The Peacock 19i0

"So that really is it", say I musing aloud.  "Jesus said the dimensions would come together, and we would begin to notice immediately the change." And who should this be coming in through the coffee shop door but our own creator and author, sort of.  Aaron.  He doesn't appear to notice or heed our presence as he dumps his shoulder bag on a comfy chair by the window and goes to the counter to make his order.  In silence we watch as he stands aside to await his americo.  We are really all too spellbound to say anything to him, or to one another. As he picks up his cup, ceramic for here, and carries it to his table by the window, Carl calls to him "Aaron!"  He pauses, looks around then through us as though to him we are invisible, then proceeds to his seat. "Do you think he's ignoring us?" say I. He doesn't see us", says Kenny.  "Jesus tried to explain it to me as we were about to leave.  "The merging of the dimensions will mean that from now on because Aaron is writing us, that we are going to exist in his imagination only.  He will no longer be popping in on us, uninvited or otherwise...."

1909

"That is amazing news about Jesús", says Erik. "Miraculous", I concur. "Does he have any plans of returning", says Carl.  "I'm going to miss him." "Send him a text", say I, "Ask him." "I don't have his contact. Could you?" "Jesús", I text.  "That is such amazing news.  God is so good."  But we are going to miss you.  Are you coming back to Canada.."  Send. "You know", says Amaris to Kenny.  "Benjamin Butterfield is already taken.  It's the name of a famous tenor." "Do you think he'll sue?" "No more than John Smith", quips Carl. "Here's A reply from Jesús.  "My mother needs me with her right now.  She has bad arthritis and needs help in the home.  But I will let you know.  I miss all of you.  At least Colombia is safe for me to live now." "Now that our dimensions have come together", muses Amaris. I text, "Jesús, why has Colombia become safe?" "It seems to have always been safe.  At least the evil network seems to have never existed." I text, "Are there still other dangers in Colombia?"" "Nothing else has changed.  But I now am safe...."

The Peacock 1918

"Kenny", say I, "Or, I mean, Benjamin..." "Kenny is still my name and you are all welcome to call me Kenny.  But please, do it discreetly." "What are you going to do now that...now that you're back?" "My partner has just bought me out in the florist shop in Duncan, which means that now I can retire.  I do have my condo in Duncan, but it's all paid for, and I am happy to still live there part time, Christopher, that is to say, if you would be happy to receive me back into your father's house." "It is a bit full right now, but in a couple of days there'll be room.  It all depends on what Jesús does." "From whom I have just received a text", says Carl.  He says, "Hi.  I am in Bogotá, and miraculously recovered.  Right now I am walking and talking and texting and eating normal food.  ¨Praise be to Jesus!" "There is room for sure.  Can you come back with us tonight?" Kenny holds forth his backpack and with a grin and a wink says, "Neither Harriet nor Jesus would let me leave without at least my toothbrush and razor.and deodorant too..."

The Peacock 1907

"There were others here with you", says Amaris, smiling while regarding the orphan beverages. "Lawrence is gone, and the others, Stella, and Caspar are still at the refuge..." "And there they are going to remain. They are both, with Sven, in very good hands". "So, what are you guys going to do now that you're out, I mean", says Carl, and now his phone is ringing..."It's Sarah", he says, turning on speakerphone.  "Hello Sarah, where are you guys?" "Carol and I are both in her townhouse and we are about to have tea.  How are you guys?" "We are in the coffee shop, Waves on Broadway.  It's like we never left." "Is it Monday or Tuesday?" "It's still Monday.  We will find that we are all resuming our normal lives and activities as though nothing happened." "Nothing happened indeed!" she snorts. I call over, "We  should all meet together tomorrow at my house.  We could do it in the morning." "Let me check with Carol, but I can certainly be there" "And...Sarah?" says Carl.  "absolutely no one is to hear about where we just were.  No one.  At least until we've all had a chance to debrief together" "Oh, on my honour", she says.... 

