chapter 1

cusp

copyright elaine morrison 2021

1

“So it’s all a lie?” Ayrden posed to Fae, a random girl who had been guided to her apartment by the upstairs neighbour while searching for an address which didn’t exist. That oft seems to happen on script from the man with a large marker striping just off camera. And Ayrden knew because she had hunted the building for it after the impromptu roommate left, and took her in anyway. 

Her babysitter didn’t respond.

We only think of the actual, but we are constantly creating the world from our imagination. 

We only see what is here, yet in order to build anything we must believe in what isn’t.

If you want to stay exactly as you are, stay, stay in the sameness.

Life does not only continually change, after this instant the existence we know disappears and in order to keep the system as is we just loop over the same moments, the same actions, same set of circumstances, 

replacing a new identical card to the deck which blows away many times per second.

You decide a path every single moment, and again now, and again right now.

Decide different. 

There is no keeping score. There are no wrong moves. 

This is your moment to be entirely new. 

So you must stop looking around you and think only of the impossible.

Hold the dream in your being and then follow it. 

Hold the unknown out in front and don’t look back.

First you think the thought in your head, feel the instinct in your gut, know it in your essence, love it in your heart. 

Be trust.

Then act on it with your body for we are alive. 

Like gods we create.

“And then they all go ‘Whaah? How does that work?’ And we’d just have to grapple with the reality of an impossible vision of perfection come to life?” 

“I think we could live with that, as a place we want to be.”

Get in there.

“I love there.” 

I wonder what without mercy the move could be of late.

“I feel like we’ve been here before,” Ben mocked. “Didn’t everyone splatter out of British Columbia, including you who was speeding in the opposite direction across the Trans-Canada when I last noted, after that whole international debacle? You know, the one in which our Israeli security finest enacted the re-assassination of late PM Aram, and all your perverted relatives, vaguely associated ruffians, plus a sizeable Canadian surveillance contingent showed up. And we are returning, why?”

Yuli was game for a second childhood. Life is short. She had figured out some long term plans a while ago but by the time the buried events of recent weeks had sprung back up into her consciousness she found herself drowning. There is a time when you realize you have nothing to lose. It often occurs amongst those who lose most. And in that silence of utter humility when a powerful force sweeps everything away one irrational instant of clarity had her turning around the car and heading back. We come in fanciful and light, which the system persists to cure. But if you want to retain any kind of innocence you must be fearless, fearlessly open. That was where she wanted to go so she gave in to not knowing and just went. Exhilarating scary freedom. The details didn’t matter as she handed herself over. “So I had a dream where I was eating duck. Think about it. The last thing I thought about before waking was the word duck. DUCK!” she sputtered, before pausing on confused. …terrific.

“Excellent! Don’t let time and Twinkies win, or that depressed musician near the dolphins again.” 

She may have been scuffing the numb veneer of sadistic pragmatism but underneath there was revealed a nutty enthusiasm and transparently naive centre wise enough to be openly disarming while threatening no one. “Be uncontrollable, not one of the robots. You can’t negotiate with crazy.”

“And do it in another language. That’ll get you removed from the plane. I always suspected you had it in you,” praised Ben, “a judgemental laziness undaunted by lack of any real psychic talent.”

“Howbeit your keeping score, I’ve still got that awesome one percent.”

“Check presupposing rejection and shooting first. That’s for our little friends with all the ammo.”

Yuli wished she had been taught earlier that our life’s purpose is just to radiate and emanate ripples of energy out into the world.

“Emanate the love,” Ben jested. “Have we passed Toronto yet? Remember, Israeli abrasion cuts through the surface…Who needs that pesky topsoil?…deep into our programmable core, with exploding bullets.”

Ayrden listed:

1. The victim tale fiction starring nuclear world superpower overwhelmingly armed with the finest offensive weaponry on the planet by way of hundreds of billions of American taxpayer dollars. 

Fae offered, “Everyone loves an underdog story.”

“But what does the underdog become when they win?”

“Excuse-filled justified.”

“I didn't realize we were also setting a place for your agenda,” Ayrden added. 

