Clock, n.
         an instrument for measuring and recording time, especially by mechanical
         means: not designed to be worn or carried about
Clock, v.
         to strike sharply or heavily

..

It’s one of the greatest inventions of mankind. At first, it was oversized and ugly; only the wealthy could afford them. Since then, everyone came to own one, made into ornaments that speak of the qualities desired by those that wear them. What began as an exclusive possession came to be democratized, and collective life no longer had to be ruled by the the peal of bells or the squeal of sirens that marked the passage of time. Instead, a new Era emerged: the clock wormed itself into the bedroom and latched onto the bodies of millions across the face of the earth.

Sociologists would describe this as part of a larger transformation: the emergence of mass society where life came to be defined by the rhythm of the machine. Even night was colonized: time chopped into shifts to maximize profit in pursuit of the American Dream. So important was this that a universal standard was established at the "center" of the world (Greenwich Mean Time), and with this shift space was colonized as well: distant places and climes calibrated to a single machine.

Perhaps this is why dictionaries warn of the danger of the clock, noting that it should not be worn or carried. Perhaps it’s also why, as a verb, the word has come to be used to describe an assault. It’s almost as if somewhere (in the shadows, perhaps?) there’s evidence that the clock’s triumph brought a certain danger: that hidden in the folds of its precision, unseen demons lay in wait.

But such are the demands of modern living, an alarm tucked away next to bedside lamps the world over. From that tiny corner, they exert their rule beginning with the simplest of rhythms, like when to go to bed and when to wake. From the moment one’s roused in the morning, an entire day’s activities are scheduled, a sliver of time accorded to each of many tasks, each competing with others for the attention and care that they deserve.

Depending upon temperament and constitution, one’s response to such a slate of activity will vary. Some will thrive on the manic action, not really feeling alive unless suffused by the movement of self and others. The anxious might seek comfort of an elaborate schedule, hoping their grid of expectations will control the chaos looming around the corner. Others more rebellious or free-spirited may flaunt the dictates of mechanical time, but they’ll also be forced to choose to between a begrudging accommodation or a life cut-off from the rhythm of modernity.

So pervasive is the force of the clock, some kind of agreement must be forged. Whether it’s is done consciously or not doesn’t really matter, since the result is the same: if one is to secure a place among the living, surrendering is an absolute necessity.

Which must be why "free" time becomes so precious, untainted by the demands of the clock and the kinds of expectations they bring. Even if scheduled, these moments are eagerly anticipated, treasured precisely because the clock’s imperative can (temporarily) be put on hold.

Various hobbies and activities come to fill this space – the pursuit of pleasure and diversion – an antidote to the exhaustion of working according to the imperative of the clock. For some, this might just be frivolous and light, joy for no purpose other than the production of feeling. Others may seek out cranked-up sensation, a dangerous remedy that can easily slide into addiction. Still others may develop elaborate avocations, creating another world that’s shaped by a logic different from the one they’re trying to escape.

In different ways, each gives voice to aspirations unable to find a home within the time of the clock. And whether recognized or not, they speak the language of the soul.

It’s no mistake they’re often described as an escape. Which is why it would also be wrong to dismiss them as unimportant, for there’s an unspoken secret that resides at their core (like a lighthouse caught in a bottle?). Despite the different forms they take, they provide an opportunity to make a connection with what’s normally dismissed, to commune with spirits too often presumed to already be dead.

Part of this is signaled by the etymology of "escape," pointing to a meaning that’s already forgotten, referring less to the impulse to travel than to what’s left behind: derived from the Latin excappare, "to get out of one’s cape, leave a pursuer with just one’s cape," where cape refers to a hooded cloak. In other words: to shed the garment that cloaks and hides since, beneath it, resides a shrouded truth.

According to the ancients, such escape is an example of Samadhi, the highest form of knowledge. Hobbies represent one of its "lesser" manifestations, but share it’s central trait: a single-minded absorption, in which the practitioner is enraptured as if in a trance. And it’s precisely this kind of entrancement that hobbyists (and others) pursue with such determination, fiercely protective of the bliss they’ve been able to capture during the moments they’ve been freed from the imperative of the clock.

These "lesser" versions of Samadhi are classified according to the guna that predominates and ranked according to their degree of sanctity. At the bottom are Samadhis of the deluded mind (tamas) where the mind is absorbed in a blank, like sleep, a coma, or the states brought on by alcohol or drugs. Not surprisingly, it’s precisely this kind of numbness that’s being chased – like a drunken stupor – as if "real life" were too terrible to endure.

In Samadhis of the distracted mind (rajas) the mind is so engrossed in an activity or sensation – like sports or sex – that it temporarily forgets itself, calmed by the intensity of sensory experience. A negative version of this exists among those who become enveloped by an intense emotions, such as fear or pain. In fact many will try to chase them away with manic activity, hoping that the pain will disappear.

In Samadhis of the imaginative mind (sattva) the mind gets caught up in its own projections. These are the Samadhis of the inspired mind or genius as is often found in artists, philosophers and scientists. It also includes transient contact with the mystical that some are lucky enough to experience, although these usually fade away and disappear, leaving a feeling of desperation and helplessness in the face of what’s been lost.

What unites these "lesser" Samadhis is absorption of the mind: the mind forgets itself either through numbness, sensation, or imagination. In different ways, each produces a high, a peak experience that one might be tempted to describe as bliss. But because each is tied to something external, the experience can only be temporary: a high followed by a crash. The entrancement comes to an end with a cruel – and painful – return to the reality one so desperately tried to escape.

Living in that absence is one definition of hell, haunted by a memory one’s unable or unwilling to forget. And for good reason, too. The "lesser" Samadhis work through an illusion, where an external object appears as one’s salvation. And by virtue of the power of that experience, an indelible imprint is left on the soul, one that seeks to revisit the past in order to be replenished.

This is how addictions and other dangerous behaviors are born. Either by chance or by fate, one happens upon Samadhi in one of its "lesser" forms and immediately becomes hooked. The high is unforgettable, and the low that follows only serves as a cruel reminder of what’s been lost. In this way, a pathway or channel comes to be formed – like a nadi – knowing only one way to get the sensation back.

However convinced we may be about the object of our salvation, the truth behind the illusion is this: the "object" serves as a stand-in for the part of the self that usually remains submerged – what some call the soul – and it’s through an encounter with the Other that a communion with this self is made. So intoxicating is the experience that some will breathe it in, as if the Other were prana, the breath of life itself; others might say it resembled an electric jolt or psychedelic trip that seared through one’s very being (tejas).

Whatever the variations may be, each signals contact with another world through an experience that transports one to the beyond (the sur-real).

Why is it that we’re drawn to certain hobbies or activities? Why is it that, only in certain situations, a soul connection is made?

Part of the answer may reside in our very constitution, the doshas that represent the circumstances of our birth woven into our physical being. It’s often assumed these merely represent different body types, but those familiar with Sanskrit will inform us that dosha comes from the same root as the English prefix "dys" (as in dysphoria); some translators even suggest that it refers to a shortcoming, impurity, or defect.

More importantly, these doshas are said to prevent the successful completion of the puja of sacrifice: either by interfering with its proper performance or contaminating its desired effect.

How these doshas came into being is rarely addressed, although they’re frequently said to reflect the qualities of our parents at the moment of birth. It’s also said that they may be related to other doshas, such as Ancestor Dosha, Evil Spirit Dosha, Black Magic Dosha, Malefic Planet Dosha, or Bad Karma Dosha. Far-fetched as this may seem, the 2,500 year old Ashtanga Hridaya that catalogs the "eight arms" of Ayurvedic medicine includes chapters on childhood afflictions and possession brought on by demons, although these have also been discredited by modern science claiming that they’re merely reflections of the superstitions said to be characteristic of that time.

Whatever the case may be, it’s also said that the Doshas are "disturbed" versions of the three vital essences necessary for the harmonious functioning of the universe: prana, tejas, and ojas. So, while it’s common to think of the doshas in terms of the predominance of certain elements over others – vata (ether and air), pitta (fire), kapha (water and earth) – this may be the surface appearance of more fundamental forces at work. One teacher describes it in this way:

According to an ancient analogy, prana is the life force that strings body, mind and spirit together like beads on a strand of breath. Prana is not air, although oxygen is one of its vehicles; prana is the force that causes the physical yukti [process] necessary to keep living beings alive. Tejas burns windows into the barriers that exist between the body, mind and spirit, permitting them to communicate and influence one another in spite of their differing planes of existence. Ojas is the subtle glue that cements the body, mind and spirit together, integrating them into a functioning individual.

Crucial are the ways these vital essences work to connect body, mind and spirit. All three are necessary for the maintenance of life, whether it be physical, mental or spiritual. Each contributes a different vital function, for life could not exist without even one of them: the forces of movement, force and stability; or kinetic energy (vata), potential energy (kapha), and the energy that converts one to the other (pitta).

It’s said that vata is the unstable form of Prana, pitta the reactive form of Tejas, and kapha the inert form of Ojas. In other words: if Prana is the life force that animates body, mind and spirit, vata is the form of Prana that is "unstable"; if Tejas is what burns the barriers between body, mind and spirit enabling them to communicate, pitta is the form of Tejas that is "reactive"; and if Ojas is the glue that integrates body, mind and spirit, kapha is the form of Ojas that is "dead."

The lesser Samadhis provides a glimpse of unification, temporarily overcoming the "disturbances" so often relegated to the dark, the impurities that undermine the integration of body, mind, and spirit. This is why the lesser Samadhis are so difficult to relinquish: they hint at a possibility that usually seems so out of reach, a taste of salvation in the absence of death. (Only after Susie follows the lighthouse beacon into the shadows, only then does she reach the Tree of Life.)

The trick is to harmonize the elements in our environments and in ourselves.

Which might be why the guiding principle in Ayurvedic therapy is the imperative of balancing the doshas that are disturbed by excess (e.g., kaphas overcome by a predominance of earth and water). Thus, the instablity of vata is balanced by the stabilizing elements, as well as the digestive force of fire; the reactivity of pitta is balanced by more calming elements, and channeled by those facilitating creativity, instead; the inertia of kapha is stimulated into action by the transformative power of fire and the movement of air.

