Sunday, March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day is the day it starts.   Right there—on the Seattle beach with the scent of spring in the air.   Since the afternoon is pleasant, the sun shining, Kewe slips into his car, drives out to the waterfront.   He strolls along the breakwater, listens through earphones to a small radio attached to his waist pouch.   A sultry guitar piece is being played.

From his vantage point he can see far out towards the west.   Layers of snow on the Olympic Mountains.   The lower forests thick with hemlock and Douglas fir.

To the north, on a relatively thin strip of land, dominate the skyscrapers.   Squeezed between a large freshwater lake to the east, and a larger saltwater inlet on the west, “Tzee-tzee-lai-itc,” had been the name for the hilly area before, and at the time of Chief Seatchhh`l.

When new people began arriving, Chief Seattle, knowing he could not stop the invasion, negotiated.   The settlers drew up treaties, and then ignored the treaties.   They did rename the newly built township after the Chief.

In the past century, with the influx of many peoples, a center of concrete and glass has risen.   Long gone are the forests that once covered the thin strip of land.   The city now teems of varied folk—and the ghosts who live here, live side by side with the corporal bodies in Tzee-tzee-lai-itc.   “The little place where one crosses over.”

Walking along the beach, Kewe is enjoying the music, until the radio buzzes.   He thinks at first it’s static from the station, but he can hear a man’s voice.   The man talking to someone is saying he’s been outside the body.   “I kept thinking I should be inside my body,” the man says.   “I was bouncing against the ceiling.   I thought it was the beginning of the dying process.   I was terrified, feeling for sure this was going to be the end for me.”

Kewe tries to return to the music station only the waist pouch hampers his access, he can’t quite reach the buttons with his fingers.   “I think it’s a terrible thing to fear death.”   The man has a gravelly voice.   “When I was on the ceiling, the fear became all too real.”

About to punch the button to change the station, Kewe stops.   He’s always been interested in out-of-body traveling.   From when he’d first read it was possible, that people could do it, he’d wanted to try.

Listening to the man talking, Kewe thinks about the humming and buzzing he hears in his head.   A high-pitched whine will block his ears, it’s as if he’s going up a mountain, or descending on a plane.   The sound will be in his head for a minute or less, and there never seems to be a reason for it.   If he’s lying in bed when the roar begins, he will concentrate, try to make it last longer.   If the humming or the buzzing increases, he moves through the sound.   It seems to take him ever so slightly away from his body.

“I’ve seen the sense of bewilderment and shock that some people have after physical death,” the man continues.   “Often people do not know they have died.   They have this other body.   It looks like the human body and it confuses them.   People need to know this.”

“Do you think it is possible to travel to other planetary systems while you are in a second body,” the radio interviewer asks.   “Yes, I believe we can be hundreds, or millions of light year’s distant,” Kewe hears the man say.   “There are no signs that point the way.   You have no idea where you are.”

“Sir, it sure is a pleasure to have you on the show,” the interviewer responds enthusiastically.   Then as a pre-announcement to a break, “If you call....”   The interviewer’s voice blares into Kewe’s ears.   “Call, and you will get the information you need.   Get a pen ready, now.”

Kewe searches his pockets to find a pen.   He has no paper, but to be certain he remembers he writes the number onto his palm.   Finding a scrap of paper on the beach, he scribbles the number on that.

The commercials over the man returns talks about a retreat center and tapes for purchase that have sound pulses.   Kewe has cassettes that induce hypnosis but his gut is telling him this might work better.   The sounds he hears he knows are not from an external source, even though his brain records the hearing.   He wonders if sound can activate a second body.

Another break and Kewe pulls the plugs from his ears.   He’s been doing mind travel for years, but complete separation he’s never been able to do.   He’d love to find himself bouncing around the ceiling.   This man could do it.   He sensed that.   In the strangest way, he knew that.

He stops to watch a large ferryboat plow across the waves.   Watching the vessel pass by, he can see a seal troop bopping in the water near the ferry.   At the stern rolling across the bowline white surf foams, some of the seals have moved into the surf, peeking their snouts above the white.

The program continues with more talk of dimensions—states where time is different, or is no longer measured.   He hears of places were we rest and become orientated after death, way stations where people gather.

“I have a faxed question,” the interviewer says.   “In your travels, have you ever met anyone who is not human?”

“Yes, I have,” the man replies.   “I’d say we are a species on a spectrum.   A range of qualities continues when we are no longer in a physical form.   Much of life exists only in light, and much exists only in thought.   There is existence we cannot hope to understand that is beyond thought.”   “Sir,” the interviewer’s voice quiets.   “As we near the end of our show, I have to ask.   Do you think your experiences have led you to a better understanding of a supreme creator, of a God-like super being?”

The man pauses for a moment as if to try to phrase the answer in a form that might be acceptable.   “I have begun to understand that Earth’s life system is a created process,” he responds carefully.   “I have never faced God, but energy fields flow from a higher state.   These fields allow creation.   They allow even the human mind to act as a creator.”

“Many people fear death.”   Kewe can imagine the interviewer going through sheets of fax papers being given him.   “Would you tell people out there not to be afraid?   Would you say that death is not the end?”

“What I will say,” the man replies, “is that I have begun to understand there is a quality to who we are that we do not realize.   We are a growing new personality.   We are at the beginning.   Being human is only one state.   After death, if we choose we can begin to explore all the many states that are beyond, beyond being human.   When we no longer have a physical body, when we have this other body, we can be amazingly versatile.”

He adds, “I have seen openings where beings wait to go into an inner reality.   It is like an aperture.   To slip through into this advanced inner state we have to be in some way complete.   I’d say therefore, that activity in the physical life has much to do with our life beyond.   The remarkable thing is, once we know dying is not the end then everything becomes possible.

Chances for progress exist in all the realms for us to take, many we do not take due to fear.   When we open ourselves to the idea we are on a path that continues, this brings a whole new meaning to our life spent here.”

When Kewe gets home, he writes the telephone number he jotted down onto a notepad by the phone.   He adds a note: “Out of Body— call soon.”   But he doesn’t call.   “Yeah, I will,” he mutters each time he looks at the note.   “Yeah, I have to do that.”

Days later he wakes from a dream.   Stumbling towards the bathroom, he can see little fish swimming around his head.   Once he notices the fish aren’t fish, and he’s looking at floating letters that seem to be chirping, he tries to decipher the letters.   He swears he reads: “o-u-t-o-f-b-o-d-y-c-a-l-l-s-o-o-n.”   He calls the retreat center.

. . .

The lady on the East Coast phone is perky.   Kewe on West Coast time is still mostly asleep, but she’s concise: “Sound pulses recorded on the tapes do enhance the ability to move outside the body.”

He presses one of the pictures, a photo-image of him when he is very small.   Computer script comes rolling down and a door opens.   He must be only two.   He’s laughing, running around and he knows he is making his mother laugh.   The little child looks back at his mother to see if she really is watching him.   She is laughing.

The movie clip ends.   New script comes rolling down the screen.   Immediately he recognizes the ship he took with three of his friends.   He was a teenager, on a trip to South Africa.   The screen goes blank, and waves of electric energy surge through him.   Most people have no idea how to open these buttons he thinks.

New icons start to appear.   One in particular sends a chill up his spine.   He presses the button and here on the screen is a stack of modern buildings.   Wind is blowing.   Sand is tearing into people who are wandering around scavenging for food.   Everyone’s face is heavily covered with cloth.

The screen is flashing and he sees himself in some sort of box.   Wood surrounds him.   He watches himself pressing, trying to push himself into the wood.   He’s telling himself there’s a problem because he cannot pass beyond the wood.   He can touch the wood but he cannot go through it.

Kewe moves fretfully in the airline seat.   He lurches and wakes, listens to the drone of the engines.   Looking at his watch, he’ll be arriving soon.

. . .

“We have eighteen people signed for the week’s retreat,” Eric says, opening the closet.   “That’s eighteen including Charl and me.”   “Charl?”

“The other facilitator.   Charl and I don’t live here.   We fly in like you do.”   Eric looks around.   “Everything seems to be in order.”   He opens the closet door.   “Let either of us know if there’s anything we can do.”

