Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (Illusions 1)

boredom.

It is not always an easy

sacrifice.

Jeff Sykes had told everybody who we were, that our airplanes were parked on John Thomas' hayfield on State 41, and that we slept nights under the wing.

I felt these waves of anger, from people frightened for their children's morality, and for the future of the American way of life, and none of it made me too happy. There was a half hour left of the show, and it only got worse.

"You know, mister, I think you're a fake," said the next caller.

"Of course I'm a fake! We're all fakes on this whole world we're all pretending to be something that we're not. We are not bodies walking around, we are not atoms and molecules, we are unkillable undestroyable ideas of the Is, no matter how much we believe otherwise . . ."

He would have been the first to remind me that I was free to leave, if I didn't like what he was saying, and he would have laughed at my fears of lynch mobs waiting with torches at the airplanes.

18

Don't be

dismayed at good-byes.

A farewell is necessary before

you can meet

again.

And meeting

again, after moments or

lifetimes, is certain for

those who are

friends.

Next noon, before the people came to fly, he stopped by my wing. "Remember what you said when you found my problem, that nobody would listen, no matter how many miracles I did?"

"No."

"Do you remember that time, Richard?"

"Yeah, I remember the time. You looked so lonely all of a sudden. I don't remember what I said."

"You said that depending on people to care about what I say is depending on somebody else for my happiness. That's what I came here to learn: it doesn't matter whether I communicate or not. I chose this whole lifetime to share with anybody the way the world is put together, and I might as well have chosen it to say nothing at all. The Is doesn't need me to tell anybody how it works."

"That's obvious, Don. I could have told you that."

"Thanks a lot. I find the one idea I lived this life to find, I finish a whole life's work, and he says, 'That's obvious, Don. "'

He was laughing, but he was sad, too, and at the time I couldn't tell why.

19

The mark

of your ignorance is the depth