It’s been said that our strengths are also our weaknesses, and the imbalances of our doshas give light to that truth. For each dosha is prone to its own version of excess and disease. And what is evident at the level of the  physical body holds true for the mental and spiritual, as well.

But when we reach that moment when our strength no longer serve us, more often than not, it’ll feel like a defeat. As if the world and all that was meaningful has come to an end. For all our hopes and aspirations will be denied and it’ll seem as if the world’s snubbing its nose at us and snickering behind our backs. Or, perhaps, what’s worse: indifferent to our fate.

When we reach this limit – wanting something that remains beyond our grasp – this is the moment of truth, whether we recognize it or not. For it signals the limit of the strengths we’ve come to rely on – our dosha – and we’re given an opportunity to balance the elements that have dominated our being, finding the complements that have been set aside as unnecessary or even "weak."

And through the violence of this defeat, another miracle happens: the barriers between body, mind, and spirit are broken, and a different sort of access is given to the soul. One that’s different than the lesser Samadhis to which we’ve become attached, and unbearably searing in its delivery of pain. For the soul contains a record of all that animates us, including the lives that have come before, a set of records that some call Akashic that contains the hidden knowledge of the universe and the nature of its creation.

For when the bottle is broken, a beacon emerges that brings light to the dark.

The imperative of "balancing" is often insufficient to goad us into taking the path that’s best for us, bound as we are to the lesser Samadhis that have brought us a taste of delight. According to those trained in the wisdom of the ancients, the only way to relinquish a Samadhi is to replace it with another, preferably one that is more spiritually advanced.

Hence, those stuck in a Samadhi of delusion are encouraged to take on an activity of some sort. Whether that be physical exercise or a hobby doesn’t really matter since the inertia of tamas will be replaced by rajasic movement. Similarly, those stuck in a Samadhi of distraction are encouraged to develop their creativity, thereby replacing their rajasic fixation with the fluidity and imagination of sattva.

Those who’ve been caught in Samadhis of the imaginative mind – whether it be a tortured artist or someone haunted by a mystical experience – will have to make the transition to the "higher" Samadhis that can, ultimately, neutralize our karmas and end the cycles of birth and death. The first (focused or single-pointed Samadhi) is used to uncover the secrets of the cosmos and the psyche by focusing on an object until its cosmic truth is revealed. The second and highest (Samadhi of the calmed mind) relinquishes all objects and focuses, instead, on stilling consciousness on all levels. This practice is necessary for transcending the external world and opens the path for the realization of the Self.

This kind of practice isn’t easy. More often than not, it’s only after reaching wit’s end that an effort is made to replace one kind of Samadhi with another, precisely because the torture of absence has grown too large. And it’s in that moment, at the threshold of a pain that can barely be endured, when the most important decision is made.

Do I return to an old (and lesser) Samadhi or can I make a different choice?

In facing this decision, vatas are generally the most anxious and therefore most in need of faith and support; pittas are more stubborn and most in need of a dose of humility and persuasion; and because kaphas are haunted by immobility, they’re most in need of strict guidance on how they can move from where they’re stuck.

The mark of a monster or fool is the unwillingness to change, no matter the cost to oneself and others, even after an exit has been pointed out to them. It may feel like it requires too much work but, in the end, there’s really little choice: either return to the highs – and lows – of a previous existence or pursue the promise that’s only been glimpsed in the lesser Samadhi to which one’s so desperately attached.

All of this is hidden by the imperative of the clock that imposes another set of responsibilities upon those trying to secure a place for themselves in the world. And with those obligations come headaches and suffering of another sort, none of which can be dismissed, because they too are real.

And yet, the language used to describe one’s pain and yearning taps into the very same source that gives birth to the Samadhi experience. If we pay attention, we’ll come to notice how its language reflects an experience from a different time, how today’s anguish echoes one more ancient, perhaps even forgotten. In this way, another set of clues is provided to set us upon the path.

Is it justice for which we battle, a society in which each person is accorded a place of dignity and worth? Is it the prospect of love denied that sends one to the edge, yearning for a promise that’s never kept? Is it the fear of violence that forever looms around the corner, robbed of the sense of safety necessary for securing a place for oneself on the face of the earth? Whatever the words and sentiments, this is the language of the soul. And while the lesser Samadhis calm these agitations through illusion, it’s only the "higher" practices that will finally put them to rest.

If this seems daunting, we shouldn’t lose hope. Even Vishnu, Preserver of the Universe, took on different forms during the course of his life, not all of them as regal as he’s normally portrayed. Like the ten Mahadevis, his ten avatars identify a path of transformation that’s fit for a king. In his ninth avatar, for example, Vishnu threw off the trappings of royalty and became none other than the Buddha himself. It’s an unusual turn of events, particularly since each of his previous incarnations had all been about Lakshmi, his consort and his lover. And yet, it’s this incarnation that paves the road for the universe’s renewal. For it’s the tenth avatar, Kalki, who defeats the demon of darkness, finally bringing an end to the age of strife.

If a God can throw off the mantel of Responsibility, leave his protective Palace, and confront the face of Suffering instead – following Buddha’s path – then the rest of us certainly have the chance to make that change, as well.

..

SACRED (noun)
from pp. of obsolete verb sacren "to make holy," from Latin sacer "sacred, dedicated, holy, accursed," from Old Latin saceres which some connect to the base *saq- "bind, restrict, enclose, protect."

..

It’s almost as if they forgot their wedding vows, the limit of any marriage: "until death do you part." For even after she died, she found a way to return by taking over the life and body of her daughter.
A child displaced.

For this, she cannot be blamed. Very few have been taught about death, let alone how to embrace it. Even fewer recognize the fact of their passing, caught instead in a fog of unknowing: frantic about what has come of them, left grasping for certainties where none exist, desperately hoping to replace the ground that’s suddenly been lost.

After a while, she’ll recognize the haze that surrounds her as part of the Bardo state: it’s what happens to the mind when life comes to an end. Failure to recognize it is the greatest danger, although this happens to the best of us. Surrounded by confusing visions that make it virtually impossible to give coherence to what’s come to pass.

Taking over the life and body of her daughter was a split-second decision, an impulse that came on the heels of death. It’s this choice that created a new alliance, prolonging a marriage already at its end: both unwilling to accept the tragedy of her dying, both unable to let her go. From this comes a certain silence, a pact between a grieving husband and the spirit of his wife who now appears as his daughter.

Somehow, the stalemate needs to be broken so as to allowing the flow of life to begin again. It’ll require undoing the pact they share, despite the fear of what such a deed might bring. Until then, both are caught in the In-Between: bound by an untold secret that has yet to be heard.

But which secret is the most binding?  Which one hasn’t been told?

Over time, secrets acquire a sacred aura due to the energy required to keep them and their power to bind two people together. (Me and him against the world.) Such secrecy is enormously seductive, due precisely to the unknowingness of everyone else, as if the two of them had been granted a glimpse of the heaven while mere mortals busied themselves with simple concerns about the earthly and the mundane.

And so, for husband and reincarnated wife, the silence is maintained, either out of fear of disclosure or a fierce sense of protectiveness. And yet, if ever they should forget, there’s the question of their daughter: the body her mother took hostage amidst the confusion brought on by the arrival of her death.

Which is probably where karma comes in – a past life and its lasting influence -where another kind of power does its work, behaving as if death doesn’t exist. In the face of these forces, the will begins to shrivel and decay sets in, forcing its victims to reenact scenarios over which they have no control. (In many ways, it’s not so different from the case of a man caught in a web of relationships, forever looking for validation from those who rip his sense of self to shreds.)

Such is the effect of a soul contract: an agreement made in another time and in another place. While involuntary, such a contract typically exerts its influence long after its original purpose has been served. It worms its way into the structure of one’s body and the yearning of one’s soul, programmed for an endless repeating. Desperate for a solution that never seems to be found.

It, too, is ruled by the power of the unspoken. It, too, is governed by a secret too sacred to be told.

All marriages borne of love produce at least one child (if not two or even more). Out of this one grew a girl: their one and only, their precious daughter.

It’s she who interrupts the stalemate, if not by her own actions then by her parents working on her behalf. Both love her deeply and despite the mother’s death, both will do anything to ensure her return. It’s her mother who first comes to the realization of what the cost of this effort will be; his comes more slowly, confused as he is by the voice of his wife coming from the body of their daughter.

By introducing another imperative, in reminding her parents of her existence, they can no longer pretend she’s just disappeared. And so, their attention will begin to shift, no longer able to relish their love but fighting on behalf of their daughter, instead. New priorities will be established that forever alters the fabric of fate.

They’ll pray that their daughter will return to the land of the living. Hoping that it’s not too late.

Isn’t it appropriate that when the time comes for the pair to say goodbye, it’s their daughter’s diary from which they read? A voice submerged beneath their love, almost suffocated by her mother’s return from the dead? That beneath their secret was another voice buried and silent, now able to breathe in an open sky.

It’s a bittersweet moment in any parent’s life, but especially those who struggled so mightily on their child’s behalf. For their labors have been rewarded, even as they come to realize the cost of their success: ensuring a future for their child may also mean having to relinquish a most precious past.

In this way, the sacred tie they shared becomes their sacrifice, in much the same way as ancient rites sought to realign the human with the divine. As fragments of the Original Soul, all individuals seek reminders of the primordial spark that gave birth to the universe. And it’s through love that one comes closest to finding it, love’s embrace harkening back to God both gloriously self-sufficient and complete.

Sacrifice of what we hold sacred and dear is the time-honored method by which such completeness is reclaimed, for through the power of alchemy one can reestablish right relationship between heaven and earth, whether it’s through heart-break or mind-break or even both. And what greater love is there when this is accomplished on behalf of one’s child: a father for the sake of his daughter and a mother for a younger version of herself?

While he tried to comfort his wife, surely the daughter’s words were intended more for him rather than for her. After all, she lived her daughter’s life and became familiar with the diary and the sentiments contained within. She now knows how daughter felt about her mother and the life her parents imposed upon their child. What had previously been lost has been found. Now, on the eve of her departure, her husband’s let in on the secret, as well.

In breaking the silence, the parent’s pact is undone. Once the truth comes out, it’s impossible to return to the past. For old habits acquire new meanings, just as a marriage built on a secret comes to be reassessed. It isn’t about talking loudly in order to undo the silence. It’s about unearthing what was hidden and making room for what was buried and unheard.

