"This is what you came here to learn. This is what you
are going to do," I told him. "The answer you're looking for is to give up your Freedom and your Independence and to marry Leslie Parrish. What you'll find in return is a different kind of freedom, so beautiful you can't imagine. ..."
He didn't catch anything after marry Leslie; he nearly fell from the plane, he was so startled.
Such a long way he has to go, I thought, while he choked and gasped. And he'll go it in only five years. A stubborn closed son-of-a-bitch, but basically I like the guy. He'll make it, all right, I thought ... or will he? Might this one become the voice from the sailplane crash, or from the other turn to Montana? Is this one facing a future that failed?
His very loneliness, so well defended, turned out to be my hope. When I talked about Leslie, he listened sharp, even swallowed and took some truth about his future. Knowing about her could make surviving easier for him, I thought, even if he forgets words and scenes. I turned the plane north.
She was waiting when we landed, dressed as she did for private days at home. He jolted at the sight of her; the vision of her vaporized a ton of iron in less than a second. Such a power is beauty!
She had something personal to say to him, so I stirred in my sleep, faded back, and woke up years later than he would wake from the same dream.
Soon as I opened my eyes, the story evaporated, misted away like steam on air. A flying dream, I thought. How lucky am I to have so many flying dreams! Something special about this one, though . . . what was it? I was investing in uncut diamonds, was that it, was I flying somewhere with a box of diamonds or seeds or something, and they almost fell from the plane? An investment dream. Some part of my subconscious thinks it still has money? Maybe it knows something I don't.
On a night-pad I put a note: Why not self-induced dreams, to travel and see and learn whatever we want to learn?
I lay quiet, watching Leslie sleep, dawn glowing in that golden hair splashed careless about her pillow. For a moment, she was so still-what if she's dead? She breathes so lightly, I can't tell. Is she breathing? She's not!
I knew I was kidding myself, but what relief, what sudden joy, when she moved softly in her sleep that instant, smiled the smallest of dream-smiles!
I've spent my life looking for this woman, I thought. Told myself here's my mission, to be together with her again.
I was wrong. Finding her wasn't the object of my life, it was an imperative incident. Finding her allowed my life to begin.
The object is: Now What? What are you two going to learn about love? I've changed so much, I thought, and it's barely begun.
Real lovestories never have endings. The only way to find what happens in happily-ever-after ;with a perfect mate is to live it for ourselves. There's romance, of course, and the sensual delight of lust fallen in love.
And then what?
Then days and months of talking nonstop, catching up again after being centuries apart-what did you do then, what did you think, what have you learned, how are you changing?
And then what?
What are your most private hopes dreams wishes^ your most desperate if-onlys to bring true? What's the most impossibly beautiful lifetime you can imagine, and here's mine, and the two of them fit like sun and moon in our sky, and we together can bring them true!
And then what?
So much to learn together! So much to share! Languages and acting, poetry and drama and computer-programming and physics and metaphysics, and parapsychology and electronics and gardening and bankruptcy and mythology and geography and cooking and history and painting and economics and woodworking and music and music-history, flying, sailing and the history of sail, political action and geology, courage and comfort and wildplants and native animals, dying and death, archaeology and paleontology and astronomy and cosmology, anger and remorse, writing and metallurgy and snapshooting and photography and solar design, house construction and investing and printing and giving and receiving and wind-surfing and befriending children, aging and earth-saving and warstopping, spiritual healing and psychic healing and cultural exchange and film-making, photovoltaics, microscopy and alternate energy, how to play, how to argue and make up, how to surprise and delight and dress and cry, to play the piano and the flute and the guitar, to see beyond appearances, remember other lifetimes, past and future, unlock answers, research and study, collect and analyze and synthesize, serve and contribute, lecture and listen, see and touch, travel cross-time and meet the other we, to create worlds from dreams and dwell there, changing.
Leslie, in her dream, smiled.
And then what? I thought. And then more, always more
for life-hogs to learn. To learn, to practice, to give back to other life-hogs, to remind them we're not alone.
And then what, after we've lived our dreams, when we're tired of time?
And then . . . Life, Is!
Remember? Remember / AM! AND YOU ARE! AND LOVE; IS ALL: THAT MATTERS!
That's and-then-what!
That's why lovestories don't have endings! They don't have endings because love doesn't end!
Then in the morning all at once, for the space of a hundred seconds, I knew how simply Everything-That-Is is put together. I grabbed the bedside notebook, slashed those seconds down felt-tip black, huge excited letters: