it will be. Two feet deep, I thought, it will be two feet deep, and I'll wade.
I stepped confidently into the shore and sank over my head, an instant drop off. It was black underground, scary, and I fought to the surface, holding my breath, flailing out for some solid water, for the edge of the pond to hold on to.
He sat on the grass and laughed.
"You are a remarkable student, do you know that?"
"I ain't no student at all! Get me out of here!"
"Get yourself out."
I stopped struggling. I see it. solid and I can climb right out. I see it solid...and I climbed out, caked and crusted in black dirt.
"Man you really get dirty doing this!"
His own blue shirt and jeans were without spot or mote of dust.
"Aaaa!" I shook the dirt out of my
hair, flapped it out of my ears. Finally I put my wallet on the grass, walked into the liquid water and cleaned myself the traditional wet way.
"I know there's a better way to get clean than this. "
"There's a faster way, yes."
"Don't tell me, of course. Just sit there and laugh and let me figure it all out for myself."
"OK "
I finally had to walk squishing back to the Fleet and change clothes, hanging the wet stuff on the flying wires to dry.
"Richard, don't forget what you did today. It is easy to forget our times of knowing, to think they've been dreams or old miracles, one time. Nothing good is a miracle, nothing lovely is a dream. "
"The world is a dream, you say, and it's lovely, sometimes. Sunset. Clouds. Sky."
"No. The image is a dream. The beauty is real. Can you see the difference ?"
I nodded, almost understanding. Later I sneaked a look in the handbook.
The world
is your exercise-book, the pages
on which you do your sums.
It is not reality,
although you can express reality
there if you wish.
You are also
free to write nonsense,
or lies, or to tear
the pages.
12
The original sin is to
limit the Is.
Don't.
It was an easy warm afternoon between rain-showers, sidewalks wet on our way out of town.
"You can walk through walls, can't you, Don ?"
"No "
"When you say no to something I know is yes, that means you don't like the way I said the question."
"We certainly are observant, aren't we ?" he said.
"Is the problem with walk or with walls ?"
"Yes, and worse. Your question presumes that I exist in one limited place-time and move to another place-time. Today I'm not in the mood to accept your presumptions about me. "
I frowned. He knew what I was asking. Why didn't he just answer me straight and let me get on to finding out how he does these things ?
"That's my little way of helping you be precise in your thinking," he said mildly.
"OK. You can make it appear that you can walk through walls, if you want. Is that a better question?"
"Yes. Better. But if you want to be precise..."