The body of their child interrupted their marriage, forcing exactly this kind of shift. In place of old forms of communication, new ones had to take their place. No longer was it just the two of them. Instead, by virtue of the child’s body wedged between them, a space was created for a different voice. And when the creation of that space is completed, that’s when their daughter returns to earth.

Such is the alchemy of sacrifice: marital bliss set aside that sets the stage for a mother and daughter reunion, finally becoming One. And while the timing might be different, surely a similar transformation awaits husband and father, too.

..

While there are many threads to her story, at its center is a story of love and the man around which her life came to revolve. All she had wanted was to follow him.

They had just met moments earlier, when she was working with her hands and with colors. And what she felt in him struck deep, as if she were an instrument and he was her playing. Soon she would learn that he rarely rested, haunted by dreams that kept him awake, as if there were too many doors he couldn’t keep shut. She, on the other hand, had no such trouble. If anything, besides her daydreams, she rarely dreamt at all.

Despite this difference, they were on the brink of something momentous, as if each realized they’d never truly loved before. As they began their journey, she wondered whether he’d be the one to help open the doors of her consciousness. If there were anyone she’d want to help with that task, it would be no one else but him.

What soon followed was nothing short of heaven: the intimacy of skin and the pleasure of their exertion. Maybe it was then that she gave her heart to him.

But she also witnessed the torment of which he spoke; the things that kept him up at night. Contrary to her intuitions, he told her he was living in the light. The only problem was the end. There was nothing there: an emptiness so complete, that it left him swallowed by darkness and gasping for breath, as his very life would come to an end.

She tried to console him. They had met each other, after all. Perhaps the "nothing" wasn’t as empty as he thought. Something had to be there. He should be patient. The answer would come. He would see.

But then one night, while eating at a fancy restaurant, she had a vision, the first of many that were yet to come. The image didn’t make sense: a child was being ripped away from her, in a foreign land. And yet, despite the confusion, the feeling was far from uncertain: the taste of horror and a hole in her heart, as if her very being had been stolen.

He had tried to comfort her, tried to tell her that everything would be all right. But the terror failed to go away. It only got stronger, more insistent, as if replying that he was wrong. Words provided no reassurance. The dread, unrelenting and deep, refused to disappear. And that’s when the blackness came.

And when she awoke, he was gone. As if it were his disappearance that her vision had foretold.

Devastated by his absence, she felt as if she’d been ripped in two. Her other half only recently discovered, now wrenched from her, leaving an open wound. Inspired by her newfound visions, her paintings captured the nature of their love, as if they had been fated to meet: lovers reincarnated, brought back from another place and another time. Their bodies merged into one, his hand plunged deep into her heart. How could such a love be broken?

When they were still together, she learned that he was a refugee of war: born in a camp in the desert, only to be evicted into the most unforgiving places on earth. She’d also learned that he was an activist, just like his mother, a freedom fighter who had died for the cause. Like her, he worked on behalf of the dispossessed, his people who’d been denied even a place to call their own.

Perhaps if she had paid closer attention, she would have seen the warning signs, the conflict that already existed between his activism and their love. Perhaps if she had looked with different eyes, she would have seen that a commitment with roots so deep could never be content in her embrace. But since their honeymoon was just beginning, they allowed themselves to believe otherwise. But now, in his absence, she was left reeling. Looking at the painting she’d drawn, she’d whisper to herself, "Not like this!" For the task of opening her doors isn’t what she wanted to do on her own. Not alone. Not without him.

As fate would have it, while caught in the depths of despair, she would meet a hypnotherapist willing to help, someone she’d learn to trust. For a while, they even became roommates to facilitate the work that they would do, for there’d be many sessions in which they’d try to figure out the truth behind her life and all the ones that came before.

As was quickly discovered, and as she’d already suspected, her current life was not the first. The clue to this were memories not really her own, visions of experiences belonging to another: a feeling that she had lived another life or that this one was a fraud. Once the therapist had even asked whether there were other names by which she’d been known.

As their work proceeded, he’d become more certain that she carried an abyss inside her, the place from which her terror had come. The same terror that had sent her lover away, leaving her completely alone.

To her friends, her plaints would become tiresome, repeated like a broken record: yearning for him, wondering what happened, asking if he might return. Those who tolerated her grief would fail to understand why his leaving made no sense, perhaps because they’d never experienced a love like the one the two of them had shared. When they met it was as if the gods had answered her silent prayer.

At the time, she’d been working on a painting. Her mentor suggested that she begin working with oils: they were much better for capturing the unconscious, allowing for more depth, unlike the crayons that gave her drawings a childish look. Without a second thought, she’d reply curtly, as if defending doors that were firmly shut.

I paint to forget, to escape.
I don’t want depth.

And yet, almost immediately – as if in response to her unspoken cry – she saw a painting almost identical to her own. The colors were different and the rendering more crude. But when juxtaposed with her own, it was as two siblings happened upon a common memory. At the center of their drawings was predatory bird of one sort or another. Perhaps a hawk. But while hers looked majestic, his looked like a demon or even the devil himself.

This confluence of the unspoken and barely remembered. That was how they met.

In his absence, the hypnotherapy is the only means by which she can divine what was lost and, hopefully, understand why he left her side. And so, quite reluctantly, she submits to the man she and her roommate came to call "English" because of the formality with which he spoke as well as his accent, as if her language was not his own.

It was during one of their very first sessions that the image of the bird came to her, although she would only know of it when her words were translated back to her. (Time came to a halt when she merged with the twilight of her unconscious.) And it was from that image – the two of them being devoured by birds of prey – that the first piece of the puzzle comes into place: of the connection that bound them together as well as the fear that drove him away.

The sessions would continue, both arduous and unforgiving: while she pleaded with the therapist for happy memories, they all seemed to lead to images of her death; during the times when she’d speak in foreign tongue, a translator would be brought in to decipher what she had said. All of which only served to underscore the many layers of history through which their excavations led.

It’s in this way that, one by one, her doors came to be opened, allowing a glimpse into what had remained hidden. But while this seemed to suggest progress, all they brought were messages of mutilation and despair. And rather than provide her with any clear answers, they only deepened her anguish and sorrow, no closer to any understanding of why she’d been left alone.

Travelling back in time as far as the mind could see, in different places and times, these visitations brought a single message, one that was less about the lives she’d led than about how each of them came to an end. More cruelly, each punctuated by the gruesome ways in which a woman can be made to die.

Which is probably why she chose to end their sessions, too weary of the demands it made. Her therapist and friend were excited by the revelations, but she couldn’t help being repelled by them: stories of young women, none of them dying a natural death. Instead, all stories were a variation on a single theme: tales of annihilation where chaos and terror reigns supreme.

Her only comfort came from the man who had raised her in a cave, the place decorated by doors curiously similar to the ones she and her hypnotherapist were now working to open. Since the life they once shared was a distant memory, she’d write letters to him on paper and in her head. He was a constant presence, even if absent, one who could be counted on to help sort through the turmoil in her head.

With affection, she’d call him cave dweller, cave monster and her very own grizzly beast. She’s write to him about her lover as well as the torment she experienced when he disappeared. What she didn’t tell him was what she learned through her hypnosis, as if that would jeopardize the relationship they had shared.

So when his health begins to fade, she interrupted her treatment to go see him. And when he died, she stopped completely, no longer able or willing to continue that work. Instead, she found herself on a boat sailing across the ocean with a man twice her age, not quite knowing what she was doing but certain her life needed a radical change.

During the trip across the ocean, she’d confess that she’d never spent as much time with a man who wasn’t her father, perhaps even mourning the time she was unable to spent with "him." Which might also be why, when they reached New York harbor, she’d pass on his invitation to continue accompanying him, traveling the world and celebrating the kind of freedom only a man can presume to be his own.

Instead, it’s the Statue of Liberty that strikes her, causing her to catch her breath. Perhaps it’s her water-stained face that’s caught her attention, or the dignity with which she’s weathered the years. Almost imperceptibly, the portrait of two merged bodies with an arm sunken into her chest slowly replaces another in which this Lady comes to be her other half.

In the meantime, she marvels in the excitement of the City: a new landscape, new sights, new sounds. A new place in which to discover herself or, at least, learn more about what’s eluded her so far. And yet, triggers and reminders continue to haunt her, ghosts of the one who had left and never returned. The one to whom she had given her heart but, for one reason or another, who wasn’t able to stay.

One day, her therapist reappears out of the blue, not quite the Prince Charming for whom she’d been waiting. He’s excited, even agitated, brimming with news: he’s been doing research and believes he’s found an answer to the conundrum they faced so long ago. They need to return to the origin, back 2,000 years ago. And he’s found people who can help. Despite his claims that she’s never been closer to the answer, she insists that she left that life behind. And in the face of his news, she can’t help asking herself: How am I going to die this time?

He takes her to an Indian reservation, and it’s there that the details of her story unfolds. Like all the other lives she’s relived, she now finds herself as another, this time as Osdad Ciara, the Goddess of Life and Mother of Good Men. She’ll learn that her beloved had dethroned her, instigating a civil war. The skull before her, perhaps like those invading her visions, is none other than the evidence of what was done by the man she had loved, the one who had split her head in two.

In her mind she relives the moment, hounded by a lover now dressed as a bird of prey. She tells him she won’t go with him if he’s dressed like that, repelled by his pride and his strutting. And yet, he continues to taunt her, as if her refusal only strengthen his resolve. Even her threat to leave carries no weight, leading to the death of the Goddess, the origin that gave birth to it all.

Her mentor tells her to remain calm in the face of this extermination, that it’s in her dying that the Goddess glows. For it’s through death that her wisdom blossoms, fueled by Life rather than the machinations of destruction and war. But because it’s too much to absorb, she leaves once again, making no plans for the future other than the desire to take care of herself. If anything is to come of this, she has to believe that the way will make itself known.

Later, after she’s established a new life for herself, she meets her lover looking sheepish about his unexplained absence. She puts him through the ringer. When her wrath is spent, he makes a confession, one that returns to the knot that defined their relationship long after the absence that had left her heart bereft.

After your [panic] attack, which we all saw, I had another, which nobody saw.
And I saw that I couldn’t help you, how I would hurt you.

