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«The next thing I knew was I no longer on this earth. Just as it takes time to grow accustomed to the after-world, so it was in my dream. The strangest thing to get used to was the fact that nothing I wished to do required the least effort. If I wished to run, whether slow or fast, I did so without losing breath. If I wanted to jump or lake or skip over a hill, I simply jumped. If I wanted to fly, I flew. There was nothing more to it than that, whatever I attempted.

After a time I realized I was not alone. Someone was at my side, like a shadow (...) My guardian angel, most likely. Though I encountered nothing resembling earthly creatures, I found myself conversing, effortlessly again, with whatever crossed my path. If it was an animal, I spoke to it in its own tongue; if it was a tree, I spoke in the language of a tree; if a rock, I spoke as a rock. I attributed this gift of tongues to the presence of the being that accompanied me.

But to what realm was I being escorted? And for what end?
Slowly, I became aware that I was bleeding, that indeed I was a mass of wounds, from head to foot. It was then that seized with fright, I swooned away. When at last I opened my eyes I saw to my astonishment that the Being who had accompanied me was tenderly bathing my wounds, anointing my body with oil. Was I at the point of death? Was it the angel of Mercy? Or had I already crossed the Great Divide?

Imploringly, I gazed into the eyes of my Comforter. The ineffable look of compassion which illuminated her features reassured me. I was no longer concerned to know whether I was still of this world or not. A feeling of peace invaded my being, and again I closed my eyes. Slowly and steadily a new vigour poured into my limbs; except for a strange feeling of emptiness in the region of the heart I felt completely restored.

It was after I had opened my eyes and found that I was alone, though not deserted, not abandoned, that instinctively I raised a hand and placed it over my heart. To my horror there was a deep hole where the heart should have been. A hole from which no blood flowed. 'Then I am dead' I murmured. Yet I believed it not.

At this strange moment, dead but not dead, the doors of memory swung open and down through the corridors of time I beheld that which no man should be permitted to see until he is ready to give up the ghost: I saw in every phase and moment of his pitiful weakness the utter wretch I had been, the blackguard, nothing less, who had striven so vainly and ignominiously to protect his miserable little heart. I saw that it never had been broken, as I imagined, but that, paralysed by fear, it had shrunk almost to nothingness. I saw that the grievous wounds which had brought me low had all been received in a senseless effort to prevent this shrivelled heart from breaking. The heart itself had never been touched; it had dwindled from disuse.

It was gone now, this heart, taken from me, no doubt by the Angel of Mercy. I had been healed and restored so that I might live on in death as I had never lived in life. Vulnerable no longer, what need was there for a  heart? (...)

Now, once again, the Angel appeared before me. In her hands, cupped like a chalice, she held the poor, shrunken semblance of a heart which was mine. Bestowing upon me a look of the utmost compassion, she blew upon this dead-looking ember until it swelled and filled with blood, until it palpitated between her fingers like a live, human heart.

Restoring it to its place, her lips moved as if pronouncing the benediction, but no sound issued forth. My transgressions had been forgiven; I was free to sin again, free to burn with the flame of the spirit. (...)

I was no longer ashamed to be human, all-too-human.
I had found my place. I belonged. My place was in the world, in the midst of death and corruption. For companions I had the sun, the moon, the stars. My heart, cleansed of its iniquities, had lost all fear; it ached now to offer itself to the first comer. Indeed, I had the impression that I was all heart, a heart which could never be broken, nor even wounded, since it was forever inseparable from that which had given it birth.

And so as I walked forward and onward into the thick of the world, there where full of havoc had been wreaked and panic alone reigned, I cried out with all the fervour which my soul possessed - 'Take heart, O brothers and sisters! Take heart!'»

[ Henry Miller - Plexus ]

The model above is Linda O' Neil - Mrs. O' Neil website
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