“The centre of the story becomes the only person in the room.”

“Then who’s the underdog now?”

“Can you know someone’s ability who doesn’t believe it themself?” Yuli dwelled on the classic teacher dilemma. And the plot of that dancing movie where the student rekindles the ardor of the downtrodden stars.

“Isn’t that the plot of all dancing movies? You be you and I’ll deal with it.”

“That may be one of the most equanimous things anyone has said to me.” 

“It’s not that I’ll be passive or necessarily accepting,” tempered Ben, “but when I find a counterbalance which works for me don’t take it personally.”

And, there it is. “Good thing I appreciate myself and am not in need of external validation.” We shine when we are passionate.

“Yuli, think positive, like Canada calling every slab of wilderness covered in evergreens a park. If it has wolves, coyotes, bears, deer, moose, bison, it’s not a park. If it is big enough to find Hansel and Gretel still held at the witch’s candy house it’s not a park. If you lose visibility with civilization, die on a mountain, get bitten by a snake, cougars eat your face, it's not a park. Though, sometimes passion rises from a discontent and restlessness and you just have to go with it, into it, and out the other end.”

Either way the activity has to spark a fire. It must be fulfilling and worthwhile of our time and energy. 

“Wonderland!” they shout excitedly in unison. 

“Sure, pleasure hobbies are so cutely innate until you are brainwashed by society’s best and must actively work to reconnect with your own intuition again.” 

Then Ben sketched how the commercial amusement grounds are engineered for safety and diversity with the illusion of local privacy, all the while under camera. If you have to get to a public university through the forest, though, you’re on your own. 

2. The propaganda media instills fear and blame of an annihilated occupied country whose civilians are routinely massacred at a kill ratio of 25:1 and murdered daily without consequence. 

“You can’t accuse Palestine of not wanting peace. They don’t have any power. And the proof is 77 years of loss.”

“If they could, it wouldn’t look like this.” Fae reported soldiers in the field were struck dumb they didn’t find the wars they were promised. 

“It’s not a war if you’re basically ambushed in a prison.” Ayrden rephrased, “It’s target practice.”

“They publicize Israeli casualties all over the news.”

“Israeli casualties. But Israel kills twenty-five times more Palestinians.” 

“They don’t show that.”

“And that’s how you control people.” 

Fae knew about manipulation. She wasn’t the only one stolen and deceived. No childlike heart ever wishes to grow up and become an occupier and abuser of other people.

“Israelis do suffer. But Palestinians suffer more. And Israel is the only one with the power to do anything about it.”

“Besides the outside world which doesn’t interfere.”

“Interfere. Give a damn. When a Palestinian is murdered there are no charges and no one is prosecuted. It’s open season. An Arab life isn’t worth very much.”

“There was that one case,” Fae replied.

“The one percent show pony judgement to convince Israelis they are just and lawful and the system is not corrupt.”

“That’s even worse. You’ve just cemented genocide.”

“That or flee to a locale which understands intuition.” Yuli embraced motion. Not so much arriving.

        “And when you don't feel energetic or in the right mentality to enter into that creation zone?” 

Push yourself to do it anyway. Use a trick so you don’t notice. 

Ben took to that. “First you surgically identify the problem. Zero in, and I’ll only give you a few minutes,” he analytically designed. “After that I’m just laughing at marmot jokes in my head.” 

“Aim at your future goal.” Farther than your eyes can see or your heart can dream.

“I suppose the limit is when your ankles get wet. But be sure to land precisely back at the place you’re trying to avoid with people trying to kill you. It’s hilarious and sad how stupid a smart person can be.” 

“Now map the steps from choices of many possible avenues…” 

“…needed to get to the very place of which you should do well to steer clear.” 

And go!

“Run at it as if Ofer is holding a gun,” noticing they were speeding past the landscape at 125 km/h. “I truly admire if not agree with your reckless pluck heading straight for the flames. He’s rewriting history, you know.”