While it was years ago, she still remembers. Both of them had spoken in a foreign tongue; no one else was able to understand. They’d been talking about his horror and how it complemented her own. Despite her terrible vision, she kept trying to reassure him saying that the "emptiness" was just an illusion, something they could overcome if he only had faith: in her and himself. She reminds him:

That night, you realized it’s not over when biology runs out.
Our souls have another biological sense.
You said that there’s nothing in the end, [but] it’s the opposite !
We accumulate.
Death fills, not empties.

While he was gone, these are lessons that she’s learned, forced to face the violent deaths that haunted her so. And while she had preferred to learn them in his company, she now possesses the kind of wisdom that glows like the Goddess of Life herself. Maybe he’s come to a similar understanding, as well.

So thrilled is she to see him again, it’s difficult for her to stop talking. There’s so much to tell him, so many plans to make. All she’s ever wanted was to live with him and, finally, he’s now returned. And yet, there’s a reluctance, as if something’s holding him back, as if there was more he had to say. Which is when he finally tells her what she’s waited so long to hear: confessing his side of the visions they shared and the lives they’d reincarnated, making them their own.

I wasn’t the Saharan you were in love with. I’m Said, his son. My parents were prisoners in a Moroccan camp. A soldier took your son away. My mother was a well-known Berber. She came from way back and possessed energy from other wise women, Amazigh women that came before her. That’s why the Moroccans let the birds eat her alive. They thought her soul would be released into the air.

In the face of this revelation, all she can do is restate what he’s told her in terms that are more familiar = So I was your mother, your grizzly beast of a mother! = stunned by the realization that their relationship would never be the same. In one fell swoop, the bond they shared, as well as his mysterious disappearance, is finally explained: what it was that drew her to him, and him to her, as well as the terror she felt when faced with letting him go. In another life, he had been her son who was wrenched from her, just prior to being left to the birds to be eaten alive.

Swallowed by blackness, she later awakes. And once again, he’s gone.

Some time later – is it weeks months or years? – while she’s working as a waitress, she comes across an important looking man who wishes to see her, one that her colleagues in the kitchen say is none other than the architect of the latest war that killed their son. And she’s expected to serve him.

As she walks to his table, she’s bolstered by the voice of the Goddess that reassures her that she’s not alone, that they’re all in this together. So, when he engages her in conversation, she’s unable to avoid the obvious: how he – and men like him – are responsible for the death of millions, men sent to their graves far too young.

But just as she’s about to launch into a tirade, as if in response to a self-correction, she softens her approach, unashamed of the tears welling up in her eyes. Instead, she’ll declare she’s convinced that there’s good in him: it’s something she can see in his eyes, even if he doesn’t believe it himself. Which is how she comes to be invited to his suite for a private meeting. And much to his delight, she agrees.

It’s also how, moment later, she comes to be bloodied and beaten, standing between two men not like the other two who have defined her life: one old enough to be her father, the other like the lover who turned out to be her reincarnated son.

She had the gall to defecate on the man’s face, what she called "a poetic act." She also described her lineage to him uncensored, from her most recent past in a North African desert to the people who settled the America continent. When he learns that she can speak Arabic, his anger and confusion find a focus, accusing her of being a terrorist, a threat to him personally and a danger to the state.

Which is when the beating began, an old man gone crazy, fueled by fear and hate; the younger one, his bodyguard, on the sidelines, not knowing what to do. Both stunned by her refusal to cower, speaking without fear, even as she’s beaten into the ground.

Even if you kill me 2000 times, I shall be born again.
You can never defeat me because I am the Mother of Good Men.

What was her crime? She had retracted her adoration, refusing to believe that he was good or overlook the way she’d already been reduced to a function in his eyes. Instead, she boasted of a lineage that had nothing to do with his world. In fact, it exceeded his grasp. In short, she refused to be bowed by his stature or impressed by his importance in the eyes of the world.

Still bloodied from being thrashed, she walks the streets of Manhattan. Except this time, she’s smiling, unconcerned about how she looks to others. For she’s been transported to another world. Finally released from her prison. Finally freed of the doors that had once remained firmly shut.

Another sign of this freedom is the absence of the ritual that defined her life after leaving the grizzly beast, her cave father. For it was her mode of operation when walking down streets like these. Hands held out before her as if she were a divining rod. Looking to see to what or whom they were attracted, eager to see where they might lead. Almost as if they had been programmed to compensate for an absence. Looking for water when her own well had run dry.

But now, experiencing her death firsthand, she’s no longer haunted. And no longer does she yearn for what was lost. For she’s found something in that suite designed for the rich and the famous. By virtue of her newly discovered ability to glow in the face of death, she now knows she’ll live a life to its conclusion and, when her time comes, die a natural death.

No longer is it a fate to be avoided. The Goddess of Life has been reborn.

..

Thanks to the deleted scene excised from the theatrical release of this film, we’re able to see the dilemma around which Sweet Pea’s story revolves: an emotion frozen in the depths of hell, a passage that’s been blocked. She’s none other than Shakti who’s been prevented from reaching Her goal. That’s the reason for Her torment, the yearning for what’s been kept beyond Her reach.

According to those who’ve been trained in Her nature, there are many ways She can be released from Her earthly home; there are also several passages through which She can travel, although not all of them lead to Her goal. Quite cruelly, some are only cul-de-sacs that tease Her with a taste of what She’s been missing, even while barring access from the place She’s meant to Be.

From the resting place in which She laid dormant, She may have been aroused or disturbed, even prematurely, perhaps. Should this happen in the absence of an experienced teacher committed to Her success, She’s left disoriented since She’s not been guided to the passage leading to where She needs to go. When abandoned in this way, She’ll probably be faced with a dead-end street, one that feels worse than the fires of Hell.

In the language of an ancient tradition, this is the experience of non-culmination, a "deflected rising," since Her ascent has by-passed the usual routes that lead to Her success. Among the "side" passageways that produces this kind of torment is the Sarasvati Nadi which leads directly to the crown of the head. According to those trained in these matters, Shakti may develop remarkable talents when She enters this route, due to the premature stimulation of the brain, but because She’s unable to unite with Her Being, She’s also doomed to an endless repeating, bouncing back and forth like a yo-yo between Her base below and the far reaches of Heaven.

It’s said that a similar deflection occurs when Shakti’s released into the Vajra Nadi, something that may result from an accident rather than meditation or practice. Unlike Her movement through Sarasvati, however, this passage stops at the brow. Certain talents may also develop, but as with any blocked movement, the ultimate goal remains beyond Her reach.

There’s also the Lakshmi Nadi, said to be associated with transitions of birth and death. Shakti may find Herself here due to massive trauma; according to some, this nadi may even explain the mystery of bodies combusting spontaneously, leaving nothing but a pile of ash. In general, those deflected into this passage are caught in the grip of a grief that refuses to end.

(It’s almost as if these routes recount the ways Shakti is dislodged from Her resting place by trauma and assaults on Her home, as if escape to another world – to the head – provided the only means for Her survival.)

..

Each of the four sisters – the two blondes and the two "honorary" ones – bears a uniform and a pose, different faces of this predicament. For Sweet Pea, it’s a form of torture that’s the very definition of Her martyrdom.

..

As if in compensation, her sister Rocket finds solace as a nurse. As the needles in the hands of her retinue suggest, she also finds comfort in the drug that’s able to dull the pain that defines Her condition.

..

Of the two honorary blondes, the elder comes dressed as a maid, her work only visible through a hole in the door, as if it was her station in life to take care of the needs of others, perhaps even to the exclusion of her own.

..

Her younger sister belongs to a more public profession, one designed for the consumption of others, seemingly unaware of different uses to which her sword might be put: the real purpose for which it was actually made.

..

Two sets of sisters with their own personas and postures, some public while others remain hidden from view. Each set has its highs and its lows, almost as if one were tied to the other: the martyr and the nurse, the maid and the dancer with the sword. And Baby Doll is a witness to it all. By the end of the story, however, out of all the sisters, only Sweet Pea will remain, finally freed from her prison. All others – not only Baby Doll and Rocket, but also the honorary blondes, even the boy caught in the midst of war – will have disappeared, as if they were personas ensuring Shakti’s survival until She became more able to continue Her ascent.

The violence with which they fight, even their eventual disappearance, is a sign of the arduous task of re-diverting what was originally deflected: there may be others invested in maintaining Her tormented state, those who benefit from the personas that She’s become; there may be rewards She’s gotten used to, offerings that once helped Her endure the torture of hell. Each must be confronted, each obstacle removed, otherwise She’ll remain forever stuck.

Often, it’s an enlightening experience that makes that kind of reversal possible, realizing that things could be different, that there might be a another passageway toward Her goal. A vision perhaps. Or maybe the experience of seeing and being seen. It might come unexpectedly, as in Baby Doll’s dancing, when she finds other worlds to which she can travel, including the ancient wisdom she recognized in one of them and how it laid the ground for defending herself against the demons intent on her killing.

The process can be heartbreaking, partly because this re-routing means a return to the beginning, retracing the steps that brought Her to a dead-end street. Once She’s returned to Her base, it also means choosing a different passage for her re-ascent, a painstaking journey precisely because of the stops She’s required to make along the way.

The ancient texts describe it as a thread strung with beautiful flowers, wondrous like a chain of lightning.

Which is probably why Her fighting takes Her back in time, like Baby Doll and her sisters traveling to the Dark Ages to do battle with zombies and dragons. It’s almost as if they were confronting a past refusing to stay in its place, polluting the future and all the possibilities it might hold. As if the past itself required a killing to open the way for an ascension that had previously been blocked.

Once there, She’ll face a baby dragon, sleeping peacefully on a bed of bones, a soft yawn signaling its contentment with the food that it’s been fed. She’ll be instructed to slit its throat, to kill the infant that sleeps protected in a fortified castle, as if this dragon sustained that ancient landscape, the child that kept the world of Creation afloat.

According to the ancient tradition, the dragon – Makara – is to be found along the passage punctuated by flowers, more specifically, in the region of the Waters. It also appears at the Makara Point at the top of the head: the gateway to Shakti’s final goal. Battling the dragon, in other words, must be done not just once but twice, the second time finally providing entry to the place She’s been struggling to reach.

Perhaps this is the secret behind the ten Goddesses of Wisdom, the different forms She takes in the fight to reach Her goal: from Lakshmi (at the beginning) to Kali (the end), her crowning achievement as the Queen of Time. Each a different manifestation of the Goddess herself, different forms that battle the blockages and obstacles that She meets along the Way.

