Eeny meeny miny moe catch a tiger by its toe.
If it hollers let it go eeny meeny miny moe

Icky thwicky sticky thwap nail a spider to a tack.
If it stays, we’ll launch attack, icky thwicky sticky thwap.

Ferret one and ferret three please remember, stick by me.
And ferret two, a tank will do. Go and find one, make it new.

Be quiet kids and furry friends, our enemies are near.
And lest they all discover us, tread lightly and beware.

The fiends are in the walls, they’re in the cracks and up the stairs.
I can feel them in my bones I can feel them in the air.

Don’t dawdle when the time grows nigh!
Don’t ogle when they pass you by!
They’ll freeze you dead if ever you let down your wily guard.

Be stern, be fast, be stubborn,
Close your eyes and wade on in.

Let the ferrets take the vanguard!
Hold your breath until we win.

I went down to Paia yesterday, to watch the surf and do some roaming. I hadn’t slept well and my brain was stubbornly unfocused. I went to the point I’d been shown and sat on a bluff, trying to wake up. I stared at the waves, the sea turtles, the clouds, and then the waves again, but nothing felt real.

The sun was burning my back, so I got up to find coffee instead. As I was leaving, an attractive man my age came around the corner with his dog. We talked on the path towards town. He was a carpenter and a gardener. Like me, he lived on the mountain and came down to Paia to meet people. He introduced himself as Eric. As we rounded the final corner, Eric told me he worked as a grounds keeper for Oprah—and was on his way to her estate that afternoon.

Ever since my traumatic one night stand (ambiguously described here), I’ve tried to keep my Hottieness in check. It turns out fornication is ugly and only love is pretty. I now try to wield my sexual powers for world peace only. But sometimes it’s hard to keep them in check.

This was one of those difficult times.

Every one wants to meet Oprah Winfrey! She is as fundamental a node in the map of reality as the Pope or Cheney. It’s not just a matter of power of celebrity. It’s a question of character, and power and celebrity. What has Oprah done? What does she know? Could Oprah be the wo-Man in the High Castle? Does she know that all is a fiction?

I couldn’t contain myself. I raised a seductive eyebrow. “Oh really?”

Eric turned red and shy for a moment but he recovered quickly. “Yeah…you wanna come?”

~~

Oprah lives on the far end of Kula, above the south shore of Maui. From her porch you can see both shores and the West Maui’s. By the time the road reaches her house, it has dwindled to a one lane gravel path, somehow inaccessible enough to dissuade her international hordes of admirers. I was the only visitor in sight.

Eric had to work, but he left me on the porch. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Someone will notify Oprah.”

I nodded and found some shade. I half hoped nobody would notify her, I was so nervous. What in the world would I say to Oprah? What would I tell her? Could Oprah and I talk about dead Germans? What would she look like? Sound like? Suddenly I realized I’d never even watched her show. I barely even knew her political stances! I’d never even thought about her!

I decided that we could never connect meaningfully, and that the best I could hope for was a good gift—that much I knew about her. I decided to tell her about my yoga work in the hope that she would hook me up with a free trainer. And a horsie, and a car.

As I was scheming, a short, quiet woman stepped out.

“Hi, I’m Oprah, nice to meet you.”

I almost peed my pants.

“Oh Hi! I’m Luki!” Oprah smiled softly.

I carried on. “Thanks for letting me come up here. Beautiful place you have.”

Oprah paused as if considering something.

When she spoke again, it was from deep within. “My child. The veil of Maya has descended into your world. It is thicker than it ever has been for you. Beware.”

I was speechless. Seconds ticked by. The tropical birds chirped.

“Why have you come here, Luki? What do you want from me?”

It was hard for me to think.

“I don’t know I wanted to know…”

“What Luki, what?”

“I wanted to know who shot JFK!”

Oprah paused again.

I blushed with embarrassment, thinking she had gotten the wrong idea. Then she spoke. “You want to know the web of the world. You want to calibrate your perception of causality and integrate it with the inscrutable mass of history. You want to see so that you may play your part. You wonder whether I am a mirror or a fountain.”

“Yes, Oprah, yes!”

“Follow me, child.”

She led me down. Off her sun porch, down the stairs, down a ladder, down a rope, then down an elevator. The elevator beeped and the door opened to a purple room with fire. It hummed with a mysterious energy.

“This is the womb,” she said tonelessly. She led me in.

