Lemon Meringue and Blue Suede Shoes

by Frank Bardessono

I can’t help it. Once again I’m staring at my reflection in a window, like a dope, like the newb that I am. I’m not caring a whole heckuva lot. I’ve been told this residual self image thing subsides whenever I choose, that I simply have to think how I prefer to appear to others and presto, I’ll look however I want to look. You’d think most folks would do as I have done, revert to a special time in our former lives where we were most beautiful, young, and vital, ready to take on a thousand futures, and yes, I’m looking the consummate part I played back on earth: the long, shaggy hair, the sheepish, ne’er do well grin, the olive complexion and tootsie pop eyes, tattered high top sneakers, distressed jeans ripped at the knees, a simple knit tee shirt.

Far more frequent than us nostalgic types are the glowing orbs and amorphous vessels which traverse this elegant city of silver and white gossamer, innumerable essences passing to and fro, always exuding love and that oneness of being which radiates throughout this sector of reality, no longer beholden to that which they once were. It is little wonder few leave this place to return to corporeal existence, though that’s among the infinite options available. A staggering amount of former humans choose to return to our lonely little blue world. Sentiment remains a powerful entity in the higher dimensions.

I walk into what my uber-mind shapes into a diner style establishment, complete with a classic old school counter affixed with a lazy susan loaded with fresh baked pies and cakes, red vinyl booths and checkered tablecloths, a jukebox in the corner, and a grizzled, sweaty short order cook toiling at the grill beyond the order window. A cheery ‘waitress’ greets me, radiating love and peace and joy. She’s not really a server. She/He/It/Them is happy to provide a figure of my construct. Happens all the time around here. It’s hard to ‘splain, so I won’t, but trust me, you’ll find out yourselves, whenever you head on over.

I sit at the counter next to the baked goods caddy and order a cup of coffee and a slice of lemon meringue pie. The foodstuffs instantly manifest in front of me, perfectly brewed and perfectly crafted, easy on the eyes and if past experience is an indicator, a party for the taste buds as well. I don’t need sustenance as I once did. Eating is a visceral choice here, not a necessity. I am still a recent arrival, insofar as time is concerned. Believe me, time ain’t concerned about much in this realm. A thousand years or a second, it’s all relative and dependent on how individuals subjectively choose to experience it. Thought and love orders all reality. Most of us archaic humans just didn’t know it yet. Most of those back on my favorite mud ball still don’t know it. I’m told they will, at some point. I hope it’s sooner than later. All that needless suffering. They’re still struggling with religious dogmas, and fearful of their evolutionary roots, as if either of those frames of reference captured a fraction of the greater reality dwarfing humans’ limited three-dimensional consciousnesses. If only they’d get it together. But who am I to talk? I was as prone to my own self sabotage as any of them. I’m just getting the hang of this elevated expansion. It’s like walking into the sunlight from a cave or waking up from a dream.  

In the meantime, I miss my son. And my wife. And my brother.  It’s a different sort of mourning, in that you know they’re not here ‘yet,’ but ‘yet’ is so relative, because they’ll be here any ‘second.’ It’s confusing, I know, and I’ve been here for what earth types might deem a couple years. For me it’s been millennia and a split second. I don’t miss the self deprecation, the abuse of substances, the monkeys on my back. It was all part of my journey, I know that now. Nonetheless, I’m glad those trials are behind me. Time was so linear on earth! All in the mind. Things in creation age and decay and die while in physical forms, their energies transmuting to other states, planets and organisms and stars, a wheel never ending.

It was good to see my parents here when I first decamped hereabouts. They live in alternate states of immersive oneness within the totality of existence (you have to be in it to truly understand it) and jumping between varying roles of identity. Turns out my pop had a few other lives before being my father. He was a member of two humanoid races on planets from entirely different corporeal universes, and he’d spent one lifetime as a sentient vaporous form of a collective who lived their spans of two hundred years singing to one another. And my moms, she’d been to earth a dozen times, as far back as the late Neolithic era in which she lived fifty odd years as a budding, agrarian land baron, and as far forward as the Devolution period, where she eked out a meager existence scavenging for mutated arthropods along the former coast of Mexico. It’s still strange to me how we move through time indiscriminately, cherry picking yesterdays and tomorrows with such ease, like Alexander the Great cutting through the Gordian knot, or ripping that one ever elusive bridge I never could quite master back between the third and fourth albums. Once seen, never unseen, they say. Me, I’m what they call a first timer. Yep, only lived once in corporeality, born there as many beings are, and I’d never been to the higher dimensions until after my first body succumbed to its well earned ravages. Haven’t decided quite what to do next, but I figure it’ll come. The comprehension of the All Now comes upon leaving the physical, but I continue to find it an overwhelming sensation. Yeah, that old Carnegie Hall trope…practice, baby, practice.

There are others present in this crafted domicile, though I know not how they perceive it. It’s a fair bet they’re not seeing the same fifties style greasy spoon as I am. A slug-like being, oozing some sort of excrement from its diaphanous pores, sits in one of the cherry red booths across from a glowing orb of white light. Mugs of piping hot coffee sit before them. In front of the fluxing orb on the table sits a plate of gelatinous blue squares that reek of lavender. In the corner by the jukebox stands a tall being with long arms extending to the red and white tiled floor, its massive almond-shaped eyes filling most of its oblong face. It’s wavering back and forth, dancing in its own way, content to absorb the music which emanates softly from the juke, a pleasant, melodic tune of breathy reeds and gentle percussion. I don’t have to look inside the musical whirligig to know what selections lay within, because in actuality all options are available, it’s simply a matter of focus and preference. My own contributions to that arena are among that infinite playlist. To think my compositions rest in lexicons among illuminati artists of innumerable worlds both corporeal and incorporeal is a humbling notion indeed.

It was upon exiting the earthly plane I came to realize one of the hard boiled truths of existence. It was no secret to discover the primary meaning of sentient life was love. That was evident even to a boneheaded axe slinger like me. The love I had, continue to have, for my family is omnipotent and eternal. The far more intriguing straight dope was discovering art, the creation of art and its addition to the communal consciousness of sisterhood and brotherhood, that’s what makes the merry-go-round go ‘round. Sure, being a musician at my core, second only to fatherhood, you’d think I’d have known that already, but plinking and plunking strings on earth didn’t seem like an alpha-omega level of cerebral elevation. I knew composing brought me closer to the light over all else save for the love for my child, but I’m forced to admit I didn’t quite understand how making something from nothing added to the collective whole of creation itself. Seriously, who was gonna think working up some garage riffs with my brother was a tiny yet integral piece of a never ending horizon? Certainly not some bozo like me. But here I am and there it was, so to speak. It doesn’t even matter what kind of art we craft, whether it’s a song or architecture or theater or technological advancement, it’s all art, really, if it contributes to what makes beings happy, what stimulates their affirmation of creation. Everybody’s got it, even those who didn’t actualize it in their initial runs, and everybody ends up dwelling within it, eventually. Art is life. Art is love.

Crazy ain’t it!

I manifest a fork and knife, shimmering silver, and cut into the pie slice, taking a bite. It’s sweeter beyond any sweet I’ve ever known; its citrus not really lemon, its whip cream not really dairy, an explosion of wondrous sensation, as is anything of sustenance crafted here, by minds rather than hands, of energy rather than matter. The coffee is strong, piquant, scents of rich soil and plump bean, just the way I imagined it to be and so it was.

            Another being walks into the diner. I innately know this creature is a closer kin to my most recent corporeal life essence. They too were a musician. He knows my given name on earth same as I know his. Once he was known as a king, and by all intents and purposes he deserved that title far more than bloodline monarchs throughout the history of terra firma. My perception shapes his form accordingly as our mutual states of being respond to one another. His famous dyed pompadour and blue eyes and late career white suit actualize into glorious visage. He carries a stained baby’s blanket in hand.

