In order to join the circus, you must first prove you are willing to fly without a net. That either makes you brave or stupid. I am both. But I also know in my heart of hearts that there is nowhere really to fall. But that’s an easier thing to talk about than it is to live.

The other night, at my “going away gala” someone asked me whether we should always tell the truth. I have no idea why he asked me that. He also asked me if I always tell the truth. I said I didn’t know. That was true. But then I think I found the answer to his question: you don’t tell the truth, you live it. When you live it, it flows out of everything that you do and say.

I have a lot of stories and experiences I don’t share on this blog, even though they relate to the things we gather around our digital campfires to discuss every day. I don’t know why I don’t talk about all of them more openly. Part of it’s probably fear of “seeming crazy”, though you’d think I’d be over that by now. Another part of it is the recognition that certain experiences I have are meant for me and the people I have them with, and they are not to be profaned or cast before swine, as they say. Not that you guys are swine, I mean - or at least not all of you.

But I have one good story I have been sitting on that I think deserves to be told. Because it is in remembrance of the dead. And the dead died in order to be remembered, in order to have their stories told.

I must start this story by admitting that I’m not too sure of the spellings, which makes it all the worse, and all the more shameful, but their spirits will forgive me as long as I tell the story faithfully as far as I understand it.

I don’t know too much about Russian history, unfortunately. But I can tell you what was told to me. A man and woman escaped from Russia in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution. I think they could be termed “White Russians“, though I’m not sure. The man’s name was Andre Wasiliew and his wife’s name was Xenia. He held a doctorate of some kind, and was a chessmaster. She was a beauty queen. Or so the story goes…

They fled to China, where they lived for many years before arriving in my house here in Seattle. I don’t know what year this was, but I know they lived here for decades in peace and love, but also in fear of discovery. Andre covered the house in mirrors to reflect the beauty of his wife and his queen. It was not an act of vanity, but an act of Truth. The Truth that a mirror gives you is simply what you are at that present moment. The glory of God reflected in your skin and hair and eyes, my love. I wash myself in your beauty, my love.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Andre was a chessmaster, as I’ve said. I have no idea what job he held while living here, if a man like that ever truly holds a job at all. A man like that keeps jobs at bay, keeps the world out of the sanctity of his home, his castle, the best he can to protect and glorify the ones he loves. And let’s not forget the celebrations. The man grew psychedelic mushrooms in my basement, where my room, my cave, my sanctuary is. He pickled them in vodka. The basement is covered in red and white psychedelic swirls and flowers from those days. He would invite his friends over and they would get smashed together and they would experience God together. And they loved each other very much and the cares and fears of our troubled world would melt into the woodwork, the mirros reflecting and amplifying only the joy and love this house held during those days.

And so they lived out their lives together here, until they reached their seventies or eighties. I’m not really sure. But they committed suicide together in our house, somewhere upstairs. Because they didn’t want to ever be apart. They didn’t want to have to watch each other die. They loved each other that much. They held each other close and passed on together.

And yet they linger here still, or some element of their spirit does. I have felt it watching over us. I have heard whispers in the night when I am alone. And more than that, I have felt old Wasiliew within my body one night almost two weeks ago. Some friends and I were partaking in those holy sacraments of which he was so fond. We began talking about him, and recounting their history. And all at once he was with me. He was in me, alongside me. His arms were my arms. His thoughts and loves and memories were mine. It was beautiful and disorienting. He was a good man and he lived for love and he worshipped his wife as a goddess incarnate, beauty that walked upon this earth and for some reason saw fit to rest night by night in his arms. He never understood it and he knew that he didn’t have to. His role as knight, as king, as chessmaster was only to serve and to protect and to exalt in every moment the glory of her goodness, of her majesty.

Meeting him in such a way as I did gave me vast and instantaneous insight into the course my life has taken while living under the protection and guidance of their eternal love: the struggles I have gone through, the archetypal themes that have overwhelmed me, the joyously agonizing and tortuously ecstatic love which for me opened up within this basement, this world he created and watched over, this impossible dream for which I am putting it all on the line and leaving my ordinary life behind in only two days.

These are the spirits who have watched over me, who have guided and influenced me in dreams for almost a year, in whose beatific memory my own love and blood have been spilt out upon the altar of rocks, that eternal place of self-sacrifice. And I just wanted to say thank you to them, that I will always be grateful to their lessons and their loves and their sorrows which have infused my life as though their own. I will never forget what I have gained here as I move ahead in my life and I will do my very best for all time to pass along those lessons they lived and loved and died for to everyone I meet. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. Thank you.

I walked home from the grocery store the other night and I had the old man’s memories laminated on top of mine. It’s funny how these things work. I was walking home with food and drink. And I and he remembered a time - many times, in fact - where he walked that same path, up the alleyway, thoughts much aligned with mine, in anticipation of reunion with his queen. She stood there - both my love and his all at once - cooking dinner. The smell of onions in the air. Potatoes and some kind of meat on the stove. He walks in and grabs her round the waist, kissing her, cherishing every moment they could ever share together. And he showed me also my future in that moment, laid out for me again all ahead of me, mine only to be true to at all costs. And I thanked him and wept and walked on. And in two days I leave to go on and continue his dream, to live for love, to die for love. To celebrate life in all it’s joyous complexity. To fight and die as king on behalf of your queen.

Long live the memory of these times and of these people who fought the eternal fight and lived the everlasting dream. May your example shine out as a beacon to all souls who dwell within these realms. Amen.