In some versions, She’s entrancingly beautiful, but in most She’s quite frightful. Many are covered in blood. In traditional depictions, Her tongue is shown lolling in Her mouth, drunk from the blood of Her victims. Sometimes She’s seated on a throne, at other times She’s standing or sitting upon a corpse.

While there’s always the danger of getting sucked into the heat of battle, missing the forest for the trees, Her hands are poised to convey a message to the devoted: yes, She holds the skulls of the demons She’s defeated, as well as weapons of war; but one of Her hands typically says "Have no fear" while another offers the granting of boons. It’s almost as if Her ferocity were necessary for achieving everlasting peace; quite the opposite of what a woman’s usually taken to be, particularly if she were interested in attracting a lover.

There are three subtle "knots" that need to be broken during Her ascent, forms of bondage that keep her tied to the world below. They’ll be easy to identify once She’s begun Her passage since they’ll be the things nearly impossible to live without. They may include the warmth of a lover, the security of a job, a familiar set of emotions, a worldview, perhaps even a promise made to oneself or another. In different ways, each knot tied Her to prior forms of existence, an anchor ensuring a semblance of order and the promise of safety for what were probably the most treacherous times of Her life.

But once She has punctured the last of these knots, She will have gained a vantage point never available to Her before. No longer will the battles feel immediate and urgent, as if Her very survival depended on winning. No longer will She be swallowed by Her emotions or driven by fear. Instead, by virtue of the distance She’s been able to create between Herself and what came before, She’ll now see them differently, almost as if they hadn’t even been Her own.

This is the reason behind the kind of asceticism associated with different spiritual traditions, less a condemnation of the world than a recognition of the ties that bind Her to it. Those who embark on such journeys may not be any more "enlightened" than anyone else, except for the recognition that their current life no longer works, that their efforts so far have come to naught.

And while these scenes are filled with violence, the process is better described as a dissolution: dissolving the ties that bind. The blast of fire and the fierceness of the battle merely convey the difficulty of the task and the determination with which it must be met. For beyond it lies an everlasting peace.

But even after She has finally reached Her goal, it doesn’t mean Her job is done. In fact, very rarely is that the case. It may be necessary, for example, for Her to return to the places from which she came to complete the process of deprograming that Her ascent began. She may have broken through the knots of Her previous existence, but it’s likely there are remnants that need to be taken care of before She can rest.

The residue may consist of old patterns and blueprints that had organized Her existence, certain inclinations that had come to define Her taste. They could refer to the kinds of energy that had once sustained Her, the objects and people to which She had been drawn. Maybe a sense of guilt or regret about decisions that were made, or the aftereffects of an ancient tragedy, wounds not completely healed. Or perhaps certain relationships in which She’s still entangled, no longer serving Her but pulling Her down, instead.

The differences between these "descents" and what came before is Her newfound home atop the string of lightning, a control center from which these new forays can be managed. Not all of them will meet with immediate success, for it’s a process that requires patience and time. And yet, She’ll have access to something that hadn’t existed before: a stilled sense of Being no longer tainted by desperation, no longer feeling that the Promised Land lay beyond Her grasp.

It’s often said that the Goddesses of Wisdom first appeared when Shiva and Parvati were living in Her father’s house: Shiva had tired of their domestic arrangement and had threatened to leave. The Mahavidyas then appeared and blocked his exit, forcing him to admit Her superiority over him. However, according to another tale, the Goddesses emerged when Shiva refused to provide his wife, who was famished, with anything to eat. It’s said that the Mahavidyas grew from Her angry outburst, furious over her husband’s denial. Elsewhere, it’s said the Goddesses appeared when Sati threw Herself upon a fire, protesting Her father’s refusal to bless Her marriage. (Sounds confusing. But perhaps all three capture an aspect of the truth?)

It’s also said that Shiva once teased Parvati about her complexion, calling Her Kali ("darkie"). Taking this as an insult, She went to the mountains to transform herself and protect against such insinuations about Her appearance. (Perhaps this was also when She covered his eyes and the world turned to black.) Many years later, She returned and saw her husband deep in meditation. When She looked into his heart, She saw a beautiful woman She couldn’t recognize. But just as She was about to get angry again, Shiva laughed, telling Her to look more closely: the woman residing in his heart was none other than Herself.

While She performed austerities in the mountains, She had shed her skin, producing a sheath that magically transformed into a slayer of demons. Some say this fighter was none other than Kali Herself, defender against those that would block Her way.

With this removal (and harnessing) of "darkness," Parvati would come to be known as Gauri: the Golden One.

..

First comes love, then comes marriage;
then comes a baby in a golden carriage.
That’s not it! That’s not all!
The baby’s drinking alcohol.

..

Why would a supernatural love story choose a poster for itself like this? After all, the film’s about a family that loves each other: a husband, his adoring wife, and their daughter. If there’s any tension, it concerns mother and daughter, not the dad. So why an image that suggests something more sinister, as if it was secretly a tale of horror?

This is not an idle question; nor does it use a foreign poster to create insinuations. Even though the film uses American actors, it was made under the auspices of EuropaCorp and produced by Luc Besson, among others. It’s as if, in their eyes, the "secret" involved a struggle to the death.

The questions for an American working backward (from English to French) are compounded when we notice that the film’s title is different too - "If I Were You" (Si j’étais toi) – although it’s not quite clear who’s speaking to whom. Is it the husband (and father) who has plans for his daughter that are different from what she’d choose for herself? Or is it the daughter speaking of her dissatisfaction about how her mother’s leading her own life? Or perhaps the voice belongs to another?

The American poster, tame in comparison, hints at something else, suggesting that the daughter’s forced to live under a shroud of silence. So, while the French version might use the imagery of horror, the secret here gains its weight from an imperative imposed upon a child.

Which might be why the English tagline also differs: "Sometimes a gift can be a curse." But what gift is being talked about here, and what’s the curse? Might it have something to do with the daughter and the mother, and the names by which they’re known? Or might it have something to do with the playground taunt that warns about the course of love?

Might that be why the French poster speaks of two destinies pitted against each other, as if the daughter was fighting for the right to be born ? If this were true, then her mother would be her only ally, especially since her father would be asked to relinquish his wife.

Si J’etais Toi (deux destins, une seule vie)
If I Were You (two destinies, one life)

Perhaps that’s why the film opens with the husband looking into a woman’s eyes, telling her they’re beautiful, only to have them revert to polite conversation when the examination is done: talking about their respective children, about how amazing they are and never wanting to let them go.

And perhaps that’s why, in the scene that immediately follows, we see his wife and her friends enjoying an off-color joke about a fainting husband and spongy lips, as much for the humor of the story as for their ability to embarrass the uptight women eavesdropping on their conversation.

And maybe that’s why, when the husband returns home, we’re witness to the ritual that makes her weak in the knees: hearing how, despite all the eyes he’s looked into that day, his day doesn’t really begin until he’s looked into hers.

Maybe that’s also why, when seated at the dinner table, the daughter can’t wait to get out of there, wanting desperately to be somewhere else. And why, later, in the midst of an argument, she’d yell at her mother to get a life.

And yet, it’s precisely the ensuing accident that produces the scene from which the French poster is taken, in the hospital, after wife-and-mother is declared dead. It’s also the scene in which we’re first made aware of the haunting that defines the remainder of this tale: two spirits inhabiting the body of the teenage child. During the weeks and months that follow, it’s the spirit of the mother that predominates, taking possession of the body (and life) of her daughter.

Upon awakening from unconsciousness and upon discovering her own body is gone, it’s at that moment that she loses all composure, realizing she’s already dead, but also at wit’s end about the fate of her missing daughter. Shouting loudly, screaming for the one who’s gone, the one whose body she now inhabits.

WHERE’S MY DAUGHTER !!!

Her husband, just as frightened and confused, holds her to the ground and, soon, the doctors will come to sedate her, saying she’s suffering from a psychotic break, all the while mystified as to why this teenager would think she’s her own mother. And as the camera pulls back, we hear her scream at those trying to restrain her:

GET OFF OF ME !!!

Where there was once two, there’s now one. Or more precisely: the two previously separate, now share a single home. Trying to figure out how life will continue in the wake of an accident that changed their lives forever.

And yet, as the story unfolds, we learn more about the daughter’s life that only adds to the confusion. New questions emerge that pile up on her parents’ dilemma, something mother-posing-as-daughter comes to realize very quickly.

As if mirroring the idea of competing destinies, she’ll discover her daughter was surrounded by boys, two in particular: a "bad boy" who swoops in unannounced, dragging her to the nearest corner that offers any semblance of privacy, and another who, in comparison, looks more like a sad puppy, especially when she’s whisked away by the secret lover who claims her as his own.

When she defends herself (and her daughter) against the boy’s advances, he lashes out at her quest for independence. What’s your problem? You like playing with me before. And his anger only escalates when she says it’s definitely over, that she can’t return to the way things were before.

You just cut it off? Just like that?
You know, I thought you were different from all the losers here.
I thought you were a risk taker. I thought you were different.

The words are meant to cut her, a kind of verbal assault. Perhaps they harken back to an earlier conversation they’d had about the courage required to take such risks. Clearly, in his mind at least, she’s now fallen short of the standard to which she’d been held. No longer his special playmate; now declared a loser.

(It’s almost as if his mauling her, both physically and verbally, were no different than the image provided in the movie poster. As if they were one and the same. … One plus one equals one?)

Because of the distance that’s beginning to grow between them, the husband will intercept the boy who spends so much time with the girl, trying to get a sense of what’s happening in her life, trying to understand why she’s drifting away. Maybe she’s doing drugs, which would certainly explain her erratic behavior.

When he hears how much the boy loves the girl, the father can only laugh. How much could the kid possibly know about love?! More importantly, how much could he possibly know about what’s happened since the accident and the kind of changes they’ve been hiding from the world?

So his humor soon changes to indignation, glaring at the boy who would compete for his daughter’s affections. Quite unexpectedly, he launches into a speech about the nature of love, as if he were only beginning to realize what it meant to love the girl as a father. Startled by the father’s outburst, the boy’s confusion is only heightened by the man’s presumption to lecture him about what it means to love another. And yet, the unspoken message comes across loud and clear: "Stay away from my girl."

