Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Part 5 of The Past Life Regression Series

**Past Lives is a Meme which features installments from bloggers around the world writing creative stories about past lives, even possibly their own past lives!


Our story starts with a fictional Australian called David.
As a last ditch effort trying to resolve his debilitating phobias, he goes through Past Life Regression (PLR) therapy. Join us as we follow David’s experiences through different times and continents.

If you are just joining us, please read Part 1 of the story and follow the links at the end of each segment to learn David's progress so far. Please note that you will be traveling to different blogs as each author adds to the evolution of David's journey.



Past Lives Part 5- David's Regression Continues


Falling...falling...my stomach in knots as the rocks below me get closer... “David, David, I want you to come back away from the light towards the sound of my words”, Dr. Marlowe's voice soothes and guides me into the observer's stance.

“Tell me where you are now”, he asks.

But I am already on my way, too deeply involved, answering him before he completes his sentence...

“New emotions, heaviness, despondency.. Once again...... Falling...as I feel warmth and watch the rocks below morph into the pebbled tessellations of an Oriental rug beneath my bare feet – browns, golds, terracotta and sand....

“Master Hugh”, Lao Chen's voice comes from my right side and my eyes follow to where he is standing at a black lacquered cabinet, a punk smoking in hand. “Are you ready for the pearl”?

With my addled mind, I listen as Chen's voice rolls his r's with a thick Mandarin accent laced with proper British over his words so that pearl comes out sounding more like 'pe'.

I grunt a response, ready to drift off again into my shadowy dream world. This sorry state of affairs has become my only escape and solace from this, a drab and cursed life, of which I, when younger, enthusiastically embraced as promising and full of adventure.

Another sip of absinthe. I drink mine without babying the water by pouring it over sugar sliced from a loaf. Although meant to take the bitter edge off for those less foolhardy, I much prefer to find what sweet messages I can in the green clouds of milky louche`.

Chen's formal queue of braided black moves with a life of its own from his bare shaved head under his black satin skull cap while he busies himself with the lantern and pipes. The voice of his long brocaded sleeves shushing against his sides as he cleans first the pipe chamber and then adds oil to the lantern lulls me further. My thoughts drift to Lillabeth.


She has become as jaded and as disappointed in me as I am with my union to her. My having a title and minor peerage was as attractive to her as her family's wealth was to me when we were met through introduction at an outing in Churchill. Let this be a cautionary tale to those of you contemplating marriage for either reason- money or status climbing.

While not beautiful, Lillabeth was handsome with regular features, a somewhat ruddy complexion prone to chapping, nondescript dark hair, wide hips and a boyish chest. She grew more comely in my eyes as I learned that she was sole heir to her father's shipping concern. Junkets carrying goods to China, including raw opium from India, and returning with Chinese silver and silks had made a wealthy, if somewhat gaudy man of Thomas Reeve. His one and only child never knew an item of whimsy she didn't get if only barely suggested to him.

Thus, I inherited her with a profoundly developed sense of privilege from her doting father along with his monies and business when he abruptly passed from an appallingly incurable case of bilious gluttony aggravated by gout.

Lillabeth was particularly cursed in the landscape of motherhood. Thrice she greeted me with good news to deliver two of them in her early courses and to carry yet a third, a son, to full term only to be still at birth. I buried him in the family plot next to his grandfather in the churchyard of Greyfriars.

She began to look at me first with guilt, then rage, solemnly blaming me for the mishaps and misfortunes of her ability to carry through a viable heir. I joined Her Majesty's 26th regiment training under Major Pratt, as part of a deterrent to forces opposed to British shipping interests in the Orient to escape her attention. I was granted the rank of leftenant commanding a small company whom I grew fond of during our long deployment.

My fortune with the military was to prove as dreary as Lillabeth's with her attempts at establishing herself as mother to a titled and landed young peer. Before we had an opportunity to even engage the enemy on her shores, my horse misstepped coming down the ship's plank and sent me hurtling to the hard stone of the causeway below.

I was sent back to Great Britain on the next ship with honorable letters of discharge from 'injuries derived while in service to the Crown', a small but reliable pension, which was the first of monies I could truly say were my own, and was also given an open script for Paracelsus' laudanum from hospital to chip the edge from the blinding pain in my back and legs. No amount of bed rest or remedy could assuage in the least except for the draughts of laudanum.

I am patently aware of Lillabeth's disappointment that I had not been killed by the natives and returned to her in a camphor wood box. Rather, I appear at our ancestral door with my sea trunks and an injury that makes me prone to a gait-disturbing limp. With the knowledge of her final and utter disgust and disinterest in me, I became more consumed with the regular doses of laudanum, and when those tinctures did not serve to make me numb to both injury and my wife's assaults and wicked diatribes on my various shortcomings, I turned then to opium in it's most pure form.

And that, to whit, is why I find myself here in a den on a dodgy side street off Cheapside having Lao Chen prepare yet another pearl and pipe for me.

I lie back, watch as Chen touches the punk to the lamp wick, hold the silver bowl of my bamboo pipe over the shimmering pillar of heat rising from the glass alembic, and observe as the pearl begins to melt into vapour. I inhale deeply. I have forgotten how many glasses of Absinthe and how many pearls have clouded my senses in euphoria today.

Lying back, I watch the ghostly tongues of light from the lamps playing on the ornamental ceiling and feel my heart beat ever more slowly. I close my eyes and give myself over to it. I count the timpani of each spasm of that engine of life between shallow breaths with fingers on a clammy hand.

Slower now...I count...41........42..........43................44...........................


##


David’s next PLR Session is only days away. You’ll be traveling to Vicki North's Blog to read Past lives Part 6

Note: David's PLR story is purely fictional. If there are any bloggers in any part of the world who would like to participate in David's story by writing about a 'past life' in a time, place and country you are familiar with, please contact Lilly Taylor at lillyslife@gmail.com.


16 comments:

Vikki North said...

I’m just overwhelmed. You are incredible. To develop a character like this that is so elegant, passionate and heartfelt-in these few words- is an amazing talent. I want to read the novel-not just this excerpt. Thank you so much for being a part of our Past Lives story.
Vikki

Unknown said...

Vikki, If I start another novel, it will end up in the stack beneath my bed with others in just about every genre and voice there is! But thank you!
Dina

Lilly said...

Thats was so incredibly amazing! I am in awe, seriously. You are truly a gifted writer. I am so pleased that you have been involved in this and who knows what it brings. Definitely a book for you. I will be back to your site and dont forget let me know when you want to do another one!!!!

Unknown said...

Lilly,
Thanks go to you for coming up with this splendid idea to stretch all of us!

Of course, I'd like to do another! I have three in pocket now and will dash one up when you're ready.
Blessings, Dear Lady!
Dina

Expat No. 3699 said...

...standing and cheering, "Bravo. Bravo."

tashabud said...

I've read every single one of the entries so far, and I'm truly impressed at everyone's writing talents. I'm glad this is just a meme and not a contest because the judges would have such a hard time judging.

Eric S. said...

Such style, such description, such emotion. You have done a wonderful job on this entry. I can't wait to read the next few. If Lilly keeps getting "life chapters" like this, she could end up wit a collaborative book.

The potential for this story stretching out for our entertainment is mind boggling.

Jules said...

I feel like I did when I was in the 5th grade. I remember standing on stage behind a curtain watching the girl before me sing beautifully! Next they were going to call my name for the talent contest and I knew I could not possibly follow that act!

Bravo Dina! I am amazed at the creative genus you all have put forth in your writing proficiency.

Ndinombethe said...

Words escape me. Brilliant. Bravo. Encore.

Thoroughly enjoying the meme...

Unknown said...

Miss Linda,
I so enjoyed reading your blog with your acerbic commentary on life as an accesory to the corporate world. Having been there, done that with friend Martha, the two of us have sat at her kitchen table and come up with renditions of appropriate responses to the stupidity and paranoia of past bosses. We did a Meme of our own coming up with various art works playing on the theme, and even a secretary's parade with typewriters on wheels and an ever full coffee pot and server!

Thank you!

Unknown said...

Miss Tasha!
I love hearing from other writers and would hope you'll continue to the finish of your own work -- and then publish it, something I seem unable to do.
Blessings,
Dina

Unknown said...

Eric,
You are a soul after my own heart! I love solitude and the country, have lived for over 6 years without running water and electric on my Utah ranch. I cooked and heated on a wood stove that we dragged deadwood off the mountains to burn.

We took care of mares and their foals and colts for the Wyoming race track. There were at least 30 at any given time plus our own personal horses numbering 4. I was married to a horse shoer, so I can clean the thrush out of a horse's hooves, burn a muscle sprain, and cinch a saddle with my eyes closed. My husband was a holdover from the previous century and truly a real cowboy. I learned to flux my own lead and build my own bullets and holsters. Jim taught me how to quick draw and fancy handle my Ruger .357 which we wore on our hips daily along with spurs and cowboy boots permanently embedded with horse shit. "Sarah Jane" has retired with me and occupies a spot next to my bed in a hidden hollow and hasn't been fired in five years.

I love independent sorts such as you and your wife! Keep checking back and DO write about your experiences in the wilds of Colorado! It's a fast disappearing way of life.
Blessings,
Dina

Unknown said...

Well, Jules!

Honeylamb! We all have our gifts. Mine has been the gift of the vocabulary of an English Don, the tongue of a viper, and the heated air of a bullshitter to back it all up.

But Beauty, I can't cook and house cleaning as an art just flat escapes me among many things I've tried and just can't pin down!

You just go on and write and don't pay any attention to what every one else thinks - including yourself. I would LOVE to publish you here on the DWJ anytime you'd like!

And don't dink around with it or you'll end up at 61 having published nothing of significance!

BTHs,
Dina

Unknown said...

Tash!

YOU should definitely participate! I love your writing voice and something tells me it's your walking around voice as well!

And look at you! Smart, beautiful, using your own juice for yourself instead of letting some idiot bleed it off to further their social climb within the partnership! Good on you.

And darlin', you've got excitement aplenty with that gorgeous boy child! Having raised a movie star looker with his mama's mouth isn't an easy thing to do!

Blessings,
Dina

tashabud said...

Hello Dina,
You look great at 61. Belated Happy Birthday. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your response to Eric. Your life experiences out in the ranch would make for excellent reading--in a book form as well. I encourage you to finish your books. Anyway, you're welcome to come by at my blog site to read and comment if you're interested. Have a great week.

Unknown said...

Tasha,
I'll get around to writing more about those years at some point!

Thanks for stopping by.

Blessings,
Dina