Chapter Forty Four. Buy Me Some Peanuts and Cracker Jack

Buy Me Some Peanuts and Cracker Jack

Derby felt as if his organs, including his turned inside-out skin, were heavy. Everything seemed weighted and to be pulling him down.

"Let it go Derby," said the voice from outside the vase.

Bags of weight. Heavy attachment. "Where is this gravity pulling me?" Derby wondered to himself.

"Let it go. You don't have to hold it together. Let it go," said the voice.

"I'm worried. I'm afraid," thought Derby. "I'm sad. I'm angry. I feel like I haven't done enough. Like I don't love enough. Like I don't deserve whatever it is that may be coming my way." His thoughts were negative.

"Drop it buddy. Let it go. Let it ALL go...," spoke the smooth rounded voice from above.

"Who will hold it together if not me," Derby questioned. "It all rests with me. I HAVE to do this!," he continued to debate himself and question the authority. Letting go seemed like quitting.

"The only way you will move to the next level is to quit. Quit thinking that YOU are separate. Quit thinking that you can somehow move a mountain by being above and disconnected. Find your true self Derby, which is outside of where you're looking," reasoned the instructor. "Shine the light within to find the light without."

The teaching disarmed him and Derby felt some weight fall off.

"Shine the light within to find the light without," he repeated to himself.

More weight fell.

A teenie flicker danced, like a distant candle struggling to remain lit. Derby focussed on the light. "Where is that?," he heard himself ask as he squinted and churned. "I see the light!," he said to himself as he stared down a long hollow tube within himself.

Bags were falling. His organs became light and empty. From inside his topsy turvy Jeninqua body, he felt a tingling energy in his shoulders. There was a rippling sensation, like fingers tapping, spreading. A lightness and more bags were falling.

Derby felt as if he was ascending the spiral staircase, without stepping toward the lounge area of the vase. His head was spinning and he was aware of taking steps, but it felt as if he were floating. When he reached the opening at the floor of the lounge, he recognized himself closing the trap door, but he continued to stay focussed on the light within. It had grown stronger, as he became more faint.

It was a figure. Derby was staring at a glowing figure within. "Who is that?," he heard him ask himself. "Is it Jesus? Buddha? Elvis? Oprah?"

"There are seven types of gender," he heard the voice say. "Sexuality is a mystery. Reproduction is a physical phenomena but there is so much more than the birds and the bees."

Derby dropped all the weight he was carrying and fell back to the couch. In slow motion he could see himself falling through space. Tumbling. Falling. Releasing. And the glowing figure was being pulled closer as if it were to be swallowed by his own eyes.

"You were born complete my boy," said Umpa. And Derby was out.