The Peacock 1905

"So now what do we do?"  say I. "I dunno", says Carl, "Go home and cook supper." "We really, really were with Jesus", say I still gobsmacked,  "In that great palatial mansion...on that island." "I am no longer an atheist", says Erik. "That should give you a clue", says Carl. "How did you guys leave?" "We already knew that Tron had taken you out for a walk.  Then Jesus said we were going to catch up with you, so he took us out then whoops, suddenly we were back in here, the minute we stepped out the door." "This is just so crazy.  I'm phoning Francois." "Not at all a bad idea." "Where are you right now?" Francois replies, "Seated on the couch of your father's living room, and every bit as freaked out as you.  Are Carl and Erik with you?" "We're back in, or maybe I should say, we're still in, the cafe." "What about Carl?" "He is here with me and Erik.  Did the others make it back okay?" "George and Jeffrey, and Jason and Lazarus are right here with me, and totally dazed and confused." "You do remember where we were, Francois?" "That is something that I don't think any of us are going to ever forget." And now Kenny is coming in through the door, followed by Amaris, or she might be Amaris..

The Peacock 1904

This water is so cold, so pure, so delicious, unlike any water that has ever crossed my lips, and now, suddenly I am back in the cafe, nowhere near the Refuge, nowhere near Jesus.  Here is Carl, and only Carl in the comfy chair opposite.  And Erik seated on my left. They have been conversing.  No Stella.  No Sven.  No Caspar. "Where are the others", I ask. "We all returned here alone", says Carl. "Just now?" "We were both here five minutes ahead of you", says Erik. "Then it wasn't...? "One of your hallucinations?" says Carl. smiling.  "No.  Unless it was a collective delusion", and now he is snickering. "We were all with Jesus in that big mansion?" "Along with his very aged parents:" "Where are the others?" "Like us.  They are all back from where they were taken." "Except..." "Stella, Sven and Caspar", says Erik. "What time is it?" "Almost four", says Carl. "What day is it?" "Still Monday", says Erik, and now I can see they are both deadpanning as much as I am.  How else are we going to cope right now? "But, we did spend the night, didn't we?  But wait.  Not one single minute has passed since...since we were taken yesterday...but wait it's still today, isn't it.  Where is Lawrence?" "He was just leaving when  Jesus appeared", says Erik.  Now he's gone on with his day..."

The Peacock 1902

It is still dark.  There are no clocks here and I do not know what time it is. I am feeling rested, and here I am waking up in a strange room  And now the flood of memories from yesterday, all the strange bizarre and lurid confessions and revelations and Jesus appearing in his eternally youthful form in the coffee shop only to transport us...here....this place called the Refuge.  A quick shower is all I need and now that I am dried and dressed there is a soft knock on the door. It is Tron. "Perhaps", he says, "We could greet the dawn while walking in the gardens together." I don't see why not, but instead of saying anything, I slip on my shoes and off we go. The dawn bird chorus has already begun, and together we are crossing a huge expansive lawn.  I can only imagine the work involved in maintaining a place of such dimension and beauty.  I can just see the beautifully molded features of Tron's face as we walk silently together, past a bed of irises, much like where Carl and Melissa live, then under a bower of soft purple wisteria in full and glorious bloom.  I am feeling cold and Tron hands me without either of us asking the dark grey pullover sweater he has been carrying under his arm. "Thank you. Tron.  This is a beautiful sweater." "Take it with you." "Thank you  Thank you very much..."

The Peacock 1901

Tron has just shown me to my room.  He is one of the immortals here.  That is what he told me as he was guiding me up the stairs.  For a while he lingered with me in the armchair in the corner while I lie on the bed, propped up on cushions.    We donn't speak, but I do feel both energized and rested by his presence.  As he gets up to leave, he says, "You must remember, Christopher, that I have been called to your welfare and safekeeping.  No matter where you go, you will never be far from me."  And now before I can even say good night...

The Peacock 1900

"Benjamin?" say I to Kenny. This is all beginning to come together. "Benjamin Butterfield at your service, Christopher", says Kenny. "Facebook group?" "You were grieving the loss of your father, Jim, just when my mother passed away from breast cancer." "You were so kind to me." "As you were with me, Chris", he says bashfully. "As you were with me." We can only sit quietly right now, dumbfounded, trying lamely not to stare at each other. What I never knew. "Lord", says Carl, "There is a ferry service from this island?" "The two dimensions have come together. This island in Aaron's dimension has always been on the map, with limited ferry service and a tiny village on the north end of the island. This place does not exist on their radar, and the forest and bush ascending the mountain remain impenetrable. However, as you are ready to depart tomorrow, you will find yourselves rturned immediately to the place and exact time you found yourselves in when I summonedd you all here." "But weren't you going to keep us here", says Lawrence, "For several days, I mean?" "And those days have already transpired. The merging of dimensions has also tweaked your sense of time and place. But when you return home none of you will have lost one single minute. It will be as if you never left home. But you will still remember that you were here, and you will also remember all that I taught you.."

The Peacock 1899

Aaron says, "Stella mentioned today that our two dimensions are about to merge." "And this has already happened", says Jesus.  "When you all leave from here you are going to notice immediately that something has changed. recovered. "Does this mean we also can stay here", wonders Lazarus. "The records of mental illness and hospitalization have been completely erased.  You will always be hee with me, and I will always be with yuou where I am sending you." "Jesus", says Kenny.  "We were just talking about leaving here tomorrow, Amaris, Christopher, Carl and Francois." "You are leaving tomorrow.  Kenny, you are still recorded as deceased.  You will have to go under your new name, the name by which Christopher has come to know you." "You mean", says Kenny, a wondering smile on his face. "That's right, Benjamin.  But now you are going to have a little bit of explaining to do with Christopher..."

The Peacock 1998

Says Jesus, "The creative imagination is not merely an excuse for inventing fantasies and lies and fiction",  And now Aaron is carefully regarding him.  "It has nothing to do with wish fulfillment.  Neither is it merely a door opening to the unconscious.  Perhaps onto what my servant the famous Swiss psychotherapist coined the Collective Unconscious...but that was merely his early stumbling at grasping and identifying a much larger and much more complex reality than what is commonly understood among human beings.  Aaron, you do touch upon the truth when you mention different dimensions.  Remember, I have many sheepfolds.  How could they all possibly be contained in and confined to this tiny but exquisite jewel of a planet that I breathed, sung and birthed into being in order to be populated by such as yourselves?" "Lord", says Aaron, "Do you mean to tell us that there is life on other planets, other galaxies...Other universes." "There has been so much useless speculation, Aaron, among such things as your kind, and your kind is also my own kind, has speculated, theorized and fantasized.  Like my servant Carl Gustave Jung, a few of you have stumbled across a little bit of insight, but so little to be understood.  Rather like pulling a lit candle from a birthday cake and expecting it to light your way through a labyrinth.  Only after taking two or three steps, the candle has gone out and you remain every bit as lost, confused and unknowing as ever..." Aaron stares slack jawed and bewildered at our Lord. "The creative imagination, Aaron, is, or ought to be, a portal.  A door opening on to other realities, other possibilities.  These are not things of your inventing, rather you are seeing, you are catching glimpses of such deep, beautiful and complex truths as have yearned over and remained thoroughly perplexed the sages and prophets of old." "How is this like the Collective Unconscious?" "I said that the Collective Unconscious is a stumbling first step towards understanding that which must always remain obscured from your vision, from the vision of humanity.  It is not withheld from you by Divine caprice, but Divine Mercy.  Mortal humans, created of dust, do not have the faculties nor the ability nor the strength in order to grasp such wonders.  to have this light shined on you would be to snuff you out of existence..."

The Peacock 1997

Of course, as some of you well know, I am a disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ, here, our gracious and loving host.  You may wonder why I have written my  Lord as having the aspect of a sixteen year old youth.  That was not intentional.  In my earlier work of literary fiction, Thirteen Crucifixions, from time to time this same beautiful boy would appear in the novel.  I did not have a name for him, because I hadn't named him yet.  I simply didn't know.  But, Jesus, this has been you yourself appearing to me in the novel and so as I was in the early stages of the Peacock, it occurred to me that this was your true identity, something that you revealed to me, Lord, but how could I possibly write you this way, but then much later it occurred to me that your own disciples didn't recognize you after your resurrection not just because they were still in a state of unbelief, but that they were seeing you in a lovely, innocent,  and transfigured form. And so, Lord Jesus, this is your novel, and I have done my utmost to take my cues from you, and write you, not as we imagine nor as I imagine, but...as you yourself most truly are, gracious Lord. "But what about us?" says Carl.  "How did you do it?" "Jesus was introducing me to each one of you, and I only got to know each one of you gradually as I wrote.  That is also why I kept appearing in the novel, so we could actually come to know one another.  Every time I sit down to write, whatever next move or direction or plot device I might have in mind, it suddenly gets moved around.  I am not in the least in control of this project.  I seem to have tapped into a different or alternative reality here that is just gradually unfolding to me...

Te Peacock 1996

Our Lord turns to both Carl and Melissa who are seated side by side.  "Your mother has returned to hospital.  She will experience a remarkable recovery and will be out of there within three days, and you will both be ready to receive her." Then, turning to Aaron, he says gently but also a bit portentously, "Aaron, you have some things you would like to say to everyone here."  His shirt has suddenly changed from pale blue to another shirt of vertical light blue, pale yellow stripes, set off with black, light green and white.  Another day must have already passed for him, though this happened just five minutes ago. "Hello, everyone.  I am so glad to see so many of you here right now.  I think it is time I made it clear to everyone just what is going on from my end as I have been writing your story these past five years.  Yes, it has been a long time, and you are all just into your third week now, and for you it is still May, 2021.  My original motive for writing the work was largely influenced by the covid pandemic that was still in its first year.  i thought, how interesting it would be to write a modern version of the Decameron, in medieval Italy during the bubonic plague, when a collection of persons of wealth were all finding refuge in an elegant, Florentine, I think, villa, and how they spent their time entertaining one another with quite the collection of stories. From the very onset, it was quite clear to me that this work of literature had already taken on a life of its own.  I was no longer, never was the creator, and found myself demoted to scribe and collaborator.  From the onset it was clear that I was writing about real people, and that I was no longer in control of the narrative.  The creative process really needs to be reexamined and re-explored, because the artist is not the creator, but an accomplice to other, more powerful and eternal forces.

The Peacock 1995

"Finally", says Astrid in clear Dutch-accented English, "I can see you both.  My two children.  Oh, if I could tell you both how proud I am of you.  Of how much I love you both.  Carl, I have never once preferred Melissa over you. I love you both deeply. so deeply, my dear son and daughter.  I never told you.  Never told you this.  Please forgive me.  A mother's love is an imperfect love.  Please do what you both feel is right.  Follow Jesus who is our gracious host. He will direct you.  I release everything to both of you..." and here she is starting to fade... Jesus approaches the frail sick woman, places both hands on her shoulders, kisses her forehead, and now she is gone...

The Peacock 1994

"Come in, please beloved Aaron", says our lord.  "If anyone should find himself at home here it would be you." Slowly, cautiously. while carefully eyeing every single person in the room, Aaron makes his way to a chair that Jesus has just pulled up for him in the centre.  We are seated in a semicircle.  Our author is facing all of us. "Won't you please address us, Aaron." Our author opens his mouth.  He is a bit on the portly side but not fat. He is dressed in a pale blue button down shirt and dark bluejeans.  He doesn't appear to have aged noticeably. "I am right now in Costa Rica, the city of Alajuela near the airport.  It is December 27, 2025 where I live, a time difference of more than four and a half years between our dimensions.  Please accept my apology for having taken so long to write all of you.  This has been slow work, and any attempt to rush it would have served us all a grave injustice.  But first, Lord Jesus, is it really necessary that Astrid be here.  She is very frail, and should still be in hospital." "I wanted badly to be here", says Carl and Melissa's mother.  Her graying dark hair is lank hanging over her face, and she appears thin and very pale in her pale blue hospital gown. "Mom", says Melissa, "It is so good to see you here..But Aaron is right. We want you to get better...Carl?" "Mom, Melissa is right... And you are already starting to fade...Jesus?" "Astrid, there is something  you want to tell your children.  Say it now, and just briefly, to save your strength, and you will wake up in your hospital room...

The Peacock 1993

Suddenly, Jesus is here, standing in our midst, which is just as well, given that all the chairs are now occupied. "You will not be leaving yet, not without the others.  More will be arriving tonight.  They are already here."  And now Melissa, accompanied by a frail older woman who must be their mother is holding on to her arm.  As Carl appears to be struggling to know just what to say to them, Jesus says "let us return to the meeting room. and we are now being led out through the dining room and the now unoccupied table and back to the meeting room where we all began.  Everyone else is seated, awaiting us, including Sheila, Michael, Matthew and Glen. "I believe that everyone is now accounted for", he says, just as Carol is staggering through the doorway.  "Except for your author, and now here he is", and it truly is Aaron who is standing in another doorway, as though waiting to be invited in to sit down.

The Peacock 1992

Curiouser and curiouser"say I. "I assumed we would be staying at least a few days." "Following breakfast tomorrow", says Amaris, "We are to leave, all of us." "I am a bit annoyed", says Francois, " That we can't be magically teleported back to where we were abducted from." And he is visibly indignant right now, as I am also struggling to not feel. "That's the way it alway works", says Kenny. "The way he explained it to me, it is so we can re enter normal life more grounded in concrete reality. That's the way it's always been for me, because, like Amaris here, I also live part time outside of here." "You're still part of the real world?" say I. "Oh yes, but under a different name and identity of course because Kenny is now legally dead. I live three weeks every month in Duncan where I run a flower shop..."

The Peacock 1991

I don't know how this happened, but suddenly Kenny and I are both seated in comfy chairs facing each other in the library.  There are cases of shelved books in row after row after row, with little cubicles and covey holes of comfy chairs and tables.  Much like the Vancouver Public Library downtown, only way more elegant. "Weren't we just having dinner?" say I, and I am a little bit indignant that I left my dinner half eaten. "I am just as surprised as you are, Chris", he says wistfully.  "I have been here twenty-five years and I still haven't got used to this place.  "How about coming back with me?"  Right now Amaris is approaching us with a tray laden with three full plates of food.  She places them on the table next to us, then pulls up an empty chair for herself. "Jesus has given us three permission to leave here tomorrow", she says.  "He has given us five permission to leave tomorrow", announces Carl's voice as he and Francois place themselves in the two other chairs with their plates in their laps...

The Peacock 1890

"Will she be here for the rest of her life?" Francois asks our lord. "Amaris", he says, "How would you like to answer that?" She pauses, while scooping some Greek salad onto her plate, then after putting a kalamata olive into her mouth and spitting the pit onto her plate, says, "What is your will, my lord?" "When you visit your parents, remain there until you get the call to return.  If you have to wait longer than forty days, I will come to visit you there and then we can discuss your future.  Your service is invaluable to me, to us, but you do not have to be here to serve, nor to live in my presence.  I am with you always." "What about us?" says Jennifer.  "Why were we brought here?" "All the others from your household will be joining us here", says Jesus, then adds, turning to Carl, "Including your sister, Melissa, and your mother, Astrid."