The Blazing World

Sweet Autumn Pinkney (edited transcript)

I haven’t seen Anton for years, and I don’t know where he is or what he’s up to now, but we had a moment of true balance when I was an assistant working on History of Art. My friend Bunny told me that this book was going to happen, and I thought I ought to tell my story. First, I’d like to say that, whatever other people might think, Anton was definitely not a dumb person. He read books, and he thought about big ideas. When I met him, he had this book called Anti-Octopus by two French guys that had something to do with how Freud was wrong, and it was very intellectual. But Anton was a spiritual person mostly, striving for the higher consciousness, even though he had just started making baby steps, if you know what I mean. I was at the beginning of my journey then, too. I was a follower of Peter Deunov, or Beinsa Douno, the Bulgarian master, and I was starting my work with chakras and healing crystals, and Anton and I talked a lot about cosmic rhythms, energy, and astrological signs. Not everybody puts all these knowledges together, but I think they’re all related in the big universal picture of things. Anton was kind of doubtful in the beginning, but then I think he realized that I had it — the power to read auras. I’ve always had it since I was a little kid. I just didn’t know what it was. Sometimes the energy fields, sounds, and colors I felt coming from people were so strong, I almost fell over, or I felt blockages in them, like they were in me, and I’d feel sick, kind of dizzy and faint. Training and meditation helped me to get my gift under control and use it for healing others. I have a practice now, and people from all over the greater Northeast come to me for help.

Right from the first day, I felt there was something out of whack in the studio — weird energy. There were already two assistants on the job, Edgar and Steve. The sculpture part was done, so we were helping put all the pictures on the sleeping woman. (I liked her better naked and plain, to tell the truth.) Anton had his plans — great big sheets with all kinds of writing and notes on them. He seemed anxious and was always leaning over and squinting at them. His aura was bluish, yellow, greenish, but some stoppage, too. I could see and feel how tense he was, so I put my hand on his arm and just left it there. In less than a minute, his aura got more and more blue; it was pretty cool. Anton smiled at me, and I remember thinking he might have died as a little child in a previous life — there was something so young in him, so unformed but full of spiritual potential. Probably the second or third day, Harry came in.

I felt her like a red scream. I had to back up. I mean, I wasn’t even close to her, and I had to step backwards because she was emitting so much all at once, racing, multicolored, and churning, but too much red and orange. Harry had a lot of power, passion, and ambition, but there was some black in her, something blacked out, blotted out, and I saw that, too. It can be a sign of night — grief, some kind of harshness. Anton wilted a little when he saw her, but I could feel their closeness. It was hard for him to match her energy, but he tried. It might have been good if I had just put my hands on her, too, but I didn’t dare. Too much voltage. I didn’t really get the Venus sculpture, what its greater meaning was supposed to be, but I caught the vibrations between Anton and Harry like sparks.

I hardly remember Steve now except that his aura was a very light pink, and he had long hair. Edgar radiated green most of the time, a pulsing yellow-green, partly because he had his music on all the time in his ears, so he wasn’t responding to much around him, just the techno beats in his ears, while his chin bobbed up and down, up and down, like one of those carnival dolls with its head on springs. I can’t remember when the story boxes came in, but I saw Edgar look at them, and he seemed excited for the first time and turned a little orange. Anton said he had done them at home because they were small. They arrived all finished. I don’t think I would be upset now, but I was at a much earlier phase of my enlightenment then, and the boxes made me kind of low. They were sad — the little children in there, the man’s arm, the lady who couldn’t fit in her own bathroom, the writing. They made me think of gloomy colors and whining sounds, and I said to myself, I’ve got to let Anton know, and that’s how the story between us really got started.

I worked late one night and told him about the boxes, and he looked upset. When I put my hands on his, he said, “What is it about you? You calm me down. I didn’t used to be like this. Things used to be cool.” Then he waved his hands around the studio and said, “Things were good, but now it’s changing.” I told him it was something about Harry, and he looked a little funny, but he didn’t tell me anything then, so I gave him a back rub, and he told me I was magic, and I said no, just psychic. I had learned some Tantric sexual practices from a teacher, Rami Elderbeer, who was dispensing his personal wisdom in NYC at the time, techniques that lead to higher minglings and ecstatic oneness, the dissolution of our bodily differences into the higher states where there are no boundaries. Rami knew I had the power from the start — he saw the indigo in me — an indigo child, he said.

