posted August 09, 2015 04:16 PM
Those of a certain age (or youth?) will recall the familiar tune from Disney's Sleeping Beauty. The young Aurora (beautifully voiced by exquisite coloratura soprano Mary Costa, I must add) playfully engages with the woodland animals, singing of how the dashing stranger is hardly such at all; they've met before, in her dreams. Though the Lana del Rey cover from the Angelina Jolie vehicle 'Maleficent', definitely gives things a ... darker spin.But, whichever your flavour -- dark, light, or shades of grey -- it's a heady, truly incredible experience, to encounter one on the physical plane whom we've 'met before'. Then we're immediate to ask: is it karma? Is it fate? Is there a greater purpose? And we're giddy with anticipation; will they love us forever -- or will they break our heart worse than we've ever known or could imagine? Regardless of the circumstances or our hopes and dreams -- literal and figurative -- they're going to change our lives, whether great or small.
As astrologers, there are many questions we have to ask:
• What are the transits that bring them here?
• Are progressions responsible, acting like a cosmic clock, setting the precise moment for when we'll meet?
• What is the synastry? Is it truly 'written in the stars' that we should chance to meet in this exceptional way? Are they sent from Heaven, Hell, or somewhere in between? Is it karma or fate which brings them here, something else, or both?
--
For me, it's been a great mystery of my life, the day he suddenly appeared within it.
I'd thought it was to be a day much like any other -- which I've heard is often the case. I almost stayed home. I was in no condition for meeting anyone, and certainly not him. (He would claim the same experience, though I thought he looked his usual, sophisticated self. Of course, he'd assert the same for me.)
It was the day upon which the late 'Lewis Carroll', (truthfully, named Charles Dodgson), was born over a century ago.
9 years prior, in the midst of an unusual series of dreams, I 'met' a man, of sorts. He was in his early forties; golden blonde hair which I referred to as 'bronze', with the most piercing blue eyes. His build was both lithe and strong; 'the curious marriage of lank and brawn', I'd written. His voice ... his voice was hypnotic. Mellifluous. The hint of Oxonian still clung to his speech in the form of his idiolect and cadence, and yet ... I knew that he was born in the States, and his name was Penderan Fauste -- Doctor, even. Of psychology. (I'd learn of his passionate hatred of psychiatry later.)
He was brilliant, contrary, erudite, elegant, manipulative, and positively deadly.
January, 2001. I, the young training profiler was scrambling to release the words filling my brain onto the screen; typing as quickly as I was able. I'd not written a novel in several years. Something was different about today, however, and extremely so about this one.
It was in this moment that I met him; asking his present victim if she believed in 'childhood witticism', with that remarkable, spellbinding voice. Even in the seconds leading up to her death, she was entranced.
To be honest -- so was I.
It must've been how Leroux felt, penning the first drafts of Le Fantome de L'Opera at the turn of the last century; furiously at his typewriter, eager to stay one step ahead of his 'creations' which, to honour their due, he had to lend credence by suggesting may have been real. Somewhere. Much as the late, brilliant, scribe Richard Matheson had been overcome at the sight of the portrait of Maude Adams, so that he would give birth to 'Bid Time Return', which became more known as the 1980 film Somewhere in Time. (Which premiered the week of my birthday, in fact.)
Though, I feared that Fauste was much more akin to Leroux's 'creation', Erik, 'The Phantom of the Opera', than Matheson's Collier -- the haphazard time-traveller and well-meaning protagonist of his love story across time. It would take years for me to truly realise that both apply, almost equally.
But at this moment, as Fauste enjoys a cup of tea in the house of his victim, making use of her baby grand, playing Chopin's 'Nocturne' in E-Flat Major, No 2, Opus 9, his hands expertly feeling the keys, I was ... rapt with fascination.
Who are you? I thought.
As one in the right-or-wrong place at the right-or-wrong-time (depends upon your perspective), I'd dealt with homicidal personalities before. One led me to my path of training to become a criminal profiler and forensic psychologist -- which was what I was doing now. I was hardly alien to serial murderers and spree killers; I was also determined to stop them at whatever cost -- to my own sanity, personal peace, and -- I hoped not -- life.
That's when I began having another sort of issue.
Much as the idea had come to us over breakfast that 27 January, 2001, prompting me to begin writing it at once, my curious Mad Hatter Murderer in pursuit of 'his Alice' -- whatever that meant exactly; jotting the first lines of what would become the first novel of my second series, Hunting Alice, I now had another ... problem.
'I was going through my dream log,' I said, availing myself to whatever hadn't been picked over by our fellow collegians that morning, a few days later. My former astrophysics lab partner (the field in which I was going prior to my career path change) and SF writer looked upon me in earnest.
'Do you remember the recurring dream, of the man in his twenties, in the ... I think it was a max ward, or maybe it was a prison of some kind. I don't know. Kind of ... Joker-y, but not. Different. Similar, but not the same.'
'You're rambling,' he'd said. And he was right.
I'd still not made sense of it; not since the sudden recollection of the young woman, to whom I felt so close, through whose eyes I'd experienced it. Death. Lying beneath a clear blue sky; a perfect day. Dying of a gunshot, and having no idea why. I thought little of the other series of dreams -- until now.
'He's also blonde. Blue eyes.'
To which my friend reminded me that my first monster, the homicidal personality I'd known in high school, also matched that description. To which, I had to agree.
'But the voice,' I said. 'The voice isn't the same. The man ... isn't the same.'
