heres a mystical story for you:

on friday i went to glendalough, the ruins of an old monastic village set in a valley between two lakes, about an hour south of dublin. i went hoping to have a mystical experience; i had read eco's foucaults pendulum on the plane, which is a lot about kabbalah and masons and the occult and telluric currents, boy you should read it if you havent (though it has some pretty obnoxiously erudite sections), but anyway it got me feeling really lonley for some unknown forces. so im waiting for the bus, and then there it comes, and it goes right past. so i think maybe im just in the wrong spot (the stop is not marked), so i start walking after the bus, but it just keeps going, so now i start running, im running, yes running as i see the bus turn the corner, and i blaze into traffic which is of course not coming form the direction i expect, so horns blare and i almost get hit but i swerve like a frogger and make it to the other side, and my foot jumps onto the curb, but misses, and my balance fails, and i start flailing, flailing, my arms pinwheeling madly through the air, and now i know im going to fall, inevitable, but im just running madly forward until finally i ran directly into a large metal pole with my chest. hard. i spin around backwards and hit the ground, hard, with both arms. i collapse into a pile on the asphalt, knocked out, delirious, and i look up and see two men wlaking past me, and they just look and smile. and walk right past. i shout to them, 'im all right!' and i get up and stumble over to them and tap the one on his shoulder, 'im all right'. 'oh, oh, good' he says. then i start to faint.

anyway, the bus it turns out was just going around the block, so i get to glendalough, and the whole time my body is just aching and i can barely breathe. i hike up a hill, and just watch the trees for a while. at one point the wind blows my sweater down a hill and i have to go chase after it. later i sneak into an old church. nothing overtly mystcal, but its really beautiful, the silence, the water, the wind.

then the next day, i wake up feeling awful, aching, fevered, throat sore. it seems that slamming into the pole has given me the flu. we have an endless rehearsal, and i go home shaking with a thermometer verified 100 degree fever. i go up to sleep, keeping my sweater on.

i wake around four in the moring, in so much pain...every limb exhausted and sore, my body on fire, my throat a razor, my head concrete. i drink the last of my water, and i cant move, but i know i need more...i know i have to put something else into my body, something to purge this disease form me. i try visualizing the virus, try visualizing removing it. and then i remember that there are peaches downstairs. in a small wooden bowl. i spend twenty minutes specualting on whether or not i am going to get up (im goin got get up right now. right now. right....now!) and then i surprise myself and sit up, slowly swing my legs to the ground and stand.

we are staying at jasons aunts house, she is a 70 year old ex-nun. there are religous books and paintings everywhere. and dust. but as i walk out into the hall, i find that i am in fact in my grandmothers house, and i am ten again. i creep down the stairs, past the golden woodblocks of christ, so slowly, nearly falling, and in the dark of the living room i find the bowl of peaches with my hands. i take it into the kitchen and eat it over the sink, which is my grandmothers sink. it is so good, this peach. bright orange. juicy. i can feel it enter my blood and breath. i feel awake all through. its a really beautfiul thing. and then, as im sucking the last pieces of pulp from the pit, i start sweating, my entire face becomes a wet rag; the fever has broken.

i thank my grandmother, then i have a cracker and go back to bed.