<br><br><center> *Anyone who conjures the evil of half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can't expect to come through the struggle unscathed.*
―Sigmund Freud</center>
<br><br><center>
*One Continuous Loop*</center>
<br><br>I was soul tired.
I've been physically, mentally and emotionally drained, but never experienced spiritual exhaustion. I could put it down to the long drive up from the city, worry about neighbours encroaching or the realization of Tom's death slowly sinking in, but it was all and none of these.
I was tired in my soul.
I didn't need a physical vacation, more a spiritual retreat―a reprieve from being me.
<br><br>Angelica called it spiritual warfare―I wasn't even sure what that meant, but when I went to bed, I didn't sleep―I was oppressed, obsessed, perhaps even possessed by this dragon pursuing me.
If it was warfare, I had no weapon other than fleeing in my sleep, waking up with legs aching and sometimes even screaming.
Yeah, Angelica hadn't heard that yet. She was in for a treat.
<br><br>It was past 3 am and I hadn't slept. It also hadn't rained.
*Will wonders never cease?* It's rained every night since the solar flares began. Could I be missing the sound of storms?
It seemed implausible as the glare of moon in my eyes, but what's possible and what's probable is moot, when I'm unsure of basic truths I used to take for granted.
<br><br> I get up and make a tea and sit out on the deck listening to the wind in the trees. It's a comforting sound, much like rain. Who knows? Perhaps it will lull me to sleep.
Earlier, I did sleep a bit and dream, but it wasn't a night terror this time―it was something far more personal and intimate and I'm blushing as I think of it.
There are so many bends and turns inside of us we're all opaque even to ourselves.
It's like twisting a strip of paper into a Moebius strip and tracing with your finger the riddle of the planes and realizing there's no duality but only one continuous loop.
<br><br> "Couldn't sleep?"
I gaze up into Angelica's beautiful face radiant in moonlight. It reminds me of another place and time on a phosphorescent sea.
"Sleep is elusive. Seems to be a pattern with me," I chuckle. "Come sit down―I made tea."
"Tea is soothing," she whispers, "helps when you can't sleep. But something else is bothering you, isn't it?"
"Yeah, I suppose this whole business about the spiritual aspect of the emergency and seeing supernatural significance in the events."
<br><br>She curls her legs under her and sits in lotus posture, hands cradling her tea.
"You struggle with the spiritual part of you―why is that?"
"I guess because I don't see a duality of physical and spiritual."
She smiles. "And yet you're torn between Brooke and me."
I couldn't have put it better―they're as opposite as yin and yang.
<br><br>Angelica looks at me softly. "I'm not jealous of Brooke, you know."
"I didn't say you were. The problem is with me."
She chooses to ignore my remark. "What were you dreaming about tonight?"
"I'm too embarrassed to say."
"We were together again in moonlight by the sea."
My jaw drops. "How did you know that?"
She arches a brow as if to say, *Obviously, I'm clairvoyant.*
<br><br>I sit back in stunned silence gazing at her lovely face made even more mysterious by watery shadows the moonlight casts streaming through leaves of the trees.
"You see, I can be with you anytime, Zach―there's no distance in the spirit."
'I can't believe this is happening," I sputter, "those are the very words my mentor, Father Breton, said to me when I visited him at the university."
"Maybe the universe is trying to tell you something―that life is not either-or, but both. As *my* mentor once said, 'We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a physical experience.' It's like a Moebius strip―no top or bottom just one continuous loop."
She got up, kissed me lightly and then softly in bare feet padded off to bed.
But she had no idea the conflagration she ignited in me...
Or perhaps she did.
<br><br> <center>To be continued…</center>
<br><center>© 2021, John J Geddes. All rights reserved</center>
<br><center>[Photo](https://images.app.goo.gl/mKsrizQPbfgdW4f2A)</center>
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