Whenever Chaos Rears Her Pretty Head

Darjeeling sat on the ground with his head in his hands. He didn’t know what had happened, he only knew that a sequence of events had developed and had turned real negative. It scared him to death to think about what might follow. Right now all he knew was that the Albatross Camper was no more. It all started when he had tried to elevate the cab-over camper high enough to get it into the bed of the truck and it fell over. Then he picked it up with his John Deere 420 tractor loader bucket and it fell over the other way. He tried to jack it up (4 jacks cost him $250) and it kept falling over different directions. He got the tractor again and the Albatross started breaking up like the Titanic. So there is no more Albatross. Chaos reared her pretty head and the Albatross was gone. Pushed into a heap. Gutted and empty. And Darjeeling sitting on the ground amidst the ruins, nursing a wasp sting as well.
Darjeeling didn’t really care about the physical Albatross or the loss of one more material possession. It was the manner in which it all happened that caused him concern. He had been riding a pretty high wave up until then, like a surfer about to crouch into the crest and enter the pipeline for a really good ride, only to be smacked down by the wave as it engulfed him and his board, in this case, the Albatross. The board came up broken in two and Darjeeling washed up on the beach, lying there feeling sorry for himself. He ran over in his mind what exactly had happened trying to pinpoint the instant in which Chaos showed up.
Chaos was something that pretty much dominated Stephen Darjeeling’s life. He thrived on it when he knew it was coming and he loathed it when he didn’t. It caused him to reach knew plateaus of euphoria when he was able to stand back and watch others react to total chaotic situations, and it brought him almost to the depths of despair when it blindsided him like it had in this instance. He was lucky in that the highs outweighed the lows and when the lows came he was able to recover fairly swiftly. His reaction was not to the loss but to the misunderstanding and misreading of the signs that led up to the negative chaotic event.
Darjeeling looked up at the ruined Albatross hulk. Then he smiled. “Worthless piece of shit,” he said out loud and pitched a handful of mud that he had scraped from his boots at the camper shell. “A nest for birds, a skunk den, a squirrel house is what you are now, or maybe I will continue to break you into pieces and feed you to the dumpster,” another mud ball marred the white outer side of the Albatross. He wiped from memory all of those times he had sought refuge in some wilderness area, the faithful Albatross stashed out of sight, camouflaged and ready to roll at a minutes notice. He recalled to mind Coleridge’s poem. “Dead birds smell in three days, I’ll not wear you around my neck!” Whap! Another mudball splatted and left a brown streak as it hit and then slithered to the ground. He heard a noise come from inside the camper and went to investigate. As he walked around the front he caught sight of a shadow shape. Turning quickly, he confronted it. This was his dementia, this was his own albatross that he wore.
“Who’s here?” he called out. He ducked around the corner and then quickly turned a hundred and eighty degrees to try to detect who or what was behind him. He heard the crunch of leaves under the hedge trees. One of the dogs? No, not this time, they were off chasing rabbits. “Who’s here, show yourself,” He came to the doorway and was just about to enter when she appeared at the camper entrance.
“Ok, Stephen, I will,” the lady spoke silently to him in his mind. “You ask who I am? I am Star-Chronos, the caretaker of chaos and I have come here to give you a warning. This is just a simple example of the chaos you and the world around you are about to experience.”
Darjeeling regained his aloofness and stepped back a step. “If you are the caretaker of chaos then you caused this to happen and you can keep even greater chaotic events from happening.”
“Just because I am the caretaker doesn’t mean that I control chaos. I just observe it much like you do when you have things under control. It should be obvious that in this instance, you don’t.” The lady’s eyes glowed emerald green and a halo shown around her golden hair. She stood framed in the doorway of the destroyed camper and smiled at Darjeeling. He could tell that she liked him and had compassion for him even though she now chided him for his lapse of consciousness and control. She raised her right hand and extended her index finger. A star shaped point of light appeared at her finger tip. “Here, Stephen, I am giving you this as a reminder of what you need to do to avoid chaotic conflict. Whenever chaos is about to turn negative, you will see this star light appear before you in the area where negative chaos is about to develop. Then it is up to you on how you react to it.” With that, she turned around and went into the camper. Darjeeling followed her in but there was no one there. He went back outside and kicked the side of the camper.
“Worthless piece of shit,” he said and grabbed a cold Mickey’s from the cooler in the pickup twisting off the lid and flinging it into the camper. It came floating back out on a star shaped pinpoint of light.
“Remember, Darjeeling, only you can prevent chaos,” the voice inside his mind said. He turned and got into the truck and drove out to the vineyard and sat there waiting to see what would happen next. It didn’t take long. He saw something up by the corner of the vineyard that looked like a column of clear light. As he looked more closely, he started up the truck and crept slowly forward between two grape trellises keeping his eyes on the column that now looked like a faceted crystal. Suddenly the truck stalled so he got out and walked toward the corner of the property. He noticed that the closer he got the harder it was for him to walk until he reached a point about a hundred feet from the crystal column and had to stop. It was like he was walking in molasses. The column was vibrating and glowing with a soft crystalline glow and was situated at exactly his northeast property corner next to the gravel road. The crystal grew and grew to a height of fifty feet or more and then stopped growing. On top of it appeared Star-Chronos who looked down at Darjeeling and smiled. She stretched out her hand and a star-light appeared in front of her as she faced to the west and pointed down Darjeeling’s north property line. As the star-light went out it created a diaphanous web of crystal, a wall that was as high as the column and was attached to it and spread along the north property line until it reached the northwest corner of the property where another crystal column formed and the wall turned and went south to the southwest corner. This sequence was repeated until all of the corners had columns and the crystalline web entirely enclosed Darjeeling’s property. When that was finished the web covered the entire property from corner to corner creating a ceiling over the thirty two acre tract. In his travels, Darjeeling had once encountered this phenomenon as it was shown to him by a group of monks in Tibet. They had told him that it was possible to do it anywhere if your mind was strong enough and focused and that it was used for protection from negative chaos. Darjeeling looked up at Star-Chronos who was descending toward him on a lotus-shaped pedestal of pink crystal. She stopped directly in front of him.
“Stephen Darjeeling you are right in your conclusion that this is the same structure as the Tibetan monks showed you. They have also been visited for centuries by me and others of the Star. They are a force of goodness and compassion. You should devote yourself to the same altruistic lifestyle that they have.
“You mean I, Darjeeling, am going to be a monk?” This was something that Darjeeling already knew was not going to happen.
“Of course not, silly, we do not interfere in human development or change lives, it is only a suggestion that will be of benefit to you and to others around you. And besides, it can’t hurt can it?” Star-Chronos added a British accent to the last sentence and laughed.
“OK, but what about this stuff on my land, I mean won’t the neighbors talk about it and ask me where I got the funny fence?”
“Of course they can’t see it, only you can, Stephen.”
“Like, how do I get out of here to go to work and such?”
“Through that gate over there,” she pointed to the gate at the drive and Darjeeling noticed as the web developed an outline of a gate. “You can come and go freely but others may not be able to enter. If you see someone who appears to not be able to pass through the web, be aware that that person or persons has negative chaotic energy that will disrupt the field. They will be turned away.”
“What if they happen to be my friends?” Darjeeling could think of several who would qualify in the negative category.
“Be wary of anyone who cannot enter,” And with that, Star-Chronos mounted the crystal lotus and began to slowly ascend until Darjeeling could no longer see her.
“Thank you, Thank you,” Darjeeling called out and waved and then noticed that his neighbor was getting his mail and had turned around to stare at him like he was crazy.
“You are welcome, Stephen,” he heard in his mind. He waved at his neighbor and went back into the vineyard to get his pickup. He looked up. There above him and all around his property was the web supported by the crystal columns. Darjeeling felt good and promised to himself to be more altruistic and compassionate in his life. He went around to the back of the house where the deck was where he had first encountered the People of the Star. There he noticed one more crystal column, bigger than all the rest that was anchored in the center of the octagonal deck and that reached up to the web and supported it like the center pole in a circus tent. He marveled at its beauty and it vibrated and glowed in response to his thoughts.