“I will,” Kewe smiles.   He stands looking at two cubicles, at enclosed beds just like ship’s berths.

Opening another door on the far side of the room, Eric is pointing down a long corridor.   “The bathrooms are this way.”

Kewe follows him, peers down the empty corridor.

Finished with showing him around, Eric is now standing by another set of stairs.   “Please come and join us below when you are ready.   This stairway is an entrance into the lounge.   We have drinks and refreshments waiting.”

“Thank you.”    Kewe watches the briskly disappearing Eric.   “I will.”

With the doors of his room closed, Kewe looks around him.   One half has enough space for a table, two chairs, a closet and a chest of drawers.   The other half has the two, built-in sleeping cubicles.

The sleeping enclosures have wood paneled walls on three sides.   The paneling on the open sides extends from the ceiling a couple of feet, maybe a couple of feet wide all the way to the floor on the head-side of the beds.   The open areas, where you get inside, have colorful, cotton curtains folded back, attached with cords, ready to be let down for privacy.

They do look like ship berths, Kewe thinks, except not the four-berth bunks, two beds on each side of the cabin, as he shared on the voyage to South Africa.   For a brief moment, he remembers the dream on the plane.

As Kewe peeks inside a cubicle, he sees placed upon the pillow a headphone with its wiring neatly tied.   Attached to the inside side paneling is a board with an assortment of electronic switches.   There’s a headset plug and a small inset speaker.   It looks to him as if the sound tapes are relayed to these individual units through an electronic central feed.

Moving closer to check out the switches, Kewe feels a faint breeze wafting through, gently cooling his skin.   Fresh air is filling the cubicle.

It’s country air, but there is more here.   There is energy here.   The atmosphere is charged inside the cubicle.   As he steps back and begins unpacking, excitement creeps over him.   An energy field touched him inside that cubicle.   There was a charge.   An oddness passed through him like something, something he’s felt in the past if he can only remember.

Before going downstairs he needs to clean up, take a shower.   Towel in hand he opens the door to the corridor, he can hear voices coming from below.   Peeking over the top of the banister, seeing the stairs that lead into a downstairs lounge, suddenly the realization hits him that he’s going to have to talk and meet with these people.   Kewe never a social animal is beginning to connect that the retreat is not just for him, it means being with numerous strangers for a week.   Did he really set this up for himself?

He picks a bathroom.   Finished with the shower he hangs his clothes.   After filling drawers, unpacking everything, there’s nothing remaining to do and he’s standing waiting at the head of the stairs.   The sound of raucous laughter drifts up from below.   Taking a deep breath he slowly treads down the stairs into the room.   Eric spots him first.   Eric is sitting at a large round table with a bunch of people.   “Hey, welcome to the party,” Eric leans back on his chair.   “Goodies are on the counter over there.”    He points to a table filled with rows of decanters and dishes.

Kewe nods.   The table is on the side of the lounge that, thanks to glass doors and two full-sized picture windows, has a panoramic view.   A veranda runs the length of the building, and the view beyond fills the room with trees and fields and mountains.

“We’ve been praising the water,” Eric calls over to him.   “We have our own supply from the well.   The taste is great but we’re not sure if we’ve decided what it gives you.”    He lets out a long belly laugh.   Kewe smiles, not knowing what to say.   Fortunately, the veranda door opens and a woman enters.   She takes one look at Eric and at Kewe’s bemused face, and almost as if she’d been listening, says, “Eric will tell you anything.   Don’t listen to him.”

Eric straightens in his chair.   “Oh, hello,” he responds, staring at the woman in surprise.   “I didn’t expect you see you here today.”

Before coming out onto the veranda he’d stared at the portrait for the longest time.   The portrait kept staring back.   It was a memory only the memory seemed to be from some other part of him, some other reality not accessible.   It was as if he didn’t have the information this other part knew.   “Beautiful evening.”    Eric, unnoticed, has walked up to him on the veranda.   “I love the mountains how they reach across to you, especially at sunset.   Don’t you think?”

Kewe gazing up at the high ridges, and the odd, wispy cloud formations that rise over them, searches for an answer.   “They do seem to be included in all this,” he says.   The undisguised yet beclouded mystery they had, did seem to become a component of the place.

“Eric, I know you’re going to think me stupid, but I came here because I thought I would meet the man I’d heard on the radio program.   I had no idea until today that it was a repeat.   It’s especially confusing because I know his face.   Don’t ask me where or when, but I’ve met him.”

Eric seems to be examining a particular rise near the woodlands.   “He was like a dad to me, in many ways.”    Still scrutinizing the mountains, he smiles.   “I’ve always thought myself fortunate, meeting him the way I did.   ”He continues to stare at a sweep of space just above the open fields.

. . .

Not everyone listed for the retreat had arrived in the afternoon, and so during a ‘getting to know you’ dinner there are more introductions.   Eric goes around the room announcing people’s names, doing it with a host of jokes.   With his quips he manages to turn the perhaps unduly formal atmosphere into a riotous social occasion.   His great one-liners coming one on top of the other people couldn’t help laughing.   Everyone relaxes.

After dinner, Kewe exhausted with the traveling returns to his room.   He expected to be asleep by now but all he’s been doing is toss and turn.   His watch is telling him it’s two in the morning and he’s still awake.   He hears people climbing the stairs, hears doors open and close.   He waits, counts the minutes.   All falls silent again.

They must be the last from downstairs, he thinks.   They must be people like me, still on West Coast time.   Perhaps he shouldn’t be that sleepy.   People came from all over the country to be here.   They came from Europe, from Mexico.   He had talked to people at his table and, listening to them, they all seemed eager for the sessions in the morning to begin.

Most volunteered they were here on a special, personal mission.   It was as if they thought of themselves as explorers, and they had come here on a search.   A search for themselves—and for everything else they might find out there in the universe.

Kewe thrashes back and forth, unable to sleep.

He thinks again about the portrait on the chair, the sense of memories that he cannot remember, it was so peculiar.   It felt as if his brain wasn’t connecting to the memories.   Only his feelings were.

Energy is flowing over his body.   He hadn’t noticed at first, but now he does.   He can feel the surge as he lies there.   It’s the same energy he’d felt poking his head into the cubicle this afternoon.

If he had to make a picture in his mind, he would see little light streams swirling around him.   He swears it feels as if he is being charged.   He lies in this strange cocoon for hours.   Then music begins.   Softly, from the speaker at the side of his bed, a melody begins to play.   He listens, lies there while the music gradually gets louder.   It is already morning.   It’s the wake up music.   He has to get up.

Stumbling out the door, he heads towards one of the showers.   After dressing in his day clothes, at the coffee stand in the lounge he asks a couple if they slept well.   They answer they had a good night.   Everyone looks rested.   Walking across to the photograph propped on the chair, Kewe reviews again the smiling face.   Someone approaches him, tries to make a brief conversation.   Half asleep, Kewe answers in monosyllables.   The bell rings and he strolls with the rest along the veranda to the breakfast room.

After the meal, for the first session they are shown into a thickly carpeted sunken room off the lounge.   People prop themselves on padded cushions, some against small foam chairs.   Eric and Charl give guidelines on the best way to listen to the tapes.

They say the idea is to mind wander, to do free-style imaging.   Kewe figures he won’t do much imaging.   When the tapes begin he’ll surely fall asleep.   He’s exhausted from having no sleep.

The retreat guests settle in their rooms.   Kewe lies back in his cubicle, listens through the headphones as the tape begins.   The strange force is there again.   Energy is definitely present and now it seems more like a charging wind.   The wind seems to be concentrating just in the cubicle space because when the tape ends, and he gets up, the charging wind doesn’t follow.   Before returning to the sunken lounge, in one of the bathrooms he splashes water on his face, to try to release some of the pent-up energy.

There’s a discussion about inner experiences people have seen or felt or heard during the tape.   No one talks about a charging wind.   Kewe thinks he’ll wait, say nothing.

They listen to another tape before lunch.   Then there’s a break to mid-afternoon.   Kewe uses the time to take a walk across the fields.   After dinner, the group meet at an auditorium next to the retreat lodge.   Here they listen to a guest speaker.   Questions follow.   When the group return to the main lodge, Eric and Charl bring out the popcorn machine.