3. Palestine was proposed halved by UN countries not having authority to do so to create 1947 Israel, militarily depopulated of 530 existing Palestinian villages, ethnically cleansed of 3/4 million Palestinians exiled as refugees, killed in the tens of thousands, imprisoned, violated, and the remaining land dwindled by relentless military advancement, occupation, and annexation over 77 years as forest saplings were planted over housing remnants and Hebrew names appeared in place of the Arabic. 

“Tantura,” validated Fae. 

“From parking lot gravesite to appropriated cities across Israel.”

“Even the food is Arabic.”

“On kibbutz outings we had lunch in those woods. I thought the ruins were ancient.” Ayrden narrated how she met a Palestinian family in Vancouver. “They told me how they were forced out of their home in Akka…”

“Which we renamed Akko.”

“…at gunpoint by Israeli soldiers, without being allowed to take anything, even a change of clothes. They walked to Lebanon where they became refugees and couldn’t work, so they left for other parts.”

“Where?”

Ayrden hadn’t asked.

“Palestinians were scattered out to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank,” although the Faculty of Law lectures its future Supreme Court judges that they decided to leave of their own accord.

“That’s helpful.”

“And it’s no coincidence routine invasions to the north match locations of current Palestinian refugee camps.” 

“The twin towers also had multiple attempts until success.”

Fae side-glanced.

“Nobody remembers the car bomb. Eventually the family made it to Canada.”

“Paradoxically, I’ve found that running from drama creates the end one is trying to avoid.”

Ben commended Yuli’s whatever professional platitude that was. “But at least it would have been in your wake. The last moments are always the most exciting, don’t you think? Yes, under his quill the kid firing blanks is the real assassin, the Israeli people divided divinely all by themselves, and the Palestinians are not being forced inch by inch over 77 years into the Jordan River. But let’s continue.”

Once you start, you ride a wave carrying you along.

“So, doing what you enjoy has the power to transform. I suppose it can empty a room. How’s your Latin dancing to bootleg rapper videos?”

“Why should I direct and critique myself? I am the action.” We are trying to mirror spiritual perfection in the material world. It can elevate, lead to disaster, but it should never become an obstacle in just doing. “There are no mistakes.”

“On the contrary, mistakes are proof that you got up this morning.”

“Everything and everyone is an agent of the universe and it uses them to interact with us.” 

“I’ll say.”

Beingness is benevolent and although we may not realize it at the time these events are ultimately for our greater good.

        “Weren’t you the one fretting yesterday about how narrow, fearful, and exclusive people are?”

        “Forget people, life is awesome.”

        “But people are the world.”

        “No, they just think they are.”

4. Palestinian civilians, children, are deliberately killed, maimed in the hundreds of thousands, raped, and tortured, arbitrarily imprisoned by the thousands, terrorized by home invasions and execution squads, denied freedom of movement, medical treatment, basic utilities, water, and food, and their homes, orchards, and vehicles vandalized and destroyed.

“If every dead Palestinian is labelled a terrorist, it goes unnoticed.”

Fae shed light on the published accusation within the announcements. “Those uncongenial photos are the young males whose mugshots the soldiers had already prepared.”

“Though we know sharpshooters also execute female medics and reporters, autistics on their walk to school, and old men beaten to death in their driveways at home.”

“So beware soldiers breaking into your house, ransacking, and then departing without abducting your son or shooting your husband asleep beside you. Just taking your picture.”

“I for one am glad there are negative people. That way even having an off day if I stand beside them in a suspect line-up for hell the devil will never find me. Maybe if I spoke Hebrew.”

It is a sense of instant lightness when your wheels first lift off ground. And then you practise emergency manoeuvres until dangerous feels normal, so it’s easy to see how catastrophes occur not in one fell swoop but by incremental mistakes, intentional oversights, judgement errors, that error still left unchecked…until just one more element added to the list, an unforeseen factor relatively harmless in of itself, like the others, but when placed in sequence in this series of small mishaps it becomes the tipping point to the place of no return. Mere points can pave the road leading to the precipice of disaster. And the converse can also be true in the matter of a mere point placing us on the cusp of a transformational breakthrough. 

Yuli had dreams which told her things. Everyone does. You see, when you release to sleep your conscious controlling mind you are able to receive the energy pervading the entire earth and all of time back into you. It’s as subtle as a light switch. The veil is thin so mostly we actively turn it off. But you have to not block it out, know that you can reach other depths of existence in this way, and just ask. It’s the same method by which some sit and meditate or use an object. The physical act of verbalizing your thought, doing something with the body, or establishing a trigger focuses your attention and energy directly on the invisible connection.

“You just stand in your apartment and tell the world what you want, just like that, out loud, and expect it to answer if not immediately then later in your dreams?” 

And if she clearly described every part of what she saw or heard or did, aloud or in writing, she could decode the message. “Time, space, all you need is eight.”

“You don’t need to understand,” Ben insisted. “It will all happen anyway and you’ll be living it.”

Concentrate on the idea and end result and let the how take care of itself. The mechanics of creation are beyond comprehension as well as irrelevant. 

“You know, I had that same issue in physics, always skewing my answers by forcing confinement of the question to the equations I could manage when the laws of the spirit and manifesting your dreams apparently teach that the dream is for us but the how was for the universe to answer all along,” slapping his thigh. 

        “Really?” Yuli credited. “You and Fae both?”

“No.”

How equals resistance. “Don’t get too specific. Generalize. Ignore the details.”

“Like driving across Canada by going west and looking for the green leaf with the big 1 on it.”

“That’s the extent of my map-reading.”

“You pulled out an atlas and estimated kilometrage by holding a thousand kilometre inch between your fingers.” Imitating her, “Doable.”

“I don’t know..”

“…or care…”

“…if I’m heading to Canmore, Sudbury - thank God I never need come back here.”

“You’ve not seen the movie White Nights, have you? And believe me there are much worse places we’ll yet tear through.”

  “Or Espanola…”

“Like anyone would actively head for Espanola.” 

“…when my aim is just to cross and reach the coast. Why don't they put the end destination on the road signs? The next province, the final station…”

“Splash. Hey, whales and dolphins.”

“I want to see those.”

“Of course you do,” Ben placated unicorn girl.

“…as opposed to the next town.” Signs aren't merely road directions made by the government. They are the signs of our heart guiding us home. They bring us into alignment. “As long as we move our feet we’ll get there.” 

“Because life’s always easy and feels so good, Yuli. Except when you miss the Winnipeg go around.”

“Well it should.”

“Then what have we been doing all this time?”

She let past events race, and the question simmer until it settled. “Not listening.”

“Is there a speed limit here? I’ve been looking for one but limits make themselves hard to find.” 

And they should not be sought. “It's okay. I know how they do this in the movies: The other guys are really nearly stationary and the speeder is going like 20 or something.”

“And I think I see the green screen. You see right there there's a guy eating a sandwich where they forgot to put, and you’re about to hit, a car.”

“It's really lego.”

“A sign doesn't get more literal than an actual sign. There are no cell phone bars showing across the Manitoba stretch, so I guess the universe won’t be answering in the pothole land of the straight highway either.” 

“The invention of rumble strips is genius.”

“Or you’d have run off the road miles ago.” Poking her, “Would you please look where you are driving? The car travels straight down your sight line.Your enthusiasm and lead foot would have driven us in a blaze of good-feeling sleep-deprived sizzled - Are cars even made out of metal anymore? - …”

“…plastic…”

“…into the ditch. Or in the case of Saskatchewan…”

“My wind turbine hero.”

“…we would just drown as the asphalt falls off into one big giant puddle.”

“Ah, but it’s not the universe manifesting my dreams either because the universe is me. That’s why I am getting exactly what I want. I’m giving it to myself. And when I’m the universe being accepting of me, it’s really me being accepting of me.” So be supportive and caring with the outside world. You are but nourishing yourself.

5. The food chain of power trained to systemically devalue and dehumanize its lower rungs. The runt’s life improves when it steps up a notch and can feed on someone else. But when an entire population of soldiers reintegrates back into mainstream society abuse doesn’t stop at the word Palestinian, or in the absence of the target thereof.

“The original Israeli terrorist organizations…”

  “…Irgun, Lechi, Palmach, Haganah, to name a few…”

“…picked up their bag of tricks directly from the playbook of WW2.”