I felt it to be a moment I had always waited for—when destiny and history would finally find my life and connect me to the greater continuum of time. Could the Maui Magic run this deep? Could I find it all? My heart thudded in my chest.

Oprah pulled out a key and opened a door. She pulled out a wheel.

“This is the wheel,” she told me.

“Oh…wow.”

She turned it around to the side with bright scribbles. “This is the wheel of LIFE.”

“Yes.”

She hung the wheel on a knob in the wall and started it spinning. “Have you ever watched the wheel of life spin, Luki? I mean, really watched it?”

“No. I never have, Oprah.”

She smiled at me then, gushing with love. “Watch, Luki!”

The wheel spun. As it turned, she wrapped her arms around me and began to hum.

Hush little child don’t say a word, momma’s gonna buy you a hummingbird…and if that hummingbird don’t fly, momma’s gonna…

The wheel’s colors twisted and merged fantastically. I tried to absorb them. But Oprah’s arms were slick around me. Her breathing was rapid and too shallow. Something wasn’t right.

A familiar pang flared in my heart. Oh Oprah, no. No. Not you too!

Winfrey stiffened suddenly. My heart skipped a beat, but she was too absorbed in the wheel to notice my doubt.

“Do you want to know who shot JFK, Luki? Do you want to know where to find the center?”

“I do.”

She cleared her throat and all was lost:

“The Golden Mean or Spiral Sequence is the name derived by the Divine Proportion or PHI ratio ‘discovered’ in all of organic nature that creates incredibly efficient growth patterns, coherence, harmonics, and inherent sustainability of all manifest energy! Source dreams the harmony of the universe into material existence through the perfect geometry of the golden spiral. Have you heard of the spiral, Luki?”

I nodded quickly, holding back tears. “Yes, Oprah.”

A major lesson of my year has been: Everybody is crazy. Everybody. It does one no good to have too much faith in one person or another, in one particular friendship, in a love, in a favorite thinker, in a wise elder, in a travel companion, or even in oneself. Eventually, through some unsealed crack, a person’s true insanity will reveal itself.

Oprah continued, gesticulating:

“The Phythagoreans, Leonardo Da Vinci, Plato, and many others intentionally used this shape for they found it everywhere in nature: the Nautilus Sea Shell, Ram’s horns, milk in coffee, human bone structure, the face of a Sunflower, a cedar pinecone, your fingerprints, our DNA, and the shape of the Milky Way Galaxy. Crop Circles are often created in various forms of the Spiral because it is the code that embeds information into the Earth Grid more than any other!”

I had just wanted the chance to forget the lesson. I had come to Maui hoping I had gotten it wrong—hoping perhaps that only in Berzerkeley was everybody crazy.

Is it too much to ask for just one sane person in a womb of fire? One enlightened soul in a trippy New Age dungeon?

But by then, Oprah’s mouth was foaming:

“If we view the universe as the nonlinear plane of clouds that encompasses all dimensions and frequencies, then the spiral is how we break into the plane of the 3D world through this energetic flightpath down into manifestation. This is the only geometric way the universe can generate charge and motion – a force that creates the Electromagnetic Spin Field that composes the entire spectrum of our reality!

“As this energy spins faster than the speed of light, a black hole is created which breaks through the linear space-time domain and unites with Source. This form is what links all units of creation with each other, generates SYCHRONICITY, perfect design, and connects us with the Quantum Field where the seemingly impossible becomes reality as the spiral of our co-creative consciousness connects with the ‘future’ desired manifestation… the manifestation which is already real and impulsing you in the mirrored ‘past’ to think of it!”

Then suddenly there was silence.

Oprah was locked in a trance, staring at the spinning colors. She had forgotten I was there.

I couldn’t take another minute of it. The disappointment was brutal. I had to get out of the ‘womb.’

I hurried back to the elevator, shimmied up the rope, climbed the ladder, jumped up the stairs, and ran outside into the sunshine.

Eric called to me immediately.

“Luki! Luki! Are you alright?”

“Yes, I just, I—”

“Oprah can be pretty overwhelming, can’t she?”

“Yeah.”

There was nothing else to say.

Eric looked bashful again and played with his toe in the dirt.

“Well. I have to do some yard work at Willie’s place next. He’s on the other side of the island…Wanna come with?”

“Willie?”

Eric laughed. “Yeah, Willie Nelson! He lives right here on Maui! You’ve got to meet him.”

I laughed too. “Well. Alright.”