Kewe lies on a couch at the far end of the lounge, on a corner section of sofas.   He is so tired, only he cannot sleep.   He listens to the others talking as if in a dream.   He hears somebody say, “We receive and send messages via the brain.   It’s about being connected on the same channel, like a radio channel.”

At the evening meeting, the speaker had been talking about the ability to send thoughts across long distances.   Kewe, half asleep, hears the words, “Our thoughts merge with others.”

“Sending messages, or receiving messages,” the voice is saying, “can be learnt.   If we’re seeking answers, often our thoughts are merging with some other being’s thoughts.   We hear the thoughts, and most times we think the thoughts are ours, that we’ve suddenly become inspired.   That’s because the brain interprets the thoughts as ours.   All it means is that for a moment we’re on the same channel as some other being who has the answer.”

Kewe, back in his room, is no longer half-asleep.   It’s late, it’s been hours since he came to bed and he’s wide-awake.   He keeps thinking about falling asleep but never does.

The energy is here.   Pulses keep sweeping over him.   The energy seems much stronger, much more powerful.   He’s in some strange windstorm where the wind spreads around him, so much that he cannot tell any longer that he’s in the bed.   He’s flying and the wind force increasing in velocity is charging him, changing him, transforming him in some way.

Turning and twisting, he has to get up.   There’s too much energy, too much buzzing.

Kewe heads down to the lounge, grateful that a lamp remains lighted on one of the tables.   The room without any people looks so still.   He glances at the portrait on the chair.   The man smiles.   Why the picture is on a chair and not on a wall, he hasn’t a clue, but the more he stares at the portrait the more he knows the man is staring at him.

He opens the veranda door, walks into the fields.   The further he walks the darker it gets.   When he can’t see where he’s placing his feet, he decides not to continue.   He returns to the path that takes him around the lodge.

In the parking lot his car is waiting.   Not having the keys, not really wanting to drive, he walks past the car, treks down the narrow, curving lane where he drove a couple of days ago.   In the middle of the night, with the hedgerows looming, all kinds of shadows seem to emerge.   Kewe keeps moving.

Full of energy, at the marker pointing back to the lodge he continues onto the farm road.   Dawn light is beginning to break and a cock crows from a nearby house.   In the first light of morning, he hikes all the way to the main highway before he turns back.

On the return journey there’s increasingly a sense of him doing this before.   It feels like some strange no-time where he has been here but not he, himself—a sort of déjà vu, but where he’s meeting himself for the first time.   As if these thoughts floating across his mind are not of him, walking as he’s doing along the road, but another him, an unknown version of him who’s visiting somehow, and he had been in a dream.

Back at the lodge people are milling around the coffee table.   Kewe pouring himself a cup asks if anyone else has experienced energy before sleeping last night.   He gets only puzzled shakes of the head in reply.

Out onto the veranda he takes the coffee mug, stands looking up at the distant hills as the morning sun covers them.   George, an elderly man whom he’s spoken with a few times, walks up to him.   “Your name is the same as ‘Q’ in Star Trek,” George says cheerfully, too cheerfully for early morning.   “I can’t remember hearing of anyone else addressed that way before.”

“It’s unusual,” Kewe replies briefly.   “I do get a lot of comments.”   Then with the caffeine waking him up, tells George it’s not spelt the same way.

He remembers the man mentioning to him previously about his work as a child psychiatrist.   Kewe asks about the job, about the challenges faced working with children.   The man tells him he’s been playing sound pulses recorded on tape to the more disturbed children.   There was a change of behavior.   It did seem to benefit them.   The sounds seemed to pacify as well as energize the children.

Kewe grills him with questions about that, and this keeps them both busy until the bell rings, until they go together to breakfast.

During the midday break a few people take off for a swim.   There’s a lake a mile or so through the fields and Kewe would go except he’s thinking a drive might be better.   He hasn’t used the car since he came and this would be a great opportunity.

Minutes into the drive, passing one small hamlet then another, he knows he did the right thing.   Somehow just getting into the car seems to be releasing a little of the pent-up energy.