'But he said he killed you,' he'd offered casually, breaking apart a cold cinnamon roll quietly going stale. 'Remember? He'd said he killed you in the past and wasn't sure if he was going to have to again.'
I waved it away impatiently. 'That was just to make the connexion to Ann Rule and Bundy; so that I'd have a reference point. I'm not saying it didn't happen -- and maybe it had. But ... it's not him.'
'How do you know?'
My friend always offered logic in the face of my more brazen ideas. It was a delicate dance. If one was opting for the more paranormal and unbelievable explanation, the other would counter with its opposite: the logical, concrete, rationale one. Lately, my reality was feeling quite topsy-turvy. I was grateful for his picking up the slack where most needed.
In fact, I'd always wondered why I didn't dismiss it out of hand. It was the same colouration, and it's logical that I'd been traumatised by the experience, regardless of its setting me upon my path; a complicated soulmate with a hard lesson dispatched.
'I don't think it's him,' was all that I could say. I wasn't certain of it, either, of course. All I really had to go on was a voice, and the fact that they appeared differently.
'So did you,' he'd offered, once again, reminding me that the woman through whose eyes I'd experienced death did, in fact, appear similar to, but not, me. And yet, I felt that I might've been ... somehow. He asserted why it couldn't simply be the same here.
'Because it isn't.' It was all I could say. There was no logic to it; no sense. I had nothing to support it; no evidence. I simply knew.
But he terrified me, my friend and sounding board stated. I was overwhelmed and frightened in that series of dreams. I knew not why I was visiting this incarcerated individual, in his latter twenties, though I was younger; barely 17. Mature for my age, though hardly worldly. Self-contained. Experienced. I was here for information, and ... because I missed him.
'I don't miss him,' I said, matter-of-factly, in reference to the man from school, while downing the rest of my coffee. 'He haunts me, and he probably always will, but I don't miss him. I just hope he isn't killing again.'
He asked me to recall what I was doing in the dreams. I always had a steno. I was always taking notes. He was always angry; very, very angry.
'It was personal somehow. I wasn't just interviewing him; it wasn't as strictly professional as all that. I ... knew him. I ... missed him. He missed me, too, but he couldn't admit it. There was too much anger; too much pain.'
'Would he hurt you?'
It was a good question, and it halted any further thoughts in their tracks. I wasn't sure, really, and yet ... I inexplicably knew.
'No.'
'Why not?'
I had no answer. Nothing based in anything beyond a strange hunch. 'He wouldn't. He ... loves me. He can become extremely angry -- furious, even. He'll terrify me -- manipulate me. Lead me to believe the absolute worst. But, no. He'll never actually hurt me.'
That was what I believed, too, all the way up until 2013.
So that when I met a man matching his description, possessing his unique, melodic, incredible voice, carrying himself with the same air -- appearing, for all the world, to be that man, the one that existed purely within my dreams, or inside the pages of my novels series since 2001, I ... wasn't sure what to think.
I hoped to God I wouldn't fall for him. I feared that I could, that I would, and I would be fighting feelings far more powerful than I am to prevent doing so.
Fortunately, I'd been attempting to adapt the novels into a dramatic medium -- audio, at that point -- since 2003. We'd had a few failed attempts which produced excellent demos and convened some incredible individuals and talent.
But there had been nothing like him until that day. And I knew.
But I wondered ... was that it? All it was for? So that I could bring this fantastic story to a wider audience, and, perhaps, eventually solve the greater mystery?
I thought it was possible. But I'd forgotten the role my young protagonist, Riley Wingate, had played -- also a name which simply came to me, rather than being consciously selected. Ironic, as it was through her eyes which I'd experienced it all.
In the summer of 2013, exploring the synastry between the man who had, indeed, come to change my life in phenomenal ways since our meeting three years before, that 27 January 2010, I uncovered something ... uncanny.
Too much was eerie -- inexplicable; unbelievable. His chart read the way in which I'd envision his might. Suddenly, viewing it all through the lens of Fauste, he made more sense to me than he ever had before. And, he couldn't help but admit at the very beginning that it was as if I had plucked his own deepest and innermost thoughts from the private recesses of his mind -- and soul.
He couldn't fathom how this young collegian, whom he'd never met, was bringing to life upon the page, some bizarre, alternate version of himself that only differed in a few key ways -- ways, incidentally, he himself foresaw he could've gone, had he taken a different road.
When we began to first explore a relationship several months after meeting, we were asked by close friends what was it that truly brought us together. Being costars, it's always a question how much you're falling for the individual or the role they're playing.
And, in my case, he was the embodiment of a concept I felt couldn't possibly exist in reality. He'd adroitly responded that it was a bit of both. We couldn't deny the presence of fate, but were also simply taken with each other for who we are. While there was a greater mystery underlying it all, we ... didn't want to get too caught up in it just yet.
Unfortunately, the 'greater mystery' wasn't about to let us go that easily. It would unfold, slowly, powerfully, for the next five years.
--
That's the start of my mad tale of mystery, murder, karma, fate, love, and second chances.
Do you have your own? What brought it into your life? What do you think helped it along? What have you learnt from it? Is it still going? Have you acquired any answers?
Let's discuss that fantastical possibility of what happens when we finally chance to meet those inexplicable ones first glimpsed, first met, none other than once upon a dream.
Lindaland
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posted August 09, 2015 04:16 PM
nice thread! 