Such is the mess that surrounds her, the noise that gets in the way of trying to figure out what to do, stuck in her daughter’s body without knowing why she’s gone. And yet, it’s an argument with her husband-father that will trigger the most significant change to date. For in the heat of her frustration and anger, she takes pen to paper and begins putting words to page. No longer satisfied with reading her daughter’s diary, no longer able to passively sit and wait, she begins to use it as a place to vent and reflect.

It’s less the process of writing itself than creating a space unencumbered by the expectations – or judgments – of others, a space that allows for the kind of self assertion never available to her before. She can tumble into her confusions or trace the lines of her sorrow without worrying what anyone else might think. She’s also able to give voice to questions that might otherwise be too dangerous to say aloud.

In the process, the spirit of the mother slowly changes, no longer merely pretending to be someone else. And in this way, she – unknowingly – paves the way for her daughter’s return. In establishing herself in this way, a new kind of confidence quietly grows. One that’s not dependent upon the approval of others or the roles she’d taken to ensure herself a place in the world. In other words, she achieves precisely what her daughter had wanted in her mother.

In truth, when the transition is complete, when her daughter returns to her body, the mother doesn’t really disappear. In living the life of her child, she had no choice but to make that life her own. Rather than pretending to be someone she wasn’t, she infused her daughter’s life with her own talents and abilities. And in doing so, the two became one. No longer strangers who looked at the other with indifference or confusion, the gulf that once separated them finally closed.

Many of us seek to meet our basic needs for comfort and security in the bonds of marriage; for others, it might be a job, an institution, or a cause. Sometimes, it’s sought in them all. But this reliance upon an external reality – made to feel all the more secure by contractual agreements of various sorts – can also create a prison, precisely because of the kind of stability that was originally sought. In other words, once the deal is closed, it’s almost impossible to escape.

For the Marris family, the marital bliss between husband and wife relegated their daughter to the shadows, a haunted being free to come and go, even while denied the basic soul requirements for truly living. (Is it any wonder that the baby might turn to drinking?)

When this happens – when security becomes a prison – it usually takes something like an accident to force a change, which is exactly what happened: all sense of comfort thrown out the window, all priorities radically altered. The wife’s mission in life became one of finding her daughter, perhaps even discovering what it meant to be a mother, herself.

Her husband had treated their child like an adult, playing fast and loose with the rules. As a result, she had looked to him when making a request, knowing that he’d probably indulge her, no matter what her mother might think.

But after the accident, all of that changed. A realignment was in the making: the mother finally in charge of raising her own daughter, desperately seeking her child with as much urgency as if she were looking for herself. Ironically, with the two now inhabiting the same body, they’d never speak face-to-face again.

And yet, by virtue of her mother’s efforts, the daughter is guaranteed what had previously been denied: a life lived on her own terms (rather than another’s) and the freedom to pursue her own happiness.

..

The old, unhappy feeling that had once pervaded my life
came back like an unwelcome visitor, and deeper than ever.
It addressed me like a strain of sorrowful music,
a hopeless consciousness of all that I had lost, all that I had ever loved.
And all that remained was a ruined blank and waste lying all around me,
unbroken to the dark horizon.

..

Obviously, if the feelings are familiar, they’re not new. Something else happened, something that had fixed hopelessness upon his soul. Yet, if he allowed himself the luxury of detachment, relinquishing the apparent cause of his misery, he’d find himself face-to-face with the most curious of puzzles: how feelings can pierce the barriers of time and space, injecting themselves into lives different from those in whom they first emerged. A transference between generations.

If he’s anything like the rest of us, he’d be hard-pressed to find their origin: after all, what could explain feelings so grim: a ruined blank and waste lying all around, unbroken to the dark horizon? And yet, they’d always been there, like a battered teddy bear: evident in the tortured prose of adolescence, perhaps, or the music to which he’d been drawn, plaintive tunes pointing to the unspoken and the dead.

The words of Dickens do the same: giving voice to a feeling written upon the soul and lodged in the bones. Inscribed for eternity. Finding comfort in the language of another, precisely because it echoes the ancient and familiar. Perhaps it’s even due to something as gruesome as a child sacrifice, like the accident of his youth: for it’s precisely from the black abyss that "gifts" such as his are born.

Which is probably why the chance encounter with a woman, including the taste of a possibility, felt so exciting, lifted as he was from the envelop of darkness that had become his home. It offered the chance to gauge his senses against another’s, the opportunity to learn and understand something as simple as the taste of things, and giving names to them.

With her abrupt departure on the heels of an unwanted disclosure, he’s plunged back into his dreaded cavern, the black sea from which he had hoped to escape. Tired of exploring the shape of the dark, including the ghosts who were his only companions, all he had wanted was the chance to meet the gaze of another.

(Some say that abuse targeting the body is the worst fate in the world, especially for a child. Yet, injuries to the soul are just as crippling, leaving survivors without a sense of themselves or a place in the world, as much the result of neglect as having become a plaything: seduced into the world of an adult, only to have it taken away; left with an enduring absence and an inherited sense of shame, ever responsive to the needs of others, even to the exclusion of his own.)

So, it’s to the old and familiar to which he returns, echoes that resonate with the submerged and half-forgotten. They’re enlivening precisely because they give voice to what no one else has had the courage or insight to say out loud. Besides Dickens, he could become just as entranced by the movies, struck by their ability to mirror his anguish and exultation. And yet, the words seem to speak of the danger of this rapt attention, as if he were being drawn in by a spell:

In his affable unconsciousness, he took no heed, making a tour of the prison before he left, and looking on at a game of skittles with the mixed feelings of an old inhabitant who might have his private reasons for believing that it might be his destiny to come back again.

The prison in Dickens’ novel is where entire families were sent to work off the debts incurred by husbands and fathers, where wives and children were condemned to suffer the deficits inherited by misfortune or by fate. Perhaps that’s why he’s drawn to melancholy tales, the fate of their protagonists not so different from his own … including the distinct possibility that it might be his destiny to be returned to the prison and its darkened world.

And yet, as if by happenstance, in this place of words and books, he crossed paths with another who’d written a about her experience with death, the conspiracy of silence with which she was met, and her struggle to find meaning in the confused aftermath of her passing.

I felt connected to another world, a place of utter peace and tranquility.
Whether what I saw was a genuine glimpse of the afterlife
or just a concussed fantasy, I’ll probably never know.
I arrive at the end of my journey with as many questions as I started with.
..
I certainly never imagined I would be exposed to that kind of prejudice and closed-mindedness. We obviously have a long way to go before we are able to deal with death and what follows in anything approaching a sensible fashion.

She was speaking about her own drowning, a tsunami that left her dead. She wrote about her her miraculous revival as well as the disbelief her story elicited in others: even her (married) boyfriend was unable to give credence to what she was trying to say. Left to her own devices, she was forced to her own methods of divination, her only comfort coming from experts who themselves had gone into hiding since they, too, had been met with hostility and indifference.

Before they have the chance to speak, he’s accosted by a boy he learns is one half of a pair: a surviving Twin. The child recognizes him, the man who once did readings for the dead, someone who could help put him in touch with the brother who left; a boy whose mother had been whisked away, left alone in world without his brother.

At first, the child’s an irritant. What’s worse, his demand for a reading has spoiled any chance to speak to the woman who signed her book for him. He tried running away, hoping to return to the rhythms of his life. And yet, the boy stood his ground outside from morning ’til night, as if he were the only one who could connect him to the spirit of the dead, the other whose absence had left him bereft.

Eventually, he relents but soon discovers that his words are not enough. The child remains stricken, not knowing how to live without his other half. Which is when the unexpected happens: straying from the script on behalf of the grieving one in front of him, as much a surprise to him as anyone else: less words from the beyond than advice on how to deal with an unwanted absence. As if he had to suffer a broken heart first to understand what it meant to get to the other side, perhaps even to recognize the nature – and consequence – of the accident of his youth.

What was not said (but implied), the secret behind the riddle of the Twin’s death, the fate of the elder who went to fetch medicine for their ailing mother because he was the more able of the two: when his cell was stolen, that’s when the terror began, for that’s also when their soul connection was lost. Boys who towered over him took it. Wanting what he had with his twin. Wanting it as their own.

It’s the kind of theft that happens more often than we’d like to think. The deprived stealing what they lack from the hands of a child. Sometimes it’s accomplished by brute force and the advantage of numbers, overpowering their prey. At other times, it’s more intimate, using the power of seduction to set their trap. But the result is always the same: there’s a death and there’s a survivor who’s haunted by absence, by the life that was taken.

In circumstances like these, some turn mute, other become a flower upon the wall or a ghostly shadow. Some try to compensate by changing their sex; some acquire talents that tap into the occult and hidden. Most became addicts, desperate to fill the gaping hole created by loss. Each are faced with the same question: how to live – how to create a life – in the absence left by tragedy.

Which might be why he writes a letter that turns into an avalanche of words, as much an homage to what he has learned as a desire to make it known to her. And while it may resemble a dissertation, it’s clear they’d never be published in a fancy magazine or a book. For they’re meant only for her.

Since the words come out rushing, not all of it makes sense. Surely, some of it’s garbled and confused, which probably reflects the nature of an illumination that undermines everything he took to be true. It’s as if his meeting the child and then reading her book had unleashed something that had remained dormant, as if the woman and child helped answer the riddle that had hounded his entire life, including his ambivalence about his "ability" to communicate with the dead.

His compulsion to write is a measure of his gratefulness, as well as his admiration. And why he’d ask if she would like to meet.

Whether she would consent or not would remain an open question, an uncertainty he’d happily tolerate, especially after assaulting her with his words.

While she reads, another scene unfolds, one involving the Twin who extracted a reading on behalf of the dead, as if the reading – perhaps even the letter that followed – contributed to a long-awaited reunion between the child and his mother: the lonely journey now finally at its end. As if the woman, in her own act of reading, conjured a different conclusion for the story of the boy who had lost his brother.

For he now has access to what seemed beyond his grasp, his very own mother who had once seemed so far away. She’d been drowning in a sea sorrow, leaving the twins to fend for themselves. But having committed herself to a life of sobriety, she had now returned. And the world was no longer swallowed by the dark.

..