Some teachers counsel against all sex. Beinsa Douno did not believe in sex: “Love,” he wrote, “without falling in love” and “Stay at a distance so as not to see each other’s flaws. While people stay away from each other they only see their positive sides. When they get too close they cannot stand each other.” This is pretty good practical advice most of the time, but not all masters agree on sex. One of the prophet’s students, Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov, taught that the sexual act, Tantric, could be a path to higher wisdom. I taught Anton how to breathe and slow down and lose ego. Anton and I blissed out, really blissed out totally for a couple of weeks on this yoga mat in the studio. He got much happier; his aura went really blue with some touches of purple, and when he worked on the art, he was smooth and humming on a low note that just kept going. We talked a lot about the grasping self and how to transcend it, and we went on a ten-day wheat bulgur fast to tone up our nervous systems. The prophet prescribed it. You begin just after the full moon and end just before the new moon. All you eat for meals is the wheat with hot water, walnuts, and some honey if you want to sweeten it up. You can eat apples between meals. After you’ve had the apple, you must turn to it and say, “Thank you, apple.” Then you bury the core and the seeds. We had to go outside to do it. We’d pick up the cigarette butts and cans and condoms and clear a nice spot for the little burial. While you’re fasting, you’re not supposed to think any negative thoughts, so when we were picking up the garbage, I’d concentrate on stars and clover and clear pools. It really works. In fact, it’s pretty amazing. No sex during the fast. We felt really pure and white and clean as fresh snow and new moons.

During the fast, Anton said that he could feel how nothing matters personally, how the personal is the wrong path. Mine and yours are equal. Mine and yours are the same. We don’t really own anything in this life, and nobody owns art either. Making art shouldn’t be about names or about selling; it should lead you somewhere better on your path to higher understanding. He said Harry knew that, that she didn’t want anything for herself. She was unselfish. She’s like another mother to me, he said. I didn’t tell Anton that Harry was awfully red for a totally unselfish person, because I knew he had to find his own way. On the last day of the fast, we ate potato soup, and Anton started crying, not loud crying or anything, just tears dripping down his face. I remember that really well. I was in the lotus position, and he was in half lotus, face to face, and his shirt was unbuttoned so I could see the little curls on his chest, just a few light brown hairs, almost like an angel’s, really. The archangel Raphael is the angel for healing and wholeness and unity, so I called to the angel in my mind. Sadness, Anton, I said, is because of self-grasping. We are all looking for things to satisfy this sense of want that we feel would satisfy our needs. We all know that the next want will appear, and we will chase that and so on, but when we recognize it and put it on the shelf, we can move beyond it. And he felt better, and then after the soup, we went higher than ever before into the non-self upper reaches of Tantric truths.

We all saw it happening. Steve, Edgar, and I knew when that lady walked in, the one from the gallery — I can’t remember her name — but it doesn’t matter; she had a greedy face with money in it and lots of blockage in her, and Anton was very nervous. He could hardly breathe. And then it was bad to worse. Harry came in a lot, and she had this certain look. I mean, her eyes could do damage to you. She was quiet, really quiet, and stiff like she had just gotten extra starch at the dry cleaners. Anton was calling her Fairy Godmother, and then Edgar started doing it. I’m Cinderella. That’s what Anton said, but he was so keyed up, it wasn’t funny, if you know what I mean. The bad karma was building and building. So noisy! I had to meditate a lot. I had to cleanse my aura all the time. Auras are like magnets. They pick up all kinds of crap, and mine was getting mucky from the vibrations and negative energies. I was running my hands through my hair all the time and washing up, washing up. Sometimes I’d go outside and walk and let the wind from the water blow over me and clean me. I liked to walk by the water taxis and peek into the warehouse buildings and check out the Statue of Liberty from different angles. She looks so strong and centered. She always makes me feel better.

Then the show happened. Anton’s mom and dad came, which seemed really nice to me, and they were really nice people, too. I talked to them for a while, and his dad said, “We’re very proud.” But Anton freaked. He was drinking red wine and getting drunk. His spleen chakra was completely shut down. Harry wasn’t there. He kept saying, “I thought she’d come even though she said she wouldn’t. I can’t believe she isn’t here.” He was slurring words. He bumped against the wall. The crowd of people were screeching and laughing; their sounds made me really sore in my arms and legs, as if they were beating on me with their energy — bang, bang, bang. I had to run out of there. So I went home and lit a candle and meditated for a while, and then I called my mom, and we talked for about an hour. She was in a good place then, and her voice was like a healing song.

But it didn’t really get better with Anton. People were coming to talk to him in the studio. Tell us this and that, and oh, Anton, what were you thinking when you made the big nude? And blah, blah, blah, but the rest of us weren’t really doing anything there. Still, we were paid. Harry and Anton whispered together, lots of low conspiracy-type whispering. Harry read the reviews to all of us, laughing really loud, her eyes all glassy with tears. She thought it was so funny, but that didn’t make any sense. I could feel her from way across the room. Meanwhile, Anton got slicker and slicker. He talked different, walked different. His vibes went completely weird. He bought these really expensive shiny boots and some Japanese shirts, and he seemed to think they were going to protect him from what was going on with his inner being, which was shriveling up like a hard little peanut. I did a lot of breathing, a lot of aura cleaning, and I hoped things would change.