At a bridge, the start of what looks to be a moderately sized city, he drives across then turns into some side streets.   Not knowing where he’s going, a sign for a museum is ahead.   He parks, gets out, sees a building that looks just like an old southern courthouse.   A woman in her forties is standing waiting inside the entrance, which surprises him because for some reason he didn’t think the place would be open.   She greets him, hands him a brochure.

“Welcome to our courthouse museum,” she remarks smiling broadly.

Kewe looks somewhat bewildered and the lady, the only person who seems to be in the building, offers to show him around.   Kewe thanks her and she begins to guide him through the various displays.   She talks about the Quakers who settled, about the Civil War.   Showing him displays of the battle flags, the uniforms, the medical supplies dispensed in the war, there is always an interesting story.

By a photograph of a group of young soldiers, he’s told, “Local boys who fought in the war.   The people around here still refer to the war as the ‘War of Northern Aggression.’”

Kewe has not really been noticing, but each time he’s passed one of the larger artifacts, those not protected by glass, instinctively he has placed his finger or his palm over the object.   Lightly touching the ceramic pot or the metal piece, a ton of energy seems to have been drawn away from him, into the objects he’s been touching.

He begins to feel clear-headed, as though all the pent-up energy he’s been absorbing the past few days—the energy that has been making him crazy—has gone, has been drained.   The strange force somehow has been released into these artifacts.

When they return to the main room, a room with a domed ceiling, the woman points up at the metal staircasing.   “That’s where people would stand when they watched their loved ones being sentenced.”   Kewe, scanning the gallery, can only imagine all the life dramas that must have taken place here.

It’s the end of the tour and they walk towards the door.   Kewe comments that he’s really enjoyed the visit.   “I’m at a seminar and I’m sort of playing hooky,” he says, “but this adventure has been a charm.   Your stories have made the people come alive.   Thank you so much.”

The lady smiles graciously.   “I’m an afternoon volunteer,” she tells him.   “I love coming here, talking to people about the war, about the sacrifice of the men.   These items hold such dear memories.   I don’t want any of the men to be forgotten.   Talking about them always takes me back into their world.”   Back in his car, Kewe feels almost normal.   He’s late for the afternoon session, but after some discussion with Eric about the advisability of driving in an altered state, Eric arranges for him to listen to the tape he missed.

That night in his room the energy cocoon returns.   The ethereal wind is energizing him again.   He tries the other cubicle, to see if it is the one bed, but the wind follows.   He sits upright, crosses his legs and sits yoga style with his back propped against the pillow.   The strange current of air doesn’t abate.   Now in the dancing wind he begins to see strange images.   Colors flood his vision.   Vivid crimsons, deep purples, dark, deep colors saturate all around him.   At times they become sudden intense flashes.

Kewe tries to be calm, relaxed.   He swears the wind is curling, curving around him.   He swears he is hovering.

KNOCK!   KNOCK!

He opens his eyes.   Someone is rapping on the door.   He must have fallen asleep because as he fumbles his way more than half asleep across the room he notices it’s morning.   It’s light.

Charl is standing at the door.   “I just wanted to let you know the Director is ready for the interview you requested with her.   She is waiting for you in the breakfast room.”

Downstairs, walking past the coffee drinkers, he knows he looks a wreck.   In the breakfast room the Director is asking him why he cannot sleep.   He tells her he did, last night for the first time.   He asks if the Center might be on a laid-line, if it is built on an energy vortex.   “Not as far as I know,” she says.   Kewe gathers from her comments that his experience of not sleeping for three nights is not ordinary.

Through the day, listening to the tapes in his cubicle, Kewe expects the wind to return.   It doesn’t.   He retires early after the evening’s presentation.   He still expects the strange current to reverberate around him but, truth be told, he falls asleep almost immediately.

Hours later he wakes.   His arms outstretched in front of him, he knows he’s flying.

He is hovering in some box-like structure.   It is completely dark.   The only light he can see is emanating from his body.   A silvery light is shining from him, from all around his body.

There is wood in front of him.   When he reaches to touch the wood, it feels solid.   He cannot move through the wood.