sitting at the bar watching the news, the captain of your flight narrated your bravery, how you explained that a radio had told you to go ride the music and how you then charmed the terrorists into parachutes. At that moment in walks the festival producer to ask what band name to put on the program, and the cats all looked at me so I said, Go Ride the Music.” “All right, if we’re that connected, let’s play together some time.” “How about tonight at the Green Parrot after the show?” “Bet to that. I’ll be there.” Ganga half-swam, half-walked to the tunnel’s entrance and stepped out of sight and sun into cool pitch darkness. The water from the hot springs felt warmer than the air so she tied her hair up in a rishi knot and hunkered down until all but her head was underwater. Paddling down the tunnel, adjusting to the dark, her eyes caught in the stone images from the day mixed with bits of last night’s dream. When she could see no light at either end, the walls of the passageway began to breathe like muscles slowly contracting. A primordial dread entered her bloodstream, and when she closed her eyes and opened them she knew: she was in mother’s birth canal. She loved her mother, and her mother said she was a smooth delivery, but the walls seemed to be closing in. Like the Contra-Tantras she knew she was at the end of what her compass could do for her. So she took the remedy she prescribed for them: she inched her way forward to her jump-off point. Fighting off panic she pressed on and soon saw light up ahead. As the passageway opened she stepped out of the tunnel and into the circular, high-ceilinged cave. At its center, an island of rock rose evenly above the water. Light filtered down from an adobe turret’s large windows forty feet above. She swam to the island, climbed up the warm, sun-drenched rock and lay down next to the former pastor on the sun-drenched rock. “Do you find it odd that a radio spoke to me?” “Not after living in Haight-Ashbury way back when.” “But go ride the music?” “That’s actually the refrain Marty Balin and Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane sang on ‘Wooden Ships,’ a Crosby-Stills song of the late Sixties, but I’d need a time capsule to give
Page 70