...third posting in a sequence on Imagination.
Dad was a “small businessman,” industrious, hardworking, serious about his profession, a mid-western Republican, anything but an alchemist, yet there he was in a suburban Skokie, Illinois, basement with his “liquid-filled crystal flask and yellow glass egg on the altar...” transforming what he felt to be “base” [about himself] into gold. That was his secret. That’s where he went when he wasn’t busy making money.
“There are two worlds,” he says, lighting incense, “the seen
and the unseen, and she doesn’t understand.
This is my treasure,” he says,
lead cooking in an iron pan,
liquid darkness and some gold...”
A teenager I had no idea what it was all about. My sister and stepmother thought he was crazy, but they tolerated his Rosicrucian practice as long as he kept it out of sight—in the basement.
And when I returned from India after spending a month in Ganeshpuri with Swami Muktananda, I felt superior. Callow, the word “callow” comes to mind. What did I know? And then, in the 1990s, I began “hearing” his voice, loud and clear. I began hearing and writing in that voice maybe ten years ago. My little book, Rosicrucian in the Basement, appeared in 2001, published by Marty Gervais' Black Moss Press (Canada).
Imagination. Yeah. Something kicked in. I’m still hearing the voice. The thing takes on a life of its own. The things the kid in the poem sees and comments on. His interactions with his father. This is dad, new and improved in some respects, old and more bizarre than ever in others. But the thing is true. And, dead since 1982, dead and buried, he’s no less a part of my life now than he was. A little more playful these days and, too, helpful in 2003 when I fucking lost my mind.
ROSICRUCIAN IN THE BASEMENT
i.
“What’s to explain?” he asks.
He’s a closet meditator. Rosicrucian in the basement.
In my father’s eyes: dream.
“There are two worlds,” he says,
liquid-filled crystal flask
and yellow glass egg
on the altar.
He’s the “professional man”—
so she calls him, my stepmother.
That, and “the Doctor”:
“The Doctor will see you now,” she says,
working as his receptionist.
He’s a podiatrist—foot surgery a specialty—
on Chicago’s North Side.
Russian-born Orthodox Jew
with zaftig Polish wife, posh silvery white starlet
Hilton Hotel hostess.
ii.
This is his secret.
This is where he goes when he’s not making money.
The way to the other world is into the basement
and he can’t live without this other world.
“If he has to, he has to,” my stepmother shrugs.
Keeps door locked when he’s not down there.
Keeps the door locked when he is.
“Two nuts in the mini-bar,” she mutters, banging pots
in the kitchen upstairs.
Anyway, she needs to protect the family.
“Jew overboard,” she yells, banging dishes.
“Peasant!” he yells back.
iii.
“There are two worlds,” he says lighting incense, “the seen
and the unseen, and she doesn’t understand.
This is my treasure,” he says,
lead cooking in an iron pan,
liquid darkness and some gold.
“Son, there are three souls: one, the Supernal;
two, the concealed
female soul, soul like glue…
holds it all together…”
“And the third?” I ask.
We stand there, “I can’t recall.”
He begins to chant and wave incense.
No tallis, no yarmulke,
just knotty pine walls and mini-bar
size of a ouija board,
a little schnapps and shot glasses
on the lower shelf,
and I’m no help.
Just back from seven thousand dollar trip,
four weeks with Swami Muktananda,
thinking
Now there’s someone who knew how to convert
the soul’s longing into gold.
Father, my father: he has this emerald tablet
with a single word written on it
and an arrow pointing.
2.
JESUS
“What’s with the cross? You believe in Jesus, dad?”
“What?”
“Are you still a Jew?”
He turns away.
“Dammit, it’s not a religion, farshtehst?”
Brings fist down on the altar.
“We seek the perfection of metals,” he says,
re-lighting stove,
“salvation by smelting.”
“But what’s the point?” I ask.
“The point? Internal alchemy, shmegegge. Rosa mystica,” he shouts.
Meat into spirit, darkness into light.”
Seated now, seated on bar stools.
Flickering candle in a windowless room.
Visible and invisible. Face of my father
in the other world.
I see him, see him in me
my rosy cross
podiatrist father.
“I’m making no secret of this secret,” he says,
turning to the altar.
“Tell me, tell me how to pray.”
“Burst,” he says, “burst like a star.”
3.
ROSY CROSS FATHER
“Yes, he still believes. Imagine—
American Jews,
when they die,
roll underground for three days
to reach the Holy Land.
He believes that.”
We’re standing at the Rosicrucian mini-bar listening,
(clash of pots in the kitchen upstairs)
father
with thick, dark-rimmed glasses
blue-denim shirt,
bristly white mustache,
dome forehead.
“Your stepmother’s on the phone with her sister,” he says.
“He thinks he can look into the invisible,”
she says from above.
“He thinks he can peek into the other world,
like God’s out there waiting for him…
Meshugge!”
She starts the dishwasher.
“As above, so below,” he says.
“I’m not so sure,” I say.
“Listen, everyone’s got some stink,” he says,
grabbing my arm,
“you think you’re immune?”
I shake my head.
“To look for God is to find Him, “ he says.
“If God lived on earth,” she says, “people would knock out
all His windows.”
“Kibbitzer,” he yells back. “Gottenyu! Shiksa brain!”
Father turns to his “apparatus,”
“visual scriptures,” he calls them,
tinctures and elixirs,
the silvery dark and the silvery white.
“We of the here-and-now, pay our respects
to the invisible.
Your soul is a soul,” he says, turning to me,
“but body is a soul, too. As the poet says,
‘we are the bees of the golden hive of the invisible.’”
“What poet, Dad?”
“The poet! Goddammit, the poet,” he yells.
He’s paler these days, showing more forehead,
thinning down.
“We live in darkness and it looks like light.
Now listen to me: I’m unhooking from the world, understand?
Everything is a covering,
contains its opposite.
The demonic is rooted in the divine.
Son, you’re an Outside,” he says,
“waiting for an Inside.
but I want you to know…”
“Know what, Dad?”
“I’m gonna keep a place for you in the other world.”
