Within two nights it was the brightest full moon in 136 years. And yes it was eye-blinkingly bright; it reminded her of that November moon in the Walbran. She went to Temple Bar Square that night where it turned out someone was running a projector, and the moment she sat down what should come on but “Slug” of all things, with montages of the flaring eclipse that had happened just days before she first met him, so it could not have been more moving really. Then the sun blazed on with “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles, and who should walk up but her two favourite Irishmen, Cormac and Eoin, better yet, sharing a hash spliff. Cormac appealed to her by wearing a keffiyeh around his neck. They kissed on the cheek, hugged each other, and then she turned around to discover Eoin was there too.
They went to Isolde’s Tower, and there they got into one of her age old acid tinged arguments, where Eoin believed we fulfilled no better life form model than a virus, and Cormac believed that both cycles, destruction and growth were occurring in tandem and the growth/evolution pattern still managed to stay ahead. By this point she was of the mind to offer her support to Cormac, from the invisible sector of the argument they weren’t actually addressing, the spiritual dimension at root of all this, where she’d battled mentally over the exact same debate for years and years, and felt like she was the only being in existence who could point to how she herself had solved it after hours and hours of agony, but she held back in silence. Cormac left them with a thought provocation probably to get her reaction, stating he was going to get into Israel by way of the Golan Heights and leave by the West Bank without any passport. He kissed their hands good-bye, hers and a Frenchwoman who’d joined them, (aptly named) Delphine. She wondered if anyone else at the table could actually grasp the enormity of what he’d said in parting. And that was when Eoin brought out his sketchbook for Delphine upon request, stopping on a black ink drawing he’d painted in with red and yellow.
“Ooh, symbolique!” cooed Delphine.
There was an outer shell or a frame in the outline of a body, graphics and symbols trimming the outside. The body was sheared in a cross-section to show what was on the inside.
“This is acid,” announced Eoin. Rahab could only stare at him. But then he switched the term to something in Spanish, and she couldn’t nail him down in what he meant, which was deliberate. He didn’t want to define it. Inside the body was a nude woman, all red. At the intrasternal notch (the indentation between the clavicles at the base of her neck) he’d drawn an Egyptian Ankh. The woman was pointing below at a red city with such force and directness, it was as if she’d invoked its existence. She pointed with her left hand, and it even appeared he might have added the detail of a ring on her significant finger, though Ray was not quite sure. The city was reflected, beneath, in a red sea. In the reflection in the sea, the city was gold, not red.
“But the reflection of the city is different, see”, said Eoin with emphasis.
Oh Crikey, though Ray. Even that. The reflection is different; I’ve always known that. But that’s where it becomes its full dimensions, becomes true to itself. When they define it…that’s when it becomes gold. Ray covered her mouth in astonishment. If only you could see what I’ve written!
Eoin was talking about how when you’re on acid, this is what you see. You become a part of this body. Delphine looked back at him in comprehension.
“We’re all keys”, she said.
Jesus! thought Ray. If I told them yes, it’s true, but I don’t see that, I am, I made that, I became that body with everyone in it, I invoked the city, I wrote about the keys….
