3

Prologue

One night shortly after my fortieth birthday I dreamed a dream of my birth. On awakening I was so convinced that what I had just witnessed was indeed my birth, that I was compelled to leave the bed and pick up pen and paper to record what I had just seen. The product of this perception that I now report was a bit of writing of surreal lucidity and of an automatic quality. I do not recall having conscious control over what I was writing and was rather surprised at the conclusion of the exercise. I took it to be the permission that I needed, if indeed one needs permission, to record the fictions of my life before I dream a dream of my death.

Bubbles:

A Dream of Birth

***

…the trees are mobile shadows in lunar luminescence.

Animated by shifting breezes, we arrive, Ghosts inhabiting bubbles.
We dance a while, a silent dance,

Take consciousness of the lustre of our Impenetrable fragility and

Float off again, pushed by irresistible Aeolian streams.

Soon we reach the place of our collision. From the flatness of our contiguity,

Other bubbles.

We dance a while, a silent dance,

Gain consciousness of the faded lustre of our

Penetrable fragility, and

Float off again, propelled by our irresistible

Evanescence.

…the trees are mobile shadows in lunar luminescence.

***

Chapter

1

April 2006

Dateline – Almost Heaven:

So this is the Garden of Eden, in dreams it was never so grand

Let’s never leave again Adam and Eve again

Hold my hand

Don Cornell

On a sweet afternoon on southern Vancouver Island in late April when the warm sun helps you forget the dreary winter rains of yesterday, I am convinced that I have emigrated to heaven. From my vista in Ladysmith overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Oyster Harbour, the North Shore mountains of the mainland still snow capped, define the north eastern limits of the horizon and to the south east, Mount Baker’s creamy, white peak suggests that a trip to the Dairy Queen just below our house on the Vancouver Island portion of the Trans Canada Highway may be a desirable after supper walk. C.N.N. may declare otherwise with earnest analyses by experts in terrorism of the latest suicide bombings somewhere out there, but the apple and cherry trees in bloom and the passionate songs of finches in love speak to me of paradise.

From my vantage point at the western edge of the North American continent, I feel fortunate to have landed in a spot where humanity and nature are relatively benign, although the apocalypse, according to some doomsayers is only an earthquake away “The Big One.” I live comfortably enough and with time enough to appreciate the journey that brought me to this place. How did I get here from where I started in a rural region of the Caribbean? The trajectory of my life has been more a result of happy accident than of deliberate planning, unless of course one believes in destiny and divine plans for humanity.

As obvious as it appears, it is worth stating that I was not always who I now am. I had a long apprenticeship before stumbling upon my current and most welcome vocation. I had to undergo several metamorphoses. I had to evolve out of the bewilderment of my birth, the confusion of my childhood, the expectations of my youth and the minor deceptions of adult life to realize my great potential as a grandfather.

I had the great good fortune to be born into a family with a sense of honour, bound by duties and obligations, proud of its past and anxious to be of service to society at large. Not surprisingly, they also suffered from the foibles of their humanity. I consider myself nonetheless, among the most privileged of people to have landed among them in the formative period of my apprenticeship in life.

But I am wasting your time with all this nonsense. A child is waiting to tell to tell his story. I will now recount the story that he relates.

So this is the Kingdom of Heaven

And here on the threshold we stand

Passing the portal now,

We’ll be immortal now

Hold my hand

***