In many ways, they’re the picture-perfect family. Husband and wife love each other deeply and both adore their daughter. And yet, there’s a tension that haunts their home: the daughter wishes she were somewhere else. In private, her parents joke about the terror of adolescents, but this only serves to confirm what they already know. A fracture between mother and daughter that seems beyond repair, no matter how hard either of them may try to fix what’s been broken.

The child hates the place to which they’ve moved, a nowhere-land filled with losers. She’s bright in a place where it’s frowned upon to use one’s brain, much less show any signs of aspiration or achievement. And what better target than her mother to vent her frustration, particularly since she seems to have no purpose in life other than to dote on her husband? The perfect housewife who’s given up everything just to be with the man she loves.

It was precisely this endless argument that erupted during a mother-daughter trip to somewhere, as if the tension could be contained no longer. Hanna is the mother ("God has favored me with a child") and despite her daughter’s silent resentment, still loves her dearly. On the other hand, her daughter, Samantha ("God has heard" + "flower") is just tired of her mother’s attention, as if she doesn’t have a life of her own. Or wouldn’t know what to do with one, if she had.

Can we talk?
– Why do you constantly have to talk about everything?
I just want to know what’s going on with you. Why you’re acting this way.
I want things to be better between us.
– Yeah, well, it’s never going to happen. So just get over it.
Why am I the bad guy, huh? You don’t treat your father like this.
– Because he’s not on my back all the time. He treats me like an adult.
No, he spoils you and you’re not an adult.
– Well, I’m not a baby either, Mom. I can take care of myself, okay?
Don’t be mad at me just because I care about you. I love you.
– Yeah, well maybe a little bit too much.

It would seem that the only thing holding them together is husband and father, but even this isn’t enough. For immediately, just as the two of them seem to have reached a stalemate, a truck appears out of nowhere – barreling down the highway in the opposite direction – and their lives are forever changed. Their family forever transformed by an accident that comes on the heels of an argument between wife and daughter.

Father-and-husband finds them lying side by side on life support, like twins awaiting divine intervention hoping to avoid a fate in a casket. He’ll not know what to do, looking to the doctors to intervene, especially since the eyes of his wife will flicker, telling him that she’s not yet dead.

When he tells her what happened, she’ll go into a panic, asking about their daughter while apologizing profusely to the man she loves, certain that the accident was all her fault. Between sobs of confusion and despair, she asks him to move her closer to their child and to place her hand in her own.

When the machines start signaling an emergency – made worse when the two are separated – he’s pushed aside during the furious work of resuscitation. But in a matter of minutes, it’s all over: both mother and daughter declared dead … until a faint pulse brings one of them back to life.

The heartbeat belonged to the body of the daughter.

On a rollercoaster of emotion, her father watches over her bedside, still coming to terms with the death of his wife, grateful that their daughter remains alive.

As she awakens he goes to her side, trying to comfort the one still disoriented by what has come to pass. He breaks the news about her mother gently, whispered in her ear, but this only adds to her confusion. Matters are made worse by the name he keeps calling her ("Samantha"), as if she were someone else.

She asks him for a mirror – because she wants to see the injuries, he thinks – but when her face appears, she’ll go berserk. Within minutes of her awakening, she’ll be told she’s lost her mother, called by a name that’s not her own and, now, see that she’s inhabiting the body of another.

Staring back at her is the unthinkable: none other than the face of her daughter.

Soon, a funeral will be held, all the more perverse because no one knows the truth of what happened. Her husband, Benjamin ("son of my right hand"), will waver in disbelief, not knowing what kind of credence to give to the words coming from his daughter’s mouth: she says she’s his wife, and will recount detailed memories of the life they shared. But the sight of seeing his child speaking of those intimacies will prove too difficult to bear.

With time, he’ll come to believe her; nothing else can explain what’s happened. Because of the strangeness of it all, they’ll keep it a secret, something only the two of them will share. For both want to understand this turn of events and, more importantly, wish to discover the fate of their daughter: will she come back to them or is she now forever gone? And if she should return, what will happen to the wife who no longer has a body to call her own?

As they wait, hoping the answers will come, they decide that she should continue living the daughter’s life. If nothing else, she’ll be taking care of their child’s body, the vessel waiting for her daughter’s return.

Which is how she finds herself back at school, swallowed by a world she’d left more than twenty years ago. And unlike her daughter, who was a straight A student, she’s not sure she can pull this off. For she had given up any outside pursuits when she married her husband, and is more than a little wary about writing essays or whatever else her teachers may throw her way.

What’s more, she soon discovers the life of her daughter that had been hidden from view, more complete – and complicated – than she could have ever imagined. Her friends love her dearly, that much is plain to see. But there’s also the matter of boys (and sex) as well as the frightful discovery that the name of one of them had been tattooed on her ass.

For a woman who married quite young, this experience forces her back to an adolescence she’d bypassed years ago, as if this freak accident were giving her the chance to live it all again. Except this time, with stakes set impossibly high: her daughter’s life now depended on her success.

Meanwhile, Ben, her husband, looks for answers. The doctors haven’t been much help, saying it could be anything from an extreme case of posttraumatic disorder to delirium. (Their exams showed nothing wrong with her brain.) And while they hope it’s nothing other than a temporary brain dysfunction, it’s clear that his daughter’s confused, and for good reason, too: she’s just survived a traumatic accident and the death of her mother. Sometimes, it’s just too much for the mind to bear.

The library gives him access to different sorts of answers to the question he begins to describe as a form of "spiritual possession." And in his hunting, he finds the work of a professor familiar with cases similar to what’s happened to his wife and daughter: the spirit of one inhabiting another.

When he goes to meet him, the professor speaks of a woman in Africa who, after emerging from a coma, claimed to be the spirit of a girl who once lived a hundred miles away. No explanation could be found to connect one with the other. As far as the professor could tell, the two were complete strangers. The woman eventually recovered from her illness but retained the girl’s personality forever.

He’ll tell Hanna this phase could last as long as seven years, that they’ll need to find a way to make a go of it. So the charade continues: she living the life of her daughter and he pretending that she’s his child, even as both wonder whether their daughter will return or whether they’ll ever return to being husband and wife.

At night, he watches over her, struggling to understand: the body of his daughter now inhabited by his wife. There’ll be times when, unannounced, the child returns, like when she’s having a bad dream and calls out for her daddy. But other than these briefest of moments, it’s the spirit of his wife who lives in the girl’s body, and who’s just as frustrated as he, for their old life – looking more idyllic, now that it’s gone – seems to be forever gone.

Where there once were two, there’s now only one. The wife and mother buried six feet below the ground. And because of this, the old intimacies are gone, leaving each to learn how to handle a new form of chastity that’s been imposed on them.

Blocked in this way, she redirects her energy into learning about the daughter who’s now gone missing, the one who had resented her so much. As she begins to become familiar with a routine that doesn’t revolve around her husband, she comes to be submerged in a new rhythm of living, a life with it’s own demands, complications, and joys.

In her locker, she’ll find her daughter’s diary, a private record of what was never shared. In spending time with these memories, she learns to better understand the child’s unhappiness, and why she hated the life imposed by husband and wife: made to feel like a fish out of water, self-conscious and apologetic about who she was, as if something was wrong with her, rather than the others.

Eventually, she begins writing in the diary herself, creating a record of the life led in the daughter’s absence. A new chapter in the life of the girl, even if she’s not there to serve as its witness. And with this solitary activity, another barrier is erected between the married couple, a new form of privacy from which he’s now excluded. For this labor of love doesn’t concern him: it’s about mending the relation between a woman and her daughter, previously eclipsed by the role of wife.

And rather than merely pretending, she uses this exile to work on skills she never had the chance to develop. School work will be the most frightening and difficult. But it brings its own rewards, like the pride in recognizing one’s own progress, realizing her limitations were a figment of her imagination.

She’ll also use this second adolescence to hone her skills as a photographer. Previously, it was just a hobby patronized by her husband. Still life, mostly. Solitary landscapes reflecting the quiet and unspoken, as if seeking to capture something that had yet to see the light of day. As a mirror to this, her other favorite subject was her daughter, which irritated the child to no end, which was the focus of their other argument, immediately before their accident.

Mom, are you taking my picture (again) ?
I already told you: I hate it when you take my picture.
Why don’t you listen to me ??
– Honey, [lying] it was just one shot.
You’re an amateur. You take pictures of buildings, of cows, of nothing !
When are you going to do something real ?

But now, inhabiting her daughter’s body, she’s no longer restricted to buildings and cows. And for the first time in her life, there are others who see value in her work. She’s even told it might lead to something big, the kind of future of which her daughter had dreamed. In pursuing her own talents, she comes to ensure a life for her child, one that would make her proud.

But this immersion in the life of her daughter alienates her husband: in becoming her own child, she’s robbed him of any relation to his wife. Quite predictably, this leads to an argument. And yet, in the flurry of words that follow, the shape of her dilemma becomes abundantly clear, as well as the reasons behind the decisions she’s been forced to make.

I made a decision to be Sam because I couldn’t be me. It was too painful.
– So it doesn’t even bother you that we can’t be together ?
You know, this was your idea.
– Yes, but I’m stuck. I can’t move forward and I can’t move back as long as Sam’s
– gone. I don’t know how you can do this, just take her life and forget about ours.
– This is still a marriage. That’s selfish.
Oh, right. So I can’t have a life? Everything was great when I was just a housewife.
– You don’t talk to me. You don’t seem to realize I’m the outsider in all of this.
– I don’t get to feel Sam the way that you do.
Oh, you’re looking for pity? You’re so fucking selfish. You don’t seem to understand.
If our daughter comes back, where do you think I’m going to go ?

What he didn’t seem to realize is that she’s been fighting for the life of their daughter, in the hope that one day she’ll return. The cruel irony is that, should she be successful, she also assures her own demise. Her old life as wife and mother would come to an end: caught in a temporary arrangement, created by the accident, with an expiration date signaling her eventual death.

Over time, Sam (her daughter) slowly begins to make unannounced appearances. Mostly at night, when she’s half asleep, or in the morning, when she’s roused from a deep slumber. The visits are short, never more than a moment, but whatever her mom is doing must be right, since these visit become more frequent.

And then, one night, while hanging out with her friends, she’ll be offered some Special K. She’s reluctant, at first, but upon a friend’s prodding – Come on! Don’t you want to take a break from being you for a few hours? – she decides to give it a try. And the experience seems to confirm what one of the others had said, less about the drug than the accumulation of her labor (itself, a form of grounding) that now leads to the top of her head.

