A Thousand Steps

14

The ascending series of switchbacks that is Thermal Ridge Drive brings Matt to the Vortex of Purity in the hills. The van chugs. Matt heads for the far reaches of the parking lot, away from the clot of cars near the campus entrance.

He knows this place, formerly a Catholic seminary, an art school, a psychiatric hospital, a military academy, and later the Laguna Beach Bible College, which closed its doors in 1960. He was eight when they boarded up the buildings and fenced the grounds. It took a year for the FOR SALE signs to go up. But Laguna Beach real estate was pricey even then, so little demand for a beat-up campus half-hidden in the hills, and so old that it ran on gas generators.

But Matt remembers the swanky chancellor’s residence with its own blue-domed bell tower, the classrooms, a lecture hall, dining hall, gym, lap pool, athletic field, and dorms. Matt and Kyle used to prowl the weedy, debris-littered acres, hunting lizards and snakes that Kyle kept in his room in their bomb shelter house on Top of the World.

Standing in the parking lot, Matt carefully tears his new drawing of Jasmine from the sketchbook, folds it, and puts it in a back pocket of his shorts.

Then locks the Westfalia and walks across the lot toward a bright marquee where the old wooden Laguna Bible College sign once stood:

A large, glittering gold Hamsa protrudes into the space between the words, taking up the bottom half of the marquee. Matt recognizes the Hamsa from one of the Mystic Arts World employees, Hamsa Luke Lucas, who has one tattooed across the top of his right hand. Luke calls it the Hand of the Goddess. To Matt the Hamsa is an intriguing symbol — a human right hand, open — with an eye staring out from below the fingers. It’s supposed to protect you from the evil eye, and Luke swears it works. This marquee Hamsa is made of tiny gold bulbs that flicker and glow alluringly. The eye has a golden iris and a penetrating crimson pupil. Matt stands for a moment taking it in, watching the people walking around it, some of them also stopping to look. He smells food — cooked food, good food, food made with unusual spices — calling him from the auditorium.

There’s a table set up at the entrance and Matt digs out a quarter for Sara the Skateboard Girl who said he was cute.

“Take any seat you’d like inside,” she says.

“Thanks for the discount.”

She looks him over, hands back the quarter. “You could use some food. It’s after the Evolution, in the lobby.”

Indeed it is: two long picnic tables of covered bowls, crockpots, and vessels, with paper plates, plastic utensils. Matt can’t wait. Presiding in the lobby are some of the young people from the shoot at Thousand Steps beach, most of them dressed in loose white pantsuits, boys and girls both, all with pleasant expressions.

Matt takes a seat in the back to be closer to the food. The auditorium is almost full. He breathes the complex atmosphere of curry, incense, ocean, and hillside sage. The room is dimly lit except for the stage, which waits in bright light. The stage floor is a shiny finished maple, and the rug in its center is a rich arabesque of wine-red and blue. In the middle of the rug sits a thickly padded white leather chair with crimson piping and a small crimson pillow to support the lower back. Like a throne, Matt thinks. There’s a mic on a swivel stand on one side of it.

He sees locals he recognizes, some of the older high school students and recent grads. Most of them are pretty in a wholesome, girl- or boy-next-door kind of way. Like Jazz, he thinks. The girls look eagerly toward the empty white throne, trading whispers, faces hopeful and eyes wide. The boys are more relaxed and skeptical, making cracks and smiling. Only a few in the crowd look like moms and dads.

The swami walks on. Short slow steps, arms out, palms together, fingers up. He’s barefoot, the tops of his feet dark, and the soles pale pink as he walks.

As Matt remembers from Mystic Arts World, Mahajad Om is tall, weighty, and slow in motion. His crimson robe is shiny satin and reveals a wedge of gray chest. The robe sweeps up dramatically over his shoulders, buttressed by pads, Matt guesses, like a Star Trek villain. Mahajad’s lustrous gray-black hair goes to his shoulders, the gray-white beard clear to his chest. His cheeks and forehead and eyes show no wrinkles, moles, or marks. His skin is unblemished, even with the spotlights bearing down. He looks to Matt like he could be anywhere from twenty to a hundred years old.

Now comes a ripple of applause as the swami approaches his white leather throne. Some in the crowd stand. But Mahajad Om quickly raises his hands to quell the clapping, and many of his orange-clad and apparently more experienced followers stand and do likewise to the audience. Silence please! Silence please!

Matt, who has risen, sits back down in the sudden silence, in which Swami Mahajad settles into his chair, reaching back to position the pillow before settling his weight.

Mahajad slowly draws in the microphone, taps it with one finger as he looks out at his audience.

His voice is smooth, subtly accented and surprisingly resonant.

“A stone falls into water and creates disturbing waves. These waves oscillate concentrically until, at last, the water returns to its condition of calm tranquility. Similarly, all action, on every plane, produces disturbance in the balanced harmony of the universe, and the vibrations so produced will continue to roll backward and forward... until equilibrium is restored.”

His eyes twinkle and he looks ready to smile but he doesn’t quite.

“Welcome. Peace be with you. Shantih, shantih, shantih.”

Matt recognizes the last words of “The Waste Land,” which was a favorite of Marybeth Benson, his sophomore English teacher. Miss Benson had told them that it was a Sanskrit word that meant something like “the peace that passeth all understanding.” Matt had liked the poem, though it was confusing and scattered, like something that had blown up. Miss Benson said it was trying to capture the world after the horrors of World War I.

The swami continues in his smooth clear voice:

“The wicked man in prosperity may, all unknown to himself, be darkened and corroded with inward rust, while the good man under afflictions may be locked in a struggle of spiritual growth. No, God is not mocked; but also, let us always remember, He is not understood.”

Then a pretty dark-haired young woman glides onstage from behind Mahajad. She wears a crimson robe like the swami’s, and carries a sitar. It’s a gleaming, intricately detailed, burnished thing, and large. She positions herself near the swami and gracefully lowers herself, resting the rounded body of the instrument on the rug.

The notes sound reluctant at first, ringing and lonely. Then the woman’s fingers are traveling the neck in long strokes and the notes fall from the air like rain. The music is mysterious but inviting, and Matt gives himself over to its droning, twinkling energy.

When the music trails off, the swami speaks:

“Through evolution we become the stones that are born and reborn toward purity. Through enlightenment we become the water. Through ecstasy we become the waves that move through the water. We welcome you, new stones. You are the Evolved. You are on the path to seeing the world in a new way. Yours is a new reality.”

Music again, then Matt hears the door clunk open behind him and turns to watch six young actors from today’s Thousand Steps performance trailing up the aisle toward the stage. They’re still in their beachwear. Three girls and three boys, one of them Sara, with her thick hair pulled back and spilling out of big plastic claw clips.

The veteran orange Vortexers stand and clap, quickly joined by Matt and the others. Swami Mahajad Om watches, still as a statue, his eyes wide and gleaming. The Evolvers line up in front of the stage, facing the audience, palms together at heart level, their expressions serious. They bow once, then head back out the way they’ve come in. Matt waves at Sara but she doesn’t acknowledge him. The music continues and when Matt looks back, Swami Mahajad turns and small-steps his way offstage and out of sight.

Matt heads straight for the food.