“The abused become the abusers,” Fae dissected.

“If the worst is what you expect, you strike first.”

“And Israelis today inherit the disaster.”

Ayrden admitted, “You think becoming a soldier makes you strong when it actually makes you weak.”

“Because your confidence goes to the gun.” It goes to some thing outside yourself. “What happens when the strong break, when the positive lose hope?” she sought.

“Weakness breeds fear. Fear renders us capable of harming others.”

“It's why power is poison. And you, how does a token American fare in a war criminal country?” 

        “There were incidents. Aggression, deceit, death threats on my phone, but I’ve been relatively well-treated.”

Fae smirked. “Read that back to yourself again.”

“Hey,” Ben squirted. “There was a community marking portion to an online computer course I once did. Some people vehemently complained that their markers were quite unfair, yet I seemed to get perfect scores for a basic job sketchily done. I developed a theory. And then it happened again. The second round confirmed my suspicions, that I was in fact receiving my own supportive generous marks which I had given to others. The world was behaving as a mirror and the only ones harsh on the ones who complained were the complainers themselves.”

“No comment.” When we relate to anyone, to anything, we’re really relating to ourselves. 

“Really? No, really?”

We’ve been looking at God as something outside ourselves, but mystics hold that God is in fact us. The same can be supposed for the world. We hold it outside when nothing could be farther from the truth. We are the world and the world is us. We are inside it and it is within ourselves. No wonder we imagined God as separate when all we see is a separate world. That idea is merely an extension of our resistant dualistic polar thinking of us and them. Everything we relate to has these two opposites staring each other down, except that which touches our heart and soul. It is in that space where all boundaries vanish. They just do. And that’s the test. “The test is not the actual test, it’s the way you take the test.”

“If it’s room to create that you seek, you’ll need a blank slate. Any more B.C. wilderness up for grabs? That murder shack we came to adore? Or some impoverished ideological group that is small and at its inception to which you can lend a hand?” 

In an ordered society it is difficult to find a place. “I need something which hasn’t yet been all figured out.” Yuli rather liked a smooth road in hills around water, air and a view, one where it tapers off onto the gravel and countryside as if that is the line where civilization ends and freedom begins. The boundary is there to slip over if you want. You’re not hemmed in completely by concrete and curbs, every inch managed and perfectly sculpted and caging. 

“Then choose chaos. Let’s go back,” throwing up his hands as if effective suicide was a great idea. “You do know where we’re from, don’t you?” 

But she dreamt of looking west from an industrial area in suburban Toronto and upon declaring her imminent move a hand lay upon her shoulder and its voice expressed that it was glad. 

“If I was meant to do something it would wind up on my doorstep.” Ben held a blended downstream scheme.

“You have to meet things with the right energy. By the time I reach Vancouver I want to have shaken off where I’ve left.”

“So your view will be yet another high-rise.”

“Orcas cruise close by, mid-June.”

“They hunt seals.”

“Humpbacks cruise close by, mid-June.”

  “Look at it this way. You can jog in any direction and hit water, which is good because when you piss off the spirits you wind up with your lug nuts loosened and passengers screaming at you to slow down before you drive off a cliff, again, as a random example.”

“See! It wasn’t my maniacal driving after all. It was only the driver’s wheel coming off.”

“Does it matter? That makes me feel a lot safer.”

“All I hear here is resistance.” There is no coincidence. Nothing is random. The air is thick with intent.

“I’m often accused of being random. And yes, it still holds to be predictably random.”

6. The entire population serving in the army is an interesting numbers game. Orchestrated to reinforce abnormal as the new normal, but there’s an inbuilt dependency, and inbuilt opportunity.

“Instead of comprising a relatively small subset of the populace, the service completely overlaps civilian society into one homogeneous unit. What comes with that, however, is a soldier mindset dominating the public mainstream.” 

“Reinforcing a forces perspective and assumed obedience.”

“You’re even physically stiff to the extent of motionless.”

“And that’s not common?” Fae returned.

“No. But when the citizens are the army, should they oppose the establishment all they’d need to effectively challenge authority is not show up for duty, go on strike.”

“They put refuseniks in jail. But enough of them and no prison could contain everyone.”

“Eh, they’ll think of something,” Ayrden relied, “but do stay home and the occupation falls.” 

“At that point the people have control of the country.” Fae had not speculated on this potential. “They’re trained, but not cohesive.”

“That’s just brainwashing. The weaklings will run like, well, us.”

“Very funny.”

“Without support the outliers will still fold.”

“They’re Shabak puppets anyway,” Fae endorsed.

Ayrden pressed on, “They could have commanded the proposed 1947 borders be reinstated.” 

“It would be a 50-50 split.”

“Two states. Enact mutual enterprises to solidify cooperation, so Israel doesn’t sabotage it. Build luxury towers and put people in them. Raze Yamit from the Sinai.”

“We did it before. We stuffed half a million immigrants into hotels and every hole we could find.”

“You see, you don’t need to wait for politicians. You have the power.”

“We just continue to cycle through the garbage when our kingdom is right over there, waiting. And now it’s too late."

Palestine was multicultural while Europeans planned their eradication from afar. It was a Trojan Horse, bringing hell.

“Hey Israel, here’s a revolutionary idea: Return Palestine. All of it. You visited, and slept on our couch, but that's it. Go home.”

They had forcibly removed settlements. Unions shut down the entire nation over a labour dispute. And yet Fae wondered why the most significant act to establish real peace and equality, and a future, had not been undertaken.

Save Palestine, save yourself.

It haunted her. “Military culture has a fundamental undermining flaw.”

There are many profound bits of wisdom in flight which the unfortunate ones learn by mistake. They walk right into them, turning poor visibility over land into blindness over water. They pilot trusting others while disregarding who is at the helm, having never realized their students will kill them, their mechanic will cross-wire controls, their buddy will forget a fuel cap and confuse gallons and litres, until they’re the one at the controls having a heart attack left to instantly find somewhere completely unsuitable to crash land an airplane. At some point you realize: don’t trust anyone. And don’t box yourself in.

In a dream I asked why we were going to the airport for a meeting when the meeting should come to us, descending a twisty staircase into the dark funhouse. I got chased back from a small bridge, into the backwoods, by a gate moving across the bridge when I realized all I had to do is open the door and I was immediately back at the fairground not having to make that foreseen long journey back to the city after all. Just open the door and you're there.

“Well, this makes it easy,” says Tech, connecting up to Yuli’s Vancouver digs. 

“A houseboat?”

“More of a mobile in a flood, I’d say.”

“I love a gaping security hole.”

“Sort of takes all the fun out of drilling our own, though.”

“Her Facebook status warns that any surveillants would die of boredom. That is, after an inexorably long uneventful life, just to be clear that she isn’t uttering threats, well, to…us, really.” 

“That’s nice, Comp-Sci.” 

“Ayrden, can’t you leave the sarcasm in Jerusalem where it is appreciated? Go mistranslate Sanskrit, or something.”

“How hooked up is she?” Comp-Sci inquires of the engineer.

“Will Green Eyes and Uncle Ofer suffice?”

“I came back to gather distance from all that defensive offense.” 

“Security rather labels this most blessed affliction as our doubting rational how society.”

“The more doubt the more paralyzed everyone becomes.”

“And that’s where we come in.”

“It’s where we do our best work.”

“Ah yes, the manifesto. Control by fear.”

“Camouflage in chaos.”

“Program conformity.”

“Seek everything outside yourself.”

“We’ll be pleased to tell you what to do.”

“Amidst the constant clutter of narcissists’ cuts and bruises the massacre is hidden in plain sight,” Fae displayed to Ayrden.

“Until you do the math,” she answered. 

“You can always tell a lie. Because they know they're lying.”

That’s rich, considering. 

“It’s when they believe it’s the truth that everyone’s in trouble.”

“Millions of Israelis watched a staged assassination video, knew the regular driver was switched out, heard the GSS pin it on their operative on Channel One news, and still think the blanks shooter killed him.”