One day Harry came in while I was there. She seemed sunken, low-energy. I asked her if she was okay, and she looked at me for the first time. I mean actually looked at me. She smiled, and her face wrinkled up, and I realized she was pretty old. I told her I had used abalone shells on people to clear their hearts of sorrow, that they were very good for soothing and working through emotions, that they might help her. She patted my shoulder but didn’t say anything. She talked to Anton for a while. Then they were fighting, and he shouted at her, “This is my life!” Before she left, she came over and talked to me. She asked me about where I grew up and how I got my name. I told her my mother named me after a clematis because her mom, my grandma Lucy, loved the vine more than any other flowers. She seemed to like that. I told her my father didn’t want me. He wouldn’t even sign the birth certificate. It’s funny, I don’t tell everybody that. It depends on their aura, you know, but that day, even though Harry was kind of low on the energy scale, it was okay. I told her about my sensing things most people can’t see or feel. Before she left, she said something I still remember. I can’t say it like she did, but she told me that people have different names for the same things, depending on what interests they have, but the words can also change how we see the things. I don’t really get the last part, but I can understand why Anton thought Harry was wise. That day she seemed wise, and when she touched my hand, I felt warm sweet energies coming from her.

Anton sold everything in the show. Steve and Edgar left, and I didn’t see Harry after that. Anton took a lot of pictures of me for an artwork he said he wanted to do, but he never did. Every once in a while, he’d bring in a box with a strange little story in it. He’d sell those, too. But I never saw him working on one of them. He used to lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling a lot. He read some books, and he talked about Goya, the Spanish artist from the sixteenth century or something, and he showed me these terrible war pictures he made, and I said, “Anton, those won’t help you.” He talked about Harry. He said everything had gone wrong with her. He felt like a reflection in one of those fun-house mirrors. “You don’t get it,” he said. “She’s me. I’m her.” He was really imbalanced by now, and I tried garnets on him, but he got worse, and I explained that there were toxins in him, and sometimes there can be a healing crisis, and everything comes out all at once like an explosion. Then he started yelling, “You fucking little bitch with your stones and your energies and your auras. It’s garbage. It’s all garbage, don’t you know that?” I remember every word because what he said was so hurtful, even though I tried to center myself and understand that he was hurting more than I was; honestly, he was. He knocked over some tools, and he kicked the wall. He made a dent in it, and a piece of plaster shaped kind of like Louisiana fell on the floor.

I stood really still and closed my eyes. It reminded me of Mom and Denny when they fought. Denny would yell and hit the wall, and Mom would cry. They broke lots of things in the house. Once, Mom’s nose was bleeding all over her shirt and the floor. Denny left us when I was ten, and I was glad. Then Alex came, and he was much more mellow. He would take me to the beach on Sundays, but that was when I was eleven, and then he left, too. I used to press myself against the wall in my room and close my eyes and try not to hear them — Mom and Denny, I mean. After a while, it really worked. I trained myself not to be there, and I wasn’t. Sometimes I could see everything from very far away. I was out of myself, looking down. It’s pretty easy to do after a while.

Never mind. Never mind. Never mind, Sweet Autumn, I used to say. Float out and over the room and stay very, very quiet. After a while, Denny would leave — he would run out to his car yelling and drive away. I’d go to Mom and pet her head, and she’d cry and hold me for a while. I had to take care of her and not let the sounds she made go inside me, and then we’d sleep in my bed together. You see, when I was a kid, I learned how to wait, so I waited for Anton. He said he was sorry. He said he didn’t mean it. Then he told me about Harry and that it was mostly really Harry’s work, and he was just the name on it. I think I kind of knew all along even though I didn’t have the words for it. Anton said he tried to give Harry the money from selling History of Art, to make a clean break, but she wouldn’t take it, and so Anton said he was going to travel around the world to look for answers to the big questions.

I explained that it wasn’t good for me to be around him anymore. It was throwing me back and forth and bothering me, and I just didn’t need all the bad karma. So I walked out and didn’t come back.

About a year later, I was visiting my friend Emily in Red Hook, and I was walking around down by the water, chanting to myself and feeling the wind blow on me, so purifying, and I went by Anton’s old studio, but there was another name on the door. That’s how energies work, you know, because just two days later, I got a postcard. I saved it.

Dear Sweet Autumn,

I’m in Venice sitting in a café. This morning I went to the art museum here and saw some pictures by Giovanni Bellini. There was a Madonna that looked so much like you, I had to write. She had your eyes, the kind of eyes that go straight into you. I’m okay. Thinking of trying California as a place to live. I hope you are well.

Love, Anton

I didn’t see Harry again until she was very sick. That’s when she gave me the name Clematis, but she liked to call me Clem and Clemmy, too, and sometimes Clammy, to tease me. She’d say, “Clammy, my dear, isn’t it strange how things come around?” And I’d say, “No, Harry, the wheel keeps turning.” It does. The wheel keeps turning, round and round.