PHOENIX RISING

 

February 9, 1977

 

     After descending the mountain, I returned to the rental jeep I had left sitting forlornly by itself at the far end of the tour operator’s parking lot.  I never thought that opening the door of a vehicle, or climbing back behind the wheel, or even looking at its dash board, could be such a demanding undertaking.  The jeep seemed to say to me, “You rented me like a whore at Arusha, used me for three aimless days, then left me here to rot.  Now, you come back to me only because you had a change of heart about yourself.”  And yet, when I turned the key, the engine leapt back to life instantly, but such unconditional and total forgiveness and devotion only served to deepen my shame.

     Automatically, I engaged the clutch, and then, the question arose: “Where am I going?”

     My body have traveled from the Far East to the Far West and now to the Third World, my heart from ecstasy to agony and now to new hope, my mind from the quark to the Universe and now to miracle working, my soul from my war-time birth to my near death and now to resurrection, and yet, in life, I feel I have gone absolutely nowhere.  I’ve walked almost half of my natural lifespan on what now appeared to be a dead-end path.  What am I to do with the aging half of my life?  If only I knew from the start what I know now.  What a different life I would have led then.

     “How much time did you spend to perform your ‘impossible’ water-raising miracle?” Raminothna asked me.

     “To climb the mountain, you mean?  Five days.”

     “How much time do you have left?”

     “Forty years, fifty, on the outside.  I wouldn’t want it to be any longer in that anyway.”

     “Then, consider yourself reborn into a short yet new life with a forty-year life span.  Endowed with all that you have learned in the last thirty three years at this your moment of rebirth, what greater miracle can you not accomplish?”