            He speaks to me then, not via vocal speech. In this place, that form of communication has gone the way of the dodo (plenty of dodos exist ‘round these parts, all extinct life forms carry on after corporeality, thank goodness). He issues a greeting through the empathic telepathy most commonly used in silver cities.

            “Howdy, pardner,” he says/thinks/exudes/transmits/shares. “Love your work. Just stellar stuff.”

            I swallow lemon meringue puff, nervously. “Holy smokes. I don’t know what to say, except right back at ya, man. You were the one and only.”

            “Just a good old boy, same as you I expect.”

            “Yeah, but you were the king.”

“Aw shucks, I b’lieve they called you the king of six strings, didn’t they? We’re all kings and queens when it comes right down to it, ain’t we?”

“Roger that. Hey, what ya got there?” I ask, noting the stained blanket.

“Something I carry with me, keeps my daughter close. Know what I mean?”

I did know what he meant. Many a time I’ve re-fabricated items from memory that connect me to my boy. Until our loved ones arrive, we make do with what we can, which quite honestly is a fair amount, all things considered.

“Say, I was passing by not far from here and I wondered if you’re so inclined and feel up to it, maybe we oughta collab a quick diddy together. I figure with your know how, we might get the universes toe-tappin’ for a brief epoch or so. Whaddya say?”

            I am taken back.  

            “That would be an utmost honor, sir.”

            “Please don’t call me sir, brother. We can leave those airs in the past where they belong.”

            “Yes, si…uh, sounds good, man. When and where are you thinking?”

            “Let’s do it right now, if it’s all the same to you. Just for kicks. Maybe it’ll hit true elsewhere, ya never know, right?”

            I finish my coffee and stand up. “Okey dokey. What kinda key you wanna fire up first?”

            “Aw, you just strut your stuff and I’ll warble along, fly by the seat of our pants and let it hangdog out natural.”

            I nod, amazed despite myself. I manifest a glowing white replica of a standard earthbound Les Paul. The tangy meringue lingers within me. I wrap the strap around my shoulders and take off, noodling, fretting, easing into a bluesy, rhythmic series of arching bridges and deep root notes, wingin’ it, and the king catches up and offers a cascade of harmonies and choruses alien to earthly language, his timbre and tessitura deep and rich and resonant, his lovely baritone an immense power here, our combined sound and fury echoing across universes, a puissant canticle reverberating through an infinite number of existences, heard by some tuned to higher wavelengths, bone-felt in the lower vibrations to those not yet keyed to such spectra. Galaxies are our audience and the sums of their totalities are enraptured. It is a humbling experience playing to such a house. While I’m accustomed to spotlights, this is a whole new ball game, trillions instead of thousands. Our shared anthem is a thing of beauty, both a ballad and a balls-to-wall rocker and so much more, an exquisite amalgam of improve structure and bare soul, Next Level Stuff. It lasts for an eon and a second, wonky time style.

            We finish in a thundering crescendo, satisfied and spent. I couldn’t play that song again if I tried. But it doesn’t matter. It registered all the same in the eternal chorale. Locally, the slug-dude, the orb, the cook and the waitress all burst into their respective methods of applause.

            “That was just lovely, pard,” he says, smiling that infamous, dandy, dimpled grin of his. “Much obliged.”

            “The pleasure was mine, man. Thanks for comin’ by my little corner.” I say and if I could blush, I’d be doing exactly that.

            He leaves, radiating joy. I’m feeling pretty fine myself. I let the airy, ethereal guitar fade away and plop back down on my stool. My waitress ambles over.

            “That was something, sweetheart,” she says. “Can I get you anything else?”

            “Another slice of that excellent lemon pie would be fantastic, miss, and I wouldn’t mind a top-off for the joe.”

            “Coming right up,” she replies, and boom, another perfect piece of pie appears before me. My coffee cup refills itself. I watch its steaming vapors rise.

            Love all. Serve all.

            What a jam session.

Whew.