It’s totally rad.
It makes you, like, hallucinate and totally dissociate from your body, you know?
It feels like you’re, like, rising above it.

Just as she’ getting used to the idea of relying on a drug to help her escape, just as she’s beginning to feel its effects on her body, more relaxed than she’s been in years … it hits her like a brick: a vision floating above her, as if painted on the ceiling, a portrait of her original body exactly as she must have looked immediately following the accident: splayed across the road, bleeding and broken.

The panic that sets in is not so different from what her daughter experiences the next morning when she learns of the fate of her mother. Two sides of the same experience; two versions of coming to terms with her death. What had once been an bumpy relationship now forever gone. Only her deep and abiding absence can be mourned.

She had awoken that morning as if had been any other, surprised to see her father watching over her at the foot of her bed, and even more taken aback by the hug he gives her ("Is that you?"), as if she had returned from the dead.

But slowly, the memories begin to return, as if a heavy fog were being lifted. The events from a lifetime ago rushing back to meet her, with the same violence of the accident that took her mother, her father’s wife. All of a sudden, the house will feel empty, the rooms now echoing with a resounding absence.

..

Sam’s return signals that their time is limited, so they say their goodbyes. On film, the scenes only take a moment but in real life they often last much longer, as much due to the labor of transmigration as the heartache in saying farewell.

..

They’ll also read from their daughter’s diary, discovering that beneath her ambivalence lay a recognition that her mother could not be replaced, no matter how much she might have thought that might have been what she wanted.

If Mom didn’t marry Dad, I wouldn’t be here.
Maybe if I could have seen her at my age …
I don’t know why I have such a hard time admitting it,
but deep down, I do love her.
I mean, she’s the only Mom I’ll ever have, right?

When she’s gone, daughter and husband go to the cemetery to pay their final respects. From the arrangement of their figures, it’s clear this will mark her for the remainder of her life, not just by grief, but thankfulness for her sacrifice.

..

..

One final message awaits the daughter, now returned from her place of hiding. A recording made by the mother who inhabited her own body while she was gone. It’s a farewell spoken across time and space, the only way one generation can truly speak to another. Of how a commitment made prior to one’s death gives birth to something marvelous. A creation of one’s own making.

Something happened, which I really can’t explain, but it’s been incredible.
I got to live your life while you were gone. And I got to feel what you feel, and go through what you go through everyday, and I got to know your friends.
..
And I got to know you. And I think you are a brilliant, beautiful, intelligent girl,
and I want you to find whatever it is in life that makes you happy, and go do it.

It’s the kind of reconciliation that once seemed impossible, mother and daughter inexplicably at odds and unable to understand the other, and more than the kind of "feel good" ending we’ve come to expect from the movies. It’s the gift of a mother to a daughter who once shared the same body, the ultimate sacrifice that allows a child to live her life without having to battle parents who do not understand.

It’s the kind of sacrifice that only a mother can make, although the father bears a heavy price, as well.

I want you to take care of your father for me.
He will be okay, but he needs your help to get over this.

He had no choice in the matter: the accident took his wife. And while he’ll still have his home, his job, and his life – and while he’ll have regained his daughter – his grief will run deep.

Yet, the ultimate prize – for both parents and daughter – is the life unleashed from death: free to live, to love, and to learn. A child initially met with incomprehension is now fully understood, a transformation made possible by inhabiting the life that had been closed off to her. An adolescent body interposed between a husband and wife so that their child could be born.

And while she’ll miss her mother’s presence, she’ll find evidence of her that remains in her body, traces of the life that preceded her own. Like the very hand by which she makes a mark in the world, the script itself now transformed.

..

It’s what invariably happens when we find the courage to follow the "lights" that have continuously beckoned, even when we didn’t quite understand what they were or what their purpose might be. Forever blinking on the horizon of consciousness, like flashes of insight that would come and then disappear, their disappearance as much our own doing as anything else, since the message they brought was not one we wished to hear.

The headlights rushing down the hall of her murder’s home threaten to annihilate Susie, as this is the threat that the Light has always held. Destroying all one’s preconceptions about life, even about oneself. The path that might have been …
all premised on keeping the truth buried, as if pretending nothing had happened might make the past disappear.

Susie’s encounter with the lights could not have happened as long as she held on to her father, insisting that their love blot out the terrible thing that had happened. His valiant efforts to defend her were doomed to fail since the horror was already in the past and in no way could it be erased. It was there, indelibly stamped on her very being, whether either of them liked it or not.

It’s only after she realizes that he couldn’t help no matter how hard he tried, only then does she find the strength to let him go, knowing that he loved her as deeply as he could. And it’s only after making this decision, freed from his protection, that she finds the courage to enter the dark house that had been repeatedly calling, like whispers in the dark.

If it didn’t occur to her before, it certainly did now: the two of them holding on to each other – providing comfort and joy – kept Susie forever trapped, caught in the In Between. Stuck in a prison of ever changing landscapes, haunted by the dark, with her exit from that place blocked by the light of the sun.

But once the decision is made, once Susie enters the dreaded house that she had postponed for so long, it’s as if that single decision sets certain forces in motion, forces that, until then, had been held at bay. For once she follows the light flashing in the upstairs hallway, an echo of the lighthouse that had been taunting her, she’s pulled through a series of discoveries that come to her naturally, hardly requiring any effort from her at all.

At first, the traffic threatens to overwhelm her, but the light and noise is just an illusion. Once she steps to the side of the road and turns her head around, she’ll find the first of the Murderer’s victims lying right there at her feet. And once this body is revealed to her, others follow in quick succession, as if drawn by gravity, like her tumble down the stairs that led to the next corpse lying in wait.

So, while her journey into the Murderer’s home might have seemed impossible at first, Susie soon learns that once the decision was made, the discoveries come fast. Little things will draw her attention to what needs to be seen, like a bouncing beach ball that seems so out of place, each providing connections to another place and time, allowing her to be pulled out of the world of the ordinary into another that unveils the buried and the dead.

The fact that this leg of her journey begins in the seemingly normal environs of a suburban home suggests that the veil separating these worlds exists in the unremarkable and the ordinary. That the heart of Evil can be found in a place not so different from her very own home.

While we all have the tendency to believe that the unthinkable happens to other people in other places, relatively rare events that have nothing to do with the normal rhythms of our everyday lives, Susie’s passage through the rooms of that house will expose the falsity of that lie. She will teach us that as long as we cling to the belief that Evil resides elsewhere, in another country or another neighborhood, we become accessories to the devil, for that’s precisely what he’d like us to think.

Yet, if we allow ourselves to look more closely, the evidence of his doings are not so difficult to be found. We only need to pay attention and know where to look: in the darkened corners that haven’t been dressed-up for public consumption, tucked away in the closet, or swept under the rug.

In other words, in giving up her father, Susie’s also giving up the suburban ideal, what we still call the American Dream. For in its commitment to a lifestyle of appearances, all kinds of demons get pushed into the dark.

In following the light that brings her face-to-face with the Murderer’s hidden deeds, Susie’s also coming to learn that the experience suffered by his hands was not hers alone; that there were others that came before (and perhaps even after). Without quite wanting to, she discovers what it means to belong to a sisterhood, one whose members rarely have the chance to meet. For once his deed is done, each of them is condemned to their own version of the In Between, a journey forced upon them by another.

And yet, as we hear in the timbre of her voice, Susie draws some consolation from this: the string of bodies clearly shows that her private torment was not hers, alone. It’s not that she’s "happy" that there were others who suffered like she had. The discovery of others lets her know that she was not the only one who had that experience. She was not alone. She wasn’t the only one the Murderer had targeted; she wasn’t the only one who had been lured into his trap.

Letting go of her father and the suburban ideal allows Susie to come to terms with this fact: that buried across this vast continent lie the bodies of young girls tossed aside as if they were junk. (If this isn’t evil, what is?) Only when she lets go of him is she able to face this truth.

If letting go of him is what finally allowed her to begin this part of her journey, her final trip to the Murderer’s basement is what allows the burning flame to finally extinguish itself and disappear.

This moment, standing over her very own corpse, was the moment she wished to avoid at any cost, unable to confront the truth about her death. In part, it’s what kept her linked to her father, hoping he could erase the pain of her experience. And despite the continual "lights" flashing atop that house, signaling a past that would not go away, she tried her best to keep it at bay, as if an exercise of will had the strength to undo what had already been completed.

But once she finds the strength to learn the truth about the Murderer’s, including herself, the panic will slowly melt away. And so will her anger. For as she will soon discover, there’s something else that survives her death, another version of herself waiting at the side of the sink hole. And another life to live.

She had already seen the truth of her demise much earlier, when she revisited the pictures taken by her own hand so long ago. She’s reminded of them when her father’s still in the midst of his fury, trying to figure out what happened to his little girl. Not quite able to put the pieces together, not quite able to let go.

When she looks at those images again, much to her surprise, they point to the very site that’s been the focus of her journey: the darkened house of a neighbor, lights everywhere pointing to where she needed to go. It’s almost as if, in distracting her parents while riding her bike, she were signaling a message opposite of what she’d intended. As if, in asking them to look at her, she was really asking them to look at him.

There are many ways in which the truth gets inscribed into seemingly incidental aspects of our lives, from the clothes we wear, the pictures we paint, even the books and movies we love. And even before we’re able to understand why we’re drawn to some things – and, perhaps, repulsed by others – they’re there, staring us in the face, bringing a message about the Alpha and Omega, about the beginning and the end of our lives. If only we’re willing to listen.

When Susie finds the strength to let go of her father’s protection and walk into the Murderer’s house alone, she demonstrates a courage few of us possess and the wisdom only the best of us can hope to own. For in that decision, she changes the direction of her life, coming to terms with what had been shunned and what had been hidden by the excess of light.

For it’s only in the shadows were the truth can be found, despite the metaphors we’ve been provided about illumination and enlightenment. Like the beacons that summon at the darkest moments of night. And it’s only by completing this leg of her journey that Susie reaches a place where she can find some peace. For when she’s done, there’ll be nothing left to haunt her, no more demons lurking in the dark.

All will have been uncovered, and